Personal Notes 

A personal note - Dysfunctional childhood?

I have just read the article about poor Britney Spears and how her life is falling apart because of her dysfunctional childhood.

What absolute rubbish.

How come her "dysfunctional childhood" wasn't a problem when she was "rich and famous"? How come only now that she has given up her responsibility for her life is her childhood a problem.

We humans are nuts. We strenuously avoid accepting, taking and exercising responsibility for our lives. We are constantly looking for excuses when things go wrong. We blame our parents, our partner, our childhood, our children, our government, our god, our devil, anything but admit that we are responsible for the choices that we made and the actions that we took as a result of those choices.

The only difference between Britney and the many others like her, and all the other people who had dysfunctional childhoods and families (and that includes just about everyone on this planet) is that some chose to grow up and grow on from their past and Britney and others chose to cling on to and to hide behind their past.

There are many, very public, people who have lived through truly terrible childhoods and are now leading very meaningful, happy and successful lives. The key word here is "through" going through something means that you came out on the other side and it is behind you. It's when you "stay in" that the problems occur.

I get really concerned for the future of our species when seemingly intelligent people, who really ought to know better, make an attempt to justify and defend bad behaviour. As long as this trend continues, and it seems to be getting worse, we will never stop alcohol and drug abuse, we will never stop HIV, we will never stop family violence. Why. Because we let the perpetrators know that, "shame it's not your fault you know, it's all those bad things that happened to you as a child" What we should be doing is letting them know in no uncertain terms that they are being grossly irresponsible and we should hold them fully accountable for their actions.

Just remember this. If you attempt to defend or justify your bad behaviour then it means that you know that you shouldn't have done it in the first place.

Now you might ask what gives me the right to be so critical. Well one day, if I feel so inclined, I'll tell you a story of a "dysfunctional childhood" But in real terms it is irrelevant as I am no longer that child I have grown up and on. I will just tell you this. There are parts of my childhood that I would not give my worst enemy and there are parts of my childhood that you could not buy from me with all the money in the world. All I did was to make a choice as to what I was going to use as my foundation. I think that you know which choice I made.

To live your best life be true to the YOU, that you want to be.

Live up to the reputation that you want to have.