You are being selfish when you expect others to give themselves up for you, and when you don’t care about the impact your behaviour has on others.
You are being self-responsible when you take loving care of yourself so that you feel happy and peaceful inside and can share your love with others.
Can you tell the difference?
Did you grow up seeing your parents taking loving care of themselves, or were you raised to believe that it is seen as selfish?"
We live in a world which is stressful like never before and I think it’s very important for our mental resilience to get this definition clear.
Because, while it is not healthy or helpful to be selfish, we must, as healthy adults be self-responsible.
Self-responsibility comes in many forms, here are the 3 top ones that are very helpful.
1. Learning when it’s a yes or when it’s a no
The easiest way to prevent stress is learning to understand your yes’s and no’s. We all have the feeling of “we must” “we should” but life is actually a fine balance of what we should do and what we can do. Knowing our limits is a big part of being self-responsible. Some things can wait, some can’t. Some things are up to you to do, some things you just “have” to do and somethings you don’t, sometimes we can just say no
2. Learning when to self-focus and when to self-forget
There are times when you need to knuckle down and focus, find your own solutions and press through, but there are also times to let go and walk away, get away from the moment and let the answers come organically.
The easiest way to tell the difference is whether you can still think constructively about the subject, in which case continue, however if you can’t think any more about something then don’t – go to the beach or run a bath.
3. Learning when to move forward and when to retreat
In history many a battle was won by retreating to a safe position, regrouping and moving forward from there to conquer the battle.
Sometimes we need to keep moving forward pulling our big pants up and finding the solution. But, there is a time to retreat, rethink, change direction, concede and come at it from a totally different place or point of view.
Giving to others brings us great joy, but only when we are taking loving care of ourselves at the same time can it be sustained and long term.
Sadly, giving to others becomes a way of filling up from the outside rather than from the inside, and helps us avoid often what we need to deal with.
So, let’s try to attend to our feelings with a deep desire to learn about ourselves. applying our intuitive guidance daily and see what happens.
Love Tracey
Comments