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SUCCESS
The Success Patterns You Inherited (And Didn’t Notice)
Who are you? Your experiences and your family’s narratives and legacies contribute to your identity. Your ancestry contains individual traits and forces that have been inherited over the years. It also carries the fights and victories of your forebears and older family members.
Identifying your origin shapes how you see yourself and relate to others. Moreover, it determines the way you live, do business, and interact in relationships.
This article provides insight into the reasons for the identity-shaping effects of family history on personal growth. Moreover, it shares some effective and easy ways to start your genealogical research.
The Psychological Roots: How Ancestors Shape “You”
The roots of your identity stem from your ancestors; hence, family history is a psychological element.
Knowing these roots makes it easier to understand one’s own responses, feelings, and behavior in relationships. It is not just about the past; it is about applying that insight for the sake of growing now.
Inherited Values and Behaviors
Different from physical traits, aspects such as beliefs and behaviors are hard to notice. Family culture, traditions, and unwritten rules are from family stories. They play a significant part in your personality development today.
For example, you can learn a strong work ethic from your immigrant grandparents. You may have a conservative risk attitude due to past hardships. Again, a deep respect for education or responsibility can run in families.
Discovering these inherited characteristics helps you acknowledge your reflexes and beliefs. Such a realization enables you to select the inheritance that you want to keep and the one that you want to transform.
This is a very important move in the process of emotional maturity and personal development. The knowledge of yourself can theoretically lead to a better understanding of others.
Epigenetics
Research demonstrates the possibility that the experiences of our ancestors are still present in our genes. One of the domains of epigenetics is to explain how negative factors like stress or trauma can gradually alter our genetic makeup.
For instance, the children of suffering parents might possess a different way of managing stress. Today’s stress responses may stem from ancestral experiences. These experiences include events like famine, war, or persecution.
Awareness of potential epigenetic inheritance can help you get to know yourself better. It could give a direction to your mental and physical well-being strategies.
Just to mention, one study proved that the children of Holocaust survivors show stress-related gene variations. Knowing these connections can guide better choices in health, relationships, and stress.
Family Stories and Self-Conception
What stories your family tells are the very ones that greatly influence your identity. Would you say that your family are resilient survivors? Hardworking pioneers? Victims? Such narratives not only tell how you perceive yourself but also determine your expectations from life.
Though suffering can be a source of power, it can also be a source of fear or insecurity. On the other hand, tales of triumph can either motivate or discourage one to live up to the high standards of the people around them.
One can hardly avoid getting emotionally connected with the story one narrates about one’s family when one is conversant with that family’s story. When you know your family’s story, you can regard your ancestry and create your own.
Navigating Your Lineage: Tools for Discovery
Tracing your lineage shifts reflection to action. It is a means of linking the past via dots to account for your current self. The process does not only involve data gathering but also revealing context, emotions, and meanings. This is the way history transforms into genuine insight.
Oral Histories and Heirlooms
The most authentic source of information remains old relatives. Conduct interviews by asking them open-ended questions to get a better insight into their life experiences and values.
If they are okay with it, then record the interview sessions for future reference. Monitor the usual themes or topics that come up. These topics show the beliefs and traits that shape your family.
Besides those, you should not leave out letters, pictures, recipes, or heirlooms. All these are emotional artifacts of the family.
For example, a quilt may represent thrift; a tattered letter may show hope, loss, or endurance. These things not only link you to history but also to the values that can help your personal development.
You can count on online services such as MyHeritage to guide you in the search for historical documents. Furthermore, those services enable you to create vast family trees. These tools can’t just give you answers; they prompt reflection on your past and future.
Interpreting Records
Finding documents such as birth, marriage, and death certificates is so necessary. Census records will also be of considerable assistance in your genealogical research.
However, their deeper value is in the context they reveal. Where were your ancestors born? How did they earn a living? What were the neighbors like? Did they move often?
Recognizing such patterns reveals your family’s strength and flexibility. Awareness of your forefathers’ jobs can provide a broader perspective. It can also encourage you to value your present work ethic and inventiveness more.
Adding these facts to your family tree adds to the history of immigration and resilience. By connecting past challenges to your own life, you develop gratitude. You also cultivate empathy. That builds a sense of belonging, emotional well-being, and leadership.
Transformation through Heritage: The Self-Discovery Payoff
Digging into your roots can turn curiosity into power. Learning your family history gives you insight into family patterns and strengths. It shows you the struggles of your ancestors and yourself.
Awareness as Empowerment
Recognizing family patterns helps you respond better in all situations. These patterns include conflict styles, financial habits, and relationship dynamics.
