When energy flows freely, this provides you the freedom to move between different places or attitudes, rather than being “married” to any in particular. Allowing energy to dance back and forth easily. A beautiful analogy is like watching Margaret-Rose and Wilfred Hearn move around the dance floor. For anyone local to me, you know exactly who and what I’m talking about. It is mesmerizing to watch them together.

One of the things that many struggle with is understand that without self-responsibility and love, it’s difficult to maintain healthy and respectful relationships. If you can’t take responsibility for yourself and love yourself unconditionally, then how can anyone else love and respect you unconditionally?

Self-responsibility means being able to discover your real needs and find ways to meet your needs; realize you are unique and you are the expert about yourself; know and act the importance of expressing your feelings and ideas about who you are, what you need and what you know.

While love means listening to your heart, treasure your unique, connect to your inner wisdom. It also means being your very own best friend, being faithful to yourself. Being connected to all things, while synonymously being alone.

When you live your life with self-responsibility and love, burdens can be transformed into opportunities, learning, trusting, and for loving the creation of yourself.

Here are some things to consider about Self-Responsibility & Love:

I am solely responsible for my health and well-being

As humans, we are always looking for an “easy way out”. We are looking for that “magic bullet”. Unfortunately the only way to get there, is through … through our own determination, our experiences and adventures that life brings us to gain knowledge and insights. When we look within, all the answers we week are there, literally in our backyard. When we stop believe that someone else has more control over our lives than we do, the changes are incredible. From the time we are little, we’ve learned to accept what others tell us to be true, even when it doesn’t resonate for us. As adults, we can choose to accept things at face value or explore it more in depth. You are always at choice. Often times we will hear, “I didn’t have a choice.”. We always have a choice. It’s whether or not we want to live with that particular outcome of the choice we make.

I am actively involved in the care I receive

Sometimes when we work with professionals, they believe they have all the answers. They may have some answers, but like us, they are exploring your needs and your health, just as you are. For example, doctors run tests to “rule out” or to “confirm” an illness. When the test comes back negative, they run a new test. When they run out of tests to give you, then they are at a loss. Sometimes they believe they know what’s wrong and stop listening to what is going on in your life and dismiss facts that you already know. The other thing that is really important is looking at our wellness vs our illness (or disease). When we look at our wellness, we see things differently than when we look at illness or disease.

Over the years we’ve heard about the power of our mind or our beliefs to help us feel better. This is powerful, yet some still do not believe we have the power to heal ourselves. We definitely need external interventions, however, for many things we can provide healing through our own internal state. Things like, “mind over mood”, “power of suggestion”, “you can heal yourself” are all examples of this. There are many modalities that can help you tap into your own healing power. This doesn’t mean that you don’t still seek up from your doctor or another professional, it simply means that this is another source of “medicine”.

I get between 7-10 hours a sleep a night

Sleep has been influencing our health from the time we are infants. The expression of “do not wake a sleeping baby” is not just an expression, it was shared because we need sleep to grow, heal and replenish our body. Sleep deprivation has an impact on our physical and mental health. Have you ever noticed how your brain functions or how your body feels when you are lacking sleep? For centuries, sleep deprivation was used as torture. Most of us are affected during Daylight Savings Times. As adults we know the time changes, yet it still affects us. Then we try to figure out why our children are so “out of whack”. Most of us do not get the necessary about of sleep every night. I know I’m guilty of “broken” sleep. Develop a relaxing routine just before bedtime.

I protect my physical self from harm

Sometimes we have no control about hazards that can impact us, like natural disasters such as earthquakes or tornadoes. But mostly, there are many things that we can do to impact keeping ourselves safe. Using smoke detectors, wearing seatbelts, not riding in a car with a drunk driver or eating a wholesome diet … are a few ways you can keep yourself safe.  Optimizing our health is more within our control than we think. Caring for ourselves by protecting ourselves from harmful situations is a basic wellness skill that we can all acquire.

I recognize that experiencing pain and dis-ease give me the opportunity to re-evaluate my lifestyle and my environment.

