For much of my young life, I believed knowledge was key to my existence . But knowledge wasn’t enough: I wanted to be ‘in the know,’ to be ‘right’. And to be honest, it’s still a temptation. But knowledge alone will not change the world. A shift from mind to heart has to happen.
Knowledge alone will not change the world. A shift from mind to heart has to happen.
This shift takes place through curiosity and reflection. On this path, our enquiring mind feels safe enough to take in new information, and to face the prospect of being proven wrong in what we previously thought. As uncomfortable as those moments are, it is often that awareness that sets us on the longer journey to real change.
This has been my journey as a parent (an em-barrassing admission!).
Before I had children, I thought I knew all I needed to know about being a mum. I went on parenting courses and sought wisdom, but I know now that it was all to try to affirm and confirm my existing thoughts and feelings on parenting. On some level, the pain of being wrong or unprepared was too much.
The Circle of Security succeeded in opening my heart and my mind to the real challenges and ambiguities of parenting. It wasn’t easy at first, and by that time I was already on child number three!
To start, I rebelled. I dug in my heels, refusing to believe that I could have got so much of my parenting journey thus far, wrong. I picked holes in the content and kept uncharacteristically quiet for most of the sessions.
Yet I kept going back. I kept exposing myself to the pain of new knowledge that went counter to my former beliefs and experiences. Slowly, many months later, I began to change.
The changes reflected in how I responded to my children. Instead of control and avoidance, I learnt to lean in. I took the lessons of curiosity into my parenting; enquiring about their feelings and behaviours more often, as opposed to my traditional ‘lecturing’.
The lessons I learnt through this process are not just lessons for parenting, they are lessons for life.
The benefits of empathy, openness, enquiry, seeing behaviour as a form of communication, and learning to ‘be with’ difficult emotions, have all come through the Circle of Security Parenting.
They have equipped me for challenging times in life. They have helped me to find compas-sion and acceptance when things haven’t gone ‘my way’ or when people have hurt me.
This is not to say we become door-mats. An important tension taught on the course is that of trying to maintain the balance of Bigger, Stronger, Wiser and Kinder. The key is to remain an authoritative parent, confident as the ‘one in charge’, but always with tenderness and wisdom.
So, back to knowledge. Let’s not fear the stuff we didn’t know but rather let’s be brave enough to engage in a process of enquiry. It could change your life. It could bring under-standing, and with that a whole lot of wisdom.