www.stevehein.com

Living Your Own Life

Steve Hein

When I was around 35 I finally started to live my own life. Before then I was too worried about what my family and parents thought I "should" do. In these few pages I will give you a few tips on how to begin living your own life immediately so you won’t have to wait as long as I did to experience the freedom and happiness which only comes when you live your life for yourself.

Choose Your Own Values

One of the main things I can recommend is to identify the differences between your values and your parents’ values. Here is a list which can help you start thinking about what each of you value. Your parents might value obedience, safety, security, cleanliness and self-sacrifice. You, on the other hand might value freedom, travel and non-conformity.

It is natural for children and parents to have different values. Unfortunately many parents try to impose their values on you, and they may feel hurt, threatened and rejected when you begin to let them know you don’t have exactly the same values they have. Nonetheless it is important that you stick with your own values if you are ever going to live your own life.

Select Your Own Beliefs

A big part of learning to live your own life is to consciously select your own beliefs. What are your beliefs about religion, for example? What do you believe happens when you die? Do you believe in evolution? What about your parents? Do they try to insist that you have the same beliefs they have?

What about your beliefs when it comes to raising children? Do you believe children ever deserve to be hit? Do your parents? Do you believe in punishing and threatening children? Would it be more important to you that they feel respected by you or that they obey you?

Do your parents believe in "evil"? Do you? If they do believe in "evil" it might be interesting to ask them where they think it comes from. Do they believe in the concept of the devil? Do they believe some children are born evil? Do you? Or do you believe children get into problems in life because of their unhealthy environments and inadequate parenting?

I suggest you actually write down how your beliefs differ from your parents, or from your teachers or even your classmates in school.

Seek Freedom of Mind

Which do you think is more important in living your own life: freedom of mind or physical freedom?

I believe it is clearly the psychological freedom which comes from freedom of mind. For example, once I was at my sister’s house and she looked at her kitchen cabinets and said "Mom would not like the way I have these organized."

My sister had not lived with my mother for over twenty years, and yet she was still psychologically bound to my mother’s approval! This is why I say it is not enough to move away from home. You must also move away from your parents’s beliefs and values. Actually, you can do this while you are still living with them. It doesn’t need to be a big fight. You can just say, "I accept that you have your beliefs and values, but I also have my own."

Identify Your Feelings

Something else which helped me was to begin to identify my feelings more precisely. When I did this I began to realize how many negative feelings I felt when around my parents and family. For example I realized I often felt judged, mocked, lectured to, over-protected and underestimated.

For a few years I kept a journal of my feelings. And I created my own list of "feeling words" to help me be more conscious of my specific feelings, not only with my family but with other people as well. Here are a few lists of common negative feelings which might help you get started.

http://eqi.org/cnfs.htm

Here is another list of feelings. These seem to be ones which depressed and suicidal teens often experience.

http://eqi.org/dsfs.htm

Teens in particular often feel lectured to, judged, interrogated, disapproved of, guilt-tripped, threatened, punished, disrespected, over-protected and over-controlled. It might be useful for you to track these types of feelings by when you felt them and what the situation was. When you are feeling depressed or resentful or when you are questioning your self-worth you can look back at the list and get some insight into why you might be feeling that way. Such a list might also help you in your discussions with your parents or with someone like a counselor. If one day you decide to leave your parents, you can use this documentation to help explain to them exactly why you left. You could also share you feelings with a friend or romantic partner to help them better understand you and your unmet emotional needs.

Trusting Your Feelings

If you are going to start to identify your feelings, it is important that you trust them. Often people in our lives will try to talk us out of our feelings. They will tells us we "shouldn’t" feel the way we feel, or that we don’t really feel the way we do. Or they will tells us we are too sensitive or we are being dramatic. These are all types of invalidation. Invalidation is when someone discredits our feelings. I believe invalidation is a very serious form of psychological damage. If we can’t trust our own feelings, what can we trust?!

If someone tries to invalidate your feelings, be strong and stick by them. Chances are no one has encouraged you to do this ever before in your life, but I believe it is one of the most important keys to living your own life. For more on invalidation see www.eqi.org/invalid

If, for example, you were cold, but others told you that you shouldn’t be cold, and furthermore that they aren't cold and that you should stop complaining so much, what would you do? Your feelings are there for a reason. They are to help you figure out what is needed for you as an individual. Just because no one else in the room is cold doesn’t mean that you "shouldn’t" be. You are a unique person. Your feelings are the most unique part about you. Stand by them. Trust them to lead you in a way which is right for you. Your feelings are the source of your inner voice. The more you follow it the happier you will be.

Think About How You Have Been Raised

One of the more interesting things I did when I started to live my own life was to think about how I had been raised. These sentence completion exercises were helpful. The way you do them is to take each sentence beginning and then answer it several times with different answers.

Here are some sample sentences beginnings:

Mother gave me a view of myself as...
Father gave me a view of myself as...

Mother is always....
Father is always.....

With mother I feel...
.

With father I feel....

Mother gave me a view of love as.....

Father gave me a view of love as....

Mother gave me a view of sex as....

Father gave me a view of sex as....

One thing I needed from mother and never got was.....

One thing I needed from father and never got was.....

Have a Dream

I have found that it helps to have a dream. Your dream will pull you along the course of creating your own life. Your dream for yourself will likely be different than what your parents want for you. Try to get them to accept and support your dream. If they won’t support it, then try to find someone else who will. If you can’t find someone in your own town, then try the Internet. The Internet is a great place to get connected with people like you. One of my favorite sites is something called Freeopendiary.com

There you can write about anything you want and other people can read it. They can leave you notes and you can leave them notes. It won’t take long before you find people who will support you. People love to get notes. If you leave them notes they will usually leave you a note in return. Soon you find people who accept you and support you.

Recommended Books

Here are a few books which have helped me:

Demian, by Hermann Hesse

Siddhartha, by Hermann Hesse

Love, by Leo Buscaglia

Honoring the Self, by Nathaniel Branden