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Parental guidance has the greatest impact on our lives. From early childhood, we are subject to suggestions, which we take as attitudes into adulthood. We figure out which of them are most common and how to protect your children from the negative consequences of such beliefs.
Health
For example, a caring mother says to her child: “Put on a hat, otherwise you will get sick.” The child can ignore these words, put his hat in his pocket and run off to hang out with friends. If some time after that he fell ill (for example, caught a virus), then the belief “lack of a hat = illness” may remain with him for life.
Now you can often meet hypochondriacs, to whom parents and grandparents in childhood said: “Ours is weak. Everyone goes to school normally, but he goes to school for a week, he gets sick for two.” Trying to take care of the child, they give him a negative attitude, without noticing it. The child appropriates symptoms that would never have manifested if less caring relatives were around.
And there are those who will say: “You are strong! You have such a strong immune system. Next time wash your apple before you eat it, it’s food culture. But the fact that you just ate unwashed is a matter of life. That’s what immunity is for, it solves such issues.”
And a paradox: in a family where all the linen is ironed for the child from both sides, toys and dishes are boiled, food is washed with a special liquid, children are not healthier than where they simply blow on the food raised from the floor from both sides and calmly continue eating.
And the point here is not only that strong immunity is a trained immunity. A mother charged for endless disinfection is not the best assistant for the mental processes of a child.
An important task of the parent is to give the child a sense of security in the world.
The next most powerful (in terms of health) is the “white coat suggestion”. There are many stories when the doctor’s attitudes gave hope or completely killed it in a person. If you or your family were frightened by the words of the doctor, then you should focus on the good, look for confirmation of recovery, double-check the information and believe in the best.
Finance and personal life
The same trend can be seen in other areas of life. Growing up, a person takes with him all the installations from the parental family. Working with financial issues, he gets suggestions and prohibitions like “if you didn’t live richly — there’s nothing to start”, “you won’t earn much with honest work.” And then, on a subconscious level, the thought appears that it is better not to earn money and remain an honest person, a worthy representative of one’s kind.
Generic scripts appear as strategies passed down from mouth to mouth. And if the mother and grandmother tell the girl that “all men cheat”, it is likely that the girl will look for confirmation of these words.
Who is affected by attitudes?
Not only children are susceptible to suggestions. It’s just that the younger a person is, the less he thinks about the reality of the proposed installations. Any authoritative opinion, be it parents or teachers, is taken as fact. And here is a trap that can be passed by teaching a child to distinguish facts from opinions. One should always mentally check the information offered to the child: one should understand whether this is a fact, or is it just an opinion based on the judgments of someone from the past.
Adults are also subjected to installations
The first in strength is self-hypnosis. When we hear some kind of statement, we try it on ourselves, on our previous experience, and take it into service. Propaganda or advertising programs are built on this process.
How to change suggestions?
The good news is that we can change our settings. You can declutter your head: take each belief and transform it into a new one based on facts, knowledge, or even new suggestions that are more beneficial at the moment.
Negative attitudes and suggestions are not built into us if they do not find confirmation in real life for a long time. When we are told that all the rich are evil and arrogant, and we meet kind and open wealthy people, then this belief disappears from us.
In many personal growth trainings, practices are given to get rid of limiting attitudes. If a limiting belief has grown together with the experience of the family, it is important not to devalue this experience, but to thank for it, for knowing about the life of your ancestors. At the same time, we must admit that now is a different time and other opportunities, and, based on this experience, we can go further.
Can practice
Sit comfortably, think about the situation when the installation interfered with you or limited you in some way, remember from which parent it came to you and say:
“I thank my mother (maybe dad, grandmother) for her life experience, for the fact that I know how to survive in such a situation. But now I am accepting additional knowledge and opportunities in my life that I can use to grow.”
Gratitude is an important element in working through limiting beliefs. After all, many of them are partially true (or were true at the time when they were used by the older generation). Therefore, this experience cannot be underestimated. For example, during the period of dispossession, the fear of greater prosperity was quite normal. But now is a different time. The experience of the past can be taken into account, but we must turn it off if it is not relevant, and build a new life on this platform.
Tips for parents
use positive suggestions. Since our words have great power, we need to tell the child how smart, successful, strong and healthy he is.
to teach children to distinguish facts from the opinions of different people (even if they are parents).
learn to doubt any statement. This is a feature of researchers and scientists — to question everything, to seek and get to the bottom of the truth. And it will also come in handy to debunk negative suggestions.