‘A man is either trying to live up to his father’s expectations or to make up for his mistakes,’ says Barack Obama, who met his dad once, in 1971. ‘In my case, both might be true.’ ‘We’ve created stability for our kids in a way that my mom didn’t do for us,’ says Barack. In 1967, he moved to Indonesia with his mom, stepdad and stepsister, Maya before he was sent back to Hawaii to live with his grandparents in 1971. ‘If you have somebody that is absent, maybe you feel like you’ve got something to prove when you’re young, and that pattern sets itself up over time.’
The past reaches into the present, and programs the future, by your recollections and your internal rhetoric about what you perceived to have happened in your life. You entered the world with certain core qualities and characteristics, but almost immediately the world began to write on the slate that is you. You have been both an active and a passive participant in its creation. To some extent, your self concept was forced on you by others, and to some extent you have just automatically accepted it, even elicited it.
A renowned psychologist Alfred Adler observed this tendency we have to form mental pictures of ourselves based on our history. He noticed that our minds condense all of our experiences around those happenings that are most important. One of Dr. Adler’s favorite techniques was to ask the patient what their earliest recollection was. However the patient responded, Adler would complete the patient’s description by saying, “And so life is.’ His point was that this relatively small portion of the patient’s life was critical to their present perception of self.
What is true about you in your mind, you will live. If you believe that you are inferior, inadequate, worthless, incompetent, you will live down to that truth. If you believe that you are the opposite of all that you will live up to that truth. You cannot change what you do not acknowledge. Know your history, so you can walk out of it.
The past reaches into the present, and programs the future, by your recollections and your internal rhetoric about what you perceived to have happened in your life. You entered the world with certain core qualities and characteristics, but almost immediately the world began to write on the slate that is you. You have been both an active and a passive participant in its creation. To some extent, your self concept was forced on you by others, and to some extent you have just automatically accepted it, even elicited it.
A renowned psychologist Alfred Adler observed this tendency we have to form mental pictures of ourselves based on our history. He noticed that our minds condense all of our experiences around those happenings that are most important. One of Dr. Adler’s favorite techniques was to ask the patient what their earliest recollection was. However the patient responded, Adler would complete the patient’s description by saying, “And so life is.’ His point was that this relatively small portion of the patient’s life was critical to their present perception of self.
What is true about you in your mind, you will live. If you believe that you are inferior, inadequate, worthless, incompetent, you will live down to that truth. If you believe that you are the opposite of all that you will live up to that truth. You cannot change what you do not acknowledge. Know your history, so you can walk out of it.
2 comments:
you become what you fear..good post - thanks Sasha.
Thanks Justine!
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