In order to take full personal responsibility for ourselves, we need to be taking responsibility in a number of different areas - physical, emotional, spiritual, financial, and organizational, as well as relational.

Organizational responsibility concerns how we manage our time and space. You are not taking organizational responsibility regarding time if you:

• Are often rushing to get things done.
• Are often late to appointments.
• Rarely have time for yourself.
• Have no balance between work and play.
• Don't have much time for family and friends.
• Often feel overwhelmed and anxious regarding getting things done.
• Procrastinate.
• Generally pay bills and taxes late.

You are not taking organizational responsibility regarding space if you:

• Often can't find what you are looking for.
• Create clutter by having papers, mail, magazines, and other items stacked up in piles or scattered in disarray.
• Still have things packed in boxes or not put away from the last time you moved.
• Have not created a peaceful and aesthetically pleasing environment in your work and home spaces.
   

Taking organizational responsibility is part of taking emotional responsibility - part of lowering your stress level regarding time and space.

"Well," you might be thinking, "it’s all well and good to say I need to be more organized. I already know this, yet I can't seem to do anything about it. I'm stuck in this area. What do I do to change this?"

Changing this pattern ultimately relates to intent. As I've stated numerous times, being able to choose our intent is the essence of free will. We each get to choose what is most important to us in any given moment. You will stay stuck in this issue when your child or adolescent wounded self is in charge and your intent is to:

• Resist being controlled.

When not being controlled is more important than loving yourself, you will stay stuck. The wounded self is often in resistance to being controlled - even by ourselves. "You can't tell me what to do," is the refrain of the child or adolescent wounded self, or maybe even the two-year-old! Whether you are resisting being controlled by yourself or another person, the result is the same. The wounded self gets a grim pleasure out of resisting control.

• Get away with things, hoping that someone else will deal with it.

The wounded self loves to believe that we can get away with things. This part of us gets a dark satisfaction out of doing as little as we can, especially if we can get someone else to deal with it for us.

The sad thing is that the grim pleasure and dark satisfaction of resisting control and getting away with things does not hold a candle to the real peace and joy of taking loving care of ourselves. The wounded self, the part of us that is always lying to us, cannot see that by resisting responsibility we are deeply limiting our ability to manifest ourselves and are missing the profound satisfaction and fulfillment that comes from fully expressing who we are.
 

All this changes when our intent changes.

When we decide that loving ourselves is more important than resisting control and getting away with things, we move out of the wounded self and into the loving adult. It is our intent to be loving and compassionate with ourselves that changes everything.

"How do I change my intent?" is a question I frequently hear.

You can't change your intent until you become aware of and own your present intent. If you think you want to be loving to yourself, but you really want to resist control and you are unaware of this, you will stay stuck. So, the first thing you need to do is become conscious of your intent. Pay attention. Notice. When you can notice yourself resisting control and actually own it by saying to yourself, "Right now, it's more important to me to resist being controlled and get away with stuff than it is to be loving to myself. I choose this," then you can also choose to be loving to yourself. But you don't even have that choice available until you are conscious of what you are choosing.

However, you can also resist awareness of your choice, which means that it's still more important to you to not be controlled than to be loving. Until you "remember" (this memory is within your soul essence) that you are here on this planet to evolve in love, compassion, and empathy, you might not have the motivation to become conscious of your intent.

I hope you wake up and remember! Remembering that your reason for being on the planet is to evolve in love, compassion, and empathy is key to becoming motivated and getting unstuck.

Join Dr. Margaret Paul for her 30-Day at-home Course: "Love Yourself: An Inner Bonding Experience to Heal Anxiety, Depression, Shame, Addictions and Relationships."