Breaking The Cycle of Generational Habits

“One believes things because one has been conditioned to believe them.”

– Adlous Huxley, Brave New World [Goodreads]

Am I my parents’ daughter? What does that even mean? 

Rewriting the Narrative

Being my parents' daughter meant 
Following in my father's footsteps,
While being the threads 
That held my family together. 

It meant believing in my parents’ beliefs, 
And acting in a way that they saw fit.
Conformity to a traditional mindset, 
Even if it made me bitter and unhappy. 

But, it does not mean that anymore. 
Not to me, anyway. 

I am my father’s way of thinking, 
my mother’s way of loving. 
Standing alone, one without the other,
Afraid of the thoughts of those around them.
Put together, I am the thing they could never do,
the thing they could never be, 
the overcomer of generational fears.

Conditioned from Childhood, 
It was no easy task. 
A task that takes constant effort.
One that, sometimes, I still fail to complete. 

Everyday is a conscious decision
Fighting the urge to conform
Deciphering the conflicting thoughts 
That plagues my racing mind

Slowly with time, I begin to feel free,
Learning from each failure and setback.
No longer afraid to push through
The barriers my ancestors have left for me.

Being my parents’ daughter means
That I hold the power over my own life,
Only I can decide the way I choose to live.
I am the determiner of how my future looks.

It means that I harness my parents’s traits, 
Combining the strengths they gave me
To pursue a life full of joy and passion. 

- Authentically, AB

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Breaking The Barriers Conditioned From Childhood

“It is only through silent awareness that our physical and mental nature can change. This change is completely spontaneous. If we make an effort to change we do no more than shift our attention from one level, from one thing, to another. We remain in a vicious circle. This only transfers energy from one point to another. It still leaves us oscillating between suffering and pleasure, each leading inevitably back to the other. Only living stillness, stillness without someone trying to be still, is capable of undoing the conditioning our biologoical, emotional and psychological nature has undergone. There is no controller, no selector, no personality making choices. In choiceless living the situation is given the freedom to unfold. You do not grasp one aspect over another for there is nobody to grasp. When you understand something and live it without being stuck to the formulation, what you have understood dissolves in your openness. In this silence change takes place of its own accord, the problem is resolved and duality ends. You are left in your glory where no one has understood and nothing has been understood.”

– Jean Klein, I Am

“The nature of psychological compulsion is such that those who act under constraint remain under the impression that they are acting on their own initiative. The victim of mind-manipulation does not know that he is a victim. To him the walls of his prison are invisible, and he believes himself to be free. That he is not free is apparent only to other people. His servitude is strictly objective.”

– Aldous Huxley, Brave New World / Brave New World Revisited