Support4Change Blog

August 27, 2009
By Renee Payan Wong, Webmaster, Support4Change.com

Arlene will be on hiatus from the Support4Change Blog, while working on the Better Tomorrows Program. In the meantime, I will provide you with what I think of as Arlene’s “Greatest Hits.” This post is an article from the Childhood Affirmations website.

By using special questions, you can explore who you are today and who you want to be tomorrow.

“Where am I? Who am I?
How did I come to be here?
What is this thing called the world?
How did I come into the world?
Why was I not consulted?
And if I am compelled to take part in it,
Where is the director?
I want to see him.”

—Soren Kierkegaard

I’ve always liked questions. Questions open doors behind which lie fascinating answers one might never have discovered without the question. I especially like questions that require more than a simple “yes” or “no.” And the most interesting of all are questions that lead to why a person believes a certain thing and how he or she came to a particular conclusion or belief.

Not everyone is interested in questions. Some people are able to go their whole lives without any curiosity as to the origins of who they are and how they live. Socrates would consider their unexamined lives not worth living. I’ve simply made the observation, both in my own life and in working with clients, that when parents have problems with their children, it’s often because they have been unconsciously allowing some pattern of their parents to be carried over into a new generation, without considering whether it’s how they truly want to live, and whether that is how they want to raise their own children. [See the article Have a Plan and Know Yourself at the Childhood Affirmations website.]

Most of all, I’ve discovered that when you ask questions about how you came to be who you are — that is, how you developed your personality style and coping skills, how you deal with negative emotions and express positive qualities, your religious and spiritual experiences, how you get along with people, and even what you believe about social and political issues — you will understand yourself so much better. And the more you understand who you are and what makes you tick, with all your strengths and weaknesses, the more you can help your children come to understand themselves.

When you examine what kind of life you want to live (just as I suggest you do for your children in the Childhood Affirmations article, Have a Plan and Know Yourself), you may discover you are doing exactly what you are meant to do with your life. However, you just may discover that you’re not heading in the direction that truly meets your deepest desires and most important values. You may be clear about your role in being a parent, but that is only one aspect of your life. What about the rest of your life? Do you know what you want?

The questions for this article are a very few from several hundred that will be available when I complete some e-books scheduled for this fall. Like the questions and topics I suggest in Teach Your Child to Think Clearly and Solve Problems at Childhood Affirmations, they are designed to get to the “why” and “how” of your life.

Your Motivation to Change

“Motivation is what gets you started. Habit is what keeps you going.”

—Jim Ryun

• On a scale of 1 to 10 (“1” meaning you are almost never motivated to change your behavior and attitude toward life and “10” that almost all the time you am motivated to improve yourself and see how you might be better than you have been in the past), what rating would you give yourself?

Your Philosophy of Life

“Tell me what gives a man or woman their greatest pleasure and I’ll tell you their philosophy of life.”

—Dale Carnegie

• How would you describe your philosophy of life?

Your Mother’s Influence on You

“Out of the corner of one eye, I could see my mother. Out of the corner of the other eye, I could see her shadow on the wall, cast there by the lamplight. It was a big and solid shadow, and it looked so much like my mother that I became frightened. For I could not be sure whether for the rest of my life I would be able to tell when it was really my mother and when it was really her shadow standing between me and the rest of the world.”

—Jamaica Kincaid, Annie John

• What was the best gift your mother gave you? Why do you consider it the best?
• What did you want from your mother that she was unable to give? Why?
• How do you see your mother in yourself?

Your Father’s Influence on You

“It doesn’t matter who my father was; it matters who I remember he was.”

—Anne Sexton

• What did your father teach you about love and about men? How?
• What was your father’s favorite saying about life?
• How did the way your father was raised influence how he raised you?

Family

“Family life! The United Nations is child’s play compared to the tugs and splits and need to understand and forgive in any family.”

—May Sarton

• It is said that each child carves a place for himself or herself out of the family so that he or she can be special in some way. How did you choose to be different?
• Even if you don’t feel you “chose” to be different in some way, how were you different than others in your family?
• What effect does this have on you today?

© Copyright 2005, Arlene F. Harder, MA, MFT

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