Hi!
Welcome to another addition of The Monthly Connection.
Last time we met, we talked about balancing our emotional inner teeter totters by…
noticing and becoming aware of our sole, all or nothing lenses
and…
introducing “Both/And” thinking & feeling as a pathway back to balance
I trust you all spent last month watching baby animal videos or yelling at the top of your lungs “BABY ELEPHANTS FOREVER!” every time you caught yourself solely focusing on only one side of your emotional teeter totter. (Yup, I heard you all the way across the playground.)
Anybody notice what happened to your fire hose of stress whilst doing this? Kind of magical, hey?
Bravo!
Now for those of us who either forgot or struggled with breaking the habit of continuously looking at our fire hose of stress, fear not!
There’s a perfectly good explanation for why we get Fooled and fall back into old habits and patterns when trying to view the world from a Both/And perspective.
Enter the Foundations of Connection:
This ability to do the BOTH/AND…to balance our inner emotional teeter totters… is brought to you by the skill set called OBJECT PERMANENCE.
Step into my time machine and let’s travel back to 1954 when a child psychologist named Jean Piaget, studied a bunch of infants and kids and observed something called Object Permanence.
🤔 So. What is Object Permanence?🤔
Object Permanence is the ability to understand that objects and people still exist even when they are out of sight and out of mind.
Human beings are not born with this ability, and Dr. Piaget (that guy from our time machine) found out that babies do not develop this ability until later in life.
We see this proof on babies’ faces when we hide a stuffed toy bunny behind our backs, and then, Surprise!
The bunny springs back from out of nowhere! For the baby, the bunny magically appears and disappears from reality.
It literally disappears from existence for the baby - the bunny (object) has no (permanence). It’s gone!
This is why when the bunny returns, the baby is so excited to see their old friend!
As adults, watching the baby’s surprise and glee during this disappearing act is very entertaining. Yet… unlike babies, we have the ability to understand that the bunny still exists, even when it’s behind our backs.
We aren’t fooled that the Bunny (Object) has disappeared from existence, even when we can’t visually see it!
Further, we have the ability to understand that the Bunny is out of sight, while it simultaneously still exists behind our backs (Permanence)!
This ability is brought to you by our good friend Object Permanence.
GOOD NEWS ALERT
The key to handling stressors already exists inside us!
The BOTH/AND Lens is a skill that depends greatly on our ability to remember and access what ALL adults have internally…
You guessed it… it’s called Object Permanence.
(Did you think I was going to say something different? Good job using your Object Permanence on that Object Permanence joke!)
Let’s think about this a bit more…
An updated Toy Bunny Story - “The Step and The Staircase”
Just because we are adults and have this Object Permanence ability, doesn’t mean we don’t have to work at it. Like all muscles, if they’re not used, they become weak or stop working all together!
Consider this:
Have you ever acted from a space where you were not fully connected to your Authentic Self? Maybe you didn’t have all the facts, you only had one side of the story, or you were too tired and overwhelmed.
When we’re disconnected, we often feel and say things like we’re “half-baked” or “half-hearted.”
By saying things like this, we see that our own words are trying to clue us in that we are not fully connected.
Are you noticing where these phrases are coming from?
Yes! Inside of us!
Our authentic selves are trying to give us messages, speak to us, and show us the road map back to ourselves.
This ability to return, to follow the map (heck, to even know it is a map), depends on… you guessed it, where we are putting our attention.
If we are focusing on only one half of what is happening in our lives, our perspectives are skewed, out of balance.
In other words, we are not using our Both/And skill set. We are focusing on only half of the reality because we were not using our Object Permanence Muscle.
We are being fooled into believing that the “Bunny” (joy, gratitude, peace, kindness, I can handle it) is out of sight (half truth), and without Object Permanence, that half truth becomes the truth, the “whole” truth, and nothing but the truth.
Remember, if we don’t use or cultivate our Object Permanence, we are by default training to become the only other humans who don’t have this ability… yup, BABIES!
Hmmmm anyone out their think that seems foolish?
APRIL FOOLS!
Do you remember when you were a kid and you played a trick and yelled April fools? Do you remember how you cracked yourself up and thought you were so clever and funny!
Well, I would like you to adopt a new Practice.
(Oh I feel a fun experiment coming on! You all know I love a good experiment!)
The next time when you are practicing noticing where you put your attention and you catch that it is only picking up half the story, half the emotions, half the thoughts (in other words when you are using your all or nothing lens and looking mostly or solely on the hard stuff), stop and yell APRIL FOOLS!
And then let your self crack up!
This single lens is just a trick! It’s just us forgetting that we have Object Permanence with our Authentic Selves.
There is no need to be angry or get down on ourselves because we have caught ourselves disconnecting!
It’s a time to celebrate and hand out compliments! Our Authentic Self didn’t go anywhere! We just looked away for a moment (or more than a moment) and now we are returning home to ourselves.
Yahoo! If we welcome this process of returning, like a baby welcomes back their old friend the bunny, it stands to reason that our return trip back to our Authentic Selves, will be more joyful, kinder, and full of wonder!
Don’t take my word for it, run the experiments for yourself!
Object Permanence allows us to build an ‘I can handle it’ Muscle,
because…
SAY IT WITH ME NOW…
We Can Handle It!
Thanks for reading!
See you next month, on the first Thursday,
Connection Coach Cindi
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