002 - Your Inner Child

This is "Love Yourself Back to life" Episode #2: Your inner child! Welcome to Love Yourself Back to life. I'm your host, Nadia FleuryYou dream of living a successful life, yet you feel emotionally empty. You know something is missing, but you don't know what it is. What if the answer was already within your reach? With each episode, I will help you see life through new lenses, shining the spotlight on your inner world, eliciting awareness and wisdom. My mission is to release what's blocking the flow of your success— to awaken your full potential and love yourself back to life!YOUR INNER CHILDLet me illustrate my point with this story. I'm looking at a child. From where I stand, I cannot tell if it's a boy or a girl. All I can see is the child playing in a puddle of water. Let's just say he's a boy. He's wearing a raincoat and cute rubber boots. He is amazed by how the water moves depending on the weight of his footsteps. He gets the idea to jump in the middle. Mud splatters everywhere, including in his laughing mouth. He spits it out and continues playing, going in a circle in and around the puddle. Looking at this child's innocence is actually a beautiful scene. He certainly lives the moment. However, what if this child is you right now? What if this child is your age? What if when he looks at the puddle, it's like you looking at your tasks? DO YOU KNOW WHERE YOU ARE HEADING IN LIFE?What if his outlook on life with no care in the world was actually how you saw your own world? Living without thinking about where you are heading tomorrow. Yes, I agree it's important to live in the moment. As long as the moment is supporting your goals, no? That is, if you have goals or aspirations in the first place. Going back to the story, what if the child is playing by himself not because he wants to but because something happened to him? What if he chose to isolate himself because someone hurt his feelings? Or because of fear?What if the child is there not because he wants to but because the bus that just came by didn't pick him up?He could have been told he wasn't ready to get on the bus, or he arrived too late and missed it.What we can extrapolate so far from this story is this boy is there because he's waiting for something to happen. ARE YOU WAITING FOR SOMETHING TO HAPPEN?Sometimes we don't act because we feel we are not ready or we are missing something. Like we don't have the degree, the connections, the know-how, or we don't have the right environment. It is true that your willpower is not as strong as your environment. However, it is your responsibility to do something about it. TIME AND MONEY: THE TWO THINGS WE LONG FOR THE MOSTUsually, the things we long for most are time and money. So while we have neither, we stay stuck in that puddle of water. I know how it feels because I was in that puddle for several years.When you live in it, you feel all the reasons why you are "stuck" there are valid. However, know that you always have a choice.FEAR IS WHAT KEEPS US STRUGGLING EMOTIONALLY AND FINANCIALLY You can keep looking at the puddle and say, "I'm stuck, and I don't have a choice," or you can actually say what if I had a choice? What if I wasn't afraid? What if I had all the money in the world? Sometimes, the real reason as to why we stay stuck is because we don't want to revisit deep scars. How many of us bare the pain of witnessing cruelty? Or remember the sick feeling in your stomach, hiding away in the bedroom with a pillow on top of your head because your parents or the adults who are in charge of you were having a very heated argument? NEGATIVE THOUGHTS MAKE US BELIEVE WE ARE FLAWEDHow many of us have been hit as a child - making us feel we were flawed when in all actuality were simply learning just to be? Speaking for myself, I was hit on more than I can count. It wasn't constant, but I remember retiring to my bedroom feeling very sad and hurt. However, the physical pain is nothing compared to the emotional one. Being told you were not worth their time, felt you are a burden on their shoulder or made fun of because you didn't catch a concept quickly, or felt abandoned or left alone for a long time. All these can be the real reason as to why you are still looking at the puddle of mud today.You may say you are truly enjoying what you do right now. Or what if you pretend to be happy to cover up something buried in your chest? And you don't dare go in because just the thought of it is painful. FORGIVENESS IS MEDICINE FOR YOUR SOULFor me, I chose to forgive and let go of my dad's shortcomings. What is the point of holding