Don’t Do What Isn’t Helping
When I first came across this concept years ago, I said, “What do you mean, Marshall? I’ve got a ton to do. I’ve got an activity to visit, dishes to scrub, laundry to fold, meals to prepare, a house to clean, and an unwell youngster to take care of. None of this is play and I will not find the time to take care of myself, exercise, loosen up, or spend time with a friend. How am I able to play when I’ve got so many responsibilities to others?”
The answer is to have compassion for myself, then the whole lot, even work, has some play in it.
What does Marshall Rosenberg teach about how to have compassion for ourselves?
“A crucial form of self-compassion is to make alternatives inspired in simple terms via our desire to make contributions to existence rather that out of fear, guilt, disgrace, or obligation. [When] what motivates us to make life remarkable for others and ourselves, then even hard work has an element of play in it… [A] happy pastime completed out of duty, obligation, worry, guilt, or disgrace will lose its pleasure and sooner or later engender resistance.”
Rosenberg gives 3 Steps for Self -Compassion.
Write a list. List the everything you do which you don’t think you have a choice about, which you think you have to do. You may realize how much of your day you spend not enjoying your life or what number of things you are tricking yourself into believing that you have to do.
Pick out every object. While you’re finished together with your list, acknowledge to yourself that you are doing this stuff because you choose to do it, due to the fact you have to. Put the phrases “I elect to . . .” in front of each item on the list. When I did this, I was aware of having some resistance to the concept of choosing to do this stuff that isn’t enjoyable. I thought “I don’t choose to help the kids tidy their room. I must. I’m the mom. They can’t do it themselves. It’s too difficult. And Jason can’t help because he doesn’t do it thoroughly.” and that I thought, “I don’t choose to make the kids’ lunches. They couldn’t make a balanced lunch themselves. They don’t know how to do this.”
Get in touch with the purpose. With every object to your list, figure out what your purpose at the back of it is. Write for each object “I choose to ____ because I want ____.” Once I did this for myself I realized that I choose to assist the youngsters in tidying their room because I love how I feel when the house is tidy. It also offers me a chance to assist them cleaning things out so that they can maintain things better. And I can help them study the task of cleaning, by breaking things down into smaller steps and through teaching them to be strategic. I nonetheless should remind myself throughout room cleaning what my intention is. Now that I understand why I’m doing it and what I value more than it, I can have some flexibility and lightness with our cleaning.
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