Every now and then, I thumb through old journal entries and read over them. I fixate over my old thinking patterns, my old feelings, and assess where I am currently in relation to when I expressed those thoughts.

It can be an exhilarating experience or extremely cumbersome.

Someone such as myself, usually goes down a dark path of beating myself up for all the ways I do not see improvement. This is my default way in thinking. Once I get through my pity party, I am gently reminded what I feel isn’t what it is, and so I begin the process of stating what is actually true. Little by little, I begin to see the manifestation of what I stated years ago happening before my eyes.

The imperative question is:
Does my mindset match my goals?

In a conversation with a close friend of mine, she once stated, “When belief and action collide, success happens” (Kimberly Tamsett) and in the moment I found myself profoundly saddened by the very real understanding; my beliefs about myself did not match the success I wanted to see. I couldn’t call myself a writer or poet or artist because I did not believe those things to be true about myself. 

The mind while an interesting place can be scary. It will take the idea or vision from your heart and analyze all the ways it can possibly work while screaming out all the ways it won’t. We are programmed to hear that negative voice louder than the soft cheers to take the leap and go for the thing our heart is leading us to.

Actively working towards a goal or aspiration, means combatting your natural response, means being intentional with what you say, and means believing it more than the doubt.

When perusing old journal entries, I saw the desire but what was lacking was mindset. Over time, my language has and is changing, which has transformed my way of thinking, and therefore doing.  I am now in a place where I own the fact I am a writer, poet, and artist. I own the fact that I desire to partner up with schools to implement a program designed to teach students to get familiar with their voice, their power, and their stories.

I recollect to my own childhood and recall how fearless I was. At one point, I knew I wanted to be a singer. When asked to sing, I’d choose the song that would show my range, and the variety in my voice. Somewhere along the way, I became scared of my voice, told it to be quieter, less proud. Fear settled. All of the audacity I had to believe in myself, as an adult became squelched away. I found comfort in “safe” choices. I stopped taking chances.

Our comfort zone is a different kind of pain. It’s the silent torture of not reaching your goals that eats at you until you are taunted by all the ways you fold into yourself.

That childlike wonder is still there. Under all the ways you have tucked yourself to believe this is the best you can be. It requires unpacking. It requires getting messy. It requires a confrontation to coax out the mini you and let it explore again.

Freedom to discover leads to freedom to self which gives way to freedom to be aligned to your purpose.

Getting in touch with your inner child demands a necessary shedding of all the ways your adult life tells you to stifle yourself. Remember when going to the playground and getting on the swing meant pushing yourself as high as you could to get as close to the sky. It meant soaring into the air and knowing the ground would catch you when you decided to land. Don’t worry about the fall. Relish in it. It’s in the fall you realize you can stand up again.

This is the year of actively changing your mindset by reintroducing your inner child to your adult self and allowing them to work together. You need the fearlessness, the reckless abandon, the deliberate desire to accomplish those dreams you’ve been sitting on.

It begins in your mindset. One of the best ways to encourage your inner child, is through words of affirmation. You’ve got to say it loud enough to drown out the naysaying.  You have to write yourself notes for the days you forget your power. Most importantly, you must remember the tiny steps are in consistency of what you speak over yourself.

Happy reintroducing and reimagining.