12 Steps to Self Care

This saccharine graphic, "12 Steps to Self Care", to living your life, has been making its way around Facebook. I'm sure it was meant well but it is so basic as to almost be useless. For these elements to be useful requires a degree of reading more into them than they offer here. As they are, they are simply too general. Which really is the point of these things, unless they become too general when they can become counterproductive.

These steps to "self care" imply that they aren't concerned about anything else; except you. However, in taking that tact, they can themselves become negative. Nothing is black and white in life and if you think they are, you are misleading yourself, doing yourself a disservice and setting yourself up for failure.

Ordering these elements up and seeing their limitations is as important as their original intent. On the surface they are useless. But they do hold a measure of help with a bit of help. So here is that bit of help.

1 If it feels wrong, don't do it.

 Okay, but working for a company every work day feels totally wrong to me. Should I quit? If I did, I would lose my house. I'd have no where to live. Be of no use to anyone else. Sometimes you have to do what feels wrong and yet it is the right thing to do. So how do you decide what you should do? Life, is all about balance.

2 Say "exactly" what you mean.

 This one, can get you killed. It refers to transparency. If I were to say exactly what I mean much of the time, it could affect my life and lifestyle poorly. However, if I try hard to be clear to others and communicate more rather than less clearly, with some degree of restraint in my honesty, with an attempt to be politic (gentle) in my dealings with others, but truly honest and heartfelt, there will be less ambiguity in my life and in dealings with others. Life, is all about balance.

3 Don't be a "people pleaser".

 Pleasing people is how one networks and sets oneself up for success in life. But to do it to excess, to get in a habit of constantly sacrificing oneself for pleasing others, will certainly be destructive. Please people whenever appropriate, when it falls in line with who you are and how you want to be, and how you want others to relate to you. Life, is about balance.

4 Trust your instincts.

 If you have good instincts in life and find you are not trusting them, and that things in your life are not going well, then trust them more. When your instincts become wrong on a continuous basis, then what? Review your internal and external existence and compare those to what you want out of life and how much you are using your instincts and adjust accordingly. Life, is about balance.

5 Never speak bad about yourself.

 Aside from questionable grammar, this can lead to delusional thought. Letting others know that you know where you are bad (or good) is useful, and can gain you a very valuable commodity, Trust. Be honest about yourself, be open. But work to make better what is bad about yourself. People seeing that you are aware and bettering yourself, progressing, give one another valuable commodity, Faith, in your abilities and your character. Self deprecating humor can be entertaining, it can relieve tense situations, it can be... endearing. But too much can be detrimental to you and how others perceive you. Stretching the truth to make oneself look good is one thing and useful, but breaking from reality becomes lying and negative and can come back around to cause you grief. Life, is about balance.

6 Never give up on your dreams.

 Better still, know when to give up on your dreams. Dreams don't just happen, they usually require hard work... and time. Time and effort are important elements in life to achieve anything. But you also have to take time to enjoy your efforts on the way to achieving your dreams. Otherwise you will burn out and never get to your goals. Life, is about balance.

7 Don't be afraid to say "No". 

 Better to be "concerned" about saying "No", while being able to say it when necessary. Still, don't always say "No" either. I have found that saying "Yes" more often than not, is useful in life, too. But as with anything, don't get addicted to it. Life, is about balance.

8 Don't be afraid to say "Yes".

 Like with saying "No", it is better to be "concerned" about saying "Yes", while being able to say it when necessary. Still, don't always say "Yes", either. Life, is about balance.

9 Be kind to yourself.

 This is probably the most important of all of these. Just be aware of whether your being kind to yourself is far out of proportion to what it is costing those around you. Is your being kind to yourself costing others at a degree far outweighing any justification you could openly make? Do you shun being nice to yourself? Life, is about balance.

10 Let go what you can't control.

 This is important as it goes along with "Never give up on your dreams". Sometimes, you should. But to give up on your dreams can also lead one to giving up too soon on them, as dreams are typically achieved after that point at which one wants to give up, even multiple times. Life, is about balance.

11 Stay away from drama & negativity.

 In general this is good advice, but if everyone always shunned drama and negativity, what would the world look like? Surviving drama and negativity also makes us stronger, smarter, it shows us ways to avoid them in the future. But being around too much drama and negativity is sooner or later destructive and sucks the energy out of one's life. Life, is about balance.

