Do you struggle with embracing your inner child? Is life constantly serving you an overwhelming dose of adulting that you just can’t seem to get a break from? Are you tempted to explode into tantrums or outbursts, but shove it all down deep inside for the sake of appearances?
If you struggle with connecting to your inner child, you’re not alone. Many people struggle with embracing themselves because of societal definitions of adulthood. This often drives internal conflict. And when a person is pressured to constantly repress the childlike aspects of themselves, that child eventually shows up at the worst times.
Our inner child finds a way to show up and show out when we are in conflict with others.
Embracing our authentic selves, often tucked away in our childhood, is a powerful tool for self awareness, healing, and connecting with others. Giving ourselves permission to be, embrace and express our inner child is a powerful way to avoid and navigate conflict. Even more, we all should learn to balance child-like impulses with skills and relationship insights we should all know by the time we formally transition into adulthood after high school. The following happy life lessons from high school are just a few quick tips for navigating conflict and connection with others.
Malice never wins
The first life hack that we should all master by the time we completed high school is that malice always returns sorrow to our lives. Any time we willfully act in any way to hurt another person—especially for the sake of vengeance—it will return weeds and thorns into our lives. It’s tempting to get your lick back. The sweet, instant gratification of get-back can be overwhelming. We all want justice, retribution, or for the score to be even when someone else hurts us. The problem is, however, purposefully hurting another person activates the law of retribution in your own life. You will receive evil when you plant evil. You cannot plant dandelions and expect strawberries. The same is true with our active, intentional harm towards others. It may take days, months, or even years to boomerang its way back into your life. But when it comes back, it will have more force operating against you than when you first served your nasty deed against another human being.
Gossip is a tricky trap that perpetuates conflict
Many people would be amazed how much I loved working in a female-only office. We have all heard the stereotypes of the female-dominated workspace. And there is a lot of truth behind the expectations of drama and scandal wherever these spaces are occupied and ruled by women. But my peace and contentment in that space was very simple. I did not participate in gossip. Gossip poisons the person speaking it and the person listening to it. By the time we are in high school, we should all have a healthy respect for how harmful gossip actually is. Even more, we should practice the care of avoiding it at all costs. The person sharing a juicy tidbit about someone else with you is undoubtedly spreading their tidings about you with others.
Don’t sleep on the ugly duckling
By the time we have made it to our first high school reunion, we realize a powerful trick of nature. The awkward, weird, and unattractive often develop an unassuming power. The popular and cool kids did not have the same pressure or opportunities to develop the way the weirdo kids did. Time and seasons have a really awesome way of revealing the beauty, depth, and creativity of the ugly ducklings in time. The moral of the story is that we should all invest time to discover people beyond their appearances. The people who were sleepers early in life often bloom in a later season when you least expect.
I hope this post inspires you to reconnect with your childhood. For better or worse, the child within remains a very important aspect of the adult we express for the world. When we were not nurtured or trained as children to practice kindness, patience or honesty, there remains hope. You now get to be the adult that takes the time to train your inner kiddo to be the type of person that makes this world a kinder and more connected place to live and thrive in our humanity.
Be blessed and encouraged,
Judge Char
Human connection disclosure: This post is 100% human curated and is not generated by Ai.
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