A few years ago, while I was giving a talk to several patients at the chiropractic clinic I was working in, I decided to ask the attendees a question. This question underpins a very large part of my philosophy and how I coach the people I work with. I asked them what they used to do, for fun, when they were kids? At first, I received a few blank stares and people looking at one another for inspiration but then, each person spoke up and shared their childhood delights.
After they answered this question, I then asked them another question – do they still do what they used to love as children, today? Obviously in a different form. All of them answered with a resounding NO! I expected and I knew they would all respond this way, because they were all in the clinic at the time with various health complaints. I knew then and know now, that all health complaints, whether genetic in origin or not, stem from early childhood – right at the very beginning of our evolution as individuals.
As time wore on and I focused more on using applied kinesiology to uncover these hidden habits of behaviour, I became increasingly fascinated with discovering who we are, who we could be and why most of us or at least 99% of us, weren’t doing what we wanted to do with our lives. This led me to the following 5 simple steps that I started to use to help my clients uncover their hidden potential, lying in waiting, ready to be explored.
Step 1:
Take a moment to think about being a kid. If you can’t remember yourself as child, go speak to someone who can. Otherwise take a moment to go somewhere quiet, where you can close your eyes, be still and take yourself back. What were the sorts of activities, actions, games or toys did you play with? What did you play with or spend time doing, majority of the time? Write down a list of whatever those were so you can clearly see them in front of you. It doesn’t matter how many of these you write down. It could be 1 or more.
Step 2:
Now that you’ve written down your childhood loves, ask yourself why you liked playing the games you played or why you loved playing with certain toys or dolls or why you loved taking part in certain activities? List a few reasons for each of the previous actions, activities or games. It might be tough to remember, but this is worth taking some time to uncover.
Step 3:
So, by now you’ve written do all the cool, wacky and wonderful stuff you loved to do and the reasons you loved to do all of them. What I’d like you to do, is go through each one of those reasons you wrote down and look for a common theme or thread that could connect all those games, actions or activities to each other. There may be some that seem different but are actually similar. You may have just explained them in another way. Some examples could be: ‘I loved building things’ or ‘I loved creating things’ or ‘I loved fixing or solving problems’ or ‘I loved making my dolls socialise or connect’ or ‘I loved playing house’.
Step 4:
Once you’ve uncovered the theme or themes, go and rate them on a scale from 1-10. 1 is the underlying theme that showed up the most and 10 is the theme that showed up the least. This process is another why of helping you identify what it is that you value. Most of us have forgotten what that is and I’ve found that the best way to identify this value, is to go back into childhood and discover what it was then. The core value hasn’t changed. It’s still the same but you may express it in a different form today. Consider this idea. Water, steam and ice are all made up of the same properties, H2O, except in a slightly different form. Your core value may have been, once upon a time, taking toys apart and putting them back together. That was mine. Today, it is still the same. The only difference is, now I help my clients break apart their patterns of behaviour, so they can learn how to put themselves back together.
Step 5:
In this final step, what I’d like for you to do is take your number 1 underlying theme or thread and ask yourself the following question: ‘Where do I do this every day of my life, in what area of my life and who sees me do it?’ How do you use this in your day to day activities or where do you feel most confident displaying this underlying theme or thread in your life? Your life will always demonstrate to you the parts of you that you’ve forgotten about, overlooked or disowned, in order for you to remember what those are and embrace them so you can go and fulfill your purpose in this world.
Our childhood could be our greatest cure, solution or answer for our current crises. Spend the valuable time you have now, tracing back to who you were in those earlier years, so you can invigorate that once again, in you, today. It is those memories, those playful moments and fun times that actually hold a wealth of knowledge, that might uncover what you could be doing in your life, the dreams you may have for your future and that of the world around you. True change comes from owning who we are and opening a door to allow the world to come in and share in our inspiration.
