How to Identify Your Genetic Programming…and Change It!

06 Jan How to Identify Your Genetic Programming…and Change It!

Photo by Katie Smith on Unsplash

If you have read the previous blog post and can accept the reality that you CAN change your genetic programming, then it is important to start identifying what that is and making new choices in how you think. The easiest place to start is to look at who, what, and how you judge others. We tend to judge others by what we dislike most in ourselves. If you are aware of that, then you are headed in the right direction.

I am choosing to place our judgements in three categories: 1) Physical, 2) Ideological, and 3) Ego. Identifying how you judge others is just the beginning of uncovering your genetic programming. Our judgements are usually programmed into us as we grow up by family, friends, schools, places of worship, and the media. It even starts when we are still in the womb. Parents have conversations amongst themselves, and with family and friends, creating expectations for us long before our bodies are even fully formed. Our consciousness is alive and well even as we are waiting to enter the body that is being created for us. We inherit the family generational karma and consciously or sub-consciously agree to carry it forward. And that can contain a whole baggage load of judgements!

Let’s first try to understand how we view the physical attributes of others. Think about how you look at the people around you when you are in a public space and you don’t know anyone. What is the first thing about a person do you notice? Is it their skin color, their race, their body type (too thin, too fat, too tall, too short), the clothes they wear, the way they walk, their hair style, or some other physical attribute? Are you intimidated by certain kinds of people because of your perceived social class, or do you feel more superior? Do you feel attracted to some and repelled by others? Does the work you do dictate a particular pecking order in society that affects your judgement of others?

I suggest you begin to make a list of everything that you can admit to feeling judgmental about others and look at how that has affected your life. Take the next seven days and write down every time you catch yourself making a judgement about someone or something. You’ll be surprised at how often you do. Where has it possibly stunted your potential growth and how has it changed the direction of your life. You may begin to realize how making decisions based on preconceived beliefs about others actually does affect you in ways you might not have understood before. This is sometimes not easy to admit. I know, in my own life, I held prejudices that I now find pretty appalling. They held me back in developing and growing in some relationships and did not reflect the person I thought I was.

Ideological judgements are usually based in the perceptions around social class, choice of religious worship (or lack thereof), and/or political leanings either liberal, conservative, or radical. I don’t think anyone can say what is the right one for you. That is what you must decide. It is how you judge the actions of others while you make your own choices that is the focus here. The arguments around the ‘haves and the have nots,” the one percenters and the rest of us, which religion is the true religion, or which political party is the best are really irrelevant for us as a spirit. They are simply just part of the story of life and represent choices we can make to grow and learn. But what is important is for you to know and understand where your beliefs originated and whether they are still true for you.

Ego judgements are the most difficult to identify because they tend to be deeply ingrained in our psyche. Having a strong ego is important because that is how we learned to survive early in our lives. The problem arises when ego overrules the truth of what our inner voice is telling us is true for us. It’s when the brain rules our actions and not our heart. I know many people will have a problem with this one because that is the nature of the ego…to never feel like you are giving up control.

The easiest way to tell if you are doing something out of ego is to ask yourself, “Am I doing this out of fear, or am I doing this out of love?” Ego judgments are always out of fear. If you are self-aware enough to realize this, then you can change your judgmental perceptions of a person by admitting it to yourself. There doesn’t need to be a public declaration, unless of course you have said or done something to harm another. That is where we learn the value of humility and forgiveness. Being able to forgive yourself for any perceived transgression is crucial to changing your thinking and rewiring your brain to a better way of acting or reacting.

I will cover additional methods for changing our genetic programming in subsequent posts, so stay tuned!

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