Living on Purpose (LOP)
Statement Workbook
Adapted from D. Amen's M.D. One Page Miracle

In Cell Assignment
Answer the following question to help you shed light on what you value, use another sheet of paper if needed.

6. Reflect on your emotional development as a child in your family. Do you think it has impaired or enhanced your development? In what ways?

Dysfunctional adults tend to have dysfunctional children in most cases. Based on this hypothesis, I would venture to say that I am an emotional retard. That is to say my emotional development was retarded as a child.

Reflections bring up traumatic events early in life where no real emotional sympathy was provided to assist a distressed lil' boy process and understand his emotions, be it when I was around five years old and my dad took me with him to pick up his mutilated brother—who a few days later overdosed and died on our couch. Or when a short time later at that same apartment complex, my lil buddy drank Drano and got rushed off to the hospital. He didn't die until a few months later when he drowned in a pool we used to sneak into.

Dad's drunken rage—fighting with Mom—was always emotionally disturbing for everyone! Grandma dying left a lot unresolved too.

There was no real communication at our house where emotionally healthy parents explained facts of life and tried to help us through distressed confusion. They preferred their kids to go find something to do outside—rather than accept their responsibility to train our young minds to function properly.

My life has always been an adventure as a result of that neglect, I suppose. I am grateful for that freedom, though adventures need to be processed to understand the corresponding emotions involved if they would be life-enhancing experiences.

Consequently, retarded emotions naturally impaired my development in life and it has always been difficult to understand anything that affected my emotions—which in my adventurous life, moving from town to town numerous times—was most everything in life.