THE IDENTITY DETECTIVE

I'm very excited to share with you an excerpt from my latest self-help book, The Identity Detective.

Coming very soon! 

Your Childhood Program

When you are born, you’re a blank canvas. You come into the world as a beautiful baby with unlimited possibilities for your life. You are pure consciousness and then the environment you’re born into begins to impact your life and basically ruins it. Well, not quite. 

The circumstances of your birth and the behaviours of those around you create distinctions and those distinctions become your beliefs. 

If like me, you were a girl born in Ireland, you’d have a very different childhood experience to a girl born on the very same day in America, Afghanistan, Peru or China. Obvious, I know but hear me out. Equally, If you were born to a wealthy family, your experience and beliefs will be very different to someone born in poverty or war. 

We’re all born the same way; we are all blank canvases. It’s the life we are born into that defines us. The beliefs of our parents, our church, our school and our society become our beliefs because as children, we lack the ability to form our own, so we take instruction from our parents and caregivers. 

We pick up things with our conscious mind like how to behave in a certain way, we learn right from wrong, how to study at school, cook, ride our bikes, make friends and so on. 

However, our subconscious mind picks up things as well and when it doesn’t have answers, it makes assumptions and forms beliefs all on its own.

If you had self-aware parents who raised you with a positive outlook on life, gave you all the time, love and understanding you needed to flourish, you wouldn’t be reading this book.

However, if like most people, you grew up with parents who were just doing the best they could, they were likely to be more unconscious in their parenting, not fully understanding the impact their own beliefs had on their kids. Before you bite my head off, I'm not dissing your parents. I was mostly unconscious raising my own kids. 

When they were too busy and told you to play with your sister or go outside, (every time you wanted their attention) they didn’t intend for you to form the belief that you didn’t matter, but that’s probably what you did. 

When they told you to stop being a dreamer, that hard work was the only way to succeed. 

They didn’t intend for you to form the belief that you'd never get anywhere if you made a mistake or failed a test, but that’s probably what you did. 

When they told you to always be polite and not speak your mind, to be like everyone else when clearly you weren’t. They didn’t intend for you to form the belief that there was something wrong with you, but that’s what you probably did.  

I go into this in GREAT detail in chapter three, but for now, let me tell you the four main negative beliefs we form in childhood about ourselves. 

I’m not good enough. 

I don’t matter. 

There’s something wrong with me. 

I’m not worthy of love. 

You might disagree and say you don’t have any of those beliefs. You probably do, you just don’t know it, but if you’ve bought this book, you can bet your ass they’re playing out in how you live your life. 

Try This: Spend some time thinking about your childhood and the society you were born into. Think about your parents, what were they like? Were they around or busy at work? Were they strict or easy-going? Were they strong in their beliefs? Write down your answers and sit with them for a while. You’ll then start to see how their beliefs and behaviours have impacted you.

Your childhood program drives your life completely. 

Wherever you are in your life today is a direct result of your core beliefs because not only have you formed a set of beliefs about the world that aren’t yours. You’ve formed a set of beliefs (as above) about yourself that aren’t true.  

These limiting beliefs are so deeply ingrained into your subconscious mind, that you don’t know how to live without them, and because they’re negative, they are the cause of low self-esteem, anxiety, lack of direction and so on. 

Some people never question these beliefs, they just accept that life is hard, think misery is part of the deal and go through life just getting on with it. Others and if you’re reading this book, you’re one of them, begin investigating their beliefs. They start to question why and if their beliefs are true. 

‘Why do I believe in a certain way of life, politics, eating, working, living? Is it because I really believe that or is it because I was raised to believe it?’

Start questioning your beliefs, even one as tiny as ‘I don’t like toast.’ Do you really not like toast or is that something you’ve just always believed?