Your inner child represents your true self.
When you are a child, you don’t have the knowledge about how you should behave. So you do what only comes naturally to you, whatever that may be. And you’re doing what makes you happy and progress (as long as no-one stops you).
As you go along, you learn things. Some things are beneficial for you, some build walls between you and happiness.
From what I see around, life-stopping lessons often outweigh the useful ones or at least break even, so the useful lessons only work for you to make the life-stopping ones bearable.
That’s why people talk about how we should unlearn things. Google gives more than 1M results about the topic.
What’s wrong with this picture?
Except the thing you’re spending your whole life learning NOT to be happy? And then you practice it and think “why am I not happy?“?
Take what you know and apply it to what you know you want.
Make your inner child happy!
That can be extremely hard for most (grown-up) people to do. It makes them change the ways indoctrinated in them and go down the path which is characterized as not-the-way-the-things-are-done. What’s more, everyone around them thinks the same way and there isn’t much support they get. Heck, even the support they seem to get is only formal.
It saddens me to see parents force their will on their children and build walls between their children and children’s happiness. “You gotta get a job… a secure job… so you can live securely… and earn your pension.” “You should become an engineer/lawyer/doctor, there are jobs for those professions.” “I want you to be good at <this activity>, it will get you scholarship/enrolment/good college”
Yes, there is nothing wrong with wanting your kids to be safe, be good at something, be great at something, and be able to live a good life. After all, you know better, you’ve went through it all, you don’t want them to make some bad decisions now and then regret them later. I respect and admire that, truthfully and honestly. That’s perfectly good.
However, it’s not that what I’m talking about. The world is changing. It’s not what it used to be just five years ago (I’m old enough to remember that far, right?) and it certainly isn’t what it was 20 or 30… and you’re still trying to live in it the same way.
Too many people I know (and I know them many) has issues with their parent, trying to live their dream, to please them, instead of living their own. Pursuing a dream is tough enough for anyone, so why force someone to pursue someone else’s?
If you don’t know what your dream is, have a moment with your inner child and listen to it, really listen to it. It will tell you 😉
Then go out of your way (and anyone else’s) to make this dream come true. One other thing, make sure you enjoy the process. Otherwise, your inner child isn’t happy, is it? And you don’t live the dream, do you? 🙂
And parents, it’s not just your inner child you should listen to, it’s your real children. They have dreams too. Their dreams most likely don’t align with your’s. It doesn’t matter. What you really want is for them to be happy, isn’t it? Support them. They will become the best in what they love. They’ll make a living of it. They’ll find their nirvana spot. They’ll make you proud.
If there is one thing you take from this article, make it bold one:
Take what you know and apply it to what you know you want.
Now to you. What are you doing to make your inner child happy?