Many moons ago, I wrote a list of 12 Prin­ci­ples that were the basis of my under­stand­ing, both of my life and of my coun­selling prac­tice. I’ve been think­ing about pulling them together into a small book that I could give to new clients.

I’ve decided that I’d, at least for now, tackle each of the top­ics here, in the blog. We’ll see how it goes.

8. I must take full respon­si­bil­ity for my choices, deci­sions, and direc­tions. Just as there is no one to com­pare myself to, there is no one is to blame for any choice I have ever made. I am where I am and I know what I know based solely upon what I have cho­sen to learn, to absorb, to assim­i­late and to find within myself.

“Now, if only I could tear my eyes off of you,
and actu­ally look at myself…”

Back at point 1, I sug­gested the idea that you are the cen­tre of your own uni­verse. I wrote about “get­ting” that how we relate to oth­ers is sort of myopic. We think we are see­ing clearly, but for­get the glasses on our face.

I’d like to sug­gest another per­spec­tive for this idea, and it goes like this:

Every sin­gle aspect of what is hap­pen­ing in your life right now (which, of course, is the only place you ever are…) is the result of the choices you have made. 100% of the time. Who you are, where you are, and how you are, it’s all deter­mined by you, moment by moment.

If you want some­thing dif­fer­ent,
you must start from where you are.

This seems log­i­cal, until you unpack the impli­ca­tions. Start­ing from where you are means accept­ing respon­si­bil­ity for the choices you made, and are mak­ing to get to this state—to this moment—to this con­di­tion. As we said in point 7, this is a strug­gle, as we have been trained since birth to look out­side of our­selves for both sat­is­fac­tion and some­one to blame.

Let me say it this way: our approach is not mag­i­cal, not indi­rect, and not super­fi­cial.

Many peo­ple think that ther­apy is about “mak­ing things all bet­ter,” as in “no prob­lems.” Only one client has ever said this aloud, in New Age-speak, when she said, “I need my affir­ma­tions fixed. I’m not get­ting what I want.” But many clients expect that work­ing with me is going to “eas­ily fix the world.”

In other words, they still think their inter­nal tight­ness and emo­tional issues are exter­nally caused.

My approach is to insist that how you are is how you are. If your per­son­al­ity tends toward cheery, that’s how you are. If toward melan­choly, that’s how you are. These ten­den­cies are not caused by externals—rather they colour our default response to exter­nals. The hard work of ther­apy is learn­ing to accept that “the way you are is the way you are,” and then work­ing from there.

Once you get this small idea,
the doors of oppor­tu­nity are thrown open.

Most peo­ple spend their lives try­ing to change the world, and try­ing not to be them­selves. We insist that life is far bet­ter lived through accep­tance. Now, by accep­tance I do not mean sub­mis­sion. I mean what the word means. I start from here, from right now, and accept that “I am where I am and I know what I know based solely upon what I have cho­sen to learn, to absorb, to assim­i­late and to find within myself.”

Notice the “to find within myself.” That’s the accep­tance of the base­line of your self part. As I said above (and with­out get­ting into the nature vs. nur­ture debate) we all have cer­tain over­ar­ch­ing ways of deal­ing with our­selves and the world. Call them predilec­tions. Defaults. Yet, despite this, there is free­dom in the following:

I may have a predilec­tion to act in a cer­tain way, but I always have com­plete free­dom of choice regard­ing my next action.

Blam­ing your genes, your par­ents, your “Uncle Louie,” the sys­tem, or any­thing else for who you are and where you are is a waste of your time. Even if by some stretch some­thing in the past, in your child­hood, “caused you” to be a cer­tain way, and even if you have been act­ing that way for decades, noth­ing com­pels you to behave that way this time. Nothing.

“I’m not on the inside! You are!”

Clients are resis­tant to shift­ing their way of being. They’ve per­fected their approach over years, and quickly turn my words upside down. For exam­ple, a client might lean toward depres­sion. I’ll sug­gest two things:
1) accept that your nature is to lean toward depres­sion, and
2) as you feel that way, give your­self per­mis­sion to feel it, fully, for a lim­ited time, say 15 min­utes.
Do what you need to do: wail, moan, cry, com­plain. Then, stop, and ask, “OK, now what do I need to do, this time, regard­ing this sit­u­a­tion?” You then dis­ci­pline your­self to act.

One recent client unpacked this, dis­carded 2/3s of it, and thought I said, “Just stop doing it.” Yikes.

Now, the rea­son she did this was
1) to defend her belief that she is, and always will be, depressed,
2) to stay stuck until some magi­cian comes along and per­ma­nently removes her depres­sion,
3) to resist con­sciously imple­ment­ing her symp­toms, and
4) to stay stuck in behav­iours that, in the past, have got­ten lousy results.

So we repeat, end­lessly: if you want to do your life dif­fer­ently, you have to

1) accept that how you are right now is how you are right now, and
2) shift a behav­iour in the direc­tion you want to go.

This requires the assim­i­la­tion of an entirely new

way of see­ing things.

I believe that every­one already has within them all of the tools, resources, and under­stand­ings nec­es­sary to be and to cre­ate excel­lence. The prob­lem is that we have lim­ited our choices in the extreme, have blocked our­selves from the innate knowl­edge of our bod­ies, and have designed a pic­ture of our­selves that is way too small.

Thus, the depressed per­son, above, focuses only on expe­ri­ences that con­firm her depressed-ness, and does what she does to stay within that small frame. Our approach is to acknowl­edge that this, indeed, is “how things are, right now.” Fight­ing against what is, is a waste of time. Then, we open to door, through dia­log and Body­work, to doing “the next thing” (and the rest of life, one moment by one moment) differently.

Through care­fully thought out and enacted choice.