Today we are starting our next blog series on “The Evolution of You.” We will be taking a deeper look at how you got to where you are today. What did you learn along your life’s journey that makes you who you are today? Who are you currently becoming, and what do you hope for your future?
Since I am a therapist, I can’t help but start by asking: Tell me about your childhood… 😊
We start building our emotional cargo in childhood, so thinking about the beginnings of our life’s journey is very important as we examine what brought us to where we are today. We learn who we are, who the people around us are, and how we survive in this world during those very early experiences. Alfred Adler, whose school of psychology I love and follow, says that our internal map of the world is set by age 5. What that means is that even while we are still young children, our worldview is already being formed in very important ways. We carry those experiences with us for the rest of our lives. They become a part of how we understand ourselves, others, and the world around us.
Think back to your childhood. What comes to mind first? Was it a happy or a challenging time in your life, or a mixture of both? Did you have any significant and formative experiences that happened during your childhood: a big move, the birth of your siblings, a divorce, etc.? What did you learn about yourself and the world around you during this formative time in your life? Who were the most influential people in your life, and what gems did you learn from them?
The important question is not if we carry all of our experiences into the rest of our lives, because we do. The real question is how we carry those experiences with us. Even if we carry some pain, we can still choose how this reality will affect our lives now. We can integrate all those experiences in a way that helps us become better people, understanding that we have a capacity to be resilient and turn all our experiences into new wisdom, new ways of living and relating to ourselves and those around us.
Join us as we dig deeper into the Evolution of You in the coming weeks!