What would your seven year old self do with today? Mine would not know he was supposed to fix everything, and that turns out to be an advantage.
Seven or eight years old, before the indoctrination and the years of being told how things work. What books would he pick up if he knew he could? I spent ten years wanting to be an architect purely because a careers teacher thought I could manage it. Coming at today from my age, there are a few possibilities. Coming at it from his, there are a great deal more.
One thing to try: Ask your seven year old self what they would do about the thing in front of you.
In this episode
(0:00) What I would tell my seven year old self
(3:03) Seven or eight, and what that self actually knew
(4:22) Dad fixes the problems, so I have to fix the problems
(6:50) Without the indoctrination, how would you see it?
(8:58) What books would the seven year old listen to?
(10:57) Ten years wanting to be an architect, because of a teacher
(13:00) Not the only voice, but a voice worth having
(15:29) From his age, how many more possibilities are there?
Support the podcast and join the Weekly Calm: stevenwebb.uk
Thank you for listening.
Steven
The question this answers
What would your seven year old self do with today?
I have spent years being told to heal my inner child, and I have made meditations that do exactly that. Then I sat in the cinema watching the Bob Marley film and realised I have had it the wrong way round.
The heart of it
We keep going back to comfort the child. Try asking them for their opinion on your life instead.
They have not been told yet what is not possible, and that is the advantage rather than the gap.
My parents divorced when I was seven or eight. It was messy. My dad would come to collect me and I would cry, and sometimes he was late, and they argued.
When he left, my mum said something she meant entirely well. Steven, you are the man of the house now. I think she meant it as confidence. What I heard was that I now had to provide, fix the problems, and be the emotional support for my mum and my sister.
At seven you do not know you are seven. You have the complete knowledge of the world at every age, and you also somehow know you have not, which is a strange thing to hold at once.
So instead of reassuring him, I asked him something.
How would you see my life now? What would you do with it?
He does not know about the walls yet. He has not been told. What books would he pick up if nobody had explained which ones were for him?
At about twelve a careers teacher asked what I wanted to be. Astronaut. No, not that, what are you good at. Technical drawing. How about an architect. Do they earn well. Yes. Then I spent ten years wanting to be an architect because a careers teacher thought I could manage it.
In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities. In the expert's mind there are few.
Shunryu Suzuki
Come at today from my age and there are a handful of possibilities. Come at it from his and there are a great many more.
One small thing to try
Ask your seven year old self what they would do about the thing in front of you.
Not as the only voice, because that one alone will get you into trouble and painting on the walls. Add it to the mix. It is a voice worth having in the room and most of us evicted it decades ago.
Questions people ask
What if my childhood was not a happy one?
Mine was not especially. You are not asked to go back and enjoy it. You are borrowing the eyes, not the circumstances.
Is healing the inner child wrong then?
No, and I still make meditations that do it. It is just the one direction we ever run this in, and the traffic goes both ways.
What age should I pick?
Whichever one still believed the whole thing was open. For me that is seven, before I was handed the job. Yours may be earlier or later.
Read along
The transcript
It follows the audio. Press any line to jump there.
zen · spiritual-journey · healing · present-moment
Read the transcript
Hello and welcome to Stillness in the Storms, the podcast that helps
you through difficult times.
I'm Stephen Webb, your host and in this podcast I'm going to
tell you about a moment I had while sat in the cinema watching
the Bob Marley show one Love show film.
And it had really a deep, profound impact because it's kind
of I've got everything wrong for so long.
Psychologist, books, I've read all those other things and coaches
and everybody blogs I've read all had it in my opinion, now the
wrong way around.
And I may not be right, but this aligns more with Zen Buddhism
teaching and all that.
And I just never seen it before.
So I'm going to share that on today's podcast.
Before that, I want to thank everybody for supporting.
I want to thank my new founding member.
Welcome to to the Founding Members Club.
Every week I share a reflective video where I read a bit
from a book or a poem.
Today I released about where I read a couple of my favorite pogroms,
the ones I always go back to after a long time.
They're just giving me a little piece of inner peace really
and my thoughts on them.
And in there we can chat and all that with the comments and all.
And every month and we haven't done one yet, but we're going to
do one at the end of March.
I will announce the day and time tomorrow where we can get together
live and do a live guided meditation.
So thank you everybody.
Just head over to stephenweb.uk and then you can either
go and join the founding members or you can donate on Buy
a Coffee to support the show.
