E16: YOUR INNER CHILD IS CALLING: Producing Genuine Self-Love

Ring! Ring! Have you ever wished you could pull out a road map to direct you to your purpose in life? A map that shows you the key to your happiness and wellbeing? Did you know this map exists within us all, and is easily obtainable through one simple thing… Our inner child! But when is the last time we’ve taken a moment to connect to who this is? Through today’s inspiring conversation, we will work to dig up this hidden gem within us all, to help us connect with our happiness, purpose, and direction in life. Through allowing the child within us to be heard, we will be able to clear out our systems, produce genuine self-love, and reconnect on our path of inspiration, imagination, and purpose. This life is a beautiful opportunity, and so are you! Are you ready to connect? 

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Transcript

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Hello and welcome to In a Spiritual Sense Kids, a podcast for parents, teachers, and caregivers seeking to support their children's emotional and energetic development. On the show, we'll blend insights from neuroscience, child psychology, and emotional awareness as we explore natural ways to help kids understand their own energy, stay grounded, and enhance creativity and imagination. Don't forget to check out our sister channel in the Spiritual Sense, where we dive a little deeper into the metaphysical, working to build your intuition, connect with spirit guides, the paranormal, energetic healing, and more. Join me, Stacy Piagno, where we work to bridge the gap between science and spirit. Hello everyone, and welcome back to Inner Spiritual Sins Kids. I'm your host, Stacy Piagno. Now, this week I decided to share just one more throwback from In a Spiritual Sins, because, quite frankly, it's one of my favorites for healing and helping us all, not just our kids, stay balanced and living in our purpose? This week we are talking about the inner child. Now, I want to start by asking you, have you as a parent ever felt stuck? What if the way you talk to yourself, the way you show up in relationships, and even the things that trigger you today didn't actually start in adulthood? What if some of these struggles, such as people pleasing, fear of rejection, the need to be perfect, or even that quiet inner critic has been with you a lot longer than you realize? In this episode, we're going to explore what it truly means to connect with your inner child and how healing those early patterns can shift your self-worth, your boundaries, your emotional responses, and even your ability to feel joy again. I like to refer to our inner child as the roadmap that we can pull out at any time to direct ourselves back to our purpose in life. A map that shows us the key to our happiness and well-being. And this map, it exists within us all. But when is the last time we've taken a moment to connect with who this is? Through today's inspiring conversation, we will work to dig up this hidden gem within us all, to help us connect with our happiness, purpose, and direction in life. Through allowing the child within us to be heard, we will be able to clear out our systems, produce genuine self-love, and reconnect on our path of inspiration, imagination, and purpose. This life is a beautiful opportunity. And so are you. Are you ready to connect? Hello and welcome back to Inner Spiritual Sense. I'm your host, Stacey Piagno. I hope you all are having a wonderful start to your week. I just got back from a family trip to the mountains and it was so much fun. Work has been so crazy lately with all the holidays coming up, and so having an opportunity to be away and be in nature for a full week was definitely needed. And during this trip, I had a lot of time to sit and think and reconnect with me. And so, thanks to this time, I was really inspired to share today's topic with you guys: connecting to your inner child. Now, the phrase inner child, I've heard it a lot in the spiritual world and in the therapeutic and psychological world, and I never really knew exactly what it was all about or the importance of it until recently. And what I discovered is our inner child is the map to our happiness. It is the map to showing us directly what our purpose is and how to find it. And by working with our inner child, it's not only a map that leads us to all of these wonderful things, but it's a catalyst for producing genuine self-love. And as a byproduct of self-love, we start to see not only the beauty within ourselves, but the beauty in everyone and everything around us. Therefore, we start buying into that, hence producing more of that, which helps create that world, that experience that everything is pure beauty. Life itself is pure beauty. And it does take practice seeing the beauty within yourself and of that around you. But the better you get, you will see that it's a choice, a choice on what you want to place your energy on and what you want to buy into. Because whatever you buy into will become your reality. So the goal for today is to get to a point where you love yourself, where you crush on yourself. I heard that once and I thought it was so cute. And we can use our inner child as a catalyst for this. So to start us off, I am going to place a photo of my five-year-old self here at the bottom of the screen. For those who are listening on YouTube, you get to see Toddler Stacy. And this is actually the first thing that I'm going to recommend to you. I want you to take a minute to go back. Back to yourself before the age of