A great deal of time is spent in early childhood and young adulthood conforming. It is very traumatic to question one's true identity and, when discovered, to then feel it necessary to keep it secret from one's inner self, the outside world and one’s own family. 

Our Early childhood programming overview:        

•       We all begin life in a state of relaxed and joyful bliss. 

•       If our wants and needs are met, our state of relaxed and joyful bliss is sustained. Otherwise as our needs become increasingly unmet, negative programming begins 

•       Our unmet need causes fear and pain. In our infantile ignorance, we have no idea how to change it and restore our feeling of safety. We adopt primitive coping mechanisms.

At the same time, throughout our childhood, we are also being programmed by our caretakers and communities to fit into society. We are programmed to do what we can to gain love and acceptance. 

•       We split off, repress or disown parts of ourselves that society finds challenging or unacceptable. Those of us with good enough caretakers get by; Those who don’t, have their lives handicapped. 

•        We have the illusion that we have freedom of choice when it comes to choosing our life. However our unconscious has an agenda of its own.

•       Our primitive "old" brain has a compelling, non-negotiable drive and programming to restore us to the original blueprint.

•       To restore us, the damage done in childhood as a result of unmet needs must be repaired. The way the unconscious does that is to design a life that would give us what our caretakers failed to provide.

•       Every transaction of pleasure and pain in childhood, has scarred us, and we're always trying to replicate these transactions as we scan our environment for a suitable life partner.

•       This image of "the Internal Program" who can make me whole again" I call the “Internalised Program”.

•       Consciously we may seek only the positive traits, unconsciously the negative traits of our caretakers are in our “Internalised Program”. These traits caused the painful experiences we now seek to heal. Our unconscious seeks to restore us by a Program that reminds us of our caretakers. In other words, we look for Program circumstances that replicates the same deficits that hurt us in the first place.

•       So when we fall in love, we do so with someone who is the sum total of all our caretaker characteristics. We end up in careers, life circumstances that recreates the essence of our caretaker’s lives.

•       This guarantees more of the same pain and wounding that we experienced as children until you learn to recognise this and move into a more aware way of living. Otherwise you experience the hurts of your childhood all over again and wonder why love and life hurts.  

•       Why is it great that we experience this conflict?  Because of the conflict we become aware and we grow and make new choices.

•       This is as natural selection mechanism. Everything in nature is evolving by overcoming a challenge. This can be seen as conflict or emergence. Conflict that leads to higher levels of organization or emergence is a sign that the psyche is trying to survive, to get its needs met and become whole. It's only without this knowledge that conflict is destructive.  

•       Simply changing circumstances without emergence does not solve the problems. We may change our partners, jobs, houses, but we keep our problems, carrying them forward into the next relationship, house or job. You can do this by undoing the fundamental negative childhood programs  

Plato a famous Greek philosopher in his book “The Republic” has his teacher Socrates recount the allegory of the cave. 

A group of people have lived chained up in a deep cave since birth, never ever seeing daylight and seeing only ahead. Behind them is a partial wall and a fire between the prisoners and the partial wall. There are various statues manipulated by a hidden group (representing all the forces that program and influence us) behind the partial wall that the prisoners cannot see.  

The prisoners see the shadows cast by the statutes move and think they are real. Most people mistake the products of their deletion, generalisation, distortions and projections as real and reflecting reality. They mistake their internal map of the world for the real world.   

These prisoners represent people never asked questions about their lives. They have never realized their mental models were controlling them.

One of the prisoners is freed from his bonds and forced to confront the reality of the fire and statutes themselves. This is what happens when one day you wake up and something shocking happens (you lose your job or someone close to you dies) and you are shaken out of your trance state or default mode and forced to see the world as it is.    

So the prisoner faces pain and confusion initially because his eyes are not used to the light. He then realizes that he is seeing the reality for the first time as opposed to the shadows formed by the fire and the statues, he previously saw.  

He now accepts the fire and statues as most real. This stage in the cave represents belief. He is still unaware that there that there are things of greater reality—a world beyond his cave.

Like the prisoner, the first step to freedom is when you begin to wake up from your dream state and your default modes.

Next, this prisoner is dragged out of the cave into world of sunlight where his eyes are blinded. Initially he can only look at shadows, then at reflections.

Finally he can see what is real: trees, flowers, houses and so on. He sees that these are even more real than the statues were, and that those were only copies of these. He has now reached the cognitive stage of thought. He has caught his first glimpse of the most real things, as they are.

When the prisoner’s eyes have fully adjusted to the brightness, he lifts head and sees   the sun. He understands that the sun is the root cause of everything around him—the light, his capacity for sight, the existence of flowers, trees, and other objects. 

When you who wake up from your dream state and your default modes fully and see the world for what it is, you become fully capable of choosing.

So only true choice is that you can design and build new default programs/habits after you have awareness and clarity. Otherwise even if you hit all your goals and targets you are simply repeating the same old formula. This is the only way to have forward movement in your life. This is the secret that most programs to do not address. So even after you achieve all your goals there is a feeling of lack and inadequacy.

So often we build up things in our mind. And it really comes down to making that one single commitment.  So I let me ask you this today, as we’ve been talking about this, you probably thought of a commitment you need to make right? Maybe it’s a tough conversation you need to have. Maybe it’s an action you need to take. What is it for you? What’s the thing that’s going to move the needle?

 It may push you outside of your comfort zone but listen, all the important stuff happens outside of your comfort zone. If you feel uncomfortable just thinking about this, fantastic!  Embrace it. That’s right were you should be. Nothing really good happens inside the comfort zone. What is the next single commitment that you need to make? Again if you want to live a life by design, if you want to be courageous, not live by default, not be in over drive. These are the 3 questions you need to answer if you haven’t already:

Number one, “What would your ideal life 5 years in the future look like?” 

Number two “If you continued what you are doing now, would you feel fulfilled 5 years in the future?”

Number three, “What commitment will you make now to your ideal future?” 

Now you are clear about the questions you need to answer to live a life by design, the next obvious step is the practicality of implementing this on a daily basis. For example, how will your everyday life change from what you are currently doing? How your daily decisions be different based on the answers to the questions we discussed today? And how will you manage your time so you are giving attention to the things that matter most. It’s all just dreams and wishes unless we take our 30,000 foot view of our ideal life and bring it down to practical, daily actions. 

To make positive change and break the rhythm and routine that isn’t serving us, we’ve have to change. So go ahead and answer the three questions above. I can't wait to see what new breakthroughs you will make.  

One lucky listener that posts a review on iTunes will win a private confidential consultation and coaching with me on discovering your soul’s purpose. I will lead you on a personal journey to discover your unique mind-body psychosomatic map of your life. You will get a detailed report and a personal 45 minute consultation with me that is worth thousands.

On this podcast I’m going to help you design a life that works. So you are able to say yes to the things that matter and eliminate everything else that slows you down. The more clear you can be about how to organize your daily life to support your bigger vision, the more you’ll step into your true potential, stay on track and accomplish all that you want and deserve. Are you ready to make that happen? 

Feel free to reach out to me to ask your questions at AskDrSun.com.   Your life is a gift. Design it. Do what matters and join me each week as we get closer to designing the life of your dreams.  I am Dr Sun. Join me next week on Your Life by Design.