Category: Relationship DNA

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How Viewing Generational Patterns Through a Genealogical Lens Creates Success

Generational Patterns

How Viewing Generational Patterns Through a Genealogical Lens Creates Success

Gaining knowledge and insights about your generational patterns creates freedom and expansion. And one of the most fruitful areas to look for that knowledge from is your  ancestral heritage along with its accompanying emotional DNA.

So, what is emotional DNA? I’ve discussed it many times before, but briefly, it’s the patterns of  emotions, thoughts, actions and inactions you’ve inherited from your family lineage. You’ve probably heard of generational trauma and family patterns? That’s what I’m talking about here.

Genealogy through an Emotional DNA lens

Being able to have a direct encounter with your ancestral heritage by realizing it is embodied in you and perhaps expressing through you is a powerful and transformative experience that facilitates breakthroughs, insights, and change.  To go in search of your genealogical heritage, hold in mind specific issues and/or problems you are experiencing. Perhaps you’re experiencing a consistent lack of money. Or perhaps you have trouble holding onto intimate relationships, or you never seem to get ahead at work no matter how hard you try.

As you investigate your genealogy and discover what some of your ancestors were up to, what they experienced and went through historically, answers to your own issue (s) may begin to surface. Maybe you had a great-grandmother who lived through the 1904 earthquake in San Francisco. Or an ancestor who took part in the French revolution, or experienced the pogroms in Russia. Ancestral trauma is a very real thing. Notice your thoughts, feelings, and actions as you begin to uncover possible clues about historical events that may have triggered the expression of multigenerational family patterns in you.

Eye-opening insight into generational patterns

It’s an amazing thing to realize that choices made by those who came before you about the events that happened in their lives, have become the language, feelings, thoughts and actions that often live in you and are expressed by you. For example, Doug was stuck in a dead-end job. He knew he had the talent to be in upper-level management and make his way to the C-Suite. His line manager kept thanking him for the ways he evoked and nurtured talent in others around him, yet never gave Doug the promotion he deserved. He thought about leaving the company many times, but didn’t quite have the courage to do so. Not surprisingly, Doug felt trapped.

When we looked at his family beliefs and history, Doug realized that his father had also been undervalued and unacknowledged in the employment agency where he worked. Perennially overlooked for promotion, his father refused to complain or look for more substantive work, saying he needed to put food on the table, and he wasn’t about to jeopardize the family’s safety by leaving a steady job.

The trend went further back to his grandfather’s work as a perpetual line manager in the auto industry, and possibly back before that. Doug also recognized that employee loyalty and job longevity were highly prized in his father’s and grandfather’s generations. In fact, his father would often tell him, “Stick to one place and don’t make waves, son. Security above all.”

You are not stuck

Once Doug saw the pattern, he was determined to make a change. When I pointed out that experience in several different companies can actually add value to one’s resume, Doug was able to objectively evaluate his skills and capabilities. Realizing his value, it became a no-brainer for him to seek employment elsewhere. He was quickly snapped up at a higher salary and position.

By understanding the systemic piece that had kept him stuck—the multigenerational family pattern expressing through his emotional DNA—Doug was able to make a different choice that gave him a sense of freedom and self-confidence he had not enjoyed before. 

Take it from Doug: You are not stuck, or restricted. It’s just that an unsatisfying situation in your life may well belong to your ancestors! Ask yourself: “Is my life a reflection of another family member? Am I repeating generational patterns? What else is possible through me? What do I want? What is possible for those who come after me?”

Remember, everyone adds to the family system and family behavior patterns in some way. Change is growth. What will your gifts be?

Success and freedom are right within your grasp. Once you understand what has you feeling limited or trapped you will be able to reshape your life and career.

To learn more, join me at one of my interactive events.

Emotional DNA
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Emotional DNA and Interactive Genealogy: What It Is & Why It Matters

Emotional DNA

Emotional DNA and Interactive Genealogy: What it is & Why it Matters

Traditional genealogy can tell you where you came from and to whom you are linked. With the evolution of DNA saliva tests, you came to understand why you may look the way you do, discovered how to find your ancestors, and began to connect with people related to you who once were strangers. But when we bring together genealogy and emotional DNA–inherited patterns of thoughts, feelings, and actions, including generational trauma patterns—a whole new world of personal information opens up for you.

Can you inherit heroism?

Most of us harbor secret hopes that our ancestors were incredible heroes or important figures in history. But what if you’re not directly descended from somebody famous? Does that mean you’re out of luck knowing whether you inherited any of those hero genes? Not at all! It’s actually possible to tell if someone in your family lineage was a hero.

