Reality Tip: Careful, people pleasing can live here. Sometimes, we like to take responsibility for others’ feelings or behavior so they will be happy, like us, do something for us, or not do something to us. People pleasing is different than loving-kindness. That’s for another book in our collection.
We provide love, kindness, and support to others , but we do not do for them what they are responsible for. They do those things.
We receive love, kindness, and support from others , but we do not ask them to do what we are responsible for. We do those things.
Our responsibility is to encourage, confront, empower, support, or do things that help others fulfill their responsibility without doing it for them.
Their responsibility is to encourage, confront, empower, support, or do things that help us fulfill our responsibility without letting them do it for us.
The Backpack vs. The Boulder
There are backpacks and boulders.
A backpack is something each individual is responsible to carry on his or her own. Our backpacks are full of personal responsibilities we manage ourselves.
A boulder is something we cannot move on our own, so we ask others for help with it, for a season. Some life circumstances are too difficult or impossible to handle so relying on others, for a limited time, becomes necessary. Think of a boulder as too heavy to lift by ourselves, so we seek others to help us move it. Each of us needs help sometimes, and that’s ok. We allow others to carry their backpacks. We ask others for help to move our boulders. If we carry others’ backpacks for them, we interrupt their growth and development. If we don’t ask others for help with our boulders, we struggle unnecessarily. Taking care of ourselves and loving others well comes from knowing the difference.
1
14
Made with FlippingBook interactive PDF creator