It took me many years to wake up. Even when I did, I spent a good amount of time whining.

Why did it take me so long? Why did I sell out my creativity for a J-O-B? Why didn't I follow my intuition? Why didn't I see that my passions were my strengths that could have taken me to the Bank of Big Bucks? Why do I have to start all over now? I'm too old to be taken seriously. Why didn't somebody recognize my genius? All I ever wanted to do was change the world.

Why is a rabbit hole with no carrot.

And with just a little effort why sounds quite like whine, doesn't it? But here we sit in a world that is literally dying for us to wake up.

Why, my friends, is a question for therapists, and a truly worthy endeavor if you're just beginning to inquire into what built you. Most of us have a legacy to unwind. We see our mother in our gestures, our father in our reactions, our sisters in our resistance. At some point we reach a crossroad where we realize that there is nothing more to uncover about our past that will yield us fruitfully into our future. Everything we've ever unearthed about our past points us to:

I'm not good enough.

I'm not loveable.

And it's all my fault.

The funny thing about our past is that it really can't hurt us. What hurts us is our thoughts about our past. We are at the crossroad, the edge of the cliff translating our refrain, "There's nothing I can do," to a new verse: "Oh I see, I got it...and now what?"

I think we have to stop pitching after popularity, and seek results. Stop caring about what people want to hear, and get fluent with what works. We have to stop being lazy about telling the truth. We have to get uncomfortable and challenge ourselves.

We have to take 100 percent responsibility.

I was recently at a daylong workshop with Byron Katie—whom I would call the queen of personal responsibility—and a gentleman in the audience rose to his feet and said, “Wait a minute. Are you claiming that all those folks in Darfur have choice? Are you claiming that they are responsible for the atrocities, mayhem and murder?”

Byron Katie joined him face to face and said, “I hear a profound and deep concern in your questions. Almost a yearning. Would that be true?”

He said, “yes.”

She said, “Right now, I can be with you, and you only. So my question to you is, what are you willing to take responsibility for in this moment? What are you claiming?” After about 40 minutes of inquiry and process, he claimed his commitment to be a stand, a voice, a worker, a champion, a participant in the lives of citizens in Darfur.

Lest you read this as a syrupy leftie “let’s show the heathens how to live their lives in choice” kind of commitment, I assure you it wasn’t the case. The man got, in the work that day, that personal transformation is what would make it possible to find his commitment to a greater purpose, and to work in solution.

The world is literally dying for us to wake up. And we are.