How can that be? Well, just ask yourself a simple question: “How do I act, think, and feel in my own life?” Now tune in and think about it. Do you find yourself always standing up for the underdog? Are you unafraid to question authority? Have you surprised yourself by taking crazy dares now and then without a thought to your personal safety? If so, you probably have quite a few heroes quietly stashed away in your family line!

How is this possible? Well, we all know that we inherit our physical DNA. But studies in epigenetics now show that significant events in a person’s life can create an impact on their DNA. Strong emotions in an ancestor’s life such as extraordinary bravery, determination in the face adversity, courage overcoming terrible fear—these emotions quite literally imprint that person’s DNA, creating a blueprint for behavioral patterns that is then passed down to successive generations. These epigenetic inheritance patterns of thoughts, feelings, and actions are what we refer to as our emotional DNA.

So, what else does this mean?  It means that your depression, anger, happiness, success, failure, issues with money and fear of commitment (and a lot of other issues and family behavior patterns) may well have their roots in prior generations. Stuff you’re experiencing that’s tripping you up in life may not belong to you at all! But it may be asking you to notice it. 

Generational patterns can be changed

And yet most people don’t know this. Instead, we go along through life repeating generational patterns faithfully as though they were our own. My client “Rita” is a perfect example.

Rita was embarrassed to admit it, but she always had to have a fully stocked pantry—and then some. Anything less than several overflowing closets filled with food created extreme anxiety and distress for her, and she couldn’t understand why. Paradoxically, Rita is pretty wealthy and can buy whatever she wants, whenever she wants. When I pressed her on the subject, she kept saying, “You never know what might happen. I could lose it all in an instant. If I don’t have food stores, I might not be able to survive.” 

When we looked at her family history, two generations had met with economic downturns and food shortages. Her great-great-great grandparents fled Ireland escaping the Irish Potato Famine. Her grandmother’s parents, once well-to-do, were impoverished during the Great Depression. She remembered hearing her grandmother tell her to always make sure she had enough food and money to last at least six months if not a year or more!

Again, even though Rita was well off and had a solid nest egg, she embodied the extreme trauma of starvation and loss carried in her emotional DNA from two different sets of family experiences—and possibly more going even further back in her genealogical history. On top of that, she carried the memory of her grandmother’s advice and the words of her own mother, constantly advising her to “Waste not, want not” and how she should always “Be prepared.”

“The idea of even wasting a penny just freaks me out,” Rita said. “It keeps me working long hours with my nose to the grindstone. I can’t even enjoy the success I’ve created.”

Honoring family patterns and moving on

When Rita finally got that her penny-pinching and food hoarding obsessions weren’t really hers, the lightbulb switched on. She realized it was up to her to break the generational poverty mindset. She was the person in her family who was being invited to change old negative family patterns and create something new.

When she took the next step and realized that her grandmother and mother had pinched pennies so that she didn’t have to, that gave her pause for thought. She remembered how her grandmother used to say she wished she could take her kids and grandkids on trips and have adventures. At that point, she realized that she could give her grandmother and mother a legacy by doing what they could not. She could stock one pantry in peace and take the time off to take her own children on family vacations.

Rita was breaking generational cycles by setting down the family limitations, embracing her mother’s and grandmother’s dreams as well as her own hopes and desires, setting new patterns of adventure and abundance into motion with a happy heart.

Want to learn more about emotional DNA and how it applies to you? 

Come to one of my interactive events and experience firsthand how to change the effects of behavioral genetics on your life and create new patterns of success! Click here to find out more information. 

Emotional DNA
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Gifts Don’t Always Come with Fancy Bows

When we met for the first time I could hardly hear Elaine. She alternated between whispering and crying. As a mom of 4 children, she was upset by the most recent parent teacher’s meeting she’d attended for her eldest daughter. Her daughter’s grades were great, but the teacher pointed out that her daughter’s self-confidence was not.

It was heartbreaking.

Elaine had done everything to ensure that all of her kids would be happy and bright and yet here was Jess, struggling – just like she had.

 

Worse still when she spoke to her daughter, Jess confessed that she was terribly afraid she would disappoint her parents.

That last piece had brought Elaine to see me.

It was all too familiar.

She had lived with the sadness of being a disappointment to her parents her whole life. 

 

Her brother and parents were very close.

Elaine was not. Loving and affectionate, she’d reached out for hugs her whole life only to be told that displays of affection were not something they did. It felt for her as though her brother had received all the love there was, and she had gotten just a drop here and there and now there was Jess.

Elaine had heard that patterns can be inherited, and it was clear to her that somehow her daughter was repeating the insecurity and sadness she had felt. In fact, it still hurt. 

Her mother and father had both come from broken families with distant parents. Their mothers had needed to work really hard to make ends meet. Affection hadn’t been readily available. Somehow her brother could fit in, but she could not. She had always longed to be seen and loved and her heart still ached for what she hadn’t received. 