12 LOVE

 Let the feeling of love into your life. But don't let it become all consuming or the drug you are always chasing. Also, don't try to keep it from you simply because it can lead to pain. Experiencing love in life is what gives life it's fullness, it is the reward for all the rest and avoiding it is removing one of the most rewarding features of life, from life. Life is, after all, about balance.


In the end, we really don't need to know all these things. One simply needs balance in life and when one finds that life has come out of balance, then alter whatever it is you have been doing. Be aware that at that point however, altering things usually requires altering them to the point that it is at least at first, uncomfortable. Usually to the point that at first it seems like the counter-intuitively wrong thing to do.

That is when the twelve elements mentioned above can be useful. But you will find at some point that what it all comes back down to is that Life is, after all, about balance.

Three Goal Levels in Life and Three Important Elements of Success

Life is not the easiest thing to get through. But we need to do more than simply haphazardly make it through.

We need to think ahead. To look around. To be aware of more than we think we need to be aware, of. Or if we can't think ahead, to set goals for ourselves to keep check on our progress through life. Like when you are out in the wilderness, you need to pick a landmark ahead in order to avoid going in circles, or simply getting lost.

George Carlin said that if you are an artist you have a responsibility to always be going somewhere. "An artist has an obligation to be, 'on route'. To be going somewhere. There's a journey involved here. And you don't know where it is and that's the fun."

I think that is something in life that's important for everyone, really.

I've found that the best way to do this (for me) is in three levels:

1. Choose a goal for the day, week or the month, depending on your life and lifestyle. 
2. Choose a goal for the year, a mid-range goal. 
3. And finally, choose a goal for the next five to ten years, or even a more long term goal. 

Adjust these as fits your own life. The point isn't to do what I say here, but to do what best increases the quality of your own life and therefore, the lives of those near you.

Choose a lifetime goal, but I find that those seem to change too easily with trends in the country, society, your work situation, partner in life, and so on. It's good to have an overall lifetime goal to shoot for, but realistically, things just change on you.

When I was a kid I wanted to be an astronaut. Then more realistically in Junior High I was leaning toward Jet Pilot. By the time I got out of High School, I was looking at some kind of behind the scenes work in government and so, I joined the military.

But things changed during that period, to make a long story short. I learned things I hadn't known. That I couldn't have known until I got into the situation. Reality set in. And so in my case, I ended up leaving the Military and going to a University. I got a degree in a vast lifestyle change, in Psychology. From there I got married, we had a child and life changed again. I remarried, suddenly found myself with a new life partner and another child. I thought that finally I had found my path and it would be like that till the end.

But then things unforeseen changed on me again and that situation too ended. Whether or not I remained married, the kids would eventually grow up and leave and maybe start their own families, or certainly, their own lives. There is no stopping change. And therefore there is no setting goals that will never change in life.

We have to update, learn, alter things, to find tune them. Make good and informed decisions in life and make the best of what Life throws at you. And one of the ways to doing that, is to have goals. But not just a single goal. Don't abandon your goals, don't give up on them, but do adjust them as is necessary and most productive for you and your life as it evolves through time.

If your goal is to marry someone and have a family, but you find major elements in your life have changed, maybe you find that you really hate kids, or you come out of the closet, or you find you're a serial killer, or a politician; these are cases in which you shouldn't stick to your original goal(s) but you should update things so that you are on the best path for you and your loved ones, and hopefully, society at large.

Life is about living. But it is also about learning and thinking and choices. It never hurts to have a path to follow and to be able to handle whatever comes at you while you are upon that path.

I wish you all the best of luck on your own path. And luck is not always a random thing in life. We can cultivate it and it definitely plays a part in where we are headed and where we end up. Luck and random opportunities in life have a lot to do with who makes it and who does not.

But that is another topic altogether.

May you choose to steer yourself toward the best opportunities possible that can and will be available to you. Remember that when opportunity comes, you have to be ready to accept it. Accepting it means change and change can be scary and disruptive. Be ready for it and don't shy away when it is really the best choice for you. Too often people only see their opportunities in life much, much later, when it is far too late. Live your life to revel in your choices and not regret you indecisions.

Just remember to choose and adjust your goals in life. Position yourself to be "lucky". Grab opportunity as it presents itself to you.

In closing I'll just say, all the best to you my friends. May Luck smile on you. And may you smile back.