Our Inner Child

We all like to think of ourselves as adults who have control and who make our own decisions. We are the Masters of our own Universe. That is not the case though as we will leap to conclusions, react out of emotion, and say/do things that we later regret. Our whole mental existence is built in layers on top of layers, each one being a little more simple and primal than the next. We will at some point, then, act like our inner child.

Acting like our inner child is perfectly ok. We were all children at some point and this mental coding and condition lives in all of us. To pragmatically say it is of no use or wrong would be egregious itself. If we all have an inner child then we must become aware of it and then use it to our advantage. The inner child is reward driven, emotion driven, lives in the present, and wants all the candy. Think of when we come to the gym - we want health, confidence, muscle, loss of body fat, and we want it now in this moment! Our inner child has gotten us into the door but if all we ever use mentally is our child then we wont stick around. This is where we must learn to use it to our advantage. Built on top of the child condition in our head is the inner adult. This inner adult is the one who tells us we have control, we make our own decisions, and the we control our universe. Use this inner adult to counsel the child, build the child up, distract the child at times when our spirits are down, so that we will continue to come to the gym. We will continue to see victories everywhere with a box jump height, 1 more pull up than before, a 5 pound back squat pr, etc. The inner child is so focused on the candy of the scale - cause that is what society has told us we are to base our worth on - that it will miss everything else. When the toy fire truck breaks down the adult comes swooping in with a toy plane and everything in the child's world becomes fine again. {Quick side note - this presence of the child and its ability to only focus on the immediate is one reason why diets are so hard and people fail A LOT at them.}

Our mind is like a stallion that is rampaging in its pen. The only safe place is not on the ground in the pen but on top of the stallion. We must not let ourselves feel trapped in the pen of our mind as we let it rampage and go left or right. We must learn about ourselves, learn about how our inner child and inner adult work, and then ride the stallion to the place that we want to go. Our inner child is just fine and we should be thankful that our inner child led us into CrossFit Pagosa to begin with.