Notes To My Younger Self

I have been doing a lot of self-reflection lately and one of the practices I have been following is working with my inner child. This process allows you to get into contact with the child within you, and understand and embrace her/him. I’ve found this work to be a vital component to healing as it reconnects you with a wounded element of yourself, the child within, and as you begin to reconnect, you can begin to discover (and heal) the root of many fears and insecurities as well as self-sabotaging life patterns.

With this in mind, I want to share what I would have said to my younger, seven year old self, had I known then what I know now, in the hope of helping you to harness your own power so as to live happy and fulfilling lives which make a positive contribution to the world.

1. You live in a world of infinite possibilities. Don’t allow other people’s limitations on what you can or can’t do, be or have, limit you. Other people’s opinions on how you should live your life are none of your business. I have learnt that the world is made up of people who like to complain about things and people who take action into changing the things that they aren’t happy with. As Napoleon Hill once said:

 ‘’Whatever the mind can conceive and believe, it can achieve’’.

2. You can’t always control what happens in life: life won’t always go the way you want it to go and that’s ok. The important thing to know is that even though you may not always choose what happens, you have the power to choose how you perceive and react to it. Life is not always easy and like me, many of you will already have had tough, painful challenges in your life which you’ve had to cope with. Whether you thought you could or couldn’t deal with them, you did or still are and as a result you have the opportunity to learn important lessons that provide you with even more inner strength. The hardest periods in my own life have offered me incredible lessons. They have taught me resilience, how to surrender, forgiveness, gratitude and a host of other things.
3. Understand and appreciate money. If like me, you grew up with a scarcity mind set, decide to get this knowledge for yourself. Teach yourself how to make it, how to keep it, how to invest it and how to create financial freedom for yourself. I am still on this journey myself as I work towards understanding how to make money work for me. Don’t end up being a slave to money, working around the clock from pay cheque to pay cheque. Money is a tool for creating freedom, but first we need to teach ourselves how to make it work for us.

4. Take action every single day, no matter how small it is. It’s so easy to procrastinate, but that keeps you stuck and stops you from taking a step closer to your goal(s). Use your time wisely and start now. If you want to blog, then blog, want to YouTube? YouTube. Love design? Then start designing. Want to run a business, start it now. Doing the things which excite you isn’t something you need permission for or a certain set of circumstances to before you start. Many of you have gifts just waiting to be expressed so start, and if you don’t know how to, seek out people who can help you to begin.

‘’ If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavours to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours’’.
Henry David Thoreau

5. Take responsibility. You and only you have the power to decide how successful and how happy you become in life. Taking responsibility is key. If you make a mistake own it, learn from it, forgive yourself and move on. It’s such a simple thing but we live in a world where people, companies and even governments struggle with this simple principle. Taking responsibility is a character trait which will help you to build trust not only in yourself, but in your relationships in every area of your life.

6. Be kind and be of service to others. I learnt the value of this years ago when I was living abroad and facing a very difficult and traumatic situation. The people I met during this time introduced me to the power of kindness and how to be of service. It taught me so much about life, about myself and the incredible feeling you are blessed with by being of service. It serves you in ways that I didn’t even understand until I myself found myself volunteering and being of service to others.

‘’For it is in giving that we receive’’ –  St. Francis of Assisi 

7. Love yourself and be kind to yourself first. Falling in love with yourself will not only change you but the whole world around you. You start to see everything from a different perspective and accept yourself just the way you are, flaws and imperfections included. The best thing you can do is to be the best version of yourself so that you will never have to be dependent on anyone else to feel happy or loved.

If you could write a note to your younger self, what would you say?