I love to listen to Windham Hill instrumental music, lie on my couch, gazing at the Douglas firs outside and just let my thoughts roam at this time of year. I’m contemplating this picture of a little pool around a rock on the ocean beach. I wrote another post for this week, but it’s too cluttered and complicated. A tide pool-like post is what I need.
Let’s look again at the crafting of one of my pebble mosaics to illustrate how your Adult can work with the outer world this time. Before I craft a pebble mosaic, I collect stones during many beach and river walks, often over several years. Sometimes I just focus on getting flat, roundish black ones. Other times I challenge myself to find some red or greenish ones, which are more rare. Experience has shown me about how big they all have to be, and that smooth, well-worn rocks come together in patterns I like. My Child joins in with her sensitivity to color, shape and beauty.
It’s your Adult who must look outward and select what you need for creating each thing you undertake. If it takes on too many projects, you’ll get confused and overwhelmed. If it narrows the selection too much, you’ll miss out on some possibilities. For one mosaic I just allowed flat round blue-black pebbles in concentric circles. I love the result. It seems to invite looking inward. But other shapes and colors greatly expand what designs I can create.
In January, people make resolutions to accomplish things they may not have gotten to the previous year: getting more exercise, straightening out their finances, organizing their closets, cooking more healthy food. How much input do their Adults have in this process? The whole resolution idea can set-up disharmony between Critical and Indulgent Parents and distressed fight-or-flight reactions in your Child.
The number of possible areas to focus is so overwhelming that most resolutions drift into the jumble of daily life. Your Parent and Child parts can become too confused to allow your Adult to function very well. You may not get enough rest to keep your brain healthy. You might try to multi-task to keep up, not really enjoying or taking full satisfaction in anything you do. You may compare yourself to others who seem to have their lives in better order and get discouraged.
Yet it’s possible that you actually managed to accomplish a lot in the past year. If all I do some years is pick up a bunch of pebbles on a few walks, I store them in special boxes for when there is time to craft again. Store your small and large accomplishments in your Wise Parent’s special memory chest to keep yourself hopeful and confident. This will help you handle more kinds of input and craft what you find into pleasing and positive designs for your life.
Gazing at a small round pool or circle of stones can be pleasant and comforting for awhile. You’ll need a strong, creative Adult to explore all the streams and colors of your true potential. My Adult has to keep us collecting pebbles longer than any Child could enjoy for me to accomplish an entire mosaic. Once I’m laying out the mosaic, it has to keep refocusing my effort over several hours-long sessions to carry out a pleasing pattern. Finally my Adult will make sure there’s time to clean up my mess as my Critical Parent watches nearby, and then figure out how to hang it up.
Your Adult can learn how to keep open to new possibilities while it also manages your daily life. It can learn through practice how to reduce inner conflict by managing your Parent and Child parts with more skill. Then it will be free to select and sort your experiences to plan for your next projects. What pebbles will you need for each mosaic of your life? How do you decide what designs to use, what directions to take? When can you find the time to craft them? Where do you find the confidence to keep working at all this?
As you revise your toxic beliefs and explore your potential, encountering other’s ideas for how to live, your Wise Parent will become strong. Balancing out your inner-world will become more “natural” and less demanding of your Adult’s attention. You’ll have less time spent in fight-or-flight and more energy to follow a unique path of your own. You’ll find that end-of-year reflections lead more easily to exciting plans for the next year.