six. And we'll get into why that age in a minute. But I want you to think of a time when you were young. As young as you can think. The goal is before six. So around kindergarten or before you even started to go into school. And I want you to imagine what you were like. What kind of things were you interested in? What was your personality like? How did you like to dress? What was your favorite color? Animal? What were some of your favorite toys or places to play? What was your imagination like? And side note, I know we all had different childhood experiences, and we all come from different backgrounds. And maybe you didn't have a great happy childhood. We'll get into that. It's going to be beneficial. But the point for this moment is to try to connect with a childhood memory or time that made you happy. We want to get back to our roots and connect with who we were as a child. And the reason for this is before the age of six, we are still very closely connected to the spirit world. I think I talked about this briefly in the past, but around the age of six is when we start to adopt the belief systems of those around us, which at this point is probably our family, maybe our teacher we have at school, because we're still pretty young. And if you listened to our past episode on the science behind belief, you know how important our belief systems are. If you haven't heard that episode, it's really deep. Go listen. However, before this age, we are much more pure of heart. We're guided by our interests and we live in the moment. We don't know anything else. We see the beauty of everything. We are innocent. And when we're in this state, everything is bliss. As we grow, however, and adopt all the programming of the smarter, wiser adults, because adults know best, we start to step away from our true spirit. We become aligned more or less to whatever our environment is like, which could be helpful or hurtful. But the problem is that we become shaped by our external world versus our internal spirit. And when we're shaped by others or the situation of our environment versus ourselves, we often lose the most important thing, our imagination. And when we lose our imagination, we lose our ability to manifest, to produce our own needs, to connect with who we are. And this is why so many people struggle, because we lose ourselves. And we get stuck not knowing how to navigate this sometimes very dense environment. We lose our ability to focus on the present moment. We lose our interests, and we don't know who we are or what we want. Therefore, we lose our ability to produce joy. And so we start focusing on the past or the future, which we learned last week causes anxiety and depression. And maybe we start learning how to ground, which again brings us to the present moment, but we're still unhappy. Maybe you learned how to ground from last week and produce all of those negative ions. You're cleaning your system, but you're still unhappy. And now what? You're thinking, Stacy, I've tried all the things, I've listened to your show, and none of it's working. I'm not happy. Well, I think the missing piece is that maybe, just maybe, you've lost yourself, your pure childhood, innocent self. And if we're not connected with who that is, it seems valid that, yeah, we would be unhappy. We would have a hole, an emptiness. So let's fill that hole by reconnecting with our purpose, which is guided by our interests, which is guided by our inner child. It's all connected. Connecting with our inner child is, as I said, not only the map for finding our purpose and moving forward, but it will also help us clear out any past blockages to show us what needs healing so that we can move forward. So start with a five-year-old picture of yourself or around that age. Take a moment to connect with who you were as a child and who you are now. And I want you to ask yourself something. What is something that your child self used to do that you haven't done for a long time? Something that your younger self enjoyed doing. Take a moment, pause if you need. I know when I was growing up, I would always draw. We had this huge piece of plywood and we would throw it down on the floor and we would pull out a big roll of paper, and whether it was my brother or my friends or just myself, I would just draw for hours. And I was really good at it. I was also very active as a child. I was very physically aware of my body. And so I got into sports, and that later led me to becoming an Olympic athlete. And I went on to other amazing things. And it's funny now getting into my spirituality and developing my clear senses and thinking about what some of my most powerful senses are and what my learning style is. It's all connected to my third eye visually, very much has to do with the arts, and kinesthetically, it's connected to my body. I'm a feeler. I like to study movement. And I realize this even more so as I started to connect with my younger self. And so my point is the things that we come into this world loving, or the things that we were good at as a child, show us quite directly what it is we need to spend more time doing or incorporating into our world, into our career, into our purpose. When spirit gives us an interest in something, it's because we're supposed to be doing that thing. It is connected to our direction in life. And I might get on a tangent for a minute, but in our more recent past, when we think generationally of our parents and our grandparents, it seems we've all had different waves of purpose. You know, when the Industrial Revolution hit throughout the world, it kind of