The secret of childhood.
Once you start looking at what you were drawn to growing up, you connect the dots of self-mastery.
We have all been there. In childhood, I mean. It's the foundation for our lives, and it pays off to look into it on our path towards self-mastery.
The thing is that our childhood is full of secrets to how we relate to ourselves, but we rarely think about them because we have left it behind.
To understand who we are, though, being aware of those secrets can often be a game changer.
The noise of life
I'm referring to the activities we were naturally drawn to when growing up.
To some, they were crystal clear, and to others, a bit more blurred, but rest assure they were there.
We have all been attracted to certain things in our childhood that were an extension of our true self.
Then, as we got older, the noise of life took over, and we committed to that.
In that process, we forgot about the things that occupied our mind as children, and before we realized it, we lost ourselves on the way.
A quirky road
It's probably because I'm middle-aged that I start thinking about these things.
Once you are statistically closer to death than birth, you cannot help wondering what you might have missed so far.
It leads you down a quirky road of regrets and all the way back to your childhood, where you stop and realize that the answer was right there from the very beginning.
You actually did the stuff that's you, albeit a child's version of it, but you did it.
You could have taken it with you and let it mature, but you chose to leave it behind. Why?
Then and now
To fully master yourself, you have to BE yourself. It seems simple, yet it's so difficult.
As a child, however, you ARE yourself. You just don't think about it. You live it by doing the things that are natural to you.
So, the moment you go back to your childhood and take a closer look at it, you realize the connection between then and now.
You understand yourself at a deeper level and more importantly, you allow yourself to do the childhood stuff again in a grown-up version.
On the basis of that, your self-mastery becomes a conscious choice. It defines you and leads you to a wonderful way of getting older.