Day 9 of 12 Days of Self-Care

One of the things that came up during my online class last night, was that there are many influences on the decisions we make.  Given this capacity we have to self-blame or make ourselves the problem, it's possible to make the assumption that we made a bad decision and it's all our fault.  What this blaming strategy prevents, is us being able to see the influences at play in decisions we've made or are currently making.  This includes the context, the people involved, societal factors, cultural factors, family influences, internal mental and emotional states and so on.  When we don't acknowledge these influences, it prevents from seeing clearly, and thus being able to take the appropriate amount of responsibility for making good choices.  When we take full responsibility for a decision, as though there were no environmental influences at play, and we label that decision as bad, it can lead to an internal collapse.  This act of shutting down then prevents us from having the flow of creative vital energy that supports us in making life-affirming choices.  If you would like to dive deeper on the topic of responsibility you can read my blog entitled: Shared Responsibility.

As it applies to Self-Care, I invite you to take a look at the current internal and external influences at play that are either supportive of Self-Care or in opposition to it.  When we acknowledge that many different influences go into a decision or path of action, we can then choose to consciously invite in more beneficial and benevolent influences into our life that make looking after ourselves and extending that same care and love to others a lot easier.  If self-care is currently difficult for you, or you find yourself not doing what you know you should do, or are at odds with what you know is best, take a moment to ponder the different influences on your action or inaction.  These influences can be internal in the form of thoughts and feelings, or external in the form of people, places and things that either are in favor of enhancing your well-being and enriching the quality of your life or subtly or not so subtly opposing it.  Once you have more awareness of these influences, you can make some new choices and develop new strategies to reduce the strength of an influence if someone or something is having a negative impact, or strengthen an influence if it adds momentum to your beneficial actions.  If you sense that I can be a supportive influence in your life please get in touch through the inquiry form on my session page for a free 20 minute consultation.