This will be a series from a conversation that one of my best friends had with my 17 year old son this past week... Gary Tedder is a supporter, father of Ryan Tedder of OneRepublic, but mostly a very faithful brother in the Lord! He gets that it takes a village to raise a kid and he is helping me initiate my son's - I asked him to write the basis of the conversation down... I added some thoughts as well.

Recovering your identity

We need to recover what we lost in childhood. The recovery process is: collecting all the information you missed out on as a child, so you can conduct yourself responsibly as an adult.  Most people are either locked in the past or looking to the future, and therefore missing out on "the now".  Looking in the rear view mirror is a formula for a wreck.  The windshield is many times larger than the RVM and that's where our focus needs to be.  We have clarity, field of vision and the ability to read the signs along the way (including the warning signs). 

Most people never recover...they just rehearse.  They plug in the "pain" cd or dvd every day and that is all they listen to...old recordings, old mistakes, old traumas, old habits, old behavior patterns, old "junk".  50% of how we conduct ourselves as adults is mapped on our mind, emotions and spirit by the age of 5; 80% by 8 and 95% by 18! 

That basically gives us a 5% rudder to affect change.  Therefore, most of us experience "arrested development"... that point in our lives when we are traumatized or "frozen emotionally", by a harmful/hurtful event, a negative pattern or encounter or series of events, i.e.: drugs, divorce, pregnancy, rape or molestation, death of friend or family member, financial, material (possessions) or physical devastation (cancer or chronic illness or disability).