Harvest Life Gracefully: Personal Rights

Harvest Life Gracefully: Personal Rights by Jane Jonas

Practicing your personal rights is a wonderful way to harvest life gracefully.

Yesterday when I was cleaning I ran across this sheet of paper which I had hung onto for years. I remember that I had gotten this from my therapist in my early days of learning how to harvest life gracefully. Listed on this paper was our personal rights, after studying the rights for a while, I then realize exercising these rights shows confidence, high esteem and respect for oneself. Often, people who has been abused especially during childhood will think and feel that they have no rights, because of how they had been violated. Today I decided to share these rights to you.

As a person I have the right to:

Be myself
Refuse requests without feeling selfish.
Be competent and be proud of my accomplishments.
Feel and express anger.
Ask for affection and help ( I may be turned down,but I can ask)
Be treated as a capable person.
Be illogical in making decisions.
Make mistakes - and be responsible for them.
Change my mind.
Say "I don't know."
Say "I don't agree."
Say "I don't understand."
Have my opinions given respect.
Have my needs be as important as the needs of others.
Tell someone what my needs are. (They may not choose to do anything about it.)
Take pride in my body and define attractiveness in my own terms.
Grow, learn and change,and value my age and experience.
And sometimes make demands on others.