Growing up your parents did their best. They wanted you to listen, be kind and for goodness sakes don’t hurt anyone!
With that in mind, we grew up learning general beliefs about the world that may have helped us survive as children, but block us from true happiness as adults. Here are three ways your past is messing up your future happiness.
- Do as your told. As a kid, whatever the adults say go. This makes their lives easier. But as adults if we listen to everyone else but ourselves we’ll run into trouble fast. When we put authority figures, for example doctors, and bosses, over ourselves, we’ll wind up being miserable. We might even get sick. Yes, listen if the advice sounds true to you, but don’t listen just because it’s what you were told to do.
- Don’t hurt other people’s feelings. Your parents had good intentions. You wouldn’t want to tell your neighbor their butt looks big, for example. Kids have no filter, which makes them honest. And honesty is a good thing, with a little bit of tact for good measure. However, if you’re walking around afraid of hurting other people’s feelings, you might end up hurting yourself. Learning to be assertive, speaking up for what you want and need, is a healthy way to express yourself. Yes sometimes people will be hurt by what you say. But you cannot control how they feel. You can only control yourself, which brings me to number 3.
- To be successful and happy, you need to make lots of money. Nothing else matters except for making money. If you believe this, you may be rich one day, but you won’t necessarily be happy. To find true happiness, you need to figure out who you are, what brings you joy and have the courage to pursue it. Your happiness will not be based on other people’s happiness nor will it depend on how financially or even professionally you are. Until you find something that brings you meaning, you will feel empty.
Are there myths that you bought into? What are they and what have you done to change them?
