Episode 3: The Moment You Realize Your Life Is Your Responsibility

There’s a moment in adulthood when something clicks.

You realize no one is coming to save you, fix your problems, or build the life you want for you.

And while that realization can feel heavy at first, it’s also the moment you take your power back.

In this episode, I talk about the shift from blaming circumstances to taking ownership of your life, the uncomfortable truths about adulthood, and how responsibility can actually become one of the most empowering things in your life.

Because when you stop waiting for someone else to change your life…

You become the person who does.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to No Shame, No Filter. My name is Cambriana and I'm your host. And today I'm excited to actually talk about this because I think that there's a moment in every adult's life where something just clicks. And it's not a glamour glamorous moment. It's not, right? It's not one of those moments where the clouds part and inspirational music just starts to play. No. Nope. It's usually more like you're standing in your kitchen, the laundry is piled up, your bank account is looking a little disrespectful. And your life feels really chaotic. And you realize something that hits you like a truck. This is actually my life to figure out. Like nobody is coming to fix this. Nobody is coming to clean the house unless you have cleaners or you have the backup plan. Nobody is coming to solve your problems, fix your finances, heal trauma, organize your life, and hand you a five-year plan laid out, no questions asked, blueprint for five years. And there's no adults here or adult coming to save you. No, nobody. And I remember journaling actually. And I wrote it. I said, no one is coming to save you. And it hit me hard. It hit me so hard because growing up, you kind of think eventually someone will show up with all the answers. Like at some point, someone older or wiser will appear and just say, All right, just you know, everyone come to. I got this. I got it. And then you become the adult, and then you realize that we're all just out here guessing and navigating and trying to figure this life out, just like the person next to us is. What game plan can I come up with? How can I address this? Right? Because that's when ownership begins. And ownership can feel horrible. Because we're not just talking about ownership looking at it and being like, oh, okay, that's cute. I realize I do that, or I realize I need to do that, and then doing nothing. No, I'm talking about ownership at the capacity of where we realize something, and with taking ownership means taking accountability, and with accountability comes change, and with change comes growth, and with growth comes a new version of you. Because that's where the beauty is. And adulthood comes with some really humbling, very humbling realizations. Just like no one knows what they're actually doing. I mean, where's the lie, right? Like, does anyone know what we're actually doing? No, probably not. I make decisions all day. Everything I do is a choice, right? Whether I get up at a certain time, or it's something as silly and stupid as I'm sitting down. Do I want to get up and go walk to the kitchen table, go grab my coffee? I don't know. Do I? I really need the coffee. I need the caffeine, but do I want to get up? I don't want to get up because I'm barely even awake, but we're all making decisions, right? And on a larger scale, we make decisions all the time that can drastically change the direction of our life. And nobody knows the right answer. I know growing up, we thought that adults had just like everything figured out. I thought my mom and my dad were like just killing it at life, and really they were just winging it and figuring it out as they went. And that's what I'm doing now in motherhood. Because truth be told, sometimes there's this trending reel going around, and it's like like when as you're a parent or a mom or dad, whatever, as you're a parent, you say something, you're like, Did I just say that? And I'm like, I do that all the time because like I sometimes I just don't even know. And I'm just winging it, and like my kids think I'm just genius, they think I have it all figured out. Little do they know, I don't, I have, I don't even know. I have no clue. But we're all just winging it, and some people are just really truthfully better at pretending that they have a plan. And life, oh, this is my favorite, ready? So I look at it like life does not slow down to give you time to figure things out. It is life on life's terms. Life just shows up and sometimes it smacks you in the freaking face. And you may have been dealing with work, relationships, kids, responsibilities, stress, personal growth, just all the things that hit us freaking hard. And I remember last year as I just gave birth, I was like three months postpartum with my last baby, and life hit me hard. It hit me hard, and it was that horrible realization that my life was falling apart, right? Everything I thought was going to happen is not going to happen. In fact, the dream that I had as a for life is not reality, and that was a whole other that's a whole other conversation because I mean thinking that something is real actually happening or reality when it's really not because we're stuck in this fantasy world. That's a whole other episode that we will definitely cover because honey, I've lived it. I've been there a lot. That's how I've gotten to where I am. That's exactly how. Um, but no, seriously. So sometimes these things like all hit us at once, right? I remember I was like three months postpartum. I'm like, oh my gosh, I'm now a single mom of four little ones. I had a at that point, I had what, a six, a six, four, two, and a newborn, I guess, were their ages, and I had to figure life out. I had to be the caretaker, the homemaker. I had to figure out financials to provide. I had to figure it all out. I didn't have I it was just it was a lot, and it hit me all at once. And you're like, hold up, life. Let's let's just take a pause here for a second because I need a freaking tutorial. Like, what is going on? And sometimes I would