Baggage

While you are busy making excuses for your life because of the baggage your parents left you with, remember one thing:  Today you are packing the baggage your children will carry for life.

There is work to be done.  You need to start by examining why you sabotage relationships, careers, future plans, or whatever else you are worrying about. Where does it come from?  I'm talking about your insecurities, your feelings of not being good enough, and your feelings of fear of failure.  We all have them to one degree or another.  Perhaps there is some part of it that is inherited and beyond anyone's control, but there is always part that is learned.  It is learned through disappointment, through fear, through anger, and through abandonment and/or loss.  Recognize it and then evaluate it.  The wrongs that were done to you as a child were done to you by people who were also impaired by their own baggage that was left to them from their own parents.  Each generation, whether if they repeat the mistakes of past generations or swing so far on the pendulum to make the exact opposite mistakes, each perpetrate injuries onto the next generation. Why does this happen?  It happens because none of us are perfect.

The second thing you need to do is forgive those who hurt you and loaded your shoulders down with baggage that didn't belong to you.  Forgive them because they didn't know any better.  Then recognize that you do know better now.  And with that realization comes responsibility to change what has been done before. The buck stops here.

You can not change the past, but you can change the future.  No matter how difficult facing these issues may be for you now, the payoff is enormous! The more work you do to unpack that baggage that has been passed down through generations, the less baggage your children will have to deal with.  What a beautiful gift to give to the generations to come.