Apply A Child’s Mentality To Landing Your Dream Job.
Children know how to get what they want, they have no limiting beliefs and live for fun.
Most of us go to work. Statistics show that 30% of our lives are spent working, yet many of us don’t enjoy what we do. Many adults are of the belief that we need to get through the week in order to live for the weekend. We invent concepts such as hump day, to celebrate halfway through the working week. Once we pass hump day we are on the home straight. Woohoo! We spend Sunday feeling glum because tomorrow is Monday. What a way to live.
A Way of Life
People of this mindset may be of the assumption that no one enjoys their jobs and it’s just a thing we do. We enter the rat race young and excited and end up burnt out and depressed. We start to believe that ‘this is it and tell ourselves excuses about why we can’t change our career paths and why we aren’t good enough to do anything else. Why is it that the older we get, the more serious and trapped we become?
The Way of a Child
In contrast, children do not live like this. In general, young children are excited about life. They wake with the sun, they don’t waste any time starting something they want to do and they get excited about the small stuff.
Whilst I crawl out of bed, heading for the kitchen, bleary-eyed in search of coffee, tripping over the cat, my young children are wide-eyed, excited about what the day will hold, giggling at my mishap, already finding the fun in everything.
It’s Time to go back to Life as a Child.
This may sound nuts but I actually do this with some of my clients. When we are children, we are free and creative. We don’t bend to limiting beliefs, in fact, most of them haven’t been constructed yet. This happens as we grow up and we internalize ideas about ourselves and our abilities based on what other people say and do or situations we find ourselves in. As a young child, under 5, we were relatively free of these. This is a time we can learn a great deal from and tapping into this state of being can help us really discover what it is that we want out of life.
Find the Fun
Children can find fun in anything. My daughter recently spent a boring 3-hour car journey playing an imaginative game with a leaf she found. When adults are moaning about the rain, children are jumping in the puddles. Children find wonder in things that we as adults don’t even notice, or that we take for granted. A feather on the path, rolling in the grass, screaming and laughing simply for the sake of it.
Children are creative and free. They want to spend their day doing what they love and they know exactly what that is. As adults, we often lose the ability to truly find our passion. We lose sight of what lights us up and we get stuck in a rut, doing the mundane. We stay in jobs we don’t enjoy because we no longer have any idea what we want to do. We spend less time on activities like drawing and playing that really help us tap into who we are and what we enjoy. For children, finding the fun is easy and they know exactly what activities they want to engage in.
Getting What We Want
Along with knowing what we want to do, comes getting what we want. We all know that children can flip at any point if what they want to do is thrown into doubt, by an adult telling them what they ought to be doing. Temper tantrums are a part of childhood. If a toddler wants a toy, generally they will just take it, even if it’s from another child.
I’m not suggesting this is something we should be doing as an adult. What I am saying though, is that children don’t give up easily on what they want. They don’t dumb down their desires to please others and they don’t just give up when told no. As adults, we are often so hell-bent on pleasing others that we put what we want at the back of the queue. Our needs can become secondary to what we have to do, what others want us to do, and what we do for other people.
Thinking of others and considering the needs of everyone we are involved with is obviously a positive thing, but we can take heed from our children here and remember that our needs are also important. We can say ‘no’, we can change our minds and it’s important that we are happy in what we do.
Letting Go of Certain Beliefs
As we grow, we develop certain beliefs about ourselves and our environment. It’s what helps us make sense of the world we live in and actually it’s vital to our survival. For example, we burn our hands on the kettle and learn very quickly that high temperatures hurt and avoid touching anything too hot again.
However, sometimes our beliefs are built on things that are less concrete and they can become limiting. For example, if you are told constantly by a parent, teacher, or peer that you’re not good at something, it becomes a part of your thinking and is built into the neurological pathways in your brain (more about this in a future article). Whenever a similar situation presents itself, you hold a limiting belief that you will fail.
These beliefs can have a huge impact on our lives. Who we are as a person, who we associate with, what we do for a living can all be impacted by limiting beliefs.
Research suggests that our beliefs about ourselves and the world start to be cemented around the age of 6. This means that young children, don’t carry beliefs that hold them back. We often see this with children when we are presented with a drawing that they are so proud of, but we have no idea what it is. They truly believe they are fantastic artists. In general, children believe they will grow up to be famous footballers, rock-stars, astronauts and haven’t encountered anything yet that makes them question their ability.
In life, we get what we put in. If we have the belief that we can achieve something and the commitment to follow it through, that’s when dreams come true. If we enter a job interview with the belief that we aren’t good enough, subconsciously, this belief causes our behavior to match the belief. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Limiting beliefs are very hard to break. They have been reinforced time and again over years and years and so they need to be identified and worked on. This can involve a lot of inner work, deep diving, and reflection.
Be More 4
I find the enthusiasm and motivation of a child inspiring. We can all learn a lot from our children when it comes to our careers. Children are free, intuitive, and non-compromising on their dreams. What would you be doing differently if you learned to tap into your inner child?
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If you like me style, you may want to check out some articles on a similar topic:
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