Finding direction and purpose from your inner child

It’s only Tuesday as I write this and already this week I’ve been in multiple conversations with my coaching clients about where they’re getting stopped in declaring their goals and dreams for the next stage in their life.

This is such a normal conversation in my coaching work (and in my consultancy work too!). So many of us stop before we even start because we won’t allow ourselves to dream, to declare a goal or a vision for how we want life or our careers to go. We hold ourselves back for many reasons from a fear of failure to not being worthy or good enough to not believing that it’s possible to achieve what we really want to the belief that what we have is “good enough” and we should just be grateful and not want more, to… to… to… I wonder what your reasons are.

But none of this was the case when we were children. None of these things were true then and - I’ll let you in on a little secret - none of them are actually true now either.

We wanted to be astronauts and deep sea divers. We wanted to be explorers and pilots. We wanted to be firefighters and conservationists. We wanted to be doctors and politicians. We wanted to be outside. We wanted to move. We wanted to create. We wanted to read for hours on end… And we wouldn’t hold back in declaring these goals out loud. Until someone came along and told us “that’s not possible”, “be grateful for what you have”, “that will be too hard”, “manage your expectations”… or the algorithm on a high school career counsellor’s software told us what we should become and do with our life.

Or something happened. We had children. We got a job and worked long hours. We got responsible. We crashed. We got sick. We lost a loved one and learned that life can be short. We failed. And we made that or something else mean that we’re better off to stay and play small. To stay still. To strive for contentment and not for joy.

But you deserve joy. What really is the purpose of life after all if not to live the most joyful version of it in whatever form that comes for us?

It’s not just you that deserves joy, your childhood self or your inner child deserves it. And who are you to decide that they don’t get to live their fullest life?

And this is where I see so much potential in us accessing the power, the imagination and the creativity of our inner child to really support us in imagining full and joyful life. Work with your inner child, not against them.

So, the starting place for all of this is to reconnect with our sense of play and adventure. To give ourselves permission to dream. To give ourselves permission to chase those dreams. To recognise that our responsible adult self and our playful inner child isn’t at odds with one another, but can co-exist as the most awesome and incredible team. Their dreams. Your wisdom.

So isn’t it time you asked your inner child “how do you want our life to go from here?” And just see what they say.

Using play and playfulness to open up possibility is one of my greatest strengths as a coach. You can access this by working with me directly. Or through my online self-guided play retreat - Play Boost - you can start to open up to the power of play in your life any time through just one short weekend in the comfort of your own home.