Copyright © 2021 Lee Spirit

“Oh to be a child again”, and jump into a pile of Autumn leaves, or splash in the water! How many times have you heard this expression? Why is it that in adulthood we lose our childhood innocence that was so full of joy and creativity?

Life happens! We grow up and are conditioned by our parents, siblings, peers, teachers, and environment. We change and grow, conforming and contorting ourselves into something other than who we truly are. At our core, we never lose that inner child. It’s always there within reach if we go back far enough, and go inside of ourselves deep enough. We still have access to that innocence, joy, and creativity if we want it. So let’s figure out how to let go of fear, anger, irritability, sadness, and other emotions so that we can be playful again like we were as children.

Childhood Innocence, Play & Joyfulness

I want you to think back to your childhood and recall the happy moments. What made you laugh, sing, dance, or create? What put that twinkle in your eye? When you recall these moments, notice the feeling rather than the event.

When we are born, we come into the world as pure consciousness. Nothing has imprinted us yet. We are born with love, light, and joy in our eyes. One thing I remember while observing children in a classroom was their total lack of self-consciousness. Getting up in front of the class to show and tell about their summer was natural. During the first seven years of life we are imprinted by our upbringings, and from that age on we take on traits and programming that we have brought into our adulthood.

What Destroys Our Joy

The problem is that we often grow up in difficult circumstances that wipe out our joy, innocence, and creativity. Maybe feeling neglected as a child causes us to seek attention from others. Really, we need to pay attention to ourselves with the kindness, compassion, and nurturing we maybe didn’t receive as a child.

These feelings often go unnoticed, until they resurface in our adult interactions with others or in our life circumstances. Even then, we may not realize that we are acting aggressively, seeking attention, or feeling depressed due to feelings from our past that we have never properly dealt with. Our fear, anger, and grief is not who we really are, so to arouse that childlike innocence and be playful again, we must fully acknowledge and feel our feelings from the past.

Click here to read about Finding Simple Joys When You Have a Grieving Heart.

Focusing On What’s Wrong Rather Than On What’s Going Well

The reason we lose our true selves as we grow is that we tend to focus on our faults rather than on our childhood innocence. Doing this prevents us from being aware in the present moment as we are when we are children. Just as we are not our thoughts, we are not our faults. We aren’t born with faults, we learn from the teachers and environment around us. Thoughts and faults are a construct of the mind that we twist and contort into stories that work against our greater good.

Feeling Undeserving of Attention and Self-Care

The problem with this is that we start feeling that we don’t deserve our own loving attention and care. We may be good at helping others, but not helping ourselves. But when we give from a place of lack, scraping the bottom of the barrel, we discover that our helping comes across as being inauthentic. We need to help ourselves, and take care of ourselves first, and give from a place of overflow. We do that by being attentive to the parts of ourselves that need healing. Feeling our own pain and discomfort rather than looking to someone else or something else is key.

Working Through Our Pain

This all means that in order to arouse our childhood innocence, joy, and creativity, we must first work through our feelings of discomfort so that we can move back into a state of present-moment awareness, and the childlike playfulness that we were born with. This does not happen automatically just by acknowledging a feeling from the past. Rather, we must work at it consistently, and give ourselves the unconditional love and care we feel we didn’t receive earlier in life. In effect, we become the parent of ourselves. If we don’t do this, we get stuck in repetitive patterns and habits throughout our lives.

Shifting Focus To What Is Going Well

It’s always good to be positive, but the key thing to remember is that if you’re positive in your outer appearance with a happy, shiny smile, but really, you feel miserable, then trying to be positive is going to backfire on you. What you vibrate on the inside is what prevails, so you must keep your energetic vibrations high. Once you achieve this through a consistent practice of mediation, yoga, or perhaps through creative artistic delights, you can really start vibrating at a high level and attracting more positivity and joy into your life. Just make sure you come to a state where your outer appearances match your internal vibrations.

Be in Nature To Raise Your Vibes and Rediscover Your Childhood Innocence

As you can tell by my many nature photos, nature is the best place ever to rediscover your inner child, your childhood innocence, and your joy in life. Nature is vast and expansive enough that it can allow us to run wild and free like a kid through the fields. It can absorb our pain and discomfort, and it is ever there to support our journey through its strength and resilience. As Michael Brown says in his book, “The Presence Process”…”When our child comes to peace, so do we…”

When we are at peace, we automatically flow into our childhood innocence – That being, a present state of awareness where the creative juices flow, the laughter bursts out of us, and the light of our souls shines through our eyes again! This is a lovely quote by April Peerless: “Children naturally live in the moment and they allow that moment to be what it is; magical and beautiful in every way”. When we achieve this harmony of inner and outer states, we live joyously with radiant light shining through our every word and action.

Click here to Move From Stuck To Joyful.

Finding Your Childhood Innocence in Nature

In nature we can find joy in the simplest pleasures. The warmth of the summer sun on your cheeks, the dew drops glistening on the leaves, the waft of lovely-scented Cherry and Apple trees in Spring, a Yellow Warbler flitting from tree to tree, a frog in a pond…

We often experience these things as children, and then get too busy and caught up in our lives and work. Nature’s healing abilities are often forgotten. But we don’t have to lose our childhood innocence just because we have a busy work schedule. Not only that, but consider the technology that kids are playing with today rather than enjoying these simple pleasures in nature.

Nature’s Healing Properties

Nature is a retreat we are able to access anywhere, even in our own backyards. Immersing ourselves in it creates a heightened sense of joy and peace that gets us through life’s hardships. Give yourself permission to feel elated, to laugh and play in nature. Whatever lights you up, do more of that! Your energetic vibe will get higher, and you will feel more joyful in your day to day activities. When you’re out in nature, pay attention to what you see, hear, feel, taste, touch, and sense. Use all your senses to fully embrace nature’s healing vibes. One of my favourite sounds is crunching through Fall leaves or splashing in rain puddles!

Joyfulness, and childhood innocence will return to you if you allow it and are receptive to it. If you just can’t feel any joy, just notice that. Notice how you feel in your body, mind, and spirit. Then notice how you feel about how you feel. Every emotion is valid. The more you feel what you feel, the quicker it will pass through you, which opens a portal to allow more happiness in.

Lee Spirit is an avid outdoors adventurer with a love for nature, photography, health & fitness, wellness, and spirituality. She helps those who suffer from anxiety & negative thinking to become healthier in mind-body-spirit. Her own personal journey has led her to the  study and practice of mindfulness, health, wellness, yoga, spirituality, sound healing, meditation, and personal development for over 20 years. Get mindfulness, meditation, and personal development tips in her Free Natural Mind Healing Report.