Realization of the fact that some of these traits are inherited helps you master your decisions. This clarity results in improved choices. Besides, it also consolidates bonds among relatives and develops emotional strength.
Applying the Lessons in Life
The existence and experiences of your forefathers can be a great source of motivation for the choices you make. If your family went through tough times, you can take courage to fight the next difficulties. You might even go after significant aspirations or look for transformation.
Knowing the predisposition of taking risks passed on to you by your forefathers can even determine where you should work or what business to invest in. Being aware of the emotional tendencies in your family can be a communication skill booster as well.
In addition, it strengthens the trust and makes the relationships among people more amicable and conducive to development.
Strengthening Foundations
Observing the hardships and victories of your relatives provides you with a feeling of continuity and inclusiveness. This bond draws power from within you and lessens the experience of being alone.
In addition, it provides you with a new angle from which to view your own difficulties. Strengthening your position in this legacy, you acquire confidence and purpose. Moreover, you get the opportunity to pass it on to the next generations.
Conclusion
There is no doubt that by tracing your family history, you would get a better understanding of yourself. You find out the places of origin for your traits, values, and habits.
This is an aid in your preparation for difficulties and the reception of chances. You will be making the right decisions in the areas of life, career, and connections.
It is said that the discovery of every story would add to your power. Dig into the past by looking at old photos, interviewing relatives to get their memories, or drawing a family tree.
The benefits of each finding are not only that you get to know yourself better, but also that you get to recognize your potential.
The post The Success Patterns You Inherited (And Didn’t Notice) appeared first on Addicted 2 Success.
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The Prowler in My Mind: Learning to Live with Depression
“There is a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in.” ~Leonard Cohen
When depression comes, I feel it like a prowler gliding through my body. My chest tightens, my head fills with dark whispers, and even the day feels like night. The prowler has no face, no clear shape, but its presence is heavy. Sometimes it circles in silence within me. Other times it presses in until I don’t know how to respond.
In those moments, I feel caught between two choices: do I lie still, hoping it passes by, or do I rise and face it? Often, I choose lying down—not out of paralysis but patience. Sometimes the only way to coexist with the shadow is to rest, to surrender for a while, to let sleep take me. And sometimes, when I wake, I feel a little lighter. Not free of the prowler but reminded that it is possible to live alongside it.
Carl Jung once wrote, “Everyone carries a shadow, and the less it is embodied in our conscious life, the blacker and denser it is.” I know this to be true. The more I try to push my depression away, the heavier it becomes. But when I bring awareness—even reluctant awareness—its power weakens.
The Shadow as Teacher
The shadow is not only my enemy. It also serves as a teacher. Depression forces me to face the parts of myself I would rather outrun: shame, grief, fear, anger, discontent. But it also carries hidden truths. Jung suggested that the shadow holds not just what we reject but also forgotten strengths and possibilities.
For me, the shadow’s message is humility. It reminds me I am not in control, that I can’t polish myself into perfection. It pushes me to listen more deeply—to the pain I carry and the struggles I see in others. It insists that healing doesn’t come from pretending the darkness isn’t there. It comes from being willing to see it.
Buddhism and the Prowler
Buddhism gives me another way to see this. The Buddha taught that suffering doesn’t just come from clinging to what we crave; it also comes from turning away from what we don’t want to face. That turning away is called aversion.
When the prowler moves through me, my instinct is always to turn away. I want to push it out, distract myself, pretend it isn’t there. But each time I run from it, the shadow grows stronger.
In meditation, I practice staying. I sit and breathe, whispering silently, “May I be free from fear. May I be at peace.” I’ll be honest, sometimes these words feel empty or even silly. They don’t always lift me. But saying them creates a pause—a moment of willingness to stay instead of running. The prowler doesn’t vanish, but it softens a little under the light of compassion.
Creativity and the Shadow
I’ve also discovered that my documentary work—filmmaking, writing, teaching—is only authentic when I acknowledge the shadow. My camera becomes a mirror. When I pretend everything is light, the images feel flat. But when I allow the complexity of shadow into my seeing, the work has depth.
When I sit with people to listen to their stories, I often sense their shadows too—grief unspoken, fear beneath the surface, contradictions in how they see themselves. I can recognize those shadows because I have lived with mine. Facing my own shadow allows me to meet others with greater truth and compassion.
To create honestly means letting the shadow into the frame. Without it, there’s no contrast, no tension, no truth.
Caregiving as Light
One of the greatest gifts in my life now is caregiving for my ninety-six-year-old mother. These small daily acts bring moments of unexpected reprieve.
I remember one morning, bringing her a simple breakfast—just toast and tea. She looked at me and smiled, her face lighting up with gratitude. In that moment, the prowler loosened its grip. It was such a small thing, yet it fed the part of me that wanted to live.
