As individuals, we each have unique talents, dreams, and abilities. In order to succeed in the world, we must build our confidence around the knowledge that these special things make up our natural selves and make us different from everyone else. This is the concept of “specialness,” the feeling that no matter who else is out there doing the same thing that you’re doing, what you are doing is absolutely unique, and your dreams are not only valid but also precious. I believe that this feeling of specialness is most cultivated during childhood, when we live largely in the world of make-believe. When we are kids, it doesn’t matter to us that slaying dragons, pretending to fly, or building sand castles is not a good career path. The point of playing is to exist in an expectation-free environment in which to develop our passions and interests. I’m not saying that if we played secret agents as kids we will later grow up to be CIA employees. When we play, create, and imagine as kids, we harness a very real, pure kind of magic that we need in our adult lives to recognize our passions, access our creativity, and become inspired.
Sadly, the more we are prevented from cultivating our “specialness” and exploring the magic of our imaginations during childhood, the harder it is to succeed and find true happiness later. Parents, teachers, and other adults are often the culprits of crushing our feeling of specialness. These are the people who scoff uncomfortably when we ramble about our far-reaching dreams, or who assert, “You’re not that special. Who said you were special?!!” These are the people who may even go so far as to use physical abuse to prove to us that we are not special. What we don’t know as kids is that these authority figures are very much like scared little kids themselves who never got the encouragement that they needed, and they are threatened by the purity of our childhood magic that they no longer have. Unhappiness begets unhappiness. We learn quickly to take on the fear and doubts of our parents and the other adults around us. If we are told that our dreams are too difficult, we believe that. If we are told that our heads are in the clouds too much, we come down to the ground. All of these negative things that we learