Self-Responsibility Exercise
Self-responsibility is key to personal empowerment and healthy relationships. When you are not aware of and fully own your experience, especially your thinking, you will project, blame, and judge others and yourself.
Self-responsibility defined:
Owning what is yours. It involves naming and identifying your observations, interpretations, judgments, feelings and needs.
Self-responsibility is not self-blame.
Owning your inner experience does not mean you have to do it alone.
Exercise: Bring your attention to a recent experience, or what you are experiencing right now.
Thinking:
a) Identify what you are thinking about this experience.
Say, "these are the thoughts I’m having. They are thoughts and not the full picture. They are my interpretations and judgments.
Feeling/Sensing:
a) Identify your feelings, name them.
b) Identify your sensations. Where in the body are they? Feel the energy fully. c) Say, “these feelings and sensations are mine, they are in me.”
Needing/Valuing/Longing:
a) Notice and name the longings, values and needs.
b) Feel these longings fully.
c) Let the name or label fall away and just feel the energy of the longing.
Where does this energy go from here? Feel into this question. Let the energy itself answer the question, don’t just go back into thought, stay with feeling, stay with the energy. Trust that when you move from this self-aware, self-responsible place, you move with integrity.
Originally created by Robert Gonzales, Living Compassion