Take responsibility. For everything. A hundred percent.

It's not your fault the world is the way it is; it's only your fault if it stays the way it is.

Translation of a song title of the German band "Die Ärzte."

If your boss is an unjust idiot, your partner treats you unkindly, or if your bank account is empty again, it is easy to say that others are to blame.

It's not your fault that your boss is a choleric person. What can you do about the fact that your partner is so thoughtless? Is it your fault that the economy is so bad?

These questions come to mind when everything seems to have conspired. But they are pointless questions. Answering them won't improve our lives. In fact, they are not even real questions, because we think we know the answers the moment we ask them.

We believe that the choleric person must control his anger. We demand that our partner change and hope that the economy gets a boost.

In all three cases, we do nothing but hope that circumstances will change without our intervention to benefit from it.

What would the world look like if everyone thought that way? Who would ever reach out to others, question themselves, or make groundbreaking inventions if everyone was just waiting for things to change magically?

Now you will say to many people: Well, let's share the responsibility fairly. My boss and my partner take some of the burdens, and I take the other. Maybe the economy just needs to get a little bit better, and then I'll take a training course. That would be fair.

But justice is not what matters here. The world is not fair, and unfortunately, it never will be. We still want something from the world. If we cannot force it to give us what we want, then perhaps we must simply make it a little easier for the world to provide us with what we want.

If my boss is a choleric person and I still want to be treated more fairly, I have to take one hundred percent responsibility for this relationship. I know he will not do it. If I don't do it either, nothing will change.

My partner will not suddenly show me more love just because I want to. But I can show more understanding for him. I can treat him the way I want to be treated. It is only essential that I do this because he is important to me, not because I want something from him.

So in both cases, I take one hundred percent responsibility for making sure that things go the way I want them to. There is no other way because I cannot force the same wish on the other person.

And what applies to interpersonal relationships also applies to the big things, on which we actually have no influence at all. Of course, we cannot take responsibility for the world economy, but we can take responsibility for our own finances. If my job goes away, it is one hundred percent of my responsibility to find a new one or to earn money somehow.

To take on this responsibility seems hard and brutal at first. But in reality, this new attitude frees us.

When neither the boss nor the partner nor anyone else is responsible for making us happy, but only as ourselves, we become the master of our destiny.

Suddenly it is no longer a matter of getting the other person to do what we want. We can also decide to no longer make our happiness dependent on how and by whom another person treats us. We can choose our joy and leave. Or we can decide to invest in the relationship and do everything in our power to win the other person over for us. Both ways are possible. We only have to take the responsibility to go one of the two ways.

The world looks different for each of the 7.75 billion people on this planet. All of them have different wishes, worries, needs, and unfortunately, also different possibilities. All these people can't find someone to whom they can impose the responsibility for their fate.

When we realize that we are only one of over seven billion, we soon realize that there is hardly anyone for whom we are more important than ourselves.

It's not a burden, but a liberating thought. If you believe that no one cares about your fate, then you know now that that is not true. You're your greatest advocate and supporter. Accept this role and fill it out, then you will be free, no matter what the circumstances.