By Charlene M. Brown
“I can’t believe I just said that! I sound just like my mother!”
Have you ever said this to yourself? Take Heart—we all have at some point or another.
John Mayer has a song called “Daughters.” The chorus says, “ . . . Girls become lovers, who turn into mothers, so mothers be good to your daughters too.” It’s inevitable Ladies: when we grow up, somehow, some way, we take on some elements of our mothers (or whomever has mothered us). This is unavoidable. Or is it?
I know you’ve heard the horror stories of women who have become just like their mothers for all the wrong reasons. And there are many cycles that women tend not to break when it comes to behaving like their mothers. But there is hope: sometimes we pick up all of the right things from our mothers, or at least a good deal of them. Reality, however, usually looks more like a mixture of the two.
What are the things you do when you are acting or sounding just like your mother? For me, I notice it sometimes when I’m driving—there is a certain way that I place my hands on the steering wheel that screams “Mom” to me. This is not such a bad thing—my mother is a pretty decent driver. But other things—like when I am being overbearing—make me less happy to have picked up.
What about you? What do you do that reminds you of Mom? Whether you realize it or not, you have picked up habits along the course of your life that are not yours at all—they belong to someone else! In fact, think about that for a minute—which of your habits actually belong to you!?
I am willing to bet that most of them don’t.
Here is my challenge to you: take a good long look at the things you do in your daily life. What is all yours? What have you picked up from someone else? Who? Why!? The key is, then, to strike the right balance of your You-ness, in all its glory, and your Other-ness, which you have picked up from other people that you are consciously or subconsciously emulating.
Examine these things—what do you do simply because your mother did them? Do they serve you? I heard a story once about a daughter who always cut off the ends of her ham because when she was growing up, her mother sliced off the ends of the ham, so she just assumed that was what you did to ham. One day the daughter asked the mother about it and she replied that she didn’t know why, but that her mother always did it too. The daughter asked her grandmother about it, who replied that her mother did it because she was an immigrant and always got the slightly rotten pieces of ham and had to slice off the ends to make it edible. So why does the daughter slice off the ends of her ham? Because her great-grandmother did it to feed her family. (Ah-ha! So here we’ve come to the bottom of it!)
Picture you are the daughter in this situation. How does this serve you? What do you accomplish by slicing off the ends of your ham (when you can now buy a fresh ham!)?
What are the things you do simply because they’re the way things have always been done? Are you happy with them? How do they serve you?
Now here’s the GREAT part: it doesn’t have to be this way! There is more than one way to slice an apple, or in this case, a ham. These are simply habits that we have taught ourselves. And like any habits, they can be unlearned and replaced with new ones. If you’ve found that some (or all) of these habits aren’t serving you, it’s now up to you to change them. Try something new. Try a new kind of cheese in your macaroni and cheese. Make a new kind of pie this year for Thanksgiving. Eat the whole ham instead of slicing off the ends. Celebrate yourself when you take a step, any step in a new direction.
The key to unlearning (changing) habits is to replace them with different habits that you like better. Maybe it’s something serious, like eating a salad instead of pie because your mother has Diabetes; or getting mammograms starting at 30 instead of 40 because your mother and grandmother got breast cancer early on; or maybe it’s something less serious, like eating the ends of your ham because you have no real reason to cut them off. Whatever it is, DO IT! CHANGE IT! I know you can do it! Come on, you can take that first step!
Do You Love Your Changing Life Now!? I Do!!
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© 2009 You Can Love Your Life Now!