“Crossing the River”
When you first start practicing daily half-hour sessions of SELF-Parenting, you begin a new journey I like to call “Crossing the River.” What does this mean exactly? It’s just a simple analogy to describe your passage starting as a Newbie, transitioning to a Beginner, and eventually arriving at Intermediate S/P Practitioner Status.
SELF-Parenting is a distinctive life skill. It’s like learning any new subject in school, a different sport, or the latest procedure/system at work. There are steps that need to be taken to learn and practice along the way before you get good at it.
Imagine that between you and your goal to become a positive Inner Parent, is a wide raging river. You need to cross this river to get to the other side. You certainly couldn’t swim on your own and taking a boat safely is not available. This could be a difficult task!
However, if you look closely, you’ll notice that ten large boulders have been placed in this river that form a bridge. And if you simply stroll from boulder to boulder, one at a time, you could safely and easily walk across this river with no problems at all. The Ten Steps to Intermediate Practitioner represent these guided steps that lead you to become your own loving parent. Each boulder keeps you high and dry, safely above the dangerous river.
The problem with crossing this river is if you stop at any point, you won’t get to the other side. Or, if you slide off one of the boulders, you fall in, and are swept back into your busy life back where you started and never even realize you didn’t make it to the other side.
The Ten Steps of S/P provides you with safe and proven guidelines that give your Inner Child the direct experience of positive parenting dynamics. They act like a set of invisible training wheels for your Inner Parent. Practicing your half-hour sessions using this gentle progression of Ten Steps gives your Inner Child the benefits of “healthy parenting” possibly for the first time ever.
This happens before fully understanding “why” it’s happening. The “how it happens” is so natural and progressive because you simply internalize healthy parenting skills during these steps and arrive on the other side an accomplished Inner Parent. There’s no way when you begin these steps for you to know how amazing and positive your SELF-Parenting will be once you reach the other side of this river, the Intermediate S/P Practitioner Level.
Once you’ve travelled all ten steps, you are now in a new land. As a dysfunctional Inner Parent, you couldn’t possibly know how to do this on your own. Simply by following the steps, you got there as easy as pie. The people who make it to Intermediate Status do so because they earned it. You take these steps on your own and you and your Inner Child get the benefit. I’m just here to guide you and I can assure you that the journey is not difficult at all (with a bit of guidance.)
What can be difficult is if you try to shortcut the steps, think some step is not that important, or take a side-dip into the river to see what that’s like. It only gets difficult if you leave the safety of the Ten Steps.
Starting half-hour sessions of SELF-Parenting gives you a massive amount of positive energy. This can make you feel invincible. If I showed you testimonials from a vast number of newbie practitioners, you would be certain that these people would never stop SELF-Parenting. And guess what, they did.
They got careless and were caught by a deeper undercurrent of an Inner Parent pattern that dragged them back into the raging river of their life. I wouldn’t be surprised if I even got the blame. I do whatever I can from my side of river. If I see you starting to drown, I’ll throw you a life support, but I won’t jump in and let you drown us both.
Following the Ten Steps is simple; however, it is not THAT easy because you actually have to “do something” which for many is not what they want. Some people just want to be handed advanced life skills and experience on a silver platter and arrive where they think they want to go, without earning their way.
If you are willing to commit to 30 minutes a day, there is a well-marked, safe trail for “Crossing the River” which has never existed before. But if you are not careful, it’s also fairly easy to get lost on the way. Unfortunately, I can give you too many examples of initially excited SELF-Parenting practitioners who fell “into the raging river” because their Inner Parent got cocky and didn’t want to “stay on the marked trail.”
SELF-Parenting can be tricky. It’s because you are actually doing battle with yourself. When even a slightly dysfunctional Inner Parent pattern swirls up in you, you have no idea that it’s your own pattern. And you blame anyone or anything except your own dysfunctional SELF-Parenting issues and off you go looking for another outer person or solution to do your work for you. Most people have several deeper patterns they must uncover and correct before they reach the SELF-Parenting Promised Land.
The Ten Steps act like a bridge of ten huge boulders perfectly placed just for you to walk easily right across the raging river. All you have to do is step from boulder to boulder. Take your time, be careful, and you will easily get to the other side. If you don’t take these steps, or dawdle, or think you can stop any time or go for a swim in the river, you will be swept away so fast you will never know what happened!
The SELF-Parenting Program is not a 7-day cruise in the Bahamas. It is a lifetime vacation in Hawaii when you apply yourself and work the required steps to gain the value. Once you are on the other side, you’ll find it so safe, tranquil, and pleasant that you won’t believe how easy it was to make this journey.