Healing the child within.

You can search throughout the entire universe for someone who is more deserving of your love and affection than you are yourself, and that person will not be found: You yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe deserve your love and affection.

The Buddha

To succeed in this world, to succeed at whatever we wish to succeed at, we need confidence.

How many people have you heard say "I lacked confidence" or "I have very low self-esteem" to some extent this is something that we all suffer from, and why do we suffer from it?  Like a great many things in our life, it goes back to our childhood.

 Sometimes, with the best of intentions in the world, adults, and even our siblings and contemporaries, ‘ put us down’ and this feeling, and the results of it continue to affect us throughout our childhood and into adulthood, unless we realise what is happening, and do something about it!

Children are naturally brave!  Because it simply just doesn't occur to them to be any other way!  Until someone tells them that they can't do something, or even worse that they're very bad at something!  Children naturally believe that they can do everything, we are by nature fearless.

How easy it is to say to a small child that is annoying you, and who is trying to accomplish something which they probably don't even have the advanced motor skills yet to do, "Oh let me do that!  Or leave it alone, you can't possibly do it yourself!"  Quite a harmless remark?  But what we are teaching that child is that they are not able to accomplish what they set out to do, and that adults will be annoyed at if they try.

As a very short-sighted child, (who had not been diagnosed as short-sighted,) and who was always placed at the back of any class because of her height, I found it very difficult to read anything that was written on the blackboard when I was little at school.  Nobody had told me that I needed to wear glasses, nobody knew!  It wasn't until a teacher noticed, that when I was trying to copy things down, I would walk to the front of the class and then back again, before attempting anything, that I was eventually sent for an eye test, and given glasses. (My mother's comments then being, "but nobody in our family wears glasses!") This was when I was 10 years old!  By then the amount of schooling that I had missed through simply not being able to see the blackboard was considerable, and to this day, I have difficulty with many of the basics of education, for example spelling, and simple maths, because I was not in a position to learn them at that time.

One thing I remember very, very clearly at about this time, (actually it was in my earlier school days, I imagine that I was perhaps five or six years old) saying to my new teacher, in the way of an apology, "I'm sorry I'm not very clever Miss Tilcher, but I'm very ‘backward’ you see!"  The teacher who knew me well enough to know that I certainly wasn't backward, was horrified, and asked me why I thought this?  And I said, in all innocence, "because I've heard Mummy telling people!"

I also remember my mother being asked to come into the school, and getting quite a considerable dressing down from my teacher, and being told that whatever I was, I certainly wasn't backward!

The result of this was of course, that having heard my mother telling people that I was backward, I was then being given permission to use this as a reason not to try any more, and even at that young age to except, and expect failure!  Why should I try hard?  My mother said I was backward, there was the reason for it, and why should I not trust my mother?  All that we learn in the early years is from our mothers!

I remember being very certain, when I became a mother myself in later years, to be very careful what I said in the hearing of my son!  And he has never to my knowledge, felt inadequate, or that there were things he couldn't do because he was 1. stupid, 2. lazy or 3. backward!

So even with the best will in the world, (and sometimes but not always out of thoughtlessness,) we plant these ideas in our children's minds about themselves, that are rarely true.  And they may take the rest of their lives to disprove this to themselves.  (If ever)

I believe, that whoever we are, and however happy our childhood has been (or not been) there will always have been somebody at some point in that childhood who will say "you can't do this" or "you can't do that" or "you are really stupid!"  And the sad thing is, whether we like it or not, part of us believes them!

They used to be an old song going about when I was a child, a sort of comedy song, where a man who is just recovering from an illness, was going down the road and he meets a friend, his friend says "my you do look poorly!"  And the man immediately begins to feel poorly!  And so as he goes on he meets many more of his friends, and they all telling the same tale and commiserate on how ill he looks!  By the time he gets where he's going, he's beginning to think that he ought to call an ambulance!  Until suddenly, along comes another friend, who says "My you do look well!  I'd heard you had been ill, but you look fine!"  Which perks him up no end!, and he goes on his way feeling well, and happy, and thinking no more about his illness.  And this is true, this is how it works.  We are very prone to believe what other people think of us, and the only way to get round this, is to develop a cast iron confidence in who and what we are.

To do this, we must live in the moment, we must stop worrying about the future and where we going, we must stop commiserating with ourselves about the past and where we've been.  We must go ahead in total trust, in complete confidence in our ability to succeed in whatever we choose to do.  The certainty is, that if we think like this, we will manifest success for ourselves.

There are no failures, there are only choices!

As all of us, as human beings, have all the tools from the beginnings of our childhood to accomplish all that we need to do in our lifetime.  We have only to believe this, and to believe in ourselves as perfect spiritual beings!

We are all unique.

Spiritually we are all immortal souls.

  If we develop confidence in who we are, and respect ourselves for what we are, others will respect us too!

 Love the unique being that you are!