RECOGNIZE YOUR HURTS, PAIN AND CHOICES
The first step is to pay attention to yourself and learn how to take charge and control of YOU. Stop focusing so much on your partner and start looking at yourself. How do you feel, what are you thinking, what are you doing and saying? Learn and discover more about you and the choices you have. You are not stuck, you can change! You can learn to think differently, feel differently and act differently. Will it be easy? I can’t promise that. Will it be good? Absolutely.
Becoming aware is the first step to making a committed choice to change. Decide that you want to change and live a better healthier life. Determine to make the effort to learn new ways of doing things and to challenge your thoughts and beliefs that are unconsciously the driving force of your life. Dedicate some time and make it your priority to commit to this directional shift.
TAKE RESPONSIBILITY
Once you are recognizing what you are thinking, feeling and doing you become more attuned; aware of and attentive to yourself. Then you can take healthy responsibility for your thoughts, feelings and actions.
I used to be overly responsibility. I took on other people’s responsibility and neglected my own. Now, I take responsibility for myself and let others, particularly my spouse take responsibility for himself.
That’s right, you are only responsible for you. That ought to be enough! Your choices have consequences. Even if you think your choice is only 1% of the problem or less can you still take responsibility for that. Taking responsibility for just 1% can make a 100% difference. What could you have done differently or said differently that could have altered the outcome? It can be hard to humble yourself. However, it will help your relationship and your healing. And if you have no responsibility for the issues at hand, you can accept responsibility for attracting the problem to yourself. For some hidden reason, you are getting the problem you have to fix, change or learn something from it. As hard, painful and absurd as it might be give thanks in the midst of it. Gratitude and thanksgiving produce healthy brain chemicals; no wonder God said to do it.
Along with responsibility comes ownership. You own your feelings. I used to project all my negative, undesirable, uncomfortable and bad feeling onto others, instead of admitting, acknowledging, accepting and allowing myself to feel what I was feeling. Now, I own my sadness, my anger, my fear. It’s mine. I accept how I feel and it’s ok to feel what I’m feeling. My feelings are valid. My feelings are a gift from God to help guide me and instruct me as to how to act appropriately. I own my feelings and take responsibility for how I act.