Your Inner Child Isn’t a Great Source of Wisdom, Actually

‘What now?’

The question I, and countless others, have faced when realising that dream is no longer for you.

If I were to go back in time and ask my inner child what they thought of my adult life, I guarantee she would scream at me ‘WHY AREN’T YOU A KILLER WHALE TRAINER AT SEAWORLD!?’ and be utterly inconsolable.

All I cared about as a kid was becoming a Killer whale trainer, and my education decisions were entirely based around this goal. However, childhood me didn’t know what adult me now knows:

Keeping whales and dolphins in captivity is cruel
Working with animals involves mostly cleaning (which I HATE)
Working with animals is often monotonous
Even animal research involves lots of tedious, detail-orientated work
PATIENCE PATIENCE PATIENCE!
Animals stink!

These are all things that meant even pivoting into a career in animal research was not for me

But what now?

All my life I had been understandably told by family, friends and teachers that I was heading for a long career working with animals, and I agreed; but after a zoology degree and a short career in science this clearly was not to be

So what now?

I had not been prepared for or even entertained the idea that my desire for my dream may end, or prove fruitless

So What now?…

…

Here’s the thing.

Kids, although a lot smarter than we give them credit for, don’t have the experience necessary to truly judge what to dedicate your life to. The same goes for your inner child. They don’t always know the best thing for adult you.

I often think about the above situation when I see the common well-intentioned advice of “listen to your inner child”, look my inner child would be beside herself with grief over my life choices if I ever spoke to her! Does that mean that I’m betraying my true self? Of course, it doesn’t. But there isn’t much out there for those of us who found out that our dream wasn’t right for us.

The Post-Dream What now?

A similar phenomenon:

Say it was your dream to become a writer. And you did it! Well done! But now you’re 3 years into your journalism job after completing your degree, and yes you’ve had a great time, but you’ve done it now, and it feels like enough. You’ve still got like 50 years of working life left and you want to find work that will continue to feed your soul… But what?

Writing is part of your identity.

No one prepared you for the possibility that this dream might not last your lifetime.

Are you a failure for not being able to see this dream through to the end of your working life?

Is this a moral failing on your part?…

…

I think you know what I’m going to say, of course, you’re not a failure and no moral failing has been committed on your part.

You’re suffering from a very common thing in our society, it’s called:

Being Human

Humans change.

We all change, and things happen in our lives that change our values and priorities, we get out of experiences what we need, move on and grow.

This is so normal that I am surprised this isn’t talked about more.

…

I call this phenomenon:

Re-Choosing the Call

And it’s what I help people with as a coach.

So now you know that ‘re-choosing your call’ is normal, and you’re not alone, what do you do? I have a list for you:

Talk to other people about it — I guarantee that you’ll find other people who have experienced exactly this phenomenon, and you’ll feel much better knowing how not-alone you are.
What do you enjoy? Or what you don’t enjoy might be more useful — Having a good idea of what aspects of work you enjoy and do not will get you started in deciding what sort of work you could consider. For example, I enjoy being left to my own devices to get a job done, I can’t stand cleaning
Consider your strengths — What are you good at? You might mistake these for character traits, but they’re also strengths. Think about what you’re naturally good at (listening, organising etc) and then what you’ve trained in (writing, graphic design etc)
Read my Book — What would an article be without a shameless self-promotion? But seriously, my book is full of short exercises to do to help you reconsider your identity and what you want to do with that information, and you can find more info on it here: https://www.samanthademattos.com/book

It’s worth bearing in mind that whatever you go on to do after you’ve either completed a call, or come to realise a call isn’t right for you, whatever you’ve been doing can all feed into whatever your new call is. Read on to see me do exactly this:

Human beings are animals that establish behaviour mostly through learning. EVERYTHING is learned, confidence, courage, writing, you name it. Humans learn by doing and through example, and that’s why so many of us struggle when we hit a time that we need to re-choose the call, it’s not talked about so most people don’t know how they should feel or what they should do about this, or feel like they’re broken because it’s not talked about. And this is what I’m working to change.

See how I used the knowledge gained from my scientific background in both animal behaviour and neuroscience to make this connection? You can combine everything in your background with what you want to do next, but that’s a topic for another blog.

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This post was previously published on medium.com.

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From The Good Men Project on Medium

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