Generational Thinking
Limited mindset, negative thinking, wrong thought patterns. These mental habits can be self-defeating and limiting. There can also be passed from one generation to the next. But there is a way to beat them and stop the cycle from repeating. Read on to discover the powerful spiritual principle that changed my life forever.
My dad was great. He taught me about many things including how to provide for my family and how to be a father. I really could not be who I am today without his presence in my life.
But he also had some pretty severe mindset limits and, unfortunately, he taught me some of those too. I’ve had plenty of my own mental blocks in life but I can look back and trace many of those to the way he viewed himself and his own life.
He seemed to have this belief that he was just unlucky. I must have heard a thousand times, “Well that’s just my luck.”
Dad also seemed to think that he didn’t deserve success. He had this vibe that you could tell he believed real success was for others, not himself.
Like I do, dad had friends that were wildly successful but he didn’t seem to think that there was any way that HE could be so as well.
I wonder if he picked that thinking up from HIS father.
As they often do, this particular thought pattern trickled down through the generations to me.
I, too, had this deep-seated belief that I could not be a successful person, could never achieve much, or wouldn’t leave a notable legacy. I certainly don’t remember training myself to believe this—it was so much a part of me, cultivated over the years since early childhood, that it seemed more like a personality trait than a learned belief system. It was just always there.
Gary Klein, Ph.D., in an article for Psychology Today defines mindset as:
“a belief that orients the way we handle situations — the way we sort out what is going on and what we should do. Our mindsets help us spot opportunities but they can trap us in self-defeating cycles.”
These “self-defeating cycles” can be nearly impossible to break out of. But I’ve come to be aware of one very important thing about mindset: Regardless of how difficult it is, I am responsible for my beliefs.
Responsibility
It is my responsibility to find empowering mindsets and to become aware of and dismiss those that limit my potential.
I never blamed my father for my limited ways of thinking—I just assumed them. I took them on without ever questioning them.
But if I want the cycle of limited thinking to stop it has to begin with ME.
For some people, their experiences with their parents can be really less than desirable. Some have parents who are alcoholics or physical abusers. That’s surely a step up from negative mental patterns but it serves a point—no child is given a pass to grow up and be those things themselves. They have their own responsibility.
And if you are struggling with thoughts that you don’t deserve success or personal fulfillment in life it is up to YOU to change those patterns.
My Story
I struggled for years in this area. I just never believed that I could be successful. I always believed that success was someone else’s lot in life. My standard of measure was “good enough” and I never thought to look any further.
But it caused me misery. I was depressed and frustrated and hopeless. I just felt stuck with no change in sight.
I never had the courage to venture out of my comfort zone in faith. I resigned to a life of mediocrity and became really good at justifying it. I tried to build up an image in other ways to cover my deficiencies. I’m not even sure if that was successful but I thought it was. It had to be—at that point in life my image was all I had.
To have that helpless of a feeling left me completely unempowered. When I was in that state I never had enough of the right kind of energy to break out of the cycle. I could only go around and around in that cycle longer and engrain the patterns deeper. The longer I went the more helpless I felt.
The Cure
The only cure I found to stop the disabling generational thought patterns was awareness.
Awareness comes through the process of awakening. It is a quality of understanding who I am and my relationship to all things around me. It is a trust in one’s self after all of the labels have been removed and the ego defeated. It recognizes my purpose in life. It recognizes that I even have a purpose.
Awareness realizes that there is a plan and a God to ensure its success. For me, it most of all meant understanding I have spiritual power in the form of intention and that by my intention (essentially a triggered, actively directed faith) I can create ANYTHING I need for a creative, productive, influential life.
Steve Taylor explains in Conscious Lifestyle Magazine:
“People often realize that, prior to spiritual awakening, they weren’t really living their own lives but largely just following social conventions or trying to please other people. But after awakening it becomes much more important for them to live authentically and follow their own impulses.”
Awareness is the ultimate form of empowerment.
With awareness, I quickly learned that I am not the labels I used to define myself with or the definitions other people place on me. I came to understand that my Authentic Self is a nearly limitless, loving, creative, empowered, spiritual soul—not the false construct of the ego that seeks to be right, to have its own way; loving to be coddled, nurtured, and protected.
A divine spark ignited within me and produced the necessary energy to break out of the cycle.
All the while I was looking for something in me or around me to break me out of my chains when, in reality, nothing from this world could do it. It took God-sized energy to overcome my life’s inertia.
I wasn’t even looking for it and awareness found ME. That is how God’s grace works—we don’t deserve it.
But this I did do—I asked for direction plainly. I told God in no uncertain terms that I was frustrated with my life and if I couldn’t figure it out I might as well die.
I was already dead inside. I had no purpose, no vision. As Psalm 29:18 says, “Where there is no vision, the people perish.”
I simply communicated the powerful hurt in my heart that if I couldn’t figure it out God might as well make the death official.
Looking back, this was receptivity in it’s rawest form.
God answers those who seek Him. Although my methods may not have been ideal, He honored it.
Can you find spiritual awareness the same way? I don’t know.
But no matter how spiritual or carnal you may be, I believe some form of receptivity is the key. For God to answer you requires some kind of ability to listen. It requires a level of humility to acknowledge that the answers come from without and never from within.
Take Away
If you are still stuck in the cycle of limited mindset it is likely because you are looking for that breakout energy within or around you. Please listen to me as someone who has been there—you will only find it in God.
Only the infinite power and understanding of God can provide the revelation that you need to inspire change in your life. I’ve looked for it EVERYWHERE else and never found it.
Seek Him with all your heart. Ask God for mercy in the form of answers. Wrestle with Him as Jacob did. Open yourself in receptivity and welcome the painful moments of life that God has for you.
Awareness is a sort of form of new birth and birth can be messy and painful. But it brings life. That life is full energy and potential.
Be seeking awareness. Ask God to show it to. Beg Him to give you direction. Stay receptive to awareness and it’s very possible it will find you.
Hello, my name is Aaron Force. I’m a blogger based in Seattle, Washington. I’ve been spiritually-minded for most of my life. Unfortunately, I’ve been carnally-minded for at least as much. I felt a seed of greatness hidden somewhere deep down inside but was blinded from it. That is until I experienced an honest-to-goodness calling and moment of awakening. I would be lying if I told you I had it all figured out. But I’m here to tell my story and maybe, just maybe, help you become aware of an even more amazing universe than the one your rational mind already knows.
Aaron Force is a blogger from Seattle, Washington. He writes to educate others about the nature of an expanded consciousness to evolve humanity. Aaron unexpectedly experienced his own profound awakening and ego transcendence in 2015 and soon understood that the qualities of his own experience (a greater expansion and evolution in his life) could be applied to mankind collectively.