It is even noted* that a therapeutic lifestyle (self-care strategies) can be as effective as either therapy or medicines and offer other advantages such as enhancing health and well-being.
Part of me says to this, "well, duh. Pretty obvious."
But another part of me admits that I would probably earn a C at best in self-care if it was part of our grade.
Intellectually, I know all of the benefits of good physical and mental health. But it appears that I could now face an ethical dilemma: Am I practicing what I will (likely) be preaching? And perhaps even more importantly, am I keeping myself in shape in order to provide the best counseling for my future client?
Both of these questions reframe the daily "shoulds" in my life in new ways. Those "shoulds" involve everything from a daily meditation practice to creative time to physical exercise. The "shoulds" have been with me for all of my life, so I'm pretty comfortable with them. Like some family members they are annoying but I accept them for their long-term presence in my life. Unlike family members, it may be time to confront them and perhaps even banish them. Or at least set up some new boundaries.
In my journaling practice (private) I often list these "shoulds" out in the hopes that I'll find a new plan to integrate them into my daily life. There have been some small successes and a few days when I will keep up with a practice and then it falls off the radar.
I blame two different problems for this:
1. I never learned to practice.
I grew up without sports or music lessons or really any kind of lessons. I never had that experience of learning to be better through practice. My school work came easily and there really wasn't anything else.
My first insight into practice was with a friend who went through a horrific life event and became agoraphobic. Of course, she went through therapy to work on this but there was also a day when I called her and her husband said, "She's out practicing." I asked what that meant and he said she was trying to drive to the end of their (.5 mile) driveway and back. Practicing. How brave. (And a good news ending. She now flies all over the world to promote and manage her own business.)
I also remember a violinist leading a lecture with music students at a music festival a number of years ago. Her focus was on practicing and how much she hated it. Her solution? Instead of turning to the pages where she could fly with brilliance through solo passages she gave herself 30 minutes to only work on the passages where she fell below her standards. Instead of having a heady practice session where she ripped off a cadenza brilliantly...but didn't really make any progress...she asked herself to only work on the passages where she was less than brilliant but for only a specific and short amount of time. She ended her practice session with multiple accomplishments:
- She'd committed to a specific amount of time and kept that commitment;
- She had battled with her music demons instead of ignoring them;
- She left the session with zero guilt.
2. Immediate gratification.
Do I really need to explain this? One 15 minute meditation does not bring enlightenment. And even if it did:
Before Enlightenment, chop wood carry water, after Enlightenment, chop wood carry water.
I think I will come back to this subject and end here for now. But it will be an important challenge for me as I become a counselor.
*I am not yet familiar with the APA (American Psychological Association) formatting stye for citing information. I hope to get better (ok, I have to get better in order to write my future papers!) but for now I won't be using APA in this blog.
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