Lessons Learned

If you've been following my blog, you know that my dad passed away a few weeks ago. Since then I've been doing a lot of thinking and I have come to this conclusion. The greatest gift our parent’s give us are lessens we choose to learn along the way. Guess what? It is your responsibility to discover what your parents taught you.

I believe we are not only the physical creation of our parents; we are also here on a spiritual journey to learn from them. You were born to these people and weather you know or not their lives had an irrevocable effect on who you are, what you do and how you live your life.

The only way you can truly learn from your parents is to become aware and embrace both their positive qualities and negative traits. For example, a few of my father's greatest qualities were his integrity, sense of humor and the unconditional love he gave to his family and friends. Through the years I have both consciously or unconsciously learned these qualities and in turn incorporated them into my life. I believe I am a better person as a result.

More importantly, I believe it is crucial that you learn from your parents negative traits. The only way you can do this is to identify what about their lives you didn't like or perhaps even despised. Then ask yourself what about their lives could have been done differently or better. What you would have changed is part of what you need to learn.

I would have to say that my dad's biggest negative trait was his lack of self-worth. I don't believe he ever knew how talented and gifted he was. I also believe this was the cause of so much anger that derived from deep-rooted, fear based, past experiences. Learning from this particular negative trait from my dad has been a tremendous blessing in my life.

Our path is about discovering the truth of who we really are. Our parent’s positive qualities and negative traits can be an invaluable source of information to help us grow. If we don't learn the lessons our parents are always trying to teach us, we run the great risk of carrying their pain into our lives.