my troubled childhood

my troubled childhood

As Julie Andrews once sang “somewhere in my youth or childhood….” It seems the Number One excuse we use in our daily lives has something to do with having a traumatic childhood.

“A bully beat me up.” “My parents were alcoholics.” “I was abused.” “I was abandoned.” “I was locked in a closet with a mountain of rotting fruit.” “No one changed my diapers.” And on and on it goes.

Now, I’m not disputing the fact that pretty much everyone on the planet had something traumatic in their youth. Nor am I saying that this isn’t something that we have to deal with. I am saying, “deal with it and move on.” How much of your present reality do you spend justifying NOT having the life of your dreams because of some trauma in your childhood. Well, you’re not a child any more (in case, you are, and then it’s a whole different story…).

At some point, you have to accept full and complete responsibility for the person you are today. If you don’t go to the gym as often as you want, you have to own that. If you struggle with addiction, you have to own that. If you procrastinate or are afraid of something or someone, you have to own that now. And you an choose to continue holding on to it, allowing your childhood to define your adulthood or you can let it go.

You write the definitions that make up your existence. Or, they will be written for you. And it’s never a good idea to have someone or something else define you.

Having trouble in your relationships and can’t figure out why? Look in the mirror. You are the only constant in your life and if you’re not achieving the life you want, you should rethink the definitions you use to define yourself.

The tools are out there for you to use. Like the NLP technique involving Mind Movies and visualization, or following the advice of Wayne Dyer and his book Excuses Begone!: How to Change Lifelong, Self-Defeating Thinking Habits (Hardcover), or trying out any other number of methods to improve your life. They work if you commit to them and to yourself.

So, how about changing your life as an homage to your troubled childhood?