Your Formative Years

There are countless attitudes formed in our formative years. Find out how to notice the pluses, not just the minuses in this mini podcast.

Grasshopper Notes are the writings from America's Best Known Hypnotherapist John Morgan. His podcasts contain his most responded to essays and blog posts from the past two decades. 

Find the written versions of these podcasts on John's podcasting site: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1628038

"The Grasshopper" is the part of you that whispers pearls of wisdom that  seem to pop into your mind from out of the blue. John's essays and blog posts are his interpretations of these "Nips of Nectar." Others have labeled his writings as timeless wisdom. 

Most of the John's writings revolve around self improvement and self help. They address topics like:

• Mindfulness
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• Creativity
• How to stay in the present moment
• Spirituality
• Behavior improvement

And stories that transform you to a wider sense of awareness that presents more options. And isn't that what we all want, more options? 

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Transcript

Your Formative Years 

Did you ever notice that “formative” and “family” begin with the same letter?

Most of who we become as a person is set in that time frame we spent as part of a family. Family can range anywhere from “The Waltons” to “The Osbornes” or any level of functionality in between. An orphanage may well have been your family structure. Whatever the case, they’ve added to the conditioning of your habits and personality.

Years ago, my neighbor gave me a book to read about a dysfunctional family. It’s called, “The Glass Castle.” It’s an autobiographical look at the upbringing of writer and reporter Jeannette Walls. I won’t spoil the book for you by revealing too much of its contents. Suffice it to say, it ain’t pretty, yet eye opening.

There's enough debate about “Nature” and “Nurture” on who we become that I’m sure there's truth attached to each position. The debate revolves around the question, “Are we formed by our innate, hard wired qualities or our experience?” According to Wikipedia, noted psychologist Donald Hebb is said to have once answered a journalist’s question of “which contributes more to personality, nature or nurture?” He responded with a question: “Which contributes more to the area of a rectangle, its length or its width?”

The formative years do contribute and our family is quite responsible for a portion of who we turned out to be. I’m certain there are pluses and minuses we could all cite. I’d like to focus on the plus column.

I can only speak first-hand about my own family. I’ve had two of them – the one I grew up in and the one I helped raise. The interesting thing I notice is attitudes. I'm defining attitude like they do in aeronautics, as “angle of approach.” I witness myself having a response to something and then get the gift of awareness that it was my mother or father responding, not me. I then get to see one of my sons respond to something and notice it’s me responding, not him.

There is a certain pride when you see the plus side of inherited attitude. It means you received or passed on something worthwhile. Whatever part of Jeannette Walls’ unenvied upbringing we recoil at, there is little question that part of it helped form the successful attitudes she formed to achieve the success she enjoys. We all enjoy some sort of success because of the attitudes we absorbed.

I know there are case history books filled with the damage that’s been done by adopted attitudes that immerse us neck deep in mud. There are strategies to help with that. I’m just curious if we give enough credit for our plus side to the people who we also blame for our limiting attitudes.

So no matter what your upbringing, can you find something about yourself that you like, that you can attribute to someone from your formative years?

Take a moment today and celebrate that attitude and express gratitude that you received it, no matter from whom.

All the best,

John