look in the mirror and be like, what is happening? But that's a thing. There's no tutorial, right? You just keep moving forward, and I think like one of the most beautiful things personally for me is that I have these women in my life who have walked a similar path and or have similar experiences or a variety of different experiences, and that I can turn around and I can say and I can lean on them. I can be like, hey, I'm going through this, and I can be open and vulnerable and honest, and say I'm going through this, I'm really freaking struggling. How did you navigate this? How did you handle this situation? And that's what helps moving forward. Not staying stuck in your own head and not talking to a single soul. No, we need people, we need community, right? And at first, that responsibility felt like a lot of pressure, it felt like every single thing was now on my shoulders, and truthfully, sometimes it is, even now. But then something shifts, and responsibility stops feeling like pressure and starts feeling like control. Because once you accept that your life is your responsibility, you stop waiting for permission, you stop waiting for the perfect time and waiting for someone to validate your decisions. You make your own freaking decisions, right? And you realize that if something is going to change in your life, it's going to happen because you put your foot forward and you took the steps and you to change it. And the funny thing is, is that that realization is actually so freeing because now you're not stuck waiting for somebody else no more. Okay. If you're stuck, once if you're stuck, if you're still stuck, it's because and I if you're still stuck, I should say, after you've had that realization, it's not because of anybody else, it's because of your own doing. And that hits very hard. And I think everyone reaches a point where they get really tired of waiting. I mean, it's exhausting. I've waited for years, waiting for people to show up, waiting for circumstances to just get better, or waiting for life to magically become easier. And it doesn't happen like that because one day something inside you will change. You will feel a little bit of a shift, and you just get tired. Not tired like in a defeated kind of way, but like tired in okay, we're doing something about this kind of way because you're sick and tired of waiting for things to just change. And it doesn't have to start with a huge life drastic change. It doesn't have to, right? It starts with the small things, at least for me, it did. It started with making one different decision than I would in my previous life, right? Or something doing something different, I should say, or here's the best one. And uh, I am a work in progress, guys. I am, and I will own that till the day I die, but it's even could it could even be setting one boundary. Boundaries are hard. Boundaries, if you don't fall, if you set a boundary and you don't follow through with it, then you are just saying non talking nonsense using words that hold no truth, no, no nothing to them, and it means nothing to the person. And the other thing about boundaries is that just because we set them doesn't mean that they're they will be followed. And then we have to make a decision that if our boundary that we set is not followed, then what are we going to do next? Boundaries are freaking tricky and they are so challenging. And truthfully, it took me years to learn how to set a boundary, and I'm still learning because it's still uncomfortable for me, but I know that I have the power to set a boundary today, and it could even be taking one step forward, and slowly these things, these small little choices that we then begin to make will help build a completely different life. And, you know, to clear this up though, because taking responsibility for your life does not mean you have to do everything alone, right? I look at life, like life is not meant to be done alone. Parenthood, motherhood, all of it. Everything is not meant to be done alone. We're allowed to ask for help. We don't have to be strong all the time. You're allowed to lean on people, ask for their opinions. Just because someone gives their opinion or advice doesn't mean we have to take it, but we gain more knowledge and gain more insight to situations and stuff that could potentially really help us. We're allowed to say, like, hey, I'm honestly just still figuring things out. And what responsibility actually means is that you stop expecting someone else to carry your life for you. You stop looking for someone to rescue you because guys, no one will rescue us. We have to rescue ourselves, and sometimes that sucks, honestly. Like I look back last year, a year from now, actually, exact oh my gosh, I think like almost actually would have been a year like yesterday or a year today. That's crazy. But I look back a year from now when my life took a drastic change, and I look at it and I'm like, oh, okay. So like I have to figure this out. I was so tired of waiting for other people to change, and I was like, I'm gonna remain the same, I don't have to make any changes. I was so sick of that that I'm like, okay, no, listen, I can't expect other people to change, right? That's unrealistic expectations. And when we put unrealistic expectations on people, we end up disappointed. Okay. I every single time I ended up disappointed. And so when I sit those, set those unrealistic expectations and I'm expecting people to change and do things the way I want them to do. I'm now like, I'm now the director of the show, and I have all these little characters, all these little actors, I'm trying to tell them what to do and how to say it and how to navigate it, and um, you know, don't do this, do that, don't do this. And it just feels awful. And the control aspect of it is an illusion, okay? And so I can't control other people, and so I can't expect and expect and sit around and wait for other people to make these changes so then I can be happy and satisfied and feel free and happy, joyous, and free. I can't do that. It falls back on me, and it's what am I going to do moving forward to make these changes so that I have that happy, joyous, and free life that I'm