My biggest challenge yet

"If you could kick the person responsible for most of your troubles, you wouldn't be able to sit down for weeks."

Think about this: for all of the problems I have, I am the common denominator. Yet most of the time I look to external factors and other people to justify why I'm in yet another spot of bother.

Part of this is due to a complete lack of "in-sight" into ourselves and our actions. Our eyes naturally look outward at everything around us, so the tendency is to examine everything but ourselves as the cause of trouble. Many of us, therefore, unaware of our own actions and how they impact others, tend to just live day by day, recklessly dropping words and doing things that if we really reflected on, probably would deeply regret doing. I believe all of us would achieve much more if we could just get ourselves under control.

It's called 'self-discipline', and you won't hear the word used in celebrity or popular circles, because it seems the common philosophy people live by is "do whatever you feel like, when you want to, and get as much of whatever feels good as you can". But if we could just train ourselves in areas such as patience, anger management, and perseverance, I'm sure the vast majority of us would hurt less people and reach greater heights in life.

Another area to which this applies is relationships. So often it is always 'the other person's fault' that we cannot get along. "She always misunderstands me!", comes the cry, when we fail to communicate clearly. "He never does any housework!", we complain, while criticizing him for a slightly less-than immaculate lawn-mowing job. If we could just get past our own nose and look backward into ourselves as a potential (almost certain) contributor to these problems, we have begun the journey toward reconciliation and harmony with our fellow man.

Until we begin to see ourselves as less than perfect and able to do wrong, and admit our failings and seek forgiveness, we will forever have needlessly unresolved problems and conflicts.

So next time I get a problem - the first place I'm going to look for the cause is myself.