3/4 - Nine Things That Shape Who We Are?

Conscious Parenting Series · Article 3 of 4

In the previous articles, we explored three inner states: Sattva (calm clarity), Rajas (restless drive), and Tamas (heavy disengagement), and how each one shows up in parenting. Today, we ask a more practical question: what determines which state you are in?

The ancient Indian philosophy that gave us the concept of the Gunas also gave us something else: a clear-eyed account of the factors that shape our inner life. These factors are not abstract. They are the everyday realities of food, sleep, environment, and relationship, things you can observe and, in some measure, influence.

Your inner state as a parent is not random. It is shaped, and it can be reshaped.

The nine key influencers

1. What you eat

Our food carries subtle qualities that affect the mind, not just the body. Light, fresh, and natural foods tend to support mental clarity and calmness. Stimulating foods, heavily processed, high in sugar, or consumed in excess, heighten restlessness and emotional reactivity. Heavy, stale, or nutritionally depleted foods contribute to a dull, low-energy state. This is not a system of moral judgement about diet. It is an observation about cause and effect, one that many parents will recognize from direct experience, even if they have never framed it this way.

2. How you sleep

Sleep is among the fastest ways to shift your inner state. Sufficient, regular sleep supports emotional steadiness and clear thinking. Disrupted or insufficient sleep pushes the mind toward irritability and reactivity, the hallmarks of a heightened Rajasic state. Excessive sleep or long periods of low energy can tip toward heaviness and disengagement. For parents of young children, sleep deprivation is not a lifestyle choice but a reality. Recognizing its direct effect on your parenting, rather than attributing your short temper to something fixed about your character, can make a considerable difference to how you relate to yourself on a hard day.

3. Your environment

Our physical surroundings shape us more than we tend to acknowledge. Calm, orderly spaces support mental clarity. Cluttered, chaotic, or overstimulating environments increase inner restlessness. Digital environments are equally powerful: continuous engagement with news, social media, and notifications is one of the most reliable ways to move the mind into a Rajasic state, activated, distracted, and running slightly anxious. This applies to children as much as to adults. The home environment you create is also a nervous system environment for everyone who lives in it.

4. The people around you

The company we keep shapes our inner state, sometimes profoundly. Grounded, supportive relationships tend to foster steadiness. Competitive, high-pressure social environments heighten anxiety. Emotionally draining relationships, whether that is a difficult co-parent, a demanding extended family, or a stressful friendship, can leave a parent running on depleted inner resources. This is not about withdrawing from difficult relationships. It is about noticing the effect they have, and consciously restoring yourself afterwards.

5. Your daily routine

Consistency acts as a stabilizer. When daily life has a recognizable rhythm, meals at predictable times, adequate transitions between activities, enough space for both engagement and rest, the nervous system feels held. When life is dominated by multitasking, constant urgency, and the relentless accumulation of demands, Rajasic energy builds and builds. One of the most underestimated things a parent can do is protect the rhythm of ordinary days.

6. Your thoughts and emotional habits

The mind is the most powerful of all the influencers. Thought patterns, especially chronic self-criticism, anxious comparison with other parents, or loops of unresolved worry, sustain a Rajasic or Tamasic state long after the original trigger has passed. When a parent is carrying a heavy inner monologue of "I am not doing enough," that weight shows up in parenting as over-control, withdrawal, or sudden snapping, even when the intentions are entirely loving.

7. Your breath

This one often surprises people. Breath is one of the fastest available levers for influencing your inner state, because it is the one autonomic function that you can also consciously control. Most adults use only a fraction of their lung capacity. Shallow, rapid breathing signals the nervous system to remain on alert. Slower, fuller breathing sends the opposite message. You do not need to practice formal breathing exercises to notice this. Simply taking three slow, full breaths before walking into a difficult conversation with your child changes something.

8. What is happening in your life

Periods of change, uncertainty, or pressure naturally move the mind toward restlessness and reactivity. Loss, illness, or prolonged exhaustion can pull it toward heaviness and disengagement. Parents experience more than their share of life transitions: new jobs, financial pressure, ageing parents, relationship strain. Recognizing these as temporary shifts in your inner landscape, rather than evidence of permanent incapacity, is itself a form of stability.

9. The family you grew up in

Perhaps the deepest influence is the one we carry from our own childhoods. The parenting we received becomes, in many ways, a template, absorbed before we had the language to question it. A parent raised in a high-pressure, achievement-driven household may find themselves replicating that atmosphere with their own children almost automatically. A parent raised in an emotionally distant home may find presence and engagement surprisingly difficult, even when they genuinely want to offer it.

These patterns are not fixed. They are changeable, but they require a different kind of attention.

The good news

All these factors are, to varying degrees, things you can observe and influence. Some are easier to shift than others. But even the act of noticing, simply becoming aware that you are running on too little sleep, or that a week of difficult news has left you more anxious than usual, begins to create a small but real distance between your inner state and your behavior as a parent.

That distance is where choice lives.

In the final article of this series, we look at specific practices, drawn from the yogic tradition but practical for any parent, that work directly on these nine factors and begin to tip the balance toward greater clarity, calm, and presence.

Next in the series: Article 4 -- Small Practices, Real Change: What Yoga Actually Offers Parents