Most grown-ups are children in adult bodies. They may have lived 20, 50, or 80 years but the thought, behavioral, and emotional patterns habituated in childhood continue to run their lives.
When we’re born as healthy human beings, we have the innate ability to experience the complete range of human emotions and to express ourselves fully and spontaneously. Absent is the fear of judgment or rejection, or feelings of unworthiness or shame. Then the life conditioning process begins. Our interactions with our caretakers and environment determine how we think about ourselves and others, and the behaviors that are most likely to get our needs met. As dependent little beings, our very survival relies on our adaptation to the overt and covert norms of the family system into which we are born. These patterns of thought, behavior, and emotion are continually reinforced and become habit, developing into what I call the default operating system.
When living life from our default operating system, we are paying little to no attention to how we think and behave. We’re on autopilot, at the mercy of the patterns of perception and protective behaviors originating from childhood, that often sabotage the outcomes we seek in our adult lives. Here is an example of a client I’ll call Julia. “Julia” grew up in a family in which, as a very young child, she recalled frequently being criticized for talking too much. She remembered being very curious and outgoing as a little girl, but by the time she entered kindergarten, she had learned to avoid criticism and feelings of shame by keeping her thoughts and feelings to herself. She spent her childhood being compliant and taking care not to say anything that might evoke others’ judgment or rejection. The resulting thought pattern or core belief, “If I express my true thoughts or feelings to others, I’ll be judged or rejected”, and the behavior of withholding her thoughts and feelings from others became part of her default operating system.
Julia’s withholding behavior made sense in her family growing up as a way to avoid criticism and the emotional pain of shame. However, it wreaked havoc in her adult life. Unable to express—or often, even to identify—her true feelings and needs, she repeatedly found herself in situations in which she felt fearful, frustrated, or resentful. She had married a man who was very critical and angry, and often found herself “walking on eggshells” to avoid upsetting him. She was unable to set boundaries with others, and often felt overwhelmed and depleted. And although she maintained an outer cheerful and helpful persona, inside she felt resentful, depressed, and stuck.
Julia was 42 when she began her Illumineering work with me—a fully grown woman who was still run by the conditioned patterns adopted as a little girl. This dynamic—which is more commonplace than rare—is what I refer to as being stuck in the child ego state. And the transformative work of updating old patterns of thought and behavior—the default operating system—to align with adult needs, situations, and desired experiences and outcomes is what I refer to as the process of adulting.
To begin adulting, you must first do the work of uncovering your conditioned self (the person you learned to be). This is foundational work I do with every client, and which I write about in my book. This entails a deep understanding of the type of family system in which you were raised, the core beliefs you internalized as truths about yourself and the world, the behavioral patterns you habituated in response to those beliefs, and their impact on your childhood, youth, and life as an adult.
One common effect of our life conditioning is the erosion of our innate wholeness—the diminishment or disappearance of the parts of our true selves that were not allowed to remain or further develop in childhood. I call these our lost parts. Identifying your lost parts and the concrete actions to reclaim and develop them provide the roadmap for creating greater inner balance, well-being, and sense of wholeness in your adult life.
Shifting from operating on autopilot from the child ego state to a mindful, habitual existence in the adult ego state is complex and challenging. Since your conditioned self has been running the show for many years (and the longer its tenure, generally the harder the work), this transformative process requires commitment and patience. However, this approach is very effective in not only gaining a deep and concise understanding of your past and its impact, but in actually producing tangible and lasting change—namely, the habituation of a new default operating system that is aligned with your authentic, adult self, and that produces the results you seek in your life today. Aligning your thoughts and behaviors with the experiences and outcomes you want is what I call living deliberately, versus living by default. This shift does not happen overnight, nor is it easy. This explains why so many adults remain stuck in the child ego state, which can result in chronic conflict, depletion, overwhelm, depression, anxiety, and—over time—even physical illness.
Living from the adult ego state—adulting—is living with awareness and mindfulness. It’s cultivating an inner observer who is loving and compassionate, has our authentic interests at heart, and helps us make conscious choices that serve our lives today. In addition to the work already described, adulting requires development of strong interpersonal skills (effective communication, emotional maturity/intelligence, and conflict management) and development and utilization of our intuition—the communication conduit between our higher and conscious selves, that serves as an effective barometer for sensing when we are on or off course in our lives.
The process of adulting—especially as a grown up—can be an arduous undertaking. Evaluating where we are in our lives and how we got there can be uncomfortable and painful. But the rewards make the journey worth it. Living in balance with the person we were born to be is much easier and joyful than expending our precious life energy on self-protection and managing chronic inner and outer conflict.