Thought 189: You were programmed as a child

When a child is born, it comes into this world with a clean slate. It has no knowledge about this world. It is eager to learn about the world it has come to live in and therefore, tries to learn as fast as it can. Starting from the moment it is born, it observes every thing around it very keenly, which is how it learns. The fact that it does not know the language does not really stop its learning process. It is now accepted that even for the adults, the words carry only about 8% of the message. The rest is carried through the body and voice languages - and the child is good at reading the body and voice languages.

Most people are conditioned from early childhood to focus on the negatives. Parents, who are the role models for the child, constantly display negatives, which the child readily absorbs. Worry, anxiety, guilt, impatience, criticism, anger, hatred, greed, revenge, jealousy, excessive ego, self pity, are some of the negatives that constantly pervade the conversation of the parents, teachers, baby sitters and others, such as relatives and friends of parents, in the presence of the child. All these are picked by the sensitive antennae of the child and they are entered permanently into its mind.

Thus, although the child is born without any negatives, it gradually picks these destructive negatives before it is four years old. It gets programmed on this basis and this is the software that drives the child all through the later years of its life. This becomes the foundation for the quality of one’s life. No attempt is ever made later to unlearn or cancel the effect of these negatives.

This early childhood negative foundation constantly undercuts your attempts to learn a new way of life later. It keeps away creativity from you, because creativity has to be nurtured in a supporting environment, in which, open mindedness, cheerfulness, encouragement and similar positive attitudes prevail. Very rarely, however, does the child observe these and similar positive attitudes such as love for others, positive views about people in general, tolerance for different views, sense of humor, confidence, tranquility, excellence, perfection, etc in her young life. The child is hardly ever encouraged to look at nature and appreciate it. It does not learn to wonder about the magnificent creation around it, like the flowers or the rainbow or moonlight or any such natural, delightful and beautiful phenomena of this world. In those rare families, where the child gets exposed to positive views, that child, of course, grows up based on that foundation.

The next thought is about “Insecurity breeds fear”