Are You Response Able?

All our lives we have heard the echoes of “be responsible,” “choose responsibility,” “remember your responsibilities,” but what if I told you that it is impossible to be responsible unless you are able to respond–unless you are RESPONSE ABLE!

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO BE RESPONSE ABLE?

Being response able means that we have all the tools and skills that we need to respond to any given problem or pursuit. And by tools and skills, I do not mean strictly the skills and tools for the pursuit itself. Let’s say that the pursuit is to wash the dishes. I may have the skills to understand how to run water, put soap on a sponge and even lather up and rinse a dish, but if I do not have the emotional capacity to handle this added task to my daily duties, I cannot be categorized as “response able” for this task. FAR too often, parents assume that children are ready for things solely based on chronological age and physical skills and tools. They often fail to consider a child’s emotional age and ability and this has led to a generation of overwhelmed and overstressed adults. To be response able, we must have BOTH the skills and tools to accomplish a task AND the emotional capacity to manage the emotions that come with the added task.

EMOTIONAL READINESS

In the special education community, there’s an idea that students should stay below their “frustration level” because if we ask them to push past this, the pressures associated with pushing past this frustration level will interfere with the students ability to complete the task. This “frustration level” does not change once we turn 18. Somehow our society has created standards where our chronological age determines our physical abilities. Growth and development that supports increased responsibility must be holistic in nature and grow the emotional part of ourselves at the same time as our physical part. We as a society need to recognize that careful observation and gauging needs to happen with people of all ages, not just children to determine emotional readiness for any given task or pursuit.

NOT ONE SIZE FITS ALL

Life trajectory is not a one size fits all endeavor. We are all different. Each of us has our own unique combination of knowledge, experience, skills, tools, education, awareness, perception, emotional capacity, interests, etc. The learning path that you are on may not be the learning path that I am on or that the next person is on. While for one person, a 9-5 lifestyle might be ideal for them, while for another, part time is essential to their emotional well being. Being responsible does not mean being a superhero. It does not mean that we pressure or force ourselves to do things that we are not ready for because social media tells us that we should be or because we feel the incredible pressure from our environment to do and be and become what everyone else is doing and being and becoming!

TUNE IN

The first step in gauging your own response ability is to get quiet and tune in to yourself. What things trigger you and why? What is easy for you? What is hard for you? What do you enjoy doing? What do you hate doing? If it was up to you, what would your life look like? What is a priority in your life? What can you take off your plate? The more questions we ask ourselves, the more answers and insight will come. As we do this work, we will begin to discover a lot of ways where we are off balance for what is best for us. We will discover a lot of ways where we say yes when we need to say no. We will discover a lot of areas in our life where we believe that we are supposed to be doing something or “should be’ doing something when in truth those are someone else’s beliefs and opinions! As you tune in to yourself and become acquainted with your own frustration levels and emotional readiness, you will be able to chart the life trajectory that is best for you and create a time line that works for you!

TELL THE TRUTH ABOUT WHERE YOU ARE

There’s absolutely no shame in speaking your truth. No matter if this truth needs to be spoken to your spouse, your partner, your parents, your boss, your friend, your child…find the courage to have this conversation with them! Step two is to express your feelings! You might say something like, “Hey would it be okay if we have a chat about what I’m learning about myself and my ability to handle my responsibilities?” If they are open, then share with them what you are feeling and noticing in yourself and share with them what your plan is to self-care. To offer a personal example, in my own life, I used to believe that I needed to be supermom. Supermom did not take breaks. Supermom was never tired, burned out or incapable. Supermom could work a full time job and a part time job, maintain an immaculate home, make from scratch meals, do all the shopping, homework helping, activity driving, etc. But then one day, I realized that I was not supermom. I realized that I did not have super human powers. I realized this only after a clinical depression diagnosis. “Oh, supermom also needs to self-care,” was the realization I ultimately had. And so it was that I began my own self-discovery, self-care journey to reprogram my brain to replace my “supermom” beliefs with just “mom” beliefs. I had to evaluate myself and figure out what I had the emotional capacity to handle without melting down and what I did not and that took a lot of adjusting. My family had been used to me doing so much, on the cash flow I was bringing in, on the personal assistantship I had been providing each of them. So you can imagine how my life change affected everyone around me! (And ultimately what I discovered was that it was my fears of how the truth would affect everyone else that kept me from self-caring to begin with!). My truth became an adjustment period for us all! But fast forward to today and I can assure you that it was a blessing to those around me because what my choice to change did was it enabled my family to have a happier, healthier me and it taught each of them to learn things they never would have known about such as what it means to be response able!

BE WHERE YOU ARE

It’s okay to take steps backwards. Honestly taking steps backwards is not really taking steps backwards. Sometimes, we need to go back to learn the new lesson we are learning in order to understand it. In school, I often found that going back to easier math problems enabled me to understand harder ones. I was learning the harder math concepts BY reviewing the easier ones. As you understand what it means to be “RESPONSE ABLE” you will be able to vibe out a solution that will work for you and your life. All of us are different, so there’s really not one formula I can write down here. I found in my own life that when I worked in breaks and rewards for myself that I could reenergize myself which enabled me to get more done throughout the day. I also found that cutting out a lot of nonsensical things that I did not need to have on my list also helped. For example, our drawers and closets do not need to be organized every week! And, it’s not bad parenting to ask our kids to choose one or two activities they really love and kick to the curb the rest! My daughter reminds me regularly that she is equivalent to an expert swimmer even though she dropped out before she got her shark certificate. I am happy to report that she has not drown to date!

BREATHE

This life, it’s yours too! And wherever you got the idea that only doing EVERYTHING made you responsible needs to go! Go take a obreak, take out a piece of paper or a whiteboard or a blank document on your computer and start soul searching for what’s working in your life and what is not. Figure out where you are easily able to respond to life and where you are struggling. One step at a time, breathing your way through it, find your RESPONSE ABILITY level and then BE THERE. Don’t apologize for being there. Just breathe there. It’s not your fault. You’ve done nothing wrong. It’s simply what IS! And until you are where you are right now, there is no ground to move forward to be where you want to be. Radical acceptance is the only solution.

Much Love!