We were born Perfect- How to change your outlook on your inner child!

Today, I had the amazing experience of attending a session at New Thought Community in Fresno and what an amazing place. First of all, the topic I have chosen to write about today has a lot to do with the way we talk to ourselves and some of the stuff I have mentioned before in a lot of the topics I have covered.  Today, I had an opportunity to hear from a different perspective, a little bit about how we talk to ourselves including "Contention" and resolution.  It was a different twist on what I have been trying to communicate with you, so today, I want to speak in a different fashion with you and portray what it was that l got out of today's message.

The Ego-Less Faces

In order to understand some of what I am going to talk about today, I want to start with this.  We are all born PERFECT.  Yes, I said it.. we are ALL BORN PERFECT.  Some of our religious leaders want you to believe you are born imperfect, but in reality if we stop and we look at the virtues of what children represent, we realize we are all perfect in every way at the day of our birth.  I want you to think throughout this post about what it is that kids represent and what it is they have that we as adults don't have.  And See we are going to delve into a subject today that is going to challenge our very existence, the very thread of what we know, the very voice inside our head that questions us, guides us, and tells us we aren't good enough. 

Wait a second..did I just say we have a voice inside of our head that says we aren't good enough?  YES i did... and why did I say that?  Because we ALL DO!!! I don't care who we are, there is a voice inside of you, your ego, that creates pride, and creates situations in your mind that will challenge the very fiber of what you stand for and try to stop you in every direction that may either be good or bad for you.. It will put confusion and pain in front of you to help you navigate this strange thing we call life. 

OK.. so let's stop for a minute and identify what ego is... It is defined in the dictionary as: (Taken from www.thefreedictionary.com) 

1. the self of an individual person; the conscious subject

2. (Psychoanalysis) Psychoanal the conscious mind, based on perception of the environment from birth onwards: responsible for modifying the antisocial instincts of the id and itself modified by the conscience (superego)

3. one's image of oneself; morale to boost one's ego

4. egotism; conceit

So what this is saying is that our "ego" is a vision of ourselves, how we are "conscious" of ourselves, and what we think of ourselves.  This then becomes very telling for our discussion today.  We all have an ego right??? YES, we do... It matters not what you think, you have an ego.  Your ego becomes the inner voice that talks to you in every situation, every event, every moment in life.  It is a corrective and a lot of times harsh voice.  It is the one that can create self doubt but also the one that can create the most confidence within us.  It now comes down to training this "ego" to say the things you want it to say.  So here today, let's take an example.

Since I would say many of you whom read this blog are probably CrossFitters or at least in the fitness arena, I am going to start there.  Our ego, especially in the fitness arena is something that tells us we can do anything.. BUT when we screw up a rep and we get a "no Rep" especially in a situation of competition, it is the FIRST voice that tells us we can NOT do it as well.  In this way, our egos are so destructive to us.  Our ego has a mind of it's own if you will.  It knows how to be positive and negative, but prefers to beat the snot out of us when we make a mistake.  Typically because we want to be better.  In CrossFit as an example, during a workout, Coach yells at you that your range of motion isn't correct- you think to yourself darnit.. I have been trying so hard to get correct range of motion, why can't i get it, why did I mess up, why did that happen... i suck. I'll never get this workout done, I can't because I am too lazy, I am so tired....  blahdee blah blah...  (How do I know this happens... because it has happened to me several times before)  All of a sudden, the workout becomes a mental game in which you have to fight with your "Inner voice" to figure out how to complete the task at hand and figure out how to Accomplish the goal.  In fact, JUST today while I was working out, the workout was challenging me in a way I hadn't been challenged (since yesterday) and I wanted so much to throw in the towel after two rounds, and my ego... you can't do this, and my outside voice I said Come on.. you got this!  Trying to overcome the self doubt inside coming from that little voice trying to make me avoid the pain.



What if, and just what if, we were able to stop in our tracks when something happened and instead of when we made a mistake we dwelled on it for minutes, hours, days, possibly even months, we were able to become unattached to the emotions, forgive ourselves, learn from the mistake, never do it again and move on??  Aren't we now talking about the innocence of a child, the passion they have for life.. an un-knowing of what might be societally unacceptable?   You see, it is the stigmas, the challenges and the values brought forth by yes, our parents, that help us to become the adults that we are.  The up-side is, that most of us turn out ok.  But that doesn't change the fact that we get in the way of ourselves more often than not.  We are fearful, our own worst critic and more often we jump on ourselves faster than anyone else ever could.  What this means is that our point of contention when we make a mistake can become an internal battle in which we struggle and maybe never recover from.  The challenge is how to we reduce our time of contention and enter into resolution quickly??

This has to do with training our mind how to speak to ourselves.  We have to realize first that we are human.  According to Alan today, he uses three steps- Forgive, Thanking, Loving.  In my world when I make a mistake, what I do is reflect, commit to change and continue.  Both are very similar in philosophy, just a difference in how we go about it.  The whole goal is to minimize the reflection time until later.  or in the case of forgive, to forgive as quickly as possible.  We have to be able to stop ourselves in our tracks and forgive ourselves for making a mistake and not getting where we want to right away.  You have to realize, forgiving ourselves for maybe not performing as well as we want at a competition or even in life, is ok.. did we give it our best shot?  did we give everything we had to the moment, because truly all we have is this moment..  Were we doing everything we could to get the best out of the situation rather than putting in less than full effort.  So what happens, is we talk to ourselves and fill our head with lies about ourselves.. tell ourselves we will never accomplish what we want.. and so it becomes our reality.  This is when you absolutely have to reverse that talk and say you CAN do whatever it is Rather than you can't!

This brings me to the topic of your inner child.  I know this is all very brief.  It is hard to touch on so many things while typing away and to keep you interested... yes.. I saw that yawn!

If you think about it for a moment, we all want to be children again, to enjoy and know joy like no other, to never know and understand what it means to react, but just to be able to Create within our tiny little minds what it is we want out of life.  When was the last time you just used your imagination to imagine you were a fighter pilot, or a princess, or a robot, or the president?  When was the last time that you did something that you didn't beat yourself up over it?  This is the essence of your inner child saying.. let me out.. I don't want to be judged, but have so much fun that it hurts.  I want to have fun because I was born perfect and along the way I learned challenges and fear and obstacles.  Somewhere along the way I heard that I wasn't good enough, or that I wasn't loved, or that I was never going to be a rock star.  And it shattered my dreams.. I just want to go back to the days when I never knew the impossibilities of life, but only the possibilities.  When I could make a wagon fly, or I could make my hand into many different animals and laugh and giggle and just enjoy how life happens.

How amazing would your life if for just one day, you let yourself be a kid again?  Remember we have kids for a reason.. to remember who we were when we had fun.. and to remind us of what life could be like if we just let go and became unattached and had fun!

Describe for us in the comments an experience you had in which you felt you stifled your inner child and what did you do to overcome that?

more to come!