When you hear the word responsibility do you shudder?
What does the word responsibility bring up for you? Career, work, house, jobs, finances or health? Have you got feelings, emotions, love, your relationships or your spiritual connection on your list?
Society in general teaches us to find a scapegoat—someone else to blame in hopes of making all our problems go away.
Do you really believe this? Isn’t this just a way of implying you do not know how to respond? Most of us have the ability to ignore, avoid or blame someone else in order to protect ourselves and keep from looking bad or stupid.
Many of us need to strengthen or choose an intention to build our muscles in taking on responsibility for things that we may have not even considered. Taking responsibility for our emotions may mean learning how to be nondefensive, to collaborate, to be open with our intentions, to be vulnerable and to take a risk.
Perhaps you believe you are not responsible for your emotions? Am I pressing a few buttons here?
Perhaps you think emotions just arise out of somewhere and you get angry, feel sad or bored. You could be letting yourself down, giving yourself up, letting others take from, abuse or disrespect you. Are you maintaining it has nothing to do with you and you cannot do anything about it? Someone did or didn’t do something to you and you got angry, sad or disappointed? It’s really their fault isn’t it? They are responsible for how you feel, aren’t they?
Some emotions are good and some are bad. It’s understandable you would only want the good ones.
When emotions rise up in you what is your response? Do you control them by repressing them, ignoring them or resisting them? Is it that you cannot control them and feel powerless? If you cannot control them what are your options, see a therapist to fix them or be a victim and suffer?
Is there another way?
Consider for a moment, what if your ability to respond to the surfacing of emotions enabled you to feel a deeper and richer quality of life and a deeper sense of what makes you feel in rhythm with life?
The ability to respond to life can enable you to get in touch with the emotions that bring you peace, happiness and joy. The experience of sadness, pain and compassion for others can enrich the experience of yourself. Negative emotions you have avoided can pass through you with ease and grace. It will cost you less in conflict, tensions and health bills the more you become responsible and learn about your emotions.
When you accept that you can give yourself the love you need to create anything you want you will find a new freedom. You may be surprised at how liberating it is for both you and your circle of friends and family.
You don’t have to believe or agree with anything I have said. Experiment, play, start to get curious and see what you find when you look at your emotions with curiosity. Take responsibility for them in new ways. Let us know what you find, we’d love to hear about it!
Deborah Lange is a writer, Personal and Professional Coach/Facilitator/Guide for accessing Emotional and Spiritual Wisdom. Lange’s journey has taken her down many paths – on each path she has deepened her own wisdom and ability to guide others to find their own truth and give themselves the courage to live a life that makes them come fully alive! From a teacher, to a high flying consultant, a housewife, a mother, a carer for her dying Mother, a mosaic artist, a facilitator, a gardener, a researcher, an investor, a roadie for an Irish harpist, and more. Now growing into eldership, she is sowing the seeds she gathered of truth and wisdom that can help others on their journey as I grow into her new role as author.
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Editor: ShaMecha Simms
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