All the times growing up we swear to ourselves, we will never be like our parents, but here we are all grown up with children of our own, and lo and behold.

If we are able to step back and observe ourselves while interacting with our children, it is as if our parents qualities come alive and even though we may not be comfortable with our reactions, it appears we have very little control in enacting the same mannerisms and attitudes.

It is imperative we become aware of our patterns of behavior.

We have recollections of being treated in ways that crushed our self-esteem. The memories are embedded in our subconscious minds and time and time again, they become our reactionary behavior for many of our interactions with others.

In the most simplistic concept possible, we are born and grow up in a family with each member perpetuating his own set of beliefs. We absorb values regarded acceptable or normal by society. Our minds assimilate this information and over time, cement a belief system in our subconscious minds that governs the way we think and act.

It is important to remind ourselves that our parents were also products of their environment and what they believed to be their truths. They therefore, preached what they knew, as did their fathers before them and so on.

Many of us live our lives never becoming aware of being trapped in this repetitive cycle of behavior, others become aware but are either too paralyzed to do anything about it, or simply do not know how to go about making the necessary changes to break free. What we do know is deep down we live with a sense of un-fulfillment and lack of purpose and no matter how much we achieve and acquire, we just cannot seem to capture that illusive feeling of contentment.

"Above all things gain understanding"

To break free from the cycle of negatively conditioned thinking, we must first understand what seeds were planted within our subconscious minds which we are now accepting as our truths before we will be able to transcend the hypnotization. If we try to look at it in a detached way, more like false information we learned and now have to un-learn, then it helps to take away the desire to feel like a victim and delve into self-pity.

The majority of us have been raised with varying degrees of self-negating and self-destructive habits. This realization helps us to rise above the feeling that "no body knows the troubles I've seen" - so all alone in our sorrow and misery. We have all been fed erroneous information preventing us from fulfilling our highest potential because we are perpetually doubting and belittling our self worth thereby inhibiting our full potential.

If our lives do not reflect our hearts' desires nor satiate our inner desire to lead a purposeful life, we must change whatever we belief that is causing us to perceive ourselves as failures and set about fostering new beliefs that will nurture a different perception of who and what we are -(to think anew).

Above all, let us accept that we have the right and the power to change our minds about what we choose to believe as the truth. The intention is to re-condition our thinking so that it truly reflects what will make us fundamentally feel good. It is a journey to release ourselves from the cycle of unhappiness and discontented lives, a journey to emancipate ourselves from our mental slavery. Somewhere amidst all the mental chatter is our real voice speaking the truth of our Divinity. Our undertaking is to be guided by this voice and let the nature of who we are at the core be passed on to our children and so on and so forth . . . I pray that each generation will free itself from its father's sins.