Introduction: Reality Responsibility (Taking Charge of Your World)

Is creating your own reality just a load of new-age nonsense, or is there more to it? It is my contention that we all have the innate ability to create the kind of world we want to live in and have the things we want within certain limitations. I don’t mean we can make pigs fly, but then again, hmmm… no, probably not. However, you do have much more control over creating your own reality than you may have contemplated.

In some ways, what I’m talking about here is increasing the number of positive experiences we have and reducing the number of negative ones.

Effectively utilising these inborn abilities requires a solid foundation before you can get started. Unfortunately, most people don’t have this, and to quote Yoda, “This is why you fail”!

You Are Not the Victim: Stop Blaming, Start Owning

Hello there,

If you are in a hurry, and can’t be arsed to read my reasoning, then just scroll down to near the bottom of the page to read the 5 Simple Ways to Start Creating Your Own Reality.

Who am I? Does it really matter? Well, if it does, you can click on the “about” section of my website.

What the hell do you mean by Reality Responsibility?

Good Question.

You may have your own idea already, but I’ll share mine; it is my baby, after all. I’m currently writing my third and fourth books, and one of them is titled “Reality Responsibility.”

Short Version

So many people are identifying themselves as “victims” these days, and there are many advantages to playing this role. In fact, I would go so far as to say we are all victims in some way. The other book I’m writing is on this subject.

Anyway, there are numerous ways to become who we want to be and get the things we want, but none of them will work until we:

Take responsibility for EVERYTHING that we experience and ditch the blame game.

There you go, that’s the short version. I never said it was easy, but to get another Star Wars quote in “This is the Way”!

Going Deeper: A (Brew-in-Hand) Philosophical Dive

I recommend grabbing a brew and getting comfortable for the longer version, but I’ll still try to keep this explanation as brief as possible. Although I read that a blog post should be over 2000 words, so I’ll be aiming to at least hit that number before I’m done writing.

What Is Reality, Anyway? (No, It’s Not a TV Show)

“Reality Responsibility” Yes, I know, it does sound like one of those cheesy names people come up with for the kind of thing they help people with, and it is, but I still like it. The alternative I came up with was “Getting Your Shit Together”, but that just doesn’t have the same ring to it; pun intended.

Seems to me that without a cheesy name, you won’t be taken seriously, and you also won’t be ridiculed.
Let’s face it: if you don’t get ridiculed, you really don’t have much to say, do you?
However, that says way more about the ridiculer than the ridiculed.
But I digress.

Let’s look at the first word, “Reality”. What is it? One dictionary definition is “something which is real”.
No shit Sherlock.
But how do we know for certain what is, in fact, real?

There is an objective reality that most people generally subscribe to, such as the sky being up there and blue.

We live on a planet which is round (although bizarrely, some still argue it’s flat), in a solar system, in a spiral galaxy.
You get the idea.

There are also certain laws that govern this Objective Reality, such as thermodynamics and Newtonian physics, etc.
All this kind of shit has been worked out and agreed upon by some really intelligent people over the centuries.
The rest of us accept it and work with it without necessarily needing to understand it.

But then, when you add to this equation Quantum Mechanics, things get really crazy & fucked up. Even the people involved in it all seem to say, “No one understands quantum mechanics.”
Most recently, I heard this statement come from the mouth of Neil deGrasse Tyson, who is clearly a very intelligent man and funny to boot.

I have read a few books on the subject, most of which hurt my brain, and watched numerous videos and documentaries.  It’s not my area of expertise, but I have a bit of an understanding of some of it, I think!
Two books I read and recommend that helped me comprehend it a little more were written by John Gribbin: “In Search of Schrödinger’s Cat” and “In Search of the Multiverse”.

My point here is that Science has a lot of answers, but not all, especially when it comes down to what is actually going on with this Objective Reality:

Do we live in a Multiverse?

Do we live in a holographic universe?

What was there before the big bang?

What is consciousness?

And many more weird and wonderful questions.

Perhaps one day, science will answer these questions, but it will then raise even more.
This is where the philosophers and great mystics come in to pick up some of the slack.

I have been interested in this kind of thinking for almost as long as I can remember.
Ok, I could go off on a big tangent here, but I’ll save that for future posts.
So what say we get back on track to what I was initially saying?
“Good idea”, I believe, will be your response, or maybe something with stronger language.

The point is we can’t say with 100% certainty what Objective Reality actually is, but we mostly agree on what it seems to be for the sake of functioning on a day-to-day basis.

Can we affect this Objective Reality?

We sure can.

To what extent is certainly debatable and not something we will look at today.
It all depends on how deep you want to go down that rabbit hole, though, and how fixated your beliefs are.
If, like me, you’re eager to keep exploring further and further, then I intend to share some food for thought from what I’ve discovered so far in upcoming Blog posts.