feels like people's purpose seemed to, generally speaking, shift from survival mode to providing in a way where you could go out and make something of yourself. We became more independent. We made life easier with machinery and business was booming. We became stronger at production and faster at working. However, the shadow side of this is although it did bring in lots of jobs and financial stability for our families, it also means the purpose of that life is to somewhat live for others. I mean, this is at least a perspective because it was all about providing for our family and making a better life for them. And perhaps that still is your purpose, and that is beautiful, to provide for others. I think, however, the unhappiness creeps in when we are unconsciously living for others, because that trait still flows through us from these recent generations. Or maybe you are of that generation. And now I do live in America, so some of my perspective is based on my environment, and I can only speak for my generation, but I think a lot about my parents and my grandparents' generations, and how a lot of life has shifted from survival to providing to now something a bit different. Because when I think of my generation and a few under me, I think that we can all feel we're living in the middle of another big shift. And the way I see it is that we are now in a place where we have the opportunity of more self-expression. It feels like we're entering into a space where we can not only express ourselves more easily, but we have a better opportunity to connect with who we are and what our needs are, more so than our recent ancestors were able to. And yes, there will probably always be a bit of that I need to provide for my family mentality, especially for parents. I'm not saying that's going to go away. I think this is just important to bring up because a lot of us are subconsciously experiencing the pull of doing what interests us versus the expectations of what others think we should be doing. I think this is a pretty common feeling. And I truly believe the next wave is a wave where we are entering into an age where we are more conscious about the reality that anything is possible. Spiritually speaking, we're shifting into higher frequencies every day, which as a result shows us our world is anything we want it to be. We can create any situation for ourselves. We don't have to do what is necessary to get by anymore. We've been able to bear the fruits of that labor from our ancestors. Generally speaking, I know there are always pockets of diversity that will not follow this. But in order to create a life of anything we want, we have to be able to express ourselves and our needs. And we can't do that if we don't know who we are or if we're living for others. And we need to thank and show gratitude to those who helped us get to this point. But it's time to live for us. It's time to reconnect with who we are and what we want. So start by asking yourself, what is something that your child self used to do that you haven't done in a long time? And spend some time doing that thing. Maybe it's riding a bike, maybe it's art, maybe it's running in the yard or the street in your bare feet. Get dirty, climb a tree. I'll tell you something that will bring back instant nostalgia is to look up old commercials or songs or toys from your childhood decade. Oh, I can get lost in that. One gift I have received from teaching first grade is that I am constantly around young children, and I get to see the world through their eyes, which in return reminds me of how to see the world through my own inner child. And when I'm at work, I'm constantly flooded with all the things I used to love as a kid. You know, I grew up in the early 90s with Lisa Frank and glittery stickers and rainbow colors and gel pins, and the kids always bring in their version of that. And it instantly takes me back. So whatever it is that your generation provided for you, you should revisit it. It's really wild how revisiting something as simple as a glittery sticker can bring back instant nostalgia, which, if you didn't know, triggers the reward centers in our brain, which creates the feeling of pleasant emotions. Studies even show that even though that nostalgic thing from your past may have been a neutral memory, it still has very strong positive triggers on the brain. So we can use nostalgia as a coping strategy to deliberately trigger feelings of positivity by listening to familiar music, looking at old photos, revisiting comforting environments from the past. This is what connecting to our inner child does for us. It releases nostalgia, which releases positive emotions. And in the long run, it will help us connect to our purpose. However, let's look at the flip side. What if your childhood was filled with trauma? Well, when you're ready, the only way to truly clear that wound is to take care of it. The body and the mind are extremely magical in the sense that it can cover something up in order to protect you, and it can shove deep dark memories down to the point where you don't even know they exist. And this does help us move on with our lives temporarily. The only issue with this is that although we might not consciously be aware of them, they do unconsciously affect us. And I do believe in time wounds do heal. I don't always think it's necessary to pull up an old wound just for the sake of doing so. However, usually when we carry traits that don't support our well-being, there's always a root. A root that has usually been buried down deep and has not seen the light for quite some time. So