I read a really great article from success magazine: http://www.successmagazine.com/Ten-Life-Laws/PARAMS/article/92/channel/210. Here are the excerpts I particularly liked:
Law #2: You create your own experience.
You need to accept accountability for your life and your role in creating the results that are your life. You are accountable for your life. Good or bad, successful or unsuccessful, happy or sad, fair or unfair, you own your life. You create the results in your life, all of the time. If you don’t like your job, you are accountable. If your relationships are on the rocks, you are accountable. If you are not happy, you are accountable. Whatever your life circumstance, you can no longer dodge responsibility for how and why your life is the way it is.If you don’t accept accountability, you will misdiagnose and mistreat every problem you have. And things won’t get better. By convincing yourself that you are a victim, you guarantee no progress, no healing, and no victory. Your irresponsibility prevents you from making progress to improve your life.
Law #7: Life is managed; it is not cured.
Learn to take charge of your life and hold on. Never are you without problems or challenges. Life has to be managed. If you accept this, you are less likely to label every problem as a crisis or to conclude that you’re not handling your life successfully. Success is a moving target, and your life must be actively managed. How well your life is working five years from now will be a function of how well you actively manage yourself from now until then. As a life manager, your objective is to manage your life in a way that generates high-quality results. You may not be the only client you have, particularly if your family includes children or people who act like children. But you are your most important client. To give something in your roles, as spouse or parent, you must take care of yourself.Law #8: We teach people how to treat us.
Own, rather than complain about, how people treat you. Learn to renegotiate your relationships to have what you want. You shape the behavior of those with whom you interact. How you interpret and react to another’s behavior determines whether or not they are likely to repeat it. You actively participate in defining your relationships.People treat you the way they do because you have taught them, based on results, which behavior gets a payoff. Results (not intentions) influence the people with whom you interact. If the people in your life treat you in an undesirable way, you’ll want to figure out what you are doing to reinforce, elicit, or allow that treatment.