Every decision we face with presents us with a balancing act.  The consequences of our decisions take us to future responsibilities.  For example, deciding to have sex with someone when we are young brings about a great responsibility especially if we choose to act without protection or a plan for the “just in case” scenario. Having kids significantly reduce our degrees of freedom due to the responsibility of raising them with the intent to be independent and eventually move out on their own.  Deciding to become an engineer, doctor or artist limits our choices when we graduate from college.  The paths open to us are aligned with the degree we obtain or don’t obtain. The responsibilities generated from our decisions create the road we started out on so long ago.

Driving through life, we have to keep ourselves moving towards our destination whatever that may be.  Perhaps we don’t know what our destination is.  Nonetheless, we still have to keep ourselves safe on the road of life and enjoy the road trip.  This is taking responsibility for what happens.  This responsibility is born from the choices we make as we drive along the road we take through life.

As stated last time in the post about embracing the Dark Side, it’s our responsibility to draw a line in the sand, let go of the lost opportunities and focus on what makes us successful.  In managing the biz of you, decisions are part of every day living.  Every time we make a decision we reduce our available degrees of freedom.  This may seem counter intuitive, but reducing our degrees of freedom is a good thing. When we do so, we set ourselves down a particular road or path and get ourselves closer to the destination we chose.  Having a vision of who and what we want to be allows this path to unfold in a way creating the life we intend.  Who knows what’s around the next bend? As we travel through life we simply have to see what happens and deal with it.  We have to embrace the dark side of our freedom and accept the responsibility of exercising that freedom.

Adopting this approach of observing and adapting to the road we discover through our decision enables us to live without regret.  Knowing we do what we can with what’s presented in any given situation, leaves us with little choice in accepting what happened, ourselves and moving forward.  What happens, happens.  If we don’t accept what happened or ourselves we turn ourselves away from the future to live in the past and lose the hope of creating the life we intended.  Our response to what happens determines our course through life.  Consciously navigating our course is what success is made of.  No matter what life can throw at us, we simply work with it and move on.  The road we traveled is in the rear view mirror leaving us to focus on the road ahead. Even when failure comes along, learn from it, put it in the mirror and keep looking out for what’s ahead. Managing our business, we move forward to the next situation, whatever it brings and deal with it appropriately.

Our success is continually balanced between freedom and responsibility.  These two things are unable to be separated.  Exercising our freedom is our right and we are responsible for the consequences of our decisions.  Embracing our dark side is to exercise our freedom.