Taking responsibility for your life also means accepting the things you can’t change.
If you’re short and want to be tall, or you’re an endomorph and wish you were an entomorph, if you were born with some impediment or acquired one along the way, or if you find yourself in any particular set of circumstances that are absolute, immutable, and irreversible, then you basically have two options. You can rant and rave and curse and indulge in remorse or guilt or self-pity. Or you can go with the hand you were dealt and play the game the best you can.
You can be open to the possibility that those who say we have chosen our circumstances are correct, and then set about figuring out what you can learn from your life by making the most of it.
When you look at the personal limitations someone like Helen Keller had to deal with, and the extent to which she overcame them—not to mention the tremendous contribution she made with her life—you can see that it is possible to cooperate with the inescapable.
Going within to find the meaning of our lives does not mean seeking to avoid the challenges our circumstances present. Rather it means finding the grace to learn how to live our lives to the fullest extent possible—whatever that is for us—and, in the acceptance, to move on to the highest level of growth we can.