Yellow alerts are advanced warnings of upcoming dangers. They include tell tale signs, comments by others, gut instinct and intuition. There are 3 types of yelow alerts

• External yellow alerts - eg your friends warned you,
• Internal Yellow Alerts - eg the anxiety you felt about..... 
• Language Yellow Alerts - clues, inklings, suspicions, I had a gut feeling, I could see the writing on the wall etc.

Alerts are useful in that they give you time to change your responses or beliefs. The point is that you will often ignore the alerts because it is uncomfortable to acknowledge or take action on them.

Traditionally considered the navel of the unverse, Mt Kailas, is the physical and metaphysical centre of the world to Hindus, Buddhists, Jains and Bonpos. Meru or Sumeru in Sanskrit, Kailas or “Shining Crystal” in Hindi,  and Kang Rinpoche, “Jewel of the Snows,” in Tibetan.  Travel the traditional circuit of the Holy Mountain and visit monasteries and holy spots along Lake Manasarovar as well as the lost city of Tsaparang in the ancient Guge kingdom of Tibet.

Do you have a belief system that tells you what you should do? To overcome any  “should anxiety" make a list of your shoulds. 
eg “I should be making $500,000 pa, I should be working on the weekend, I should be wearing a business suit.”

Now reread the list, but replace “should” with “could” and  for each item ask yourself, “Why don’t I?”

The usual response is  “because I don’t want to” .  How do you feel now? The self-inflicted stress is removed  or diminished and there is room for you to create the life you want.

The worlds largest inland delta.

Having personal responsibility for your actions, choices, and emotions, is at the core of all development programs. It implies an internal locus of control, and is associated with many other concepts, including self-efficacy and goal setting.

The concept of personal responsibility may frighten you. Assuming responsibility for your actions might seem too hard to bear, and so you give yourself 'reasons' why you cannot or need not take responsibility. You may play the victim, 'blame' conditions, fate or past-programming, believe that other people 'make' you do and feel things, allow 'experts' to be responsible for you and so on. This list of excuses, which you may see as valid reasons, is endless. 

One of our challenges is to get ourselves to acknowledge personal responsibility. To say that we 'accept' it, implies that someone or something else is offering the responsibility to us. The most you can do is to decline to acknowledge it.

Being responsible means you are in control, you have exercised personal power. You can choose how you respond to any situation. Only you can know what your feelings are. Therefore only you can judge how best to respond. The power to respond is always yours, and you do not have to be at the mercy of anyone or anything outside of yourself.

When You realise that you are not responsible for how other people feel then there is a feeling of liberation. You can contribute to and influence the feelings of others, but you cannot own or determine those feelings. Therefore you cannot take responsibility for them. 

It is important to not assume responsibility for others, even in helping and development contexts. We all need to resist 'rescuing', doing for others what they are capable of doing for themselves, as this can have unforseen problematic consequences.

It may be frightening for you to think that you are responsible for your health or  ill-health. Handing over our physical well-being to 'experts' can be reassuring and comforting but the ultimate responsibility is yours. The price you pay for surrendering your responsibility is a felling of helplessness in the long term.

What acknowledging your own responsibility is about, is being dutiful. You may feel that you have responsibilities to others, and it is your responsibility to accept the consequences of behaving or not behaving in line with these. But it is also your responsibility not to ignore your own personal needs. 

If personal responsibility means not blaming others, there is a reciprocal agreement that you should not blame yourself either. Playing victim to your own persecutor is not being responsible for yourself. The proper exercise of responsibility involves acknowledging the situation, attempting to learn and grow from the experience and to understand its significance on several levels.

There is a view that you are personally responsible in some way and at some level for everything that happens to you as well as for everything you make happen. The premise of this view is that you are subtley responsible for (ie, we attract or resonate with) accidents which happen to you. Clearly this is not the case. Sometimes bad stuff just happens. What you are responsible for is how you respond to it.

Have you ever blamed anyone for anything in your life?

Have you ever complained about anything?

If you have then you don't take 100% responsibility. Remember that You are the cause of all your experiences, be they successes or failures.

The following items are a summary of the relevant sections from Jack Canfield's book The Success Principles. They are the best summary about responsibility That I have read. If you haven't read it, go read it.

Personal Responsibility
Do Your Own Push Ups
You Are Responsible
Its Simple
Give Up All your Excuses
Give up Blamming
Give Up Complaining
ABCs
Past Responses Determine Todays Experiences
Creating or Allowing Things to Happen
Yellow Alerts
Making Life Easier
Responsibility Exercises

1. The act of assuming, or taking to or upon one's self; the act of taking up or adopting. 

2. The act of taking for granted, or supposing a thing without proof; supposition; unwarrantable claim. 

3. The thing supposed; a postulate, or proposition assumed; a supposition. 

An assumption is therefore a proposition that is taken for granted, in other words, it is treated for the sake of a given discussion as if it were known to be true. 

What Assumptions do you make? 

Are they shared assumptions? 

Never assume anything. Check it out for yourself. 

An internal part of us that exhibits qualities such as freedom, joy and creativity.

The belief that we each carry a child within us is basic to theories and therapies that accept that it is normal to have multiple selves. The Inner Child is variously defined as a subpersonality, a mode of being and an ego state. The latter is the most fully theorized version of the concept, and needs to be understood in relation to the ego states of the Adult and the Parent. 

The term 'Inner Child' refers to a self which relates to the actual child each of us was, though it can be used to symbolize certain' childlike' (but not childish) capacities. The importance of getting to know and love your child within is a theme in personal development literatures concerned with healing. Doing so can powerfully change your life. 