in this case, we need to pinpoint what that root is so we can give it love. And reconnecting with our inner child can help us find this root. Whatever that thing is within us that's holding us back, it's only holding us back because we're not giving it attention. We're not giving it love. So naturally it's going to continue to fester and grow deeper and deeper within our shadows, unless we can find it and shine a light on it. But maybe we're scared of finding just what has grown so deep in our shadows. Maybe we're afraid that when we find it, it will consume us or bring us back to that time of pain. It might for a brief amount of time, but I can promise you one thing. You are stronger than that shadow. Because in order to have a shadow, you have to have a light to cast the shadow. And what we have to realize is that we are the light. And the shadows are only a reflection of what needs more attention. They are not a part of us, but rather a perspective of our experiences that get stuck in us, stuck in the mind. The shadow is a reaction to those areas where we have not shown our light. So how do we get rid of the shadow? Well, we have to find it. Sometimes that's the hard part. And then we give it light. We give it love. We give it attention. Because as soon as we start to give our shadows attention, they start to diminish. They no longer have a hold on us because they are nothing more than a teacher. A teacher that shows us what we need to look at and what we need to acknowledge. And this is how we begin to transmute that shadow into something that is beneficial by understanding that it is nothing more than a teacher. I know I always bring up past episodes, but a good one to listen to that works well with this is the one titled, Is Life Always Working for Us? Which is probably a very common question we think of when we are struggling or dealing with trauma. My perspective of this, which I talked about in depth, is yes, life is always working for us. Because when life seems to not be going our way, this is Spirit's way of showing us what we need through the paradox of what is happening. Opposites show us what we want and need. If you don't prefer something, that is life showing us what we do want through experiencing what it is we don't want. Life itself is neutral. What that means is we have the ability to see any situation, no matter what it is, as something pleasant or unpleasant. Life itself is meaningless until we, through our perspective, give it meaning. This simple law, if understood, is the medicine for healing our wounds. Everything in life is neutral. We determine what exists. This is how we are the creators of our reality. We determine what exists. And when we look at the things in our life that we deem to be horrible or traumatic or painful, yes, they might have been all of those things. But defining it as such will only allow that wound to continue living. If we want to heal that wound, we have to define it in a different way. Because learning to transmute our pain into something beneficial is, in all honesty, one of the reasons why I believe humanity experiences life. I'll get deep for a second, but my philosophy, which I've mentioned a thousand times, is that I truly believe we are here to experience the ups and downs. Of life in order to use these experiences to expand our soul. And when a soul goes through major traumas or injustices, I see those souls experiencing a life of courage and purpose. To be able to come into a life filled with trauma and be able to reconstruct those experiences into something beneficial, I see that life as not only a life of courage, but a life of magic. And not everybody has that opportunity. I mean, what better way to understand the human experience than to be able to transmute the energy of something that is not preferred to something that is preferred? We do this by seeing our shadows as a teacher. A teacher that shows us what needs clearing out. A teacher that shows us what our soul is capable of overcoming. We are capable of overcoming anything that has been placed in our life, or it wouldn't have been placed there. But we have to believe this and we have to confront it in order to transmute it. Let's roleplay for a minute. Let's just say you had the opportunity to know what you would experience in this life before you were born into it. Let's just say you knew XYZ was going to happen and you were going to have to experience that thing. What do you think the purpose of going through that would help you with? And notice I said help you with. Because for every situation, there is always a perspective of duality. Remember, we can see anything as good or bad. And sometimes we have to be creative. But there is always a positive for every situation. And I know we've all been through different circumstances. I can hear some of you yelling about murder, rape, and death. Those are always the most controversial topics. But just humor me for a minute. Although those things are probably on the farthest side of shadow, pain, and fear possible, what that means is the opportunity of outcome from that experience will offer an exceptional amount of light if we are able to finish the transmutation of that experience. Meaning we are able to fully connect with that horrible thing and see it differently. I'll explain a little more. I asked a second ago, what would be the purpose of experiencing a dark situation? One answer is so that you can experience that level of opposition. Because the lower you go, the higher you will be able to climb. The more duality you will be able to experience and