Tap Into Your Childhood Aspirations

Throughout your life, you've made many choices, consciously and unconsciously, that have led you to this very moment of being seated where you are, reading this. Many ideas and aspirations of what you could create with your life have entered your mind and your heart until your final decisions favoured some choices over others.

But whatever happened to all of those ideas that got left behind of what you could be, or what you could do? One of the greatest places to restart a stalled creative engine is to start thinking about the paths you thought about, but didn't, walk down.

We sometimes think that because we've moved on, our ideas have moved on too. Often, this isn't the case. When we tap into the aspirations from our childhood and adolescence, we can still find tremendous sources of ideas, insights, and inspiration. We find a source of fuel to bring back an authentic expression of natural creativity to our lives as adults today-personally and professionally. In addition, dusting off hopes from the past almost always sets in motion new desires and ideas for today.

For example, if as a youngster, you wanted to be an archaeologist, visiting a museum during a lunch-hour will likely get your creative engine going again and inspire you to go digging for new ideas to pursue for your current job responsibilities. Waking up your previous aspirations to be a travel agent may get you on a plane more often, and open up new destinations for your mind to travel as well. If being an interior decorator or an architect were desires in your youth, painting a wall in your house, or building a sandcastle on the beach can refresh your love of design and make creating that next presentation for the Executive Committee a whole lot easier.

Walking away from an occupational choice does not mean we ever have to walk away from all of the joys, creativity, passion, adventure, and discoveries inherent in those occupations. And it certainly doesn't mean that we can't go back anytime we want and pick up those gifts to use toward making the most of today.

Try it and see. When you were little, what did you want to be? What related activities can you take from that and put into one of your days this week? A lot of your innate creativity is still held in that aspiration. It's time to go back and get it.