Next, one of the reasons I love Jade’s course, Next Level Romance, is because it starts with the personal development of the individual—which is what I want to talk about today. The first several modules are about learning about your own wants, desires, needs, forming your personal honor code and working through limiting beliefs about love, relationships and worthiness.

Over the last 6 years at JillFit, we’ve talked about mindset in the context of being able to choose your perception of events to one that serves you.

Easier said than done, right? Especially when hurts, insecurities, uncertainty and feelings of pain and loss are present. We want to acknowledge them, and then find a better way to deal with them so that we can move on, with growth and at peace.

What does that mean? It means that whatever transpires in your life—whether it happened because of someone else or because of your own actions—you take 100% responsibility for finding a solution for it.

I think sometimes we get responsibility mixed up with blame.

It can feel like, by taking responsibility, we are letting people off the hook, especially if we feel like we wouldn’t be in this scenario if it weren’t for their actions. Maybe we wouldn’t be, but it’s still our responsibility to change them (if we choose), because the alternative is waiting on them to change.

A toughie, but take infidelity, for example.

One person’s actions severely affect the other person. But that other person—as effing hard as it may be—does have options. They can take action to feel in their power, even when they feel at a mercy of something so incredibly painful.

Some options: They can leave, live in hurt and victimhood, not do any work on themselves—only to (probably) end up with the same themes popping up again and again in future relationships. Or, they can leave and commit to personal development and overcoming their insecurities and self-worth struggles—yes, even though the infidelity wasn’t their doing, per se. Or they can stay, adjust their perception and commit to honest communication. Or they can stay and be miserable, resentful and hold on to their hurts so tightly because letting them go feels like a betrayal of self.

And most likely, they will do a combination of all of those things until they find a way to feel in their power again.

All totally normal and nothing “wrong” with any of them, I get all of it, but we can also see how some choices will move us forward and others won’t. No judgment. No rush, this doesn’t happen overnight. And no expectations.

Taking responsibility for my current circumstances no matter who did what to get me there, is NOT the same as condoning the behavior.

It’s not about letting people off the hook, and it’s not about assigning blame, but instead about making a conscious choice to do what we need to for ourselves in every situation—so that we can feel powerful and like we have a say in where our life goes next. Not at the mercy of someone else’s actions—even though we are affected by them.

Because what’s the ultimate goal?

When we feel in our power, we take more action. When we feel worthy, we take more action. When we feel more at peace, we feel safe to take more action.

And action bridges the gap. It gets us from here to there. It moves us toward the outcomes we seek.

Whether we are building a body, a business, a relationship or working on ourselves, action allows for us to see movement, progress and build a show of evidence that we can handle shit.

It’s always scary to take new action, to do things that are out of our comfort zones. But when we trust ourselves just that little bit, we see that we can handle stuff.

This builds competency, which in turn builds confidence.

And the more confidence we build, the more action we’ll continue to take. The show of evidence that “we’ve got this” is incredibly powerful - it’s the Confidence-Competency Loop.

And it’s the key to creating your life (the Empowered Mindset) versus just letting life “happen to you” (the Victim Mindset).

I know which I am choosing, even though taking the more empowered road can be scarier.

I want you to think about a situation in your life where you feel like the victim. It can be with another person (they’re the “perpetrator” and you are the one “done wrong”), a situation (e.g. you can’t seem to lose weight or you are trying to build your business and Facebook is making it harder on you) or within yourself (you blame yourself not being good enough).

(This isn’t a judgment by the way—and I am not telling you that the way you feel is “wrong” or even needs to change, but this is an exercise in choosing our reality.)

Now I want you to consider some questions to start taking #RadicalResponsibility – you don’t have to agree with all/any of these, but some food for thought:

What you think? If you find yourself immediately clamming up, getting defensive, saying “No way!” to these questions, then again, it’s fine, but might we take a closer look as to why?

Some heavy stuff, right? :) But ultimately, when we are asking the questions and getting aware, we are moving.

Great work, and I commend you on your courage – this shit is hard! But always know, I’ve got your back and I understand completely how difficult some of this is! The fact that you are here doing this work means everything.

Thank you for doing this work with me this week. The outpouring of love, support, connection and vulnerability on your part has made this one of my best weeks ever. Seriously. It’s been a magical journey. And as always, I’d love to hear where you are with things and how you’re doing.

Let me know!

Xo,

Jill

P.S. Don’t forget that Next Level Romance closes this Sunday, and if you want to get the full education on everything from self-development to attraction research to Attachment Theory to dating and keys to long-term communication and growth, it’s all in the course (Jade just added a financing option too!). It’s super robust, and I am honored to have contributed to it! Get it HERE.