Playing her old-time tunes on my Gibson mandolin does the same. When I see her foot tapping or hear her hum along, something shifts inside me. Caregiving sheds light into the darker places of my heart. The simplicity of preparing food or sharing music reminds me that love and service are stronger than despair. These acts don’t erase the shadow, but they bring balance, showing me I am more than my depression.
Feeding the Shadow, Feeding the Light
I’ve come to see that I sometimes feed my depression. Not on purpose, but through worry, anxiety, and rumination. Each time I circle the same fears, I am handing the prowler a meal.
And then there are other times when I feed something else. The words of meditation may feel hollow, the wolf story may sound idealistic, but the simple acts are real: making my mother breakfast, playing her a mandolin tune, writing with honesty, or even just breathing one steady breath.
It reminds me of the well-known story of two wolves: A grandfather told his grandson that inside each of us are two wolves. One is fierce and destructive, filled with anger, envy, fear, and despair. The other is peaceful and life-giving, filled with compassion, hope, and love. The boy asked, “Which one will win?” The grandfather replied, “The one you feed.”
For me, both wolves are real. The prowler and the peaceful one live side by side. I don’t deny my depression. I know it is part of me. But I also know I can choose, moment by moment, which one I will feed.
Presence with the Shadow
The prowler still comes. I suspect it always will. Some days it circles silently like a vulture. Other days it urges me to lie down and surrender. And sometimes, when I wake, I feel a small relief—a reminder that coexistence is possible.
This is what presence has come to mean for me. Presence is not escaping into light or denying the dark. Presence is staying with what is—the prowler, the heaviness, the caregiving, the fear. It means breathing with it, resting with it, even sleeping with it, without running away.
Both Jung and the Buddha point in this direction. Jung says we cannot become whole without making the darkness conscious. The Buddha says we cannot be free if we turn away in aversion. And I have learned that I cannot create or care for others or live fully if I refuse to face the prowler inside me.
So I continue step by step. I breathe. I stay. I rest. I create. I bring my mother breakfast. I play her mandolin tunes. I feed the peaceful wolf. I coexist. The shadow still prowls, but I am here too—more awake, more human, more present.
About Tony Collins
Tony Collins, EdD, MFA, is a writer, documentary filmmaker, and educator whose work explores presence, creativity, and meaning in everyday life. His essays blend storytelling and reflection in the style of creative nonfiction, drawing on experiences from filmmaking, travel, and caregiving. He is the author of Creative Scholarship: Rethinking Evaluation in Film and New Media Windows to the Sea: Collected Writings. You can read more of his essays and reflections on his Substack at tonycollins.substack.com.
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The Anandita: Lombok’s Most Desirable Beachfront Villa for Rent
Imagine waking up to the gentle sound of waves in your very own luxurious and private beachfront enclave, the kind of place where stars and CEOs recharge at. This oceanfront property isn’t just another island getaway, it’s a sanctuary of pampering and quiet yet refined luxury.
The five-star Anandita villa is set on the picturesque white sand Sira Beach, situated on the north coast of the Island of Lombok across from the Gili islands. What makes the Anandita villa truly extraordinary is its combination of private beachfront access, its attentive in-house staff including your very own private chef, and its luxurious amenities.
Luxurious Accommodation & Facilities
This vast luxurious property includes a fifteen-thousand-square-meter coconut grove garden with verdant lawns, and sits next door to Lombok’s Sire Beach Golf Club. At the Anandita, guests can unwind and enjoy the stunning twenty-five-meter free-form swimming pool and beautiful landscaped gardens that blend seamlessly into the powder-white beach.
The Anandita boasts comfortable and generous living spaces, including a majestic living area pavilion with high vaulted ceilings as well as a stately dining pavilion with comfortable table seating for twelve guests.
With four large standalone bedrooms, all featuring their very own en-suite bathrooms, the villa is extremely spacious and ideally suited to accommodate large groups including families, while also providing all modern comforts and privacy.
Several features set the Anandita apart from and above most luxury villas on the market. In particular, the property includes its very own in-house spa pavilion where guests can unwind during their daily massages or yoga classes upon demand.
Guests also often have the beach almost entirely to themselves, creating a sense of exclusivity and tranquility.
Exceptional Service and Dining
Exceptional service and world-class dining are synonymous with this one-of-a-kind villa. These attributes make the Anandita one of the best luxury beachfront villas in Lombok for rent.
The villa is fully staffed with an in-house chef, waiting staff, housekeepers, service staff, gardeners and security guards.
Dining is a highlight, as Anandita’s Chef and dining staff master both Western and Asian cuisines, often featuring fresh local produce and seafood, while also catering to the specific needs and requirements of each guest.
