5 Things We Inherit From Our Parents

Growing up we often get some traits from our parents. Wether it comes from genetics, from the education we receive or simply because we absorb the way they talk, behave and see things.

What can be problematic is that we create our reality based on all of those thing without realizing, without even thinking about it.

We hold all of these elements as true without questioning them because that’s just « what it is ». Generally we merely haven’t considered that there might be another way for those things to be. What do we inherit from our parents and what can we do about it?

1. The relation we build with money

How we consider money is often built by the way our parents see and manage their money.

If they struggle with it, we’ll see it. And we’ll manage money in the same way they did.

Growing up, my brother and I never lacked of anything. But there was a time when we went from spoiled children, to « are you sure you really need this? ». Money was not missing, but my parents had to pay much more attention in order to keep things well.

Money became something that we needed to pay attention to, something hard to get — especially in a huge amount — and something to be careful with.

When I left my parents home to study, I immediately looked for a job. Because my parents could not afford to pay for my university, rent or groceries. And I started to earn my own money.

I had the same relation with money that my parents had. I saved my earnings for things that really mattered and I was quite stressed about using that money for anything that was not related to my studies or my rent. Even buying food in restaurant with that money was complicated for me at that time. Because it was not its purpose.

A few years later, I am now in an entirely different situation in my life. I’ve had several professional experiences, and different types of earnings. But mostly, what changed is my relation to money.

Because I questioned it and realized that money was not what my parents thought. And I’ve managed to develop a better relation to it. Because I realized that how you see money influence a lot about how money will come in your life.

And you should think about it too.

What is money to you ?

Is it something that serves you or that you serve?

Do you live to have money or does having money allow you to live the life you want?

2. Love

The way your parents love you, how they show their love to you is fundamental. But also how they love each other, how they build their relationships with their friends and family. They teach you what love is, and what it can be, how it exists in the world. In their world.

Love is all around us and bears many forms. Whether it be the love you give to a complete stranger or the love you give to a friend, you learn it mainly by seeing your parents doing it.

Of course you also learn over time by developing your own relationships, friendships, by meeting people with different visions of the relations.

I’ve traveled a bit, I’ve lived in different cities, I’ve met people around the world with different visions of love, friendship, relationship. Each relation is different and has its own kind of love. Nothing forces you to put a name on your relation with someone, you don’t have to define it if you don’t want to. Because every people you meet has its own kind of link to you. You’re bonding around something in particular and that’s fine.

But you have to think for yourself about what you’re willing to give and what you want to receive, if you do.

What do you live with love ?

How do you show it ?

What’s your love language?

3. The relation we build with ourselves

Self confidence. It is one of the most difficult things in the world. A lack of self confidence is shared by most of the people on this planet. Maybe you don’t have it anymore but experienced it growing up. Maybe you’re still working on getting that confidence. Maybe you’ve never had to and that’s a luck for you.

Anyway. Think about it. What does it mean to be confident? What do you expect from this confidence? And most importantly, where do you think it comes from?

Confidence comes with approval. We get confident when we’re recognized or acknowledged for something we did. We get confident by succeeding in something in front of our peers. We did something good. They saw it. They clapped for it. You got confident. You can do something new more easily.

It’s actually the same when you’re a child. You partly get your confidence by the relation your parents have with what you’re committed to. If they attend to your representations, to your sport events, class events, if they support you in doing whatever you want to do and no matter the result, you’re most likely to get confident in doing things.

No matter how it was for you, think about what creates a lack of confidence in your life right now. What matters is not what other think anymore. Not your friends, not your family, not your lover. If they support you it’s amazing. If they don’t, talk about it. Your surroundings need to support you, or at least to be constructive about what you do. If they don’t, you need to change the people you surround yourself with.

You matter.

That’s the only thing you need to keep in mind.

The most important view on what you do or you want to do, is yours. You need to clap for yourself. Be proud of you. Set your goals, cheer yourself up, fail, but never give up. Fail, and try again. You’ll learn more about yourself. You’ll learn to count on yourself and then you’ll be able to healthily count on someone else.

4. Our discipline

Discipline is quite related to habits. And to mindset. If you’re not willing to set a goal, you’ll never be disciplined enough to put into the effort to reach it.

Discipline can be taught through a lot of things. Personally I know that I have a lack of it. But I’m working on it, on creating discipline in my life.

Why ? Simply because having some kind of discipline can make your life easier. I’m an overthinker. Sometimes, when I want to do something, I can think about it for 15, to 20 minutes. Sometimes more. And its not even sure that I’ll do it. Yes I have ADHD too.

Creating a discipline is about setting a goal and splitting the steps into smaller things to do regularly. Getting into the habits of those things, without thinking about it everytime.
“I’ve thought about everything when I decided to reach that goal. Now, I just have to do what it takes, when I said I would.”

Last year, I’ve decided to run a semi. I did it in the beginning of March and it only was possible because I’ve set a discipline in my trainings. But it was far from perfect, or easy, because you can’t go from 0 discipline to a well round-up routine in 24h. And all the mistakes and failures I encountered running were due to the lack of discipline in my trainings. Because I’m still learning.

It showed me the value of discipline. And I know what would have been different in that semi if I had been more disciplined in my trainings.

What are the things that are important to you?

Are you disciplined enough to do what you said you were gonna do?

What topics or thoughts can disturb your routine? so that you can anticipate and free your mind from them?

5. How we deal with our emotions

Emotions are complicated. Because we do not learn to live with them. Most parents do not teach us to identify what we feel, and more importantly, what to do with what we feel.

There’s a lot of emotions that we know, and a lot that we don’t know. We all experience world in our unique way. So it is complicated to teach about emotions. A movie can make me feel something, and leave you unbothered. And even if we were both sad in front of a sad movie, chances are we’d not be sad in the same way, or for the same things.

Emotions are unique. They can be overwhelming. But they are part of what we are, of how we experience the world. The most important thing we can do is to learn how to feel things and to acknowledge each emotions without being afraid.

I’m hypersensitive. Meaning that I feel a lot, sometimes different things hit me in the mean time and I’m overwhelmed by what I feel. But it also means that the littlest act of kindness fills me with an immense joy that can make me cry. Yes, I’m a cancer too.

How to deal with my emotions has always been a struggle. Whether it be because of toxic masculinity traits in our society, (I actually wrote about that here) you know, don’t be too sensitive, you’re a boy, or don’t show your emotions, emotions are private.

We’re humans. We’re sensitive. WE FEEL THE WORLD. That’s actually one of the best way to live. To be alive.

I was afraid of some emotions, afraid of sadness because it would be overwhelming and I didn’t want to be seen as a « sad person ». Afraid of anger because I wouldn’t know how to deal with it. What if I were to be violent? To hurt anyone out of anger? Afraid of love. Because I love so much that It could kill me to get heartbroken (it happened, and I’m still alive.) Little did I know that the best things to do with emotions is to feel them.

Do not identify as them as you’re not what you feel. But acknowledge what and how you feel. And if you can’t, think about why you cannot accept to feel this or that? Because there’s no shame in feeling anything.

You are free to feel everything.

That’s what we can do about our emotions. We can acknowledge them, accept them, feel them, and let them go as they came. We can learn how to fuel them if they’re too powerful. You can turn anger into physical activity to let it out of your organism. Sadness into creation. You’re an alchemist. Do what you want with what you feel. But do not let it consume you.

How aware are you of the things you got from your parents?

That’s part of growing, and becoming a subject, a full grown-up, with its own thinking, experiences and life. You need to understand what’s coming from you, from society, from expectations, and where you stand in front of all of that.

So that you can choose who you want to be and create yourself.