Have You Met Your Inner Child?
Have you met your inner child?
I’ll bet you don’t get asked that question every day.
I was sitting at dinner with a very good friend and his wife on Monday. It was his birthday, and this had been his first day back at work after a wonderful holiday in the Caribbean last week. When he walked into work that morning, he was met by the HR folks to inform him that they were downsizing and his services were no longer required, effective immediately. Happy Frickin’ Birthday! Well, nowadays being downsized at work is almost a right of passage. Gone are the days for most people to work at one company all their lives. But that doesn’t take away the pain of the moment when you’ve been delivered the news that you’re no longer employed.
At first, he was quite upset and had to go through the grieving process. How am I going to support the family now? I was doing such a good job for them, getting their processes running smoothly, how could they not see and appreciate the value that I was bringing to the company? Am I a failure? On and on the thoughts would come and be processed by the mind. We were scheduled to have dinner together that evening to talk about their vacation as they had met Prince Harry while on their trip, and we couldn’t even wait one more day to hear that story. Well the events of the day had them leaning toward cancelling dinner but the idea of spending time with close friends ended up winning out so there we were at one of our favorite restaurants, sharing great stories about the trip and talking about the other event of the day.
At one point I looked at my friend and suggested he go through a very simple exercise. Take the next day and imagine himself as a very young boy and ask himself what his future looked like. “Take the time to find your inner child”, I said. And as I said this I had the realization that this is good advice for me as well, and probably for lots of people.
What is your inner child?
Your inner child has no limiting beliefs. Your inner child doesn’t know how to be critical of himself. He doesn’t get in his own way. Your inner child knows what he wants right now and is able to enjoy what is happening right now. When you step into your inner child, there is nobody suggesting that you won’t be able to have all of your dreams come true. Of course they can all come true. All your relationships are wonderful. You are grateful for everything that you have and you have no regrets. Every day, you are doing exactly what you want to do. You have all that you need in order to live a happy life. You love everything about yourself and there’s nobody else that you’d rather be.
Do you remember that person? Do you remember your inner child?
I think our inner child is always there. It just so happens that he has met some other playmates over the years and some of them are a little less playful. They constantly remind him about “reality”, that he’s not good enough to fulfill all of his dreams and that his dreams are just his dreams, he can’t make them into reality.
My belief system tells me that it’s time to find my inner child. And it’s time to have a one-on-one conversation with him, his playmates are not invited. I want to hear all of his dreams and ideas. I want him to remind me that I really can live my dreams, I can have amazing relationships, and that I can look forward to what I’m going to do every day and that I’ll be able to support myself and my family while doing it. When I start to have thoughts that I can’t see how I’ll ever accomplish that, he’ll remind me that he wasn’t able to bring his doubting friends to this meeting, why did I bring mine? We’ll remember that it takes time, it takes steps every single day in the direction of our dreams that will make them happen. And he’ll also remind me that it takes practice. It took practice to learn our reading, writing, and ‘rithmetic, and it will take practice to live our dreams. But we learned our 3 R’s and we can learn to live our dreams as well.
What event will make you try to find your inner child?
For my friend, this career transition may just be the event that gets him to start looking inside for the answers. For me it was the onset of a chronic condition. For you, it might be one of these or it might be something else. But it seems like we all go through an event in our lives that gets us asking the question “Who am I?” and “Why am I here?”
I believe I have met my inner child and he’s reminded me to be playful. He’s reminded me not to be afraid of anything and to move forward every single day. He reminded me of a Lao Tzu quote “The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” I don’t know how a child would have heard and remembered a quote like this, but I’m trusting the insight. In the amazing journey that I have begun, I’ve found that there is always help to be found to figure out the “how”. As long as I put out my call to help to the Universe, there always seems to be an answer that arrives. Sometimes I think of it myself, and sometimes it comes from some sort of synchronistic event, but it always seems to come as long as I get out of my own way and see the answers that have been presented.
I’m grateful that I have met my inner child and I intend to spend a lot more time with him.
Have you met your inner child?
If you’d like to share an interesting inner child story, send it along to [email protected].
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Namaste, Ken
Written by Ken
Ken Jaques describes himself as a Health Care Evolutionary, Community Builder, and Speaker. True healing begins when we treat root causes instead of just masking symptoms. Diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) in 2008, Ken has experienced many facets of the health care system. As “the only patient who ever lost their hair on this low of a dosage of chemotherapy” – as spoken by his rheumatologist – Ken has been on an amazing journal of self-discovery, a journey of true healing. In his blog, Ken shares stories of how his beliefs have changed over the past few years, and how they are still changing. Is it possible that our bodies can heal themselves? Do we really have to live without hope after we receive a chronic illness diagnosis? These are the types of questions that Ken encourages people to ask themselves as they embark on their own physical or emotional healing journey.
Ken is creating a platform to connect People, Patients, Practitioners, Partners and Promoters, enabling a collaborative effort to help shift the focus on health from I-llness to We-llness. Check out the pilot at www.myHealthyCommunity.ca.
“When ‘I’ is replaced with ‘we’, even I-llness becomes WE-llness” ~ Malcolm X
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