You are awesome.
If you're not able to do any of those things, leave a review or
share the show, that's awesome.
If you're not able to do that, just listen to the show and enjoy
it and just put some headphones on and hopefully I won't
put you to sleep.
So, okay, so I was sat in the cinema.
The film was good.
I enjoyed the film.
So before I say I it wasn't as good as I thought it was going to
be.
I don't want anybody to think to the film was not good.
It was good and I thoroughly enjoyed it.
It's just I knew the Bob Marley Story and it didn't really
add much to it.
And although the music was all the way through it, I think it ended
quite abruptly.
But there was one point in it and I sat there and my mind wandered
as it does and for a long, long time I'd read blogs, I read
books by well known psychiatrist and psychologists and
I use those words interchangeably, they're not the
same thing, I know but I use them interchangeably because I not
always understanding the nuances of the differences but all
these professional people that tells me that I have to heal my inner
self, my seven year old self.
Now then, just to give that some context, my 7 year old self,
7, 8 years old.
I don't know whether they were exactly 7 but for some reason in
my heart I hold it as.
He was seven years old and my parents had a divorce and it was
particularly messy.
I remember my dad coming to pick me up and I used to cry and
he used to be late sometimes and they used to argue and it wasn't
pretty not judging my parents for that.
I'm not my parents, I don't know what each other put each other
through and things like that, you know, what difficulties they
had.
I'm just, from my perspective it was difficult and when my dad
left my mum said some words to me that she meant absolutely well.
She said to me, steven, you're the man of the house now.
Now then what she said was, you know, you're awesome.
And you know, I suppose from her perspective she was promoting
me to some kind of, I don't know, to give me some confidence,
to give me something I don't really know, I kind of know but it's
hard to explain it but what I heard was, damn, I've got to provide,
I've got to do all these things, I've got to fix all the problems.
You know, that's what dad does, he fixes all these problems
when things go wrong.
I've got to do that now.
I've got to be the emotional support, I've got to help my mom,
I've got to help my sister.
And of course when you're seven, you don't know you're seven,
you know you're seven.
But you're an adult, you're wise and when you're 11 you're an
adult and wise.
When you're a teenager you know everything.
So at any given age you have the complete knowledge.
Although you know you don't have the complete knowledge if that
makes sense.
Like now, if I was to say to you, anything in your brain, you've
got the complete of everything.
Deep down, philosophically you know you haven't, but it feels like
you have.
Does that make sense?
Don't if that makes sense or not.
So what was this deep profound thought I had?
So for years I'd done meditations And I've got one of my
inner peace meditations.
It's about healing the child within, giving them comfort.
Now if they're comfortable and loved, it goes into the adulthood
and I'll feel comfortable and loved.
Now I'm not saying that's not true, absolutely that is true.
But I didn't see it from another angle.
So I approach life on a daily basis of no, I don't really, that's
not entirely true.
So, but in general I look at it as that if I can hit all that
inner self, if that inner self can be deeply loved and then I'll
be more loved now and I'll have more self love and I'll be more
vulnerable, more courageous, more complete.
But the reality is with all the knowledge and everything I know
now, I don't see the world through the right lenses of ignorance
and naivety.
And I think we need to sometimes.
So I was sitting in the cinema and I thought about it.
So instead of me always telling my 7 year old self reassurance,
you're loved, you're doing awesome, you're doing amazing, if
only you could see what I'm doing now, what if I said to my 7
year old, how would you see my life now?
What would you do now?
With the ignorance and the naivety and the lack of indoctrination,
the lack of the years of ingrown teachings and all that, how
would you see my life now?
And I thought a 7 year old should in some way see the world
through brand new eyes, see the world as if it's the first time
they've seen it, that the world, everything is possible.
They should have this heart that is like, if I want to do that,
I can do that.
You know, they don't know the art of what's impossible at that
point.
And we spend time as adults trying to convince ourselves of what
is possible.
And we're trying to break down those walls and barriers that have
been put up by so many people's opinions, beliefs of ourselves,
self believes, what self beliefs, self beliefs and all the
other things that people tell us we can and cannot do.
So we're living our lives from the basis of, you know, a predetermined
way in which everybody else has basically taught us what we feel
we should see, how we should see the world, how we show up in
the world, what we can and cannot do.
What would that seven year old do?
Go, yeah, that's not true, I don't believe them.
The truth is the 7 year old doesn't know yet.
