When Anna and I married we discovered pretty quickly that it wasn’t just a person we married—it was an entire family system. My quirkiness, and hers, could be traced to patterns of behavior we acquired growing up. Some peculiarities were pretty easy to spot. Others were more difficult. Even after nearly three decades of life together, the imprint of our families of origin remains ingrained within us. And because there are no perfect families, there is often a lot of faulty thinking buried in those imprints. Quirky behavior is our only clue. The thing is, we can’t often see our own quirky behavior. We need to live out loud in the presence of another to discover it. The ancestor of every action—faulty or healthy—is a thought. How well do you know the ancestors of your actions?

Your thoughts? How have you benefited from others revealing your faulty thinking?