THE GROWING SELF

Bringing the Model to Life

Turning understanding into something we can actually use when life is happening.

The Growing Self isn’t just something to understand. It is something to use. If all of this only helps explain us, then that is helpful. But if it helps us move differently, then it becomes part of our growth.

We can understand our patterns and still repeat them. We can know our old Channels and still enter them before we realize what happened. We can know that we want connection and still withdraw. We can know that we want rest and still work more. We can know that we want meaning and still fill our lives with things that leave us empty.

Awareness is important but will only get you so far. The application of knowledge is where value is cemented.

The Self makes meaning from the world around it.
The Landscape shapes the conditions we grow within.
The Roots hold onto the concepts we lean into.
The Trunk gives us a sense of identity.
The Branches reach into roles, relationships, and the life we are trying to build.
The Channels are the familiar paths that meaning and behavior flow through.
The Currents help the Self move, adapt, open, connect, express, create, and choose.

But in the physical world, all of this happens quickly. Life happens, and the Self responds.

The house gets loud. A text goes unanswered. A plan changes. A mistake is made and an old fear is touched. Before we know it, we are already moving through a familiar Channel and continue the same old thing we dread.

This is the hard part. In order to change, we have to interrupt these cycles that leave us spinning.

And that starts with a pause.

Pause.
Place.
Direction.
Move.

This is not meant to be a complicated process. It is meant to be something simple enough to remember when life is already moving.

This gives the Self a way to slow down, see the larger picture, check the direction, and take one honest step.

Pause before reacting.
Place the problem in the larger Landscape.
Direction asks whether the answer goes toward or away from the life we say we want.
Move turns awareness into action.

The goal isn’t to get it perfect.
The goal is to return.

Again and again, we return to the Currents. Again and again, we notice the Channel. Again and again, we ask whether this path is carrying us toward the life we want.

We did not become entrenched in our habits overnight and any overnight change isn’t going to last.

Growth must be nurtured and we are something worth nurturing.