Are you the master of your own destiny, or will you throw your life's baggage on the train of excuses?

Which philosophy do you follow?

Ummm... I don't really think I can blame my choices on anybody but myself if that's what you're asking. :unsure:

Pretty sure there's no excuse to not trying unless you have some fatal flaw, like not trying to become a famous singer because you can't sing.

Oh my god... I... I just realized... I can't fly! I have no wings! I'm such a failure! *Runs to a corner and sobs*

I'm chasing my dream, and I know that I just can't make excuses, but if I don't get there, there are people to blame for it besides me. That's how I look at things. In everything that goes wrong in your life, you are held responsible no matter what, but there can and usually are other people/reason that it failed.

I believe in the Stoic acceptance of fate, along with the Stoic determination of bettering your life through conscious effort.

To me, personal accountability means being accountable for the things you personally do.

Pretty much everything has unforeseeable consequences and is subject to luck, life is by no means an even playing field and there are absolutely times when excuses can be made or actions where you can't reasonably be held accountable for their consequences. This does not however excuse you from anything that you should have seen coming. It isn't quite true that we make our own luck but the harder you try, the more likely things are to work out for you.

I'll go with that. There are some things which are truly out of your control, and you shouldn't blame yourself for that. In some cases it could be very unhealthy to hold yourself accountable.

That's quite a strenuous interpretation of the phrase.

Agreed.

Personally? I take account for everything, just about. Vestiges of an old self who thought every single bad thing in the world was his fault. Professionally? It's not only stressed, but absolute. In my field people die when you aren't accountable for every single detail. The devil's in the details, but so is the salvation.

Now as for this hogwash about destiny and masters? Useless. Destiny means nothing in the real world, outside of fantasy and literature and video games and movies and poetry. You might as well call it glorified goal setting, which is really exactly what it is in the end. When you calcinate it down like that, destiny becomes an incredibly mundane, every day, boring old thing. Do you set goals? Do other people set goals for you? Did you make a New Year's Resolution? Did you already give it up? Destiny is too fancy a word to dress up with.