I love this quote by the late psychoanalyst, Erich Fromm, and want to share it with my readers again:
“Love isn't something natural. Rather it requires discipline, concentration, patience, faith, and the overcoming of narcissism. It isn't a feeling, it is a practice.”
Erich Fromm, The Art of Loving
Summary Reflections on Declarations of a Healthy Adulthood
1. I accept full responsibility for the shape my life has taken.
2. I need never fear my own truths, powers, fantasies, wishes, thoughts, sexuality, dreams or ghosts.
3. I trust that “darkness and upheaval always precede an expansion of consciousness”. Jung
4. I let people go away or stay and am still okay.
5. I accept that I may never feel I am receiving — or have received — all the attention I seek.
6. I acknowledge that reality is not obligated to me; it remains unaffected by my wishes or rights.
7. One by one I drop every expectation of people and things.
8. I reconcile myself to the limits on others’ giving to me and on my giving to them.
9. Until I see another’s behavior with compassion, I have not understood it.
10. I let go of blame, regret, vengeance, and the infantile desire to punish those who hurt or reject me.
11. When change and growth scare me, I still choose them. I may act with fear, but never because of it.
12. I am still safe when I cease following the rules my parents (or others) set for me.
13. I cherish my own integrity and do not use it as a yardstick for anyone else’s behavior.
14. I am free to have and entertain any thought. I do not have the right to do whatever I want. I respect the limits of freedom and still act freely.
15. I overcome the urge to retreat on the brink of discovery.
16. No one can or needs to bail me out. I am not entitled to be taken care of by anyone or anything.
17. I give without demanding appreciation.
18. I reject whining and complacency as useless distractions from direct action on or withdrawal from unacceptable situations.
19. I let go of control without losing control.
20. Choices and perceptions in my life are flexible, not rigid or absolute.
21. If people know me as I really am, they would love me for being human like them.
22. I drop poses and let my every word and deed reveal what I am really like.
23. Changes and transitions are more graceful as I cooperate with them.
24. Every human power is accessible to me.
25. I live by personal standards.
26. I grant myself a margin of error in my work and relationships. I release myself from the pain of having to be right or competent all the time.
27. I accept that it is normal to feel that I do not always measure up.
28. I am ultimately adequate to any challenge that comes to me.
29. My self-acceptance is not complacency since in itself it represents an enormous change.
30. I love unconditionally and set same conditions on my self-giving.
(David Richo, How To Be An Adult, Pages 51-53
Bonnie Bull, Ph.D
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