Connecting with the inner child within can mean dealing with wounds left by parenting styles that are over-critical, over-protective, emotionally demanding or negative in some way. Positively you may recover and release the free spirit who is the source of your 'aha' experiences and who can contribute charm, pleasure and creativity. 

If you have over-adapted to the needs and expectations of others or you are over-devoted to your work and duty (and have become dismissive of play), you may need to find and love your Inner Child. 

Becoming a 'strong adult' in part means being sensitive to the inner child within yourself and others. By encouraging that part of yourself develop more joy of life and creativity is to participate in self-reparenting.

Personal Development Plan (PDP) 

A PDP identifies your personal strengths and needs and specifies the goals for your development in those areas. Personal Development Plans can be comprehensive, cover aspects of educational, professional and career development, as well as of more personal aspects of development.

The PDP process is a variant of the Plan-Do-Review model. The plan is preceded by a self-audit or a facilitated self-exploration. The self audit highlights a range of personal strengths, needs, qualities, interests and aspirations. Based on this a plan can be constructed. Such a plan specifies both long-term goals (eg, becoming self-employed) and short-term goals (eg, doing a course in photography). The latter tend to be specified in SMART terms: (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-bound or Trackable).

Personal development planning is often a shared activity, involving yourself and a tutor, mentor, or coach though you can do it on your own.

Within organisations PDPs can be viewed as devices for managing people rather than for people to manage their own development and learning. PDPs can be linked to institutional and business development plans. The benefits of this is useful in achieving the organisations goals but may compromise the personal nature of and commitment to the PDP.

Much depends on the quality of the your commitment to and active participation in the various activities involved, which include analysing, reflecting, reviewing, formulating the plan not just planning.

PDPs can:

• Encourage and increase self-awareness and self-acceptance
• Encourage reflection upon experience
• Encourage a view of life as rich in choices, and promote the skills of decision-making
• Identify areas for growth
• Open the mind to opportunities for growth
• Promote self-responsibility and a sense of ownership for personal, educational and career development
• Improve the ability to prioritize
• Where relevant, ensure coherent progression - for example, from one course of study to another at a higher level
• Encourage greater personal flexibility - with regard to management style, for example.

PDPs can cover home, family and relationships, as well as personal and career development. This format is often used when you are in mid-life and considering a major change of direction. Few PDPs are truly comprehensive, whole person or internally co-ordinated; that is, the effects and implications of one area of development on others are rarely identified. Very few PDPs deal with development at the deepest, most private areas of feeling and the self. 

Self Defeating Belief 3

People should always do the right thing. People who don't are bad and should be blamed or punished.

Often 'bad' or wrong acts tend to be more the result of ignorance or thoughtlessness rather than 'badness.' Having a desire for people to behave in a certain way in itself is not irrational. For example asking that people treat you with respect and dignity. The irrationality begins when you demand that people behave in a certain way and when they don't they will be punished in some form. 

You don't have the authority to control other people's behaviors, so believing the above statement leads to a lot of disappointment and hurt when people don't behave how you want them to. It also leads to anger and hostility if you believe that this person deserves to be punished. This belief doesn't leave any room for growth or for learning from mistakes. It also doesn't allow you to forgive yourself or others when a mistake occurs.

A healthier idea

It is sad that most of us do some bad things from time to time and some people do many bad things. Making myself very upset won't change that and demanding that people act a certain way won't help me achieve my goals. I will separate the person from the behavior and deal with how the behavior affects me.

Self Defeating Belief 2

To feel happy and be worthwhile I must achieve, succeed at what ever I do, and make no mistakes.

What's wrong with aiming for perfection you may ask. There is nothing wrong with aiming for perfection, but insisting on it is irrational. No one is perfect, or will ever be, including you.

If you are constantly setting unobtainably high goals, you are only setting yourself up for failure and disappointment when you don't reach that goal, despite the fact that you may in fact have achieved quite significantly. 

Setting up perfectionism as a goal actually makes it harder to achieve as you place a lot of pressure on yourself which in turn creates anxiety, thereby reducing your performance. It is more rational to set realistic goals, understand that you will make mistakes (because every body does) and learn from those mistakes for the future.

A healthier idea

I want to do some things well most of the time. Like everybody, I will occasionally fail or make a mistake, then I will feel disappointed, but I can cope with that, and I can take constructive steps to do better next time.

Self Defeating Belief 1

I must be loved or approved of by significant people in my life in order to be a worthwhile person

This type of thinking is bound to end up with you feeling bad. Although reading through that statement you may think to yourself "I don't need people's approval to think I'm OK" it might be worth looking at your behaviour to see if this belief has crept into you thinking process somewhere along the way. Examples would be saying yes when you really want to say no because "what would they think of me?", agreeing with a statement you are actually opposed to, or apologizing when you have done nothing wrong.

As a child, you would be praised for doing something well and punished for doing something wrong. It does not take long to develop a way of thinking based on needing approval or praise from others. It is natural to have a desire for approval, and this helps to lead a fulfilling life, but when that approval becomes a necessity you start to lose yourself in other' peoples views and opinions. You will tell yourself that in order to feel contented you need approval from others.

If we assume the 50-50 rule,  50% of the time, 50% of the people will disagree with you, then only 25% of the time people will actually agree with your thoughts, behaviors and actions. If you find you have this self defeating belief then you are setting yourself up to fail for 75% of your life. 

A healthier idea:

I want to be loved or liked and approved by some of the people in my life, but it is not essential to my survival.  I might be disappointed when it doesn't happen, but I can cope with those feelings, and I can take constructive steps to make and keep better relationships. 

Improve your tolerance level to disapproval by deliberately lookiing  for people you know will disagree with you, and apply the above healthy ideas.