Category: Systemic Patterns

Most of us have been taught to “Go big or go home.” That one’s biggest strength is media influence, having lots of money, or having “pull.” Kindness, compassion, and empathy are not seen as unique strengths or unique talents that are valuable. Sure, they might help you make a good impression, but in the context of your work, we’re taught “the race is to the swift and ruthless.” The only way the prize is won is if you’re operating at your full potential. It’s just the nature of the business.

And yet, this is really not true. People who have truly succeeded in life and in business have done so—not because they had some type of superpower—but because they have discovered their unique strengths and maximized them. This is not a nice idea it is a fact. Let me give you a specific example.

Most of us don’t recognize the depth of our links to the traumas within our family lineage and previous generations. Quite unconsciously, we repeat hidden patterns and negative emotions in our daily lives while at the same time developing unconscious loyalties to these patterns and the people who set them in motion long ago. We literally relive versions of unresolved traumas and sadness that occurred in prior generations. 

For example, let’s say a great-grand-parent suffered some lingering disease that set in motion a pattern of ill-health as well as a caretaking pattern in the family. Three generations later half the family always seems to be sick or marrying people who get sick or find themselves in stressful situations while the other half always seem to be loyally trapped in caretaking roles. Patterns like these obviously become barriers to emotional well-being and any possibility of greatness. It is as though effector patterns, once started, can’t stop. 

Negative emotions around finances are another commonly inherited family pattern in our ancestral lineage. Who knew that there was such a thing as money DNA? Not only do we inherit our money mindsets and basic emotions interacting with money from our family system, but also from our culture. Both play an important role setting up views in our minds as young adolescents about the rightness or “wrongness” of money and wealth. 

This is also amplified by religions that inspire negative emotional reactions to having money and “too much filthy lucre.” Then this ancestral/cultural meta-pattern creates life experiences of misery, chronic stress and psychological trauma around money, assets, investments, career decisions, you name it.

There is a hidden power in your DNA, and you are part of a multi-generational internet—a web of ancestral information is contained within you. In other words, your family system connects you to everything that has happened to you and your lineage. These past events include natural disasters, diasporas, genocides, slavery, sexual abuse, and gender discrimination. 

Even though many of these things have been experienced in the lives of ancestors, we experience the feelings and thoughts of our forefathers and mothers as they went through these past traumas as a part of our nervous system. We are literally repeating versions of the life paths of those who came before us instead of living our own life. 

The interesting thing is, when we achieve this state we are teaching our bodies to move from stress to joy and peace. In this state our hearts can open, our gut is able to relax, and our brain can begin working clearly and thinking new thoughts. The good thing about taking such a courageous step consciously is that it gives us a little bit of space away from old habits.

Now, quite frankly, the best way of opening our minds and hearts to possibility is by focusing on what we want. The more excited we can be about our goals, the more courageous we are able to become. Then we can start setting the goals to get us to the first step, and then the next step, and then the next, and so on until we arrive at the place where we can experience freedom and inner peace.

But there is something important to understand about fear. It isn’t there to terrorize us. One of the amazing things about fear is that it is a signal from our nervous system that something needs to change. So, next time you experience anxiety, rather than being triggered into a negative emotion or tailspin of fear and anxiety, notice that what you’re experiencing is simply a strong clue for a need for a change. How elegant is that?

If you experience anxiety, have panic attacks or struggle to let go of harmful fears of failure, those clues may well have their roots in your genealogy or in the events in your own life that have shaped your thoughts, feelings, and actions.

The minute you say “Yes” to new things and make that change irresistibly exciting, you will find your way past all your concerns about an uncertain future along with your excuses and limitations that have kept you stuck. Let me give you a quick example of how this works.

Not only do you inherit your physical DNA, you also inherit patterns of thoughts, feelings, and actions that were generated by decisions made by your ancestors about events that occurred in their lives. Each decision generated thoughts, feelings, and actions that resulted in outcomes that in turn affected subsequent generations—patterns I refer to as your Emotional DNA.

All it takes is for one family member to experience a significant event in their daily life—say a fire that destroyed the family home and all personal possessions— for negative patterns or positive behaviors to emerge out of that event. These emotional reactions create a cascading effect. The decisions and assumptions that were made by your ancestors and the conclusions that were drawn as a result of a traumatic event are often responsible for creating systemic patterns that operate in our family systems.

Let’s take the given situation of a house fire for example. Negative emotional patterns arising from that event can take on multiple appearances. One ancestor might develop a flight response to any sort of open flame. Two generations later you wonder why nobody in your family enjoys outdoor cooking, camping and bonfires. Another negative expressive response could be the development of a belief that “Nothing lasts” or “You can’t count on anything being there when you need it.”

Perhaps an irresponsible mental pattern of “carpe diem”—live for the day—begins to flow through the psyches of many family members.  Instead of relating to people, situations and personal possessions in a healthy way, they blow through money, houses, jobs, and relationships, letting things and people slip through their fingers. After all, “It might all be gone tomorrow.” Why try to hold on?

Positive behaviors and positive emotional patterns resulting from the same event might be the development of resilience and the ability to bounce back from anything.

Fear-based thoughts tend to shift with the generations, and what sounds silly to one generation makes perfect sense if we zoom out and take a look at the whole family system and its events, decisions and consequences. Every generation faces different challenges and has different ways of looking at life events and different coping mechanisms.

Our inner language, including our fear-based thoughts, often reflects multigenerational language around issues not resolved in prior generations, language that contains clues to the places where we are stuck as well as the clues to the next level of expression. For example, you may come from a wealthy family and yet experience fear around money, thinking things like “Money doesn’t grow on trees.” Or “Money can’t buy everything.” Or “More money, more problems.”

We call this inner language your systemic language, and no one is immune. Not the smallest among us nor even the titans of industries. We all have fearful thoughts that drive or plague us, until we recognize them for what they really are—clues from the past showing how our ancestors thought about things; clues we can use that show us where we are stuck and how we can shape futures we desire.