Is your Husband or Wife a "Step Parent" to your inner child?

Foreign. Hello there. So this is Steve Barnes here with a little morning talk. I'm still experimenting with the way to do this properly. And so, you know, your kind indulgence is requested. As I figure this out, my idea being that I want to do this talk to you first thing in the morning to kind of clean, clear my head out. It's easy for me to write little essays in the morning. That's one of the ways that I get myself together. But I also wanted to do video so that I can transplant it over to YouTube and other places. As I start walking this path, it's very clear to me that I'm operating on the next level of this entire game. It in a very specific way that doesn't put me ahead of other people. It puts me ahead of where I was. Be really clear about that. Nobody is obligated to be walking the path that I'm on, that's for sure. But if the results that I'm getting are of interest to you, then you might want to know how I'm doing it. And that's the result of my beliefs and my behaviors and my actions and my strategies. To the degree that those things are influenced there, then, you know, that makes sense. So I just got back from Oricon and I noticed, woke up this morning, I noticed that I don't need as much sleep at home as I needed at Oricon. That says, oh, okay. So there was something going on with my energy over the weekend, you know, emotionally. And I don't know exactly what that is, but I need to stop and kind of protect myself. One of the things that happened while I was there, well, first of all, having a chance to see lots of wonderful people, certainly. But I was also asked by my business partners if I would be interested in creating a 90 day love feast program specifically. And I'd never thought about that. This was something that Tananarive and I were doing for ourselves and something that I started sharing with the public that people loved. It originates with a lady named Chloe Madonnas. And I decided that, okay, let me think about this. And after the first 90 days, we decided to do it again. But this time I decided that I wanted to. I wanted to make it so that it would work for people whether they were in relationships or not. And that was a little trickier. So today's thoughts are connected to that. And so with your that's all preface. So let me get into it right now. Basically, I have seven days to break the book the Glass of the the Star wars novel. Okay. I almost told you the title. And I wanted to, I want, by break it, I mean that by in seven days, I want to feel like I've got the whole thing together. It could be as rough as it is anything. But it's the basic structure and all the scenes are roughed out and the character. Character arcs are therefore visible. And then I wanted to do this before Thanksgiving because if I do that, then I have over a month to do the rewriting, the massaging, the working things out. And that sounds good to me. So 44 days to deliver the Star wars book. And they're also 44 days in this new love feast that we're doing because we decided to renew it. And it hadn't really occurred to me specifically that these two things were both happening at the same time. But I think that it's not an accident. And to the degree that it's not an accident, I need to look at it and ask myself what I think it means. So by the way, I'm going to type into, into this, into the chat here. Hi there. Okay, great. Now, the origin of the love feast is to place your partner higher than yourself for 90 days to go all out to celebrate, protect, love, cherish and relish your partner. This worked great for the first 90 days that we were doing it truly. And it set our family up to be able to function in a higher level with less stress, which is great because right now Tananarif is off being a star on the east coast and I'm holding it down here, writing, training, serving Jason as he begins to seriously look at his steps into adulthood. As they come up, let's focus down a little bit more tightly. Well, when we decided to renew our 90 day vows, we actually renew our vows daily with the blessing dance. I decided to find a way to serve people who are not in relationships, whether by choice, chance or tragedy, whether seeking or fleeing, or changing lanes. Whatever it is, I wanted to be sure that whatever it was we were doing works for everybody. Everybody who wants to follow this path. It seemed to me that I could do that without compromising. The choice was to transform the 90 day love feast into loving yourself. Okay. Utilizing the sort of parts party way of looking at it. And the most powerful version of this, follow me here would be the ancient child. To me, seeing yourself as divided into three aspects, your child, elder and adult. Let's drill down even further. The child self. The child part of you has energy, enthusiasm and creativity. Creativity. What do I need to complete the Star wars book? I need these three traits to have Access to this. The child needs to feel safe, okay? To look at this and connect to what the Dalai Lama said about the meaning of life. Remember, remember to be joyful and of service, okay? To feel joyful, you need to feel safe. 99% of the time, safety trumps joy or even personal growth. Once you get there, you can turn that around and use joy to help you feel safe. But that's another question. To get this engine started, you need to feel secure enough to feel safe. Anger is fear. So the means that means you have to trigger your survival drive. That's what protects you. Survival drive is instinct. We can look at this as a cluster of things we have to do to create the space for my child to feel totally safe. The adult part of me has to be protective and handle executive function. Timing, planning, strategy, execution of critical actions on time and marketing and sales. The child wants to play. And if you were abused or neglected, it's very easy to let this get out of balance. The child rages and leaps at imagined enemies and threats. The imperative things, putting out buckets to catch water before it ruins the sofa, rather than fixing the roof. That requires planning, that requires time binding. That's the adult part of you. The adult has to think of the future. It's the ant, not the grasshopper. The child says, why work when I can play? And the adult says, work a little every day so you can have more