Exercise: Connect-the-influences by Tenzin

1. Starting with your parents, list the names of every person you can recall that you associated with during childhood in a single column down the left-hand side of a sheet of paper. If you don’t know the name of a person, use a brief description such as “the lady at the end of the street with the loud little dog.” Include family, friends, teachers, caregivers, neighbors, and anyone else you remember. If you run out of room, tape another piece of paper to the bottom of the first one and keep going down the left-hand side.

2. On the right-hand side of the paper, list all the habits and traits you possess, both good and bad. If you’re feeling brave, ask a friend to help you come up with some of the traits you possess that you might not be aware of. You don’t even have to show anyone your list; you can call them up and tell them you’re getting a head start on your New Year’s resolutions.

3. Now comes the fun part. Try to match each habit or trait with one of the people from the left-hand column, and draw a line to connect them. You may find that some people have several connecting lines, while others have none. Pay close attention to the people who seem to have appeared on your list for no particular reason. If you remember them clearly, they probably influenced your life in some small way.

This exercise is not meant to lay blame on the people in your past for ruining your life.

Rather, it is to illustrate that many of your flaws and negative qualities are a result of things you learned as an impressionable child, and therefore can be let go of without guilt.

Children see things through a different lens than adults do, and what we learn at an early age can often end up coloring everything we do as grownups. Fortunately, we can learn to let go of those negative tendencies once we view them with the wisdom and rationality we have developed along the way.

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