You And Your Journey Through Life . . . . .                                                                                    

Imagine for a moment that you and your life are much like a bus. You are on a long journey and to get the most out of the journey you will be kept busy every day">

You And Your Journey Through Life . . . . .                                                                                     Imagine for a moment that you and your life are much like a bus. You are on a long journey and to get the most out of the journey you will be kept busy every day, navigating your way along different kinds of roads, deciding which way to turn at life’s intersections, when to stick to the main highway, when to take a side road and the best places to stop for a rest or to enjoy the view. The Inner Selves on Your Bus On this bus (that’s you) are a group of passengers who have been on trips like this with you many times before. They are your inner selves. Some have been with you since birth, most joined the bus in early childhood. A few more got on board later on in your life. When it comes to dealing with any one particular type of road condition or one part of the journey it just happens that one of the passengers is a specialist in that area. In the past, that particular passenger has proved its strength or its special skills or its wisdom and experience in helping you handle that particular problem. It’s almost as though these selves enjoy the chance to deal with difficult situations that arise as you are driving along ‘their’ part of the road. Your passengers learned to help you in this way a long time ago and it is so important to honour their very real abilities in the ways they protect you. In many ways it would seem sensible whenever you have something difficult to do, to hand the wheel over to the inner self passenger best qualified for the job and let it drive.  However, the inner selves are still only like passengers, no particular one of them is ‘you’. So one problem is that if they are driving most of the time, you (and other people) may not be too clear about who is the real ‘you’. Because each inner self is a specialist they also don’t coordinate well together as a team. Faced with an unpleasant task like writing a report, one inner self may start pushing you to get it finished as soon as possible, another self may want you to spend too much time on it to make it as close to perfect as possible, while a third self thinks you should take a break, relax and fit the task in later when you are in the right mood. Notice that each self wants to help you, but each one in a totally different way.  Things will get a bit uncomfortable on your bus, as the three of them push and pull each other around until finally one of them gets the steering wheel and takes control. It helps to learn how to recognise when an inner self wants to drive or has grabbed the wheel and is already driving , why it has decided to help in its own way and what that way involves. Later you will see why we, as adults are better off when we ‘embrace’ all our inner selves rather than reject them or allow one self to judge or disown other selves in us and others. Where Is Your Aware Adult Driver? As all this is going on, you might wonder why it is left to a group of passengers to decide who will drive your bus (and navigate as well) and why there can’t be one driver who can handle all the problems associated with your life’s journey. There is such a driver and it is called your aware adult (also called your aware ego or functional adult). Your aware adult is already on the bus and only needs a little help to be able to take the wheel. It is your solid side, your ‘grown up’ part and it has been waiting within you for the right time to take charge. Your aware adult side already knows much about your inner self ‘passenger-drivers’ and understands their skills, so when their help is needed the aware adult will happily let them sit next to the driver’s seat and give advice. The difference is that with the aware adult in charge, your one-above selves will no longer be able to take over the driving, get into fights about which one should get to drive next or try to control the bus by themselves. This page and the book, Growing Awareness explains how to develop your grown up (aware adult side) which is already within you and how to help it take command of your bus and your life as soon as you are ready for that part of you to take over.   * NOTE: In Australia I use the term "Aware Adult" rather than   "Aware Ego" as Hal and Sidra use that term. The term "Aware Adult" also reflects many of the characteristics of the part Hal and Sidra call the "Awareness Self" or "The Watcher"  I find this variation more acceptable for Australians particularly as the term "ego" in Australia has so many different connotations and meanings for people (some of them quite negative)   See EXPLANATION - NEW OR DIFFERENT EMPHASIS IN THE WAY I TALK ABOUT THE INNER SELVES   Feedback?  Please contact John Bligh Nutting on nutting@growingaware.com Copyright © John Nutting 1996- - 2004  and   ©   GROWING AWARENESS   All rights reserved World Wide   LAST UPDATE  Tuesday, 11 November 2008 00:23 Don't worry about these copyright notices at the foot of each page. It just means I want to hang on to legal ownership of what I write for use in future books.  Until that day, please feel free to copy and even adapt them for your own use and for friends as long as you acknowledge me as the author and owner of the copyright and you don't charge anyone for them. If you want to use them professionally or commercially (charge a fee for them) or for clients, each sheet you hand out must include full acknowledgment of copyright ownership as above and if  you are benefiting as a result, I would appreciate an appropriate sharing. RETURN TO GROWING AWARENESS  HOME PAGE