18 _
certain fearlessness, bolstered by
sayings like, ‘The only mistake you
can make is not trying’. There are also
families in which the parents believe
that no matter what you do, you can’t
escape your background. Those
parents say, ‘Some things just aren’t
meant for our kind of people’. I
sometimes think some of my friends
would have flourished more if they
had been aware of the restrictive
credos of their childhood earlier on.
The impact of what highly critical
parents pass on to their children can
be huge. I know troubled adults who,
to this day, don’t dare trust their
feelings and intuition, because they’re
still afraid of an eagle-eyed parent’s
reprimands. So now they don’t know
what to do with their feelings. They
hear a little voice in their head telling
them, ‘Feelings don’t pay the rent’.
With a bit of bad luck, they even say
the same thing to their own children,
and so the insecure daughter
becomes the critical mother.HERO OF YOUR OWN STORY
Writing coach Mieke Bouma helps
people write down their own personal
history. “A life story is an instrument
to explore your own life,” she says.
“You can think about what
assumptions and beliefs have shaped
your life, and ask yourself, ‘Do I have
any influence on how my story
unfolds? To what extent is my life
fulfilled and would I like to give
the plot a different twist?’” She callsculture we live in. Our roles and
circumstances may change as we get
older, as do our habits, but our basic
character doesn’t change, say experts.
Our upbringing also determines our
behavior, especially in terms of how
we see ourselves and how we view life
in general. Our parents’ responses to
our personalities continue to play
a role in how we feel about ourselves
for the rest of our lives. For example,
I myself was a rather gentle child who
grew up with a mother who had fought
a fierce battle to keep her head above
water. In the world my mother grew up
in, you wouldn’t make it if you were
gentle. For her, a lack of assertiveness
was equal to giving up and ‘letting
others pull the wool over your eyes’.
I used to be ashamed of my quiet
demeanor, but I’ve learned by now
that you don’t have to be loud to betreated fairly. Most people are actually
very nice. Unlike my mother, and also
thanks to her, I have the good fortune
to be living in a kinder environment.
Part of growing up is evaluating what
you were given, and deciding whether
you want to hold on to it or let it go.OUR KIND OF PEOPLE
Equally important for your life are
the beliefs your parents, and their
parents before them, held about
how life should be lived. In our
home the formula for success was:
entrepreneurship, putting in 100
percent effort, and never giving up.
That was true for my grandparents,
who worked in the textile industry,
and later also for my parents who
started their own business. This
cheerful entrepreneurial family spirit
sent me out into the world with aEXERCISE: EXPLORE YOUR BACKPACK
‘Own your baggage,’ American sociologist and author
Martha Beck once noted. In other words, own your
history that you carry with you. Imagine that your
life history is a backpack that you’re carrying.
Put it down and take everything out. Draw these,
or put them into a mind map. Now that you see
everything in front of you, do you want to repack
it all? Or do you want to say goodbye to some
things? If in doubt, do what cleaning guru Marie
Kondo does when she has to decide whether she wants
to keep something or get rid of it: Hold it and
think about whether it gives you joy. No spark?
Then leave it out of your backpack.