Your Reality vs. My Reality: Map ≠ Territory

In addition to Objective Reality, there is also something called Subjective Reality, i.e., our personal opinion about what the fuck is going on.
How we see the world through our limited main senses, our emotions about it, and also our opinions on it based upon inheritance, experience and education.
 
In Neuro-Linguistic Programming (developed in the Mid-1970s), there is a saying, “The Map is not the Territory,” which also appears in the book “The Farther Reaches of Human Nature” (1971) by American Psychologist Abraham Maslow.
Although, the phrase was actually coined by Alfred Korzybski in his book “Science and Sanity” first published in 1931.

I’m not sharing this to sound like Mr Smarty-pants, well, maybe a little, but mainly to show that the argument on how we personally see reality differently is nothing new, and many people, way smarter than me, have pointed this out too.

Despite what you may think, no two people have or will ever see the world in exactly the same way. You may agree with a person on a great deal of things, but there will always be something which makes you think of them as a bit of a twat.
Much of this is shared and argued over on social media.
I used to do this, too, but nowadays, I prefer intelligent discussion and no longer feel the need to defend my viewpoint in a childish manner. I could be right, or I could be wrong, so there’s no point in arguing.
 
Much of our Subjective Reality, or “map,” serves us well, but not all of it.
Sometimes, someone fucks about with our map without us realising it, and we head off in the wrong direction, none the wiser.
To be fair, this is happening to us most of the time.
This leads us into angry, anxious & depressed states.
This is not a good state to be in, is it?
No rational person would say yes, yet we all still do it to some degree, probably on a daily basis.
 
For over a decade, I worked as a Therapist in a Health Centre and helped hundreds of people to readjust their course direction so as to get back on track to the destination they wanted, one which I think most human beings want… a happy and contented life.

If you can afford it, and no, I’m not selling my services here, getting help to sort the errors in your Subjective Reality out will get you to where you want to be much quicker than trying to figure it out on your own.
I couldn’t afford it, so I had to do the latter; ironically, I’ve spent more money doing it this way.
 
Still reading?
Nice one.
Now that I’ve covered the first word, “Reality,” as briefly as possible, let’s look at the second word, “Responsibility”.

Responsibility: It’s Response‑Ability, Not Just a Typo

The dictionary says “being accountable or to blame”, which is a damn fine description, but I’d like to break the word down a little more for the sake of the context of my cheesy brand name.
To start with, I, like many others, initially misspelt “respons-i-bility” as “response-ability” because that is often how it is pronounced; at least around these parts, me duck.
The suffix still means the same thing, anyway.
So, sticking with my dodgy spelling, there are two parts to the word, “response” (kind of) and “ability”.
 
We all know what these words mean, so let’s get away from the dictionary and just simplify what I see it as to save some time:
 
“Response-ability is having the correct skills to behave intelligently when confronted by any kind of external stimuli and fully accepting the consequences”.
 
A simpler way of putting it is to say, “Being able to do the right thing at the right time for the right reason and owning the result.”

So, in a nutshell, my aim with “Reality Responsibility” is to help those who are interested in working on themselves to make their life better, getting the things they want in an ethical way, and making a positive contribution to the planet.

To some, this may sound like some hippy shit, maybe it is in their reality, but I’m hoping for you, it makes some kind of sense.
Why would anyone read this far if it just sounds like a load of bollocks to them?
I could answer that, but I won’t.

Taking Back Control: Reclaiming the Wheel of Your Life

The decisions we make are often heavily influenced and bizarrely rarely for our actual best interests.
However, it doesn’t have to be this way.

No matter how dark things may seem right now, we can take back more control of our lives.

There are numerous ways we can do this.
Some of these are scientific and quite logical, while others may sound a little far out and a bit “woo-woo”. I enjoy exploring both and have had some interesting results.
If it works for me, then what the hell do I care what someone else thinks about it?
Would you agree?
I certainly hope so, and if this is you, you definitely sound like my kind of person, someone who is open to possibilities.

If you think I’m a bit of a twat, that’s cool too.
I’m not perfect, and from time to time, I have to admit, I am a bit of a twat.
Personal development is all about working on becoming less of a twat as you move through life; well, that’s my opinion anyway.
 
But moving on, I like to think I have an open mind to most, but not all, possibilities. How about you?
For example, while I think it is highly unlikely we are ruled by Reptilian Overlords, I can’t 100% rule it out.
Even if this was the case, so fucking what?
Distractions like these are not helping you or me get where we want to be, so why waste time and energy on nonsense that we can’t change and doesn’t actually affect us one way or another?
 
Wow, I’ve passed 2000 words already, so enough waffle; let’s get onto the 5 Suggestions.
 
If you just scrolled down the page to get here… hello again.
 
As I mentioned at the beginning, before you can utilise any of your innate abilities, specialist exercises, or techniques fully, you need a solid foundation to build upon.
So try these ideas out for size…

5 Simple Ways to Start Creating Your Own Reality

1. Pick Your Distractions Carefully

Our brains appear to be hardwired for distractions. Social media, the internet, movies, and TV, among other things, can inspire you or put you in a bad mood within seconds.

However, you still have a choice at which bits of it you give attention to and for how long; choose wisely. This will not be an easy task for most, but it will be worth it in the long run. Getting bogged down in world events and politics rarely makes a person feel good.

You don’t have to follow the herd, whether it veers left or right; choose your own direction.

One of the sad things I see in the world today is the need by so people to bring others down, including themselves, especially over trivial things.

I’m pretty certain it is now a marketing tactic to post some absolute bollocks about something beloved by many just because it guarantees a heated debate, thus improving a site or page ranking in some algorithm.

Just think how much more you could get done towards your own goals if you avoided this shit & focused on what you want.

2. Get Certain About What You Actually Want

Quite often, we think we want something only to find out that when we get it, it’s not at all what we thought it would be, and we may even regret having got it.

Some people crave fame but don’t consider the negative aspects that come with it. Perhaps what they truly desired was acknowledgement for their accomplishments or the opportunity to create a lasting legacy, but they believed that fame was the solution.

Being rich is another goal for many people who struggle with money, yet many lottery winners discover that this kind of wealth doesn’t actually solve their problems but rather creates more.

Dig deeper into what you actually want until you can’t go any deeper, and then work on that idea.

3. Find Your Inner Child Again

One of the things I miss about my time in the Royal Navy is how we found the humour in pretty much anything. No matter how shit or serious a job you found yourself doing, someone would lift the mood somehow without fail. This was nearly always in a juvenile manner.

Children have great imaginations, see the wonder in everything, and focus most of their energy on enjoying life. This doesn’t have to stop just because we get older.

Age brings wisdom, but where is the wisdom in being unimaginative, humourless, and apathetic?

4. Focus on What You Are For (Not Against)

The unconscious mind tends to overlook the negative aspects of communication and focuses on the subject matter. For example, saying to yourself you want to “quit smoking” gets translated into simply a focus on “smoking.”

Notice how “drugs” won “the war on drugs”, at least in America, so it seems.

Not going woo-woo just yet, but which focus sounds more harmonious to you, “Against War” or “Supporting Peace”?  

Now, apply this way of thinking about things to your own habits and behaviours. This is why one of the suggestions is not to “get rid of your anxieties,” as this would be an “against” action.

5. Trust in Yourself (Even When It Feels Woo-Woo)

OK, fuck it, let’s go a bit woo-woo before I end this.

Everything you require is within you, but it usually takes someone else to help you realise it, at least to start with.

Trust your gut instincts, trust your unconscious mind or higher self to provide the answers you seek, and trust in your abilities.

If what you are doing is for the greater good, you tend to encounter what some would call divine help, synchronicity, or just plain coincidence if you prefer a non-spiritual term.

Narcissistic motivations tend to take a bumpier road, which suddenly drops off a cliff without warning. Rewards on this latter path do occur from time to time but rarely endure.

Your gut will tend to give you an indication of which route you are pursuing.

Other people will point out if what you’re doing is batshit crazy. They may be wrong, but before dismissing this input, give yourself a bit of a reality check just to be sure.

Conclusion: Are You Ready to Start Creating Your Own Reality?

These are just some ideas of the kind of things which could help you build a solid foundation in your psyche to utilise your greater abilities for creating your own reality.

I will share more ideas on this subject in blog posts, videos, and, of course, my books. This content will be primarily available through this website, my YouTube channel, and Facebook.
As per my first suggestion on creating your own reality, I don’t spend too much time on social media, and I really can’t be arsed with posting on multiple platforms. I tried it many years ago, and it just stopped me from enjoying what I do.

I don’t know about you, but I prefer to do things I actually like doing as much as possible, as long as it doesn’t affect anyone else. 

If you’ve read this entire post and found it interesting, then you should click the like, follow, or subscribe thingy on the platform where you’re reading it because we’ve only just gotten started.

The world improves just a little with every person who takes responsibility for their own actions and behaves ethically.

So, all that remains for me to say is, are you ready to start creating your own reality?

I started with a couple of Star Wars quotes, so I’ll end with one more,

“Always remember, your focus determines your reality.”

This is an updated version of a post first published on 28th Sept 2023.