So the 7 year old doesn't know about all these barriers yet because
they haven't come across them, they haven't been told them, they
haven't tried them.
So if only we could go back to that seven year old and through all
the innocent eyes and the innocent heart and the courage and
determination of that child, what would they do with their life
now with all these opportunities, all these things?
What books would the seven year old listen to if he could listen
to them?
He didn't know he could.
And what would my life be like today if I approached today within
the same realms of.
I'm not saying you've got to be a naughty 7 year old and walk
on the grass and all those things.
You've got to live within the adult's rules but not the rules that
have opinions and beliefs.
Live within the.
Not living within the limitations of what people have put
on us.
So that seven year old might look up and go, I want to go and
try that.
And our brains goes oh no, someone's tried that, don't do that
or no, let the seven year old try that.
Live your life from that position.
So I was there and I had this tear in my eye in the cinema.
It's like oh wow, let that seven year old loose.
So I want you to think about your childhood.
At what age were you still courageous and vulnerable enough
and naive enough to, to believe that you can literally do
anything you want in life before people told you you couldn't
be an astronaut, you couldn't be all these other things.
I remember going to careers at school and they said what do you
want to be when you're older?
I remember saying I wanted to be an astronaut and I was at a secondary
school, I was about 12 years old and they said no, you're not
going to be an astronaut Stephen, what are you good at?
I don't know, technical drawing.
How about an architect?
What do architects do?
Well, they build houses.
They design houses?
Oh yeah, I could do that.
And then I spent the next 10 years wanted to be an architect because
that was what the careers teachers thought that I could do.
I remember asking how much money they make.
Oh, they make a lot of money.
Okay, I'll be an architect.
And I wouldn't mind being an architect.
I think they're pretty cool.
I think what they create and all.
And in the world of AI and oh, now you can create some awesome stuff.
But that wasn't me.
I'm not saying I can Suddenly allow that 7 year old to be an astronaut,
but just approach that essay or the daily living or whatever you're
going to approach next week from the innocent eyes and enthusiasm
and courage of that younger self when before it was all predetermined
by others that you cannot do it.
And it gave me this wonderful just opening and I wonder how it
makes you feel.
Let me know whatever platform you are on, let me know in the review
or in the comments or if you'd like to email me, go to stephenweb.uk
and there's a link there to my own blog.
There's a link there to buy a coffee, the link there to my other
podcast.
But there's also a link there to message me.
And it'll be an email and it'll come directly to me.
And it'd be interesting to know then I know some people haven't
had the most desirable childhood.
My childhood wasn't that brilliant.
Not just my parents divorce.
And I will say it's not my fault.
I don't think it's my fault anyway.
It might have been, who knows.
But you know, that whole just looking at the world from those eyes
on a daily basis gives us a perspective that we don't have as
an adult.
And I think that perspective is really important.
I'm not saying come from that only voice.
That only voice will probably get you in trouble, you know, painting
on the walls and things like that, doing the naughty things that
children shouldn't really do.
But you can add that voice to the mix.
That younger self was awesome before it was told it wasn't.
And I think we should embrace it a whole lot more.
So that's my podcast today.
A little bit shorter than usual.
I think it's an important message and yeah, what would you
do if you could go back to that most courageous version of yourself
before the bloody adults ruined it?
Oh, adults, adulthood.
Who wants to do all that stuff?
It's a voice that I think you need to hear and it's a voice that
I need to listen to more often instead of.
You can't do that.
Why not?
Go for it.
Just don't go crazy.
Too crazy, you know.
I want to say thank you deeply.
Thank you to supporters, donators.
You keep this.
I say this every single week.
I don't care.
It's really important to say it again and again.
Without the people that donate, this podcast would not exist.
And I go for a lot of changes in my life at the moment with my
operation in December now really making a difference on my
life.
So much better.
I've been diagnosed a little bit now and it's helping me out in
understanding how my mind works and it's awesome and I'm so
excited.
And it's spring here, the sun is out albeit I think we got April
in March which is a bit too early.
It's freaking me out a bit but I'm not going to sit back and not
enjoy it because it's there anyway.
You know all the complaining about the weather is not going to
change it so I'm going to leave you with this one.
Quote by Shunro Suzuki in the beginner's mind there is many many
possibilities.
In the expert's mind there are few.
So if I come at it from my age there's few possibilities I can do.
If I come at it from my 7 year old how many more possibilities is
