ME at my very best. 1971 I think.
Love
Devotion
Feeling
Emotion
Don’t be afraid to be weak
Don’t be too proud to be strong
Just look into your heart my friend
That will be the return to yourself
The return to innocence
And if you want, then start to laugh
If you must, then start to cry
Be yourself don’t hide
Just believe in destiny
Don’t care what people say
Just follow your own way
Don’t give up and use the chance
To return to innocence
That’s not the beginning of the end
That’s the return to yourself
The return to innocence
That’s return to innocence
Enigma – 1994
When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. I Corinthians 13:11
This Summer I started a journey into self-awareness in a program known as Positive Intelligence (PQ). It’s based on the book Positive Intelligence by Shirzad Chamine and I was in a cohort facilitated by my friend Lei Comerford. You’ve probably noticed this series Behind the Music contains a lot of personal reflections. PQ is to blame.
The program is way too rich to explain in a blog post, but one concept stands out to me and really helped me figure out some things in my life. It’s the principle of Empathize.
Empathy is our willingness and ability to see a situation from another’s perspective. In the PQ world, this empathy is done out of respect for our inner child. I was encouraged to find a childhood photo of myself and reflect on it.
Right now, some of you are about to delete this post, aren’t you? Hang in there.
In the earlier post in this series Numb, I talked about the inner Judge that all of us have. The Judge is the one that tells us we’re no good and that we’ll fail in anything we try. Well, as it turns out, the Judge has nine Accomplice Saboteurs. Think of your Judge as the Joker from the Batman movies. The Accomplice Saboteurs are like that band of bad guys that follow him and dress like evil clowns too.
Lest you think the Judge and friends are bad, they served a purpose of keeping us safe and guiding us when we were children. They protected us when we were most vulnerable.
As we grew however, those Saboteurs decide to make themselves at home. Even though our childhood issues might go away, those Saboteurs won’t. And their mission is to keep you safe and protected, but now it’s against positive change and growth.
In the program, our childhood photo is an anchor. It represents us before the Saboteurs took over full time. It’s our innocence.
The photo I chose was cropped from a picture of my younger brother and I taken for the church directory at Magnolia Baptist Church. That’s about the time my Saboteurs began to look out for me.
My dad had a very abusive father along with a troubled childhood. On top of that, he suffered from an extreme thyroid condition that caused him to ping pong between apathy and rage. My brother and I always walked around on eggshells trying to avoid setting him off. Most of the time it didn’t work. It also seemed like he got in these moods every Sunday driving to church. That’s why that church photo stands out to me. It was taken shortly after we arrived at church. In the family photo that made it into the church directory, my dad is not smiling.
So, I found myself coping by avoiding anything that brought about the conflict. I did whatever I could to try and make my dad happy. I often ruminated over how angry and frustrated I was. And I vowed to be a success despite him.
Those actions were the Accomplice Saboteurs of Avoider, Pleaser, Victim, and Hyper-Achiever. And they didn’t leave once I was old enough to think for myself, grow up, and move out of the house. They continue to plague me in harmful ways today.
But in that photo, taken shortly before I was really aware of my dad’s behavior, I could see joy, happiness, and more than anything, confidence. That photo represents the best of ME.
And, by understanding the principles of PQ, I learned to go back to that photo and tell my young self that while I had empathy for what he went through, I wouldn’t let the Saboteurs control us any longer. It was on an early morning flight a few months ago that I heard Return to Innocence on my playlist and all of this finally made sense.
That verse above says we’ll all grow up, physically anyway, but it’s also important to not lose touch with that child you used to be. That child is telling you to not be a stranger any longer!