understand. It's the study of energetics. Because by comparison, once you are able to connect with whatever that dark thing is, you will then be able to understand that extent of opposition, which is light. And for those who may be living a life such as this, a life filled with darkness, you need to know how purposeful it actually is. For those who are going through difficult situations, those experiences are purposeful. They are some of the greatest gifts because they offer the greatest amount of opportunity, the opportunity to feel, the opportunity to expand your soul much faster than that of someone who's living a life of neutrality. Remember, when we're living in spirit, we don't have the opportunity to feel like we do here. It is a gift to be here and experience the feelings humanity has to offer. And transmuting our pain to purpose is one of the most empowering things we can accomplish as a soul. It is one of the greatest gifts we can acquire because it forces us to produce courage, patience, creativity, love. We don't just learn these things by talking about them. We learn them through the experiences we have. And we learn the most when we make mistakes and we experience the unpleasant. It therefore is a positive thing to experience struggle, to experience pain. It actually helps us. It helps us by understanding how to produce joy through the perspective we hold of any situation. It helps us learn to consciously choose how to give meaning to this meaningless life. Our perspective is the key to healing, and it is the key to growing our inner strength. Healing is no easy task. However, I believe it's difficult because we're not taught how. Healing is nothing more than a shift of attention. That's it. It's a mental shift of our awareness. And once we are aware, it then becomes a choice. A choice of where we want to place our attention. And it takes a lot of willpower to continue choosing a positive perspective. But the more you do this over time, the easier it gets. Because we start to rewire our neurons, we start to shift our energy from dense to light because we become more aligned, more healed. And adding one more thing to the purpose of why we go through unpleasant situations. Maybe it is you who has a purpose to heal your lineage. Have you ever thought about that? Maybe it's you that needed to be born into your family of trauma, born into the situations that you've encountered. Because it is you that is strong enough to heal not only yourself, but your ancestors before you and those after you. Because when we heal ourselves, it's not only us that benefits. When we heal, we stop that trauma dead in its tracks. We put a stop to it evolving into our children and grandchildren. And we start to heal all those who came before us because they no longer carry the burden of pain that they have been holding on to. Through us, they are liberated. And that is a powerful life. And not everybody has that opportunity. So here's my next question for you to ask your inner child. What is something that he or she would be proud of you for? Find an answer for that. And remind yourself of that as often as possible. There's no shame in being a warrior in this life. And I think more often than not, that's the purpose of many who struggle. You're going through your warrior phase. Be a badass and battle through it. See the courage you've been producing all these years through any struggles you may have had, but understand you can leave that behind at any time. As soon as you create an understanding for your pain, it all starts to disintegrate. And so moving forward, one more question to ask your inner child. Is there anything that he or she would still want you to do without fear, without judgment? Remember, when we are living through our inner child's eyes, we do not yet understand fear or judgment. We are free to follow the choices that inspire us. We are free to make choices based from our imagination because we're still connected to it. So go find a picture of your childhood self, place it on the fridge or buy your bed or make an altar for it, and cherish that part of you. Live for that person. Bring him or her back into the world and use this as a catalyst for living a better quality life that is more aligned to you and not the opinion of others. A life based on imagination, creativity, joy, wonder. These are the qualities that we should be conscious of producing each and every day. Liberate yourself from anything other than that and connect with your purpose. Understand that anything you want to accomplish in this life is obtainable. All we have to do is be able to think of what that is. And we do that through connecting with who we are. Allow yourself to look at the world as if everything you were looking at is new. You're seeing it for the first time. Start to connect with the present moment. Focus on what is happening around you in each and every moment because it's all new and it's all exciting, especially with your newfound perspective. Practice experiencing life as a child. See what they see, feel what they feel. Produce that wonderlust feeling through your curiosity of everything. Look at the colors of life around you and work to stay in this space as you continue on this adventure of life. If you enjoyed today's episode, I hope you use it to inspire those around you, and I'll see you next week on In a Spiritual Sense. For those looking to connect further, please feel free to send emails to info at InaspiritualSense.com or hit me up on Instagram where you can find weekly inspiration and updates. I look forward to connecting with you.