craving and that I desperately want, but I'm holding myself back because I feel like one, maybe I'm unworthy, two, maybe it maybe the life that I that life that I want doesn't align with the family that I envisioned, the the husband, the kids, the house, the all of it, you know, like those two dreams, those two wants that I wanted for my life, that happiness and laughter and love and all of that and peace, that was at constantly at battle with the other version, the other dream that I had since I was a little girl, and they were just going at each other all the time. And so I just stayed stuck until I got sick and tired of being sick and tired and tired of being stuck. And when I was tired of being stuck, that is when the change happened. Not quickly, not fast, not drastic. It was little shifts, little decisions that I made along the way. And what responsibility means is that we no longer expect someone to make the changes for us because honestly, that's a lot of pressure to put on other people anyway. No one is supposed to be the hero of our story, that belongs to us. Other people are supporting characters, okay? Maybe they're really good ones. I don't know. Maybe they're fabulous, but they're just supporting characters. And there's a quote that I love that I feel like goes with this perfectly, this episode. And it's the moment you realize no one is coming to fix your life, you become dangerous. And I love the word dangerous because it's not in like a chaotic, like crazy way, but in a powerful way. Because once you realize that your life is actually your responsibility, you start to move differently. Like I said before, like setting those boundaries. Oh my gosh, the boundaries are hard. I've had to set a bunch recently, a few of them recently, and they I'm not at the point where it's gotten like I got it down packed. I can't say that. Like, I'm still navigating it, and I'm still in that like uncomfortable, it feels uncomfortable, but then after I do it, I feel empowered, right? And you and here's the thing walking away from situations that drain you. I've had to walk away from situation situation that absolutely every day I allowed to mentally, emotionally, spiritually drain me. And if you noticed, I said that I allowed, because that's accountability. I'm taking accountability for what I allowed to happen in my life that drains me. Because if I take accountability, then I can recognize the pattern. If I recognize the pattern, I have a choice, and my choice becomes do I want to make a change or do I not? And what you do with that is up to you. And here's another one: no longer tolerating the things that keep us stuck. Because I stayed stuck for a long time. I stayed stuck in victim mindset of life happening to me. I stayed stuck in friendships and relationships that no longer did any good for me, no longer served me, no longer held value and brought value to my life. I stayed stuck in environments that were uncomfortable. I stayed stuck in mindsets. Oh my gosh. I stayed stuck in mindsets and old beliefs that really distorted my reality for a long time. And we stop and another thing is we stop honestly tolerating the things that not only keep us stuck, but hold us back from growing. Because when we're stuck, we can't grow. I mean, of course, duh, right? Yeah. And so we stop tolerating it though, right? And we take the risks and we build things, we we create, we create opportunities. Notice I said we create because we have the power to do that, and we have the power to become the person who doesn't wait for life to happen anymore. We make it happen, we put our foot forward, we're no longer waiting for our situation to change by not doing a damn thing. We're not doing that anymore. So hear me out. If you're in a season right now, Now, where life just feels really freaking overwhelming, where things just feel so messy, and you're rebuilding things that you never expected that you'd have to rebuild, I want you to know something. You're not the only one figuring it out as you go. None of us were handed directions or a guidebook. We're all learning right now in real time. And the moment that we stop waiting for someone else to fix our life is when we realize how much power we actually have and how we do not have to give that power away to other people, places, things, whatever it is, whatever it is, it could be anything, but we no longer have to hand that away. And that can feel really scary because I know it was really scary for me. And I felt defeated. I felt drained. I felt sad. I had so much grief, so much grief, insane. But looking back in hindsight, it's also the moment that my life actually became my life and I was in charge and I couldn't make decisions for myself and my children without having to fear any backlash or like any comments or anything like that. Like I could just do as I pleased and create this life of happiness and peace and joy and laughter that I desperately craved. And so, guys, listen, I hate to be the bad guy, but I'll say it again. No one is coming to save you. If you listen to this podcast and it resonates with you and something comes to your mind, I highly recommend recommend to take a look at that because it is something that is holding you back. Because whether it's you think someone's going to come and magically fix your job at your position at your job or your duties or something, or your relationship, or um your friendship, or you know, just anything, your situation. If you think someone's going to swoop in and change it, it's not going to happen. It starts with you. You need to make the choice to do something different. And when we make a choice to do something different, we then gain back our power. And when we gain back our power, we can choose and we can execute it and we can do it. And that's the best part. That's where the beauty lies. And so Yeah. That was this was a fun one. I experienced this first hand and experiencing that realization firsthand and saying those words out loud when I did and when I was journaling, Cam, no one's coming to save you, drastically changed my life. And so I hope something in my rant stuck out to you and resonates with you. And so I'll see you next time.