Earlier we talked about the importance of entering into friendships consciously. Now to another tough question: What if you were raised by negative people? How might that change you?

My folks, as loving and supportive as they tried to be, were fearful and insecure people. I was raised in an atmosphere where we anticipated things would go wrong. Friends would turn on you. Rich people weren’t to be trusted. Employers would toss you from your job in a heartbeat. Politicians were crooked. Other world powers would destroy the USA if they could.

Of course, there’s an element of truth in all of those fears, but we were raised to expect such things to happen, and it changed all of us kids, I am sure. For one thing, I wonder how much it contributed to my chronic anxiety. For another, I sometimes wonder if I’m addicted to drama, as much as I hate it. For a third, when something horrible happens in my world, there’s a tiny part of me that savors it, that wants to fire up the crack pipe of negativity and take a long, slow hit.

A friend of mine who was literally tortured as a child, says with confidence that those hardships made her who she is today. My reaction is: bullshit!! That’s just a rationalization to ease the pain and regret. Who might she have been today if she hadn’t been hurt mentally and physically by her family? What heights would she have scaled with her incredible artistic and musical talents?

Some of us are living our lives in a haze, unaware of our prejudices or the knee-jerk beliefs we adopt to insulate ourselves, subconsciously protective. So here’s the big question: Are you now the person that you were meant to be, or are you the person you were made to be?