A few years ago I completed a personal development program called the Hoffman Process. www.HoffmanInstitute.org It’s a 7 day residential training that identifies and helps break habitual patterns of thinking and behavior that don’t serve you.
The Hoffman is the Rolls Royce of personal growth programs and has been around for 30-plus years. I highly recommend it if you feel like you are carrying “baggage” from your childhood or if you see patterns holding you back. Examples of patterns include insecurity, worrying, perfectionism, recurring risk-taking, arrogance or any behavior that even after you have been told about it you can’t change.
I have found in my work on myself and with clients that what makes these habits so stubborn to break is that they are intertwined with our relationship with our parents or primary care-givers. We unconsciously associate love and acceptance with mirroring our parent’s behavior – both the positive and the negative. In fact, the more painful some of our patterns are, the more they emotionally connect us to our parents. Bob Hoffman who developed the Hoffman Process called this the Negative Love Syndrome.
I bet you can name twenty patterns that you adopted by watching your parents. Chances are you resent them for having these patterns, wished you didn’t and struggle to drop them.
There are a variety of ways to change these patterns. All the approaches begin with identifying the pattern (just listing them) and their source (Mom or Dad) and dropping the negative judgments you have about the pattern, yourself and the loved one that taught you the pattern.
Here is a short video clip I did for Young President’s Organization members thinking about doing the Hoffman Process. In the video I describe the benefit of not