on to a boulder that stops the flow of happiness into my heart? I chose to do it inside myself by writing a letter telling I forgave him. It was my way to heal. I also know that he didn't have it easy growing up. So I gave him space. Regardless of the situation, your inner child still lives in you today, and depending on how you were affected in the past; it may cause havoc in your life right now.Most of us spend our lives not knowing we have an inner child inside us. Yes, we all have an inner child. Your inner child is the unconscious part of your being. Now you would say, how can you tell? Here are the signs of your inner child: • No concept of time. • Can't plan. • Difficulty focusing on a task.• Just want to play. • Live or talk with spontaneity. • Creative. • Not attuned to other people's needs.• Needy.• Cry to get what you want.• Don't know what you want.• Say silly jokes out of context • Wants to eat or sleep now.• Looking for physical or emotional attentionLET ME ILLUSTRATE WITH ANOTHER STORY. HOW YOU DO ONE THING IS HOW YOU DO EVERYTHINGTodd is this goofball guy at work. No one really knows what he does. He's has an office, but somehow he doesn't seem to do much. He doesn't take life too seriously.You can always count on Todd to make you laugh. Everybody knows that when there's a party, Todd will be the center of the attention. The thing is, Todd does wish to be promoted, but his behavior doesn't give him a chance. No one in the upper management can trust him to take on a project and finish it.In reality, Todd does wish to climb up the corporate ladder, but he feels it's beyond him. He hides his true feelings behind his goofiness. In fact, sometimes, his goofiness comes out of him almost without any control. It happens to me, too, sometimes when I realize I should have said that "silly joke" or when my hugs turn into a tackle. THE REALITY BEHIND THE FEAR OF COMMITMENTSo why does Todd act as he does, or do I sometimes let my inner child out? Sometimes it's because of fear. It can be all sorts of fear. Fear of commitment, being successful, or not being good enough. Todd and I hide our fear behind our goofiness. In the case of Todd, he may be scared of being tied into a "desk" job because of what his friends might say about him. WE CHOOSE OUR ENVIRONMENT TO MATCH OUR FEARJust know that unconsciously we choose our environment to match our fear. So in Todd's case, his choice of friends is no accident. As long as he hangs with them, he doesn't have to think too hard about his life. A LIFE EVENT CAN BE A BLESSING IN DISGUISESometimes a life event comes into play and wakes us up. Let's just continue with Todd's example. His behavior at work and his regard to what his friends might think may change when he suddenly sees his first daughter being born. In my case, I let my inner child out when I needed to release too much weight on my shoulders. HOW ABOUT STIFLING YOUR INNER CHILDI was in an environment where criticisms were the norm. I think I lived most of my life with someone always telling me what not to do. Being a no-box person, meaning, I don't think outside of the box; I don't even have a box; I was considered reckless from the perspective of someone who likes the comfort of being in the box.On the other side, because of my upbringing, being raised on welfare, I grew up fast and "over-responsible." So for the longest time, I stifled my inner child. I will never forget the evening when my inner child took control of me. It was early January, on a cold rainy night. Only ten people showed up at the event. The trainer in question decided not to follow the script and did something more intimate, as he called it. He went on to explain that there is a conscious mind that is at the tip of the iceberg, and there's this huge mass below the surface called the unconscious. And as much as "we" like to think, we make rational decisions. We never do. We chose with our hearts and justified with our minds. LIVING CONSCIOUSLYThe trainer continued and explained that went we live unconsciously; we tend to live our life by default. We don't think much of it and don't expect much either. We live with old unconscious habits. We stay where it's familiar, or what I refer to as keeping the status quo. Wanting to control everything around us. And being righteous, meaning always wanting to be right. When he explained about all these four things, I suddenly understood why I was struggling in my environment.I was fighting the status quo. I didn't like anything that is familiar. I love to experience new stuff. So in a way, my husband, at the time, didn't know what to...