Deadbeats, Beggars and Bums: Breaking away from limiting beliefs and the self-fulfilling prophesies of the past

My maternal grandparents had a total of 14 children but sadly two died shortly after birth. My mother was the oldest daughter and she had seven children of her own. Ours was a huge, close-knit family and we all depended heavily on our grandparents for support. All of the children and grandchildren would visit regularly and congregate at our grandparent's house for all of the different holidays and get-togethers and had a goodtime singing, eating and fellowshipping. But we also showed up when we didn't have anywhere else to stay. At one point, my family had been burned out of our home. So we showed up at my grandparent's door looking to be taken in. Several of the other children and grandchildren also took turns going back home when life wasn't working out for them the way they had hoped. Even my grandfather's mother-in-law lived with them for a time.

My grandfather was a hard-working man who bought a large, comfortable home in the white section of our town in Anderson, South Carolina. Then he built more rooms onto his house so the house had about five or six bedrooms altogether. He was proud that there was plenty of room for the family, but at the same time it angered him to see his children and grandchildren so unstable.

My grandfather worked at the local elementary and middle school as the groundskeeper and janitor. He was responsible for doing things like lighting the wood-burning stove to keep them warm during the winter. He also worked at the town's mill. On top of that, he was the head deacon in the church and was responsible for maintaining and cleaning that building, too. My maternal grandmother took care of the 12 children. But at times she labored outside of the home as a domestic.

Both of my grandparents valued hard work and discipline. My grandfather expected his children to contribute their incomes to his household once they were grown and working, for as long as they lived with him. They were raising a huge family in the years following the depression. Times were hard and everyone was expected to pitch in.

Eventually, when the children got old enough to think about getting married and starting families of their own, they rebelled. They wanted to keep their money for themselves so they could get out and make their own way in life. My grandfather became upset and bitter that his children refused to contribute their incomes even though they were living under his roof. And the ones who had left home already were constantly returning, expecting him and my grandmother to provide stability.

With twelve children and their families relying on him my grandfather changed. He'd lash out at whoever was around; telling anyone who would listen that his family was always begging and borrowing from him. We were so needy and useless. Even though he'd set the example of being a hard worker who was frugal with his money, he didn't seem to be able to pass those values along to the majority of his children.

Nothing could stop my grandfather from getting up and going out to work. As he grew older, he developed a physical disability that made walking painful. He eventually began to walk with a limp. Completing his job duties became increasingly difficult due to his physical limitations. But when he would call the children to come help him, quite often no one showed up except for one or two of the girls helping out with paying the bills and bringing the groceries as they got older. As far as he was concerned everyone expected help when they needed it but they weren't willing to offer help in return.

As a child, I remember hearing my grandfather constantly complaining. "They're all deadbeats, beggars and bums," he would grumble.

I do believe that my grandfather really loved us — particularly me because he allowed me to live in his basement when I returned home from college and needed to get away from my father just before a very bad addiction to drugs. But he couldn't get past his belief that we were all deadbeats, beggars and bums and would never amount to anything else. No matter what I did, it was seldom good enough. I loved to sing and was learning to play the piano and I was becoming good at it. But when I would go practice more often than not my grandfather would yell, "Stop that noise! Get off that piano!" He couldn't hear much good from me (or any of us) that countered his deeply held belief.

But constantly drawing a person's attention to his or her perceived shortcomings doesn't help that person to actually change for the better. Most of my grandfather's children and grandchildren continued to demonstrate the traits that he found so repulsive. After a while I stopped feeling anything about him and his tirades. I even stopped feeling an emotional connection to myself. I had no self-esteem, low or high. I became numb.

People can easily become affected by the words and beliefs of those around them, especially authority figures like parents and grandparents and teachers. The Bible says in Proverbs 22:6, "Train up a child in the way that he should go and when he is old he will not depart from it." (NKJV) But this also works in reverse. When you train up a child by steeping him or her in negativity, it's very difficult for the child to break through the limiting beliefs that have been instilled in the subconscious mind. In my family we were taught many lessons of inferiority, which we acted out as adults.

I first began to think about the differences between positive and negative reinforcement when I noticed an interesting trend happening with some of the families who married into our family. When children were born, sometimes the in-laws would become the driving force in raising and teaching the grandchildren instead of people from our side of the family. Over the years, those children grew up to do wonderful things with their lives. They were instilled with an entirely different set of core beliefs and self-talk. In contrast, the majority of people from my mother's side of the family didn't show any high levels of motivation or ambition. My family members were as bright, personable, talented and able to achieve as anyone else. So what happened?

A person's core belief system is a powerful predictor of performance levels and the...