The power of recovering your inner child
Life is a very serious thing. If we don’t live according to laws, there are consequences. If we don’t abide by social standards, we seem to be different and stick out. We do things to please others, to fit in, and we don’t always pursue things for the right reasons.
At the end of the day, we all still play the status game whether we want to or not. But what if we did something for the sake of doing something, for the sake of discovery? A child does that, they build legos to create something new and don’t care what anyone else tells them about it.
They are willing to fail, they are willing to invest without knowing the outcome is certain. But we have to play it safe, we have to be careful, we have to be responsible.
Or do we? Because within all of us lives our inner child, the little scientist who is creative, and unafraid of failure. That is our creative spirit, the one that lets us dream and be visionaries, imagining a better world, a brighter world.
The status that children seek is of creating things no one else can, with the reward of being the most authentic version of themselves, something we still all crave.
With that said, here are 4 actionable ways to recover your inner child.
1. Try a conversational form of meditation
Learn to be at peace with having discussions with yourself. Learning to say your thoughts out loud and going back and forth with them, is a great way to deepen your understanding of yourself, and some of the things you may not realize about yourself. Inner child will speak to you, only if you learn to listen to it.
2. Do things for the sake of doing those things
Children build legos, go outside, and enjoy the world around them, not for validation or because they want something out of it, but because the mere action of doing something is their reward. It’s the story of the man who loves to walk versus the man who forces himself to walk 10,000 steps every day.
3. Sit in your emotions
Emotions cannot be your master, they should not control you. But do not ignore them, for they are important to understand, and to properly feel, you have to be willing to step into your emotions and understand them. Emotions are simply a feedback mechanism, not something naturally good or bad, but how we choose to react and process them determines their effect.
4. Do things that inspire creativity in you
Do things that make you wonder about the world, that bring out the best in your imagination, that want to make you think about what’s possible. See, children are extremely curious and fascinated by the world around them, and we should be no different, and be naturally curious.