Alfresco dining by the beach or within the garden grounds of the property also makes for an unforgettable experience. The staff is frequently described as warm, attentive, and always ready to go above and beyond, whether organizing birthday celebrations, fireworks, or special dinners including with freshly caught lobster.
This dedication to details and personal touch of the staff ensures a comfortable and enjoyable stay for all ages.
The villa’s secluded yet accessible location, with direct flights from Bali, Singapore and Melbourne, makes the Anandita the perfect retreat for those looking for the ideal beachfront villa for rent in Indonesia. Upon request, helicopter transfers are also available for guests traveling to the villa from Bali.
Activities and Experiences
Beyond the villa’s tranquil setting, guests can enjoy a world of adventure, including a wide array of water sports and cultural excursions.
The Anandita villa manager can arrange private speed boat charters for sunset cruises, or for guests to go diving with the giant sea turtles that inhabit Lombok’s most breathtaking dive spots around the Gili Islands and Sira Peninsula.
Guests can also use one of the villa’s many sea kayaks to explore the neighboring coastline or paddle out to the nearby reef with its own impressive coral and flora.
The villa also includes a volleyball court on the grass lawn and a pool table, while guests can also partake in a round of golf on the neighboring 18-hole course that sits just a few steps away from the villa grounds.
The more adventurous holidaymakers can also discover some of Lombok’s hidden gems including jungle treks to tucked-away waterfalls and even excursions to the famed Mount Rinjani volcano.
The Anandita villa is the ideal luxury holiday getaway in Lombok for families or groups of friends, with an abundance of space and activities to keep everyone entertained and pampered. To book your stay at the Anandita villa, head over to the villa’s official website or Instagram page.
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The post The Anandita: Lombok’s Most Desirable Beachfront Villa for Rent appeared first on LUXUO.
Subtle Elegance: The Quality of Living in Milan’s Neighborhoods
While Milan’s international prestige is anchored in the famous Quadrilatero della Moda and the artistic center of Brera, these areas also represent the peak of the city’s tourist activity. For many Milanese, the definition of a superior quality of life has shifted to the elegant neighborhoods right outside this frenetic core.
In these locations, the standards of luxury are different, less based on proximity to global brands and more on tangible benefits like peaceful surroundings, reliable local services, green avenues, and exceptional residential architecture. It is exactly this preference for a more subdued and comfortable lifestyle that stimulates interest in the luxury properties and homes for sale and rent in Milan found in these more traditional, upscale districts. These areas provide a sense of balance and livability that the city’s commercial and tourist zones inherently lack.
The Elegant West: Historic Architecture Away from the Crowds
A prime example of this elevated residential living can be found just west of the city center, following the axis of Corso Magenta and expanding into the Pagano, Vercelli, and Buonarroti neighborhoods. This district, which largely took shape between the late 1800s and early 1900s, is defined by its impressive, stately buildings, often featuring refined Art Nouveau details and meticulously maintained internal courtyards.
The atmosphere here feels private and elegant, supported by its proximity to Parco Sempione and the presence of established professional offices and long-standing neighborhood shops. Living in this area is a conscious choice, usually made by those who want to easily access to the city center but at the same time appreciate tranquility, ample living space, and an authentic elegance that is distinct from Milan’s busier tourist zones.
Between Comfort and Urban Nature
The eastern part of the city offers a similar experience, particularly within the neighborhoods of Monforte, Risorgimento, and Indipendenza. These areas are also predominantly residential, maintaining a distinct character thanks to their elegant buildings and a remarkably orderly street plan.
Key factors like the beautiful tree-lined avenues, the proximity to the Indro Montanelli Gardens, and the availability of excellent schools make them a favored option for professionals and families. In this context, luxury is more about the tangible quality of the surroundings and the chance to live in an elegant building, which frequently offers amenities like a concierge, all without sacrificing the simple convenience of walking to the central Piazza San Babila.
The Importance of Neighborhood Services
The appeal of these areas extends far beyond the impressive quality of the buildings: it is deeply connected to the complete ecosystem of services that supports the community. Living in neighborhoods like Pagano or Monforte means having practical access to the “15-minute city” concept, a lifestyle that has actually been the norm here for generations. This means having a classic pastry shop, a local artisan, a neighborhood movie theater, and a high-quality market all within a comfortable walking distance.
This way of life, which perfectly combines the security and privacy of a large apartment with the exceptional convenience of having everything nearby, defines the true essence of Milanese residential luxury. It is a luxury that is measured by the ease and quality of daily living, not by a need for outward demonstration.
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The post Subtle Elegance: The Quality of Living in Milan’s Neighborhoods appeared first on LUXUO.
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