We spoke about patterns and connections to parents and she became even more upset. There was nothing of value that she could take from them and she didn’t know how to feel good enough about herself to pass that onto her daughter.

Several times she mentioned that all she’d gotten were the odd drops of love.

 

I asked Elaine what she was like as a mother? Distant – cold? 

For the first time she lit up and her eyes twinkled. “No!” she declared firmly. “I have so much love to give and I do! I am the mom who bakes, cooks, loves even though I work a full job. I love my family and they know it.” 

And there it was. The drop of gold.

Sometimes gifts don’t come in pretty paper and our strengths aren’t always grown on easy street. And we don’t always recognize the change agents that we are or the chapters that only we can write. 

 

“Those drops of love?” I asked. “You speak about those as though they were important?” 

“I treasured every little piece I got,” Elaine said softly. “I was determined that my kids would get to know every day that were loved. I am very proud of that.”

“So, you took the drops and grew them into something wonderful.” I pointed out. It really sounds like you treasured them and grew the treasure.” 

“I’d never looked at it that way,” Elaine responded. “I guess I really did, and I give my brother and parents all the love I can. They think it’s silly, but they tolerate it I guess.” Her face fell again. “Maybe it’s all silly.”

“Or not?” I offered. “We live a large part of our lives in response to patterns. Some strong and some limiting and yet we have the ability to change them at any time. You came from a legacy of sadness and withdrawal and yet perhaps the system was looking for another way. It needed someone to bring the love and connection back in.”

“Through me?!” Elaine sat all the way up in her chair. “Oh, my goodness!”

“Someone had to be willing to do it differently.” I pointed out. “Your family was lovingly following a pattern and there’s something special about the way you have brought the love and connection in.”

“I swore I would do it differently,” Elaine said softly. “I still love them though.”

“They sparked your change,” I said. “And for that, you owe them thanks. Showing love is your gift of change to the system. You and your husband bring what they couldn’t but they started your journey.”

 

Elaine got it.

She was the change agent in the family.

She had a purpose and that she could pass onto her daughter Jess. 

 

We often grow in collusion with or reaction to the system and Elaine’s case it was in spite of the system. Sometimes in life the spark that makes us different and special may not come from a place of joy or ease and yet it is no less special. When we can see the gifts that are trying to emerge for and through us, life becomes a place of joy where we flourish. 

Systems are elegant things they are always in service of our highest good if we only look. 

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It’s Not Just About Showing Up

I know we are told that showing up in your life over and over again will get you results and while that’s true it’s not the entire secret sauce. 

When you keep showing up over and over again shift will happen but recently I’ve been struck by additional ingredients that can make all the difference.

Elevated emotion, belief that something more is possible here and self-ambition – wanting more and daring to go there.

Together these combine to open the head, heart, and gut which creates a state of increased awareness and possibility. Now what we tell ourselves has a chance to change from the tried, trusted and sometimes limiting systemic beliefs we have to a new possibility.

Once you show up in that state over and over again, you start creating new sentences and new truths. Now you are moving beyond the old family sentences and mindsets, or the ones you have created in response to an event and you are no longer trapped and living someone else’s history.   

If you increase your level of showing up and begin to add in elevated emotions like joy, kindness, love or gratitude, a knowing that something different is possible and the determination to go there, your language changes. Your thoughts and emotions change and with it your actions and self-talk change. Suddenly your world is no longer the same.     

Your Systemic Sentences

You begin to move from:

“I’m not good enough/smart enough/strong enough” to “I am learning/ I can do this/I am doing this/I belong here.”

Now you’re no longer caught in the past but are solidly positioning yourself to write your own chapter and build a future you like. We are stronger self-magic makers than we imagine.  

Love the sentences you tell yourself every day – your systemic sentences. Don’t treat them as limiters. Instead, use them to identify where you may be stuck or looking to move to a higher level.

Then notice what you really want, how you want to feel and then dare to go there. 

 

Here’s a quick exercise to jumpstart your own showing up with a sprinkle of elevated emotion, possibility, and self-ambition. I’d love to hear what happens for you all when you add these additional ingredients. 

Exercise:

  • Please write down one way you would like your life to change/ be more/ grow
  • Now write down all the things you tell yourself that limit you from getting there. 
  • Who said that first? Was it you or does that language/mindset live in your family somewhere? 
  • To whom or to what event might these sentences belong.
  • What more is possible here that you would like to see for yourself?
  • Write down how you will show up consistently
  • Add one elevated emotion that you will add that you can feel as you write it down
  • What can you tell yourself about the way you are changing your life?
  • For the next 21 days, I want you to feel and embody the way you have just designed. 

Come and Find out at the Emotional DNA Workshop