...we aren’t responsible for creating all the bad things that happen to us. But we can claim responsibility for the bad things that happen and learn a lot about ourselves by doing so. It all depends on whether you think of responsibility as something you are or as something you do. For us, the only useful way of thinking about responsibility is as something we do. We use an operational definition of responsibility, not a theoretical one: Responsibility is an action you take, not a quality that can be assigned. A judge and jury can assign responsibility to a criminal for an act, but that criminal’s life will not begin to change until he or she makes a conscious choice to take responsibility... The key point is this: There is tremendous healing power in taking responsibility for something right now in the present, but no healing value in looking back to the past to blame yourself or anyone else.