When we are “getting sick” or we are sick, there are many things we can evaluate in our lifestyle and environment. Sleep apnea, for example, is an illness that often affects people who have extra weight (obviously not everyone, but many). If you can lose weight, you may find that you no longer have sleep apnea. Type 2 diabetes can be managed by changing the way you eat. Going for a walk changes your mental health. There are many people in history who have lived through the challenges that life has thrown at them. The writings of Helen Keller, the music of Ray Charles or the journey of Terry Fox have inspired millions all over the world. Everything leads to wellness when we use tools for self-exploration, for education and for growth. When we can reinforce wellness from self-compassion and love, we can encourage continuing success.

I believe that it’s okay for me to be vulnerable, in need and out-of-balance.

It’s okay to be just as you are. We are sometimes made to believe that there is “something” wrong with us when we are feeling vulnerable, in need and out-of-balance. Renee Brown talks about vulnerability as a strength, yet, many of us still struggle with allowing others to see us when we are vulnerable. Needing help … for most of us, often means we are incapable that there is something wrong with us, yet, if someone else needs help, we take no issue or think any less of them. And when we adjust or change things in one area of our life, we become out-of-balance until we are able re-balance. Just be okay to be just as you are. If we stay stuck in any of these or we are not happy with being in any of these states, we need to do something to change it … but we don’t need to be 100% okay, 100% of the time. Those that appear to have it together all the time like “SuperMom” or “Mr. Perfect” are often the ones who get cancer or have a heart attack without warning. It’s as equally important to give as it is to receive. Many of us struggle with the receiving part.

I know that it is possible to discover well-being in the midst of serious or chronic illness

Wellness doesn’t mean being 100% perfect. It means being okay mind, body, heart and soul. Going to back to Helen Keller, she was blind, deaf and mute. Physically she had deficits, but she was still well. She was able to live her life to its fullest. She could have simply been stifled by these challenges, yet, she was able to overcome her illness. She learned to speak and acquired an education, in spite of her illness. Wellness is the right and privilege each and everyone one of us have. There is no prerequisite for wellness other than your free choice. You always have the choice to choose whether you will be lead into wellness or defeat.

I can distinguish between accepting responsibility for a problem and blaming myself for it

It’s important for us to take responsibility for things that we’ve said and done. But it’s important to recognize that being guilty for something that we’ve chosen to us as being the right thing for us at the time we made the decision. For example, we take responsibility for saying something hurtful, but if we’ve said something that we need to say, in a respectful manner, then we have nothing to feel guilty about. When we start getting into things like, “I should have done this…”, “I shouldn’t have said that…”. It’s important that we take responsibility for choices that may have lead us to be injured or become ill but it does not mean taking on blame. There’s a big difference. With blame you berate yourself for not being perfect. You burden yourself with guilt from which more stress is created. Blame and guilt get mixed in with responsibility when we hear an angry voice at a tender age question “Who’s responsible for this mess on the floor?”. There’s a concept of responsibility with a message of blame. It’s important to be able to distinguish between the two.

I love myself and others

When you fall in love with yourself, you are simply healthier. There’s no way of not being healthy. Being in love is what it’s all about. Love truly makes the world go round. When you love yourself, you are able to trust, accept the uniqueness of yourself, understand the differences of each person and you can forgive your failings. To love yourself is to love your mind and the craziness of it, your body as it is, your emotions through the ups and the downs, and your soul from the very depths of who you are. And when you can do this for yourself, you can do this readily and easily with others. Love is all around you and within you … you simply need to open yourself up to receive it. All things in the universe are connected. This also means within the body. The doesn’t start in the body and stop in the mind, as in the universe. Being compassionate with yourself is true love. Remembering that as you breathe better, you move better, and digest your food better, and relax more deeply, and develop greater self-awareness, and . . . the dots connect you to wellness as it’s all one process. It transforms you.

I acknowledge that my well-being is connected to the planet and do what I can to minimize my consumption of Mother Earth’s resources

When we finally have that connection with ourselves and others, it’s interested to see the connection to the world around us. The more we express consciousness and accountability in our own lives, the more we will see and enjoy our interdependence with one another. Mother Earth, as a planet, brings us all that we need to survive. When we take care of her, she can take care of us. Make choices about what we do on this planet makes all the difference to the world, but also to us over all to promote wellness.

As I move through the month of January, this will be the concepts that I will be focussing on with others in Balanced Whole. Since the completion of this program last year in August, I have decided to start it again starting in January at the beginning of the calendar year. If you want to explore these further, then join me for Balanced Whole a monthly wellness program.