Don’t Die Principles of Responsibility

Don’t Die Principles of Responsibility will be the focus of my ‘summer school’ blogs the next few months.  Dana Rizer and I are in the early stages of preparing for potentially quarterly, one-day, Don’t Die Workshops in Las Vegas, paring her knowledge of food, health, nutrition and yoga with participant’s writing their most current Don’t Die story of transformation.

As I reviewed the adages and process I set out in the Don’t Die books, I realized – like all living systems – some improvements and clarifications were in order.  In the second book in the series, Don’t Die with Your Song Unsung, I set out four main self-help adages to create a foundation for re-crafting any life challenge that has the potential of allowing for a transformation.  Gosh, that is a mouthful.  Here is the shorthand version.

Moment-by-moment, you are presented with opportunities to transform a life challenge into the foundation of your next great success. No one is exempt from the opportunities.  Whether you begin the transformation process is a choice.  To make that choice you need to become aware that, in fact, you are holding a perspective about something that is holding you back.

Here is what I became aware of while thinking through the next set of workshops:  My editor, Katherine Armstrong, struggled with me to ‘name’ the four statements I use to sculpt a Don’t Die story.  She kept wanting to know what they were.  Were they steps?  Were they phases?  What were these four statements? At the time, ‘adage’ was the best I could do.  I knew I had not created per se any of the common sayings I was using, nor could I identify when they came into use, or by whom, for the first time.  Yet, they had been around long enough to be known and used by others to explain a situation with a degree of frequency.  What I was doing was organizing them into a reframing exercise.

I was fully aware Katherine did not think the word ‘adage’ fit the bill.  It has taken working with the process and the statements since 2011 to see more clearly what these four statement are to the Don’t Die process – they are Principles of Personal Responsibility.  Merrian-Webster Online helps me explain why:

prin·ci·ple noun \ˈprin(t)-s(ə-)pəl, -sə-bəl\

: a moral rule or belief that helps you know what is right and wrong and that influences your actions

: a basic truth or theory : an idea that forms the basis of something

: a law or fact of nature that explains how something works or why something happens

Dr. Success Challenge:  Reflect on the first Principle of Responsibility:  Change your awareness and your perspective will change.

More about the upcoming workshops in the coming weeks as we solidify the schedule.  For those of you who read Oprah, check out the July What I Know for Sure (the last page of her magazine each month).  See how many of the Don’t Die Principles of Responsibility she mentions.

Wishing you a beautiful day of transforming your responsibilities into actions for your next great success.