Treat Your Inner Child

photo by snapshot of life.

It's usually around this point in a new undertaking | journey, that I begin to lose steam. Somewhere between week one and week two my excitement begins to wain a little and my old habbits|routines start to take hold. The grown up in me resurfaces, and my inner child begins to submerge. This is my modus operandi. I know this about myself and I accept it wholly. But what to do?

Instead of letting my "Grown-up" frustrations, anxieties, or expectation begin to leak in, I treat myself (my inner child) to something. Anything that will start my creative inertia rolling again. (it could be a book, magazine, movie, ice cream sundae, an afternoon adventure to the thrift store... anything).

There are two things to remember here:

1. Just like anything else, being Creative takes work -
   
2. The work has to be fun, or you won't keep doing it
   It may seem like an oxymoron, but Work and Fun don't have to be the antithesis of one another.
   

   Work n. activity involving mental or physical effort done in order to achieve a purpose or result.
   

   
   There's nothing in that definition that says you can't enjoy the mental or phyisical effort. In fact, the more you enjoy it, the more easily you'll achieve your "purpose or result."

This might be the perfect time to go out and buy that inexpensive something that makes you giddy about creating. Or sit down and actually read that book you've been wanting to read for ages.

Remember, you're trying to add balance back into your life - you can't do that if you send your inner child to bed without supper.

Challenge: Continue Taking Time for Yourself & Treat Your Inner Child

• Continue taking 10-15 minutes a day (If you can spare more time, take 30-60 minutes) to "reset" or "reboot"
  
• Once a week, treat your inner child to something he|she desires.
  
• If you don't know what your inner child desires, try this writing exercise:
  
  Complete these sentences:
  
  1. "When I was four (or five, or six, or seven...) I loved to...
     
  2. As a child, my favorite color was... I remember this because...
     
  3. my favorite food, as a child, was... because...
     
  4. my favorite toy was.... [describe it in detail]
     
  5. my favorite misconception as a child was...
     (as an example: My favorite misconception as a child was that you could eat Irish Spring soap, because the commercials showed a rather nicely dressed man in a cable knit sweater slicing the bar of soap with his pocket knife, as if he were cutting a chunk of apple to eat it)
  
  
  Once you start remembering the stuff you liked as a kid, you can start feeding your inner child.