time to play tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow. Discipline then creates security which allows the child self to feel safe and loved, which opens the door to creativity. The great thing about this is that intelligence is problem solving. And the process of problem solving is creativity. Brainstorming, studying the situation, getting very clear on your desired results, using the magic formula to understand how to get into the game. And then generating the ideas, long term notions that can be tested in the short term today. You know, I perform experiments every day to see whether or not you know which path I should take, which techniques I should take, which people I should listen to. So if I've got a three year plan, I'll find some way to test aspects of that three year plan today. So I can perform an experiment that doesn't take more than 24 to 72 hours. Okay, so let me, let me evaluate your results. If you get the right results, you do it again. If you get the wrong results, you try something else. Simple as that. So let me repeat that. You first seek safety. This is the warrior aspect of who you are. The survival aspect. It's your belly brain. The first step would be working the breathing, 60 seconds per hour, at least five times a day. That's your buy in. If you're not doing that, you. You're not in a position to be able to evaluate what it is that I'm saying. That's just my honest opinion. After you've got that, then you create a morning ritual, which we've talked about endlessly. Morning ritual is where you are moving and simultaneously vocalizing and visualizing the steps of the magic formula. Magic formula. Model actions, gratitude, intention and confidence with the full and powerful intent to create a sense of safety and power to protect your child. You understand that that's the goal, to feel safe in the world so you can release your creativity, so that you can open your heart, put your leverage there, your focus there. And all it takes is to make a 100% commitment that you will die before you ever sell yourself out again or let anybody hurt that child. Part of you. Once you've done that, you've started your engine. Every day reinforce this until your child begins to talk to you about what she wants you to do. You know, in your meditations, okay? At that point, the child sort of climbs up from the belly brain into your heart. When you've got that, you're kind of in the zone that I'm talking about. But first make sure to connect with the belly brain. First make sure to connect with survival. Okay? So think about that for just a moment, okay? And that's what I need to do. The Star wars novel. Understand, I have to get my adult discipline, my childlike curiosity and creativity, all working together with my energy and my discipline. That last step would be connecting this to your elder self, the part of you that is on the other side of all your issues, that has perspective on your life. Now commit to your child self. The elder self stuff. That's, you know, that's a later level. We'll talk about that another time. But if you can get your child and your adult working together, you've got an engine and it's really great. You may not be flying yet, but you are traveling in a good car. You're able to make a lot of change. If you're in a relationship. There's a sense that the two adult partners sort of parent each other, parent each other's child selves. Tananarive is mommy for my little boy, little Stevie. And it just hit me that, you know, that I am daddy for her, little girl for little Tananarive. And when I was writing this stuff out, suddenly something occurred to me in some Ways it's more like stepmomy, because I actually have responsibility to parent my child. That means both the male and female aspects, both the nurturing and protective aspects. And just like she has responsibility to parent her little girl, both male and female aspects, both father and mother aspects. But when we got together, what I saw was that she'd be a good, I used to say kind of mommy for my little boy, but the truth is it's more step mommy because I have to have that primary spot responsibility. So when she's off, my little boy can't be feeling like, oh, mommy is gone. It's just, you know, when she's here, we have a bigger family. It's just wonderful. We can share all these different things. And when she's gone, she's taking care of her life. I'm taking care of business here at the house, you know, and as much as I would hate it, if anything happened to Tananariv, I would survive, and I know that. And if anything happened to me, she would survive because she's got primary responsibility for herself. I have primary responsibility for myself. And it just kind of hit me that question, the difference between parent and step parent right there. It's very tricky and it's very slippery and I have to think more about this. But I think that there's something valuable there. The notion that we're going to take total responsibility for ourselves, but also let someone in so deeply that you have that sense of total protection, which then gives you access to your brilliance, your capacity to focus on something for a long period of time, as well as the problem solving, of coming up with lots and lots and lots of ideas. I have to think about this, and to be honest, I wasn't prepared to follow that today. But that's what happens when you, you know, there's the dog and the cat. The dog's what you can control. That's just the work and the cat are the sort of spontaneous ideas, inspirations, luck, as it were, that come up if you're walking the dog. So I need to think about that and I kind of wanted to, to leave it right there today. But you protect and nurture your own child self, which demands that you awaken both your male and female energies. Then you find another adult to share your life with and allow them to sort of step parent your inner child. Huh. That's really interesting. And I want to stop there today. I hope that this has been of some interest to you. I don't always have complete thoughts on these things. Things, these morning sessions are basically just to kind of get it out and I will have something more to think about. You take care and I'll talk to you later. Bye Bye. Oh, and if you like these thoughts, do join us on Saturdays for the Fire Dance gatherings. Join my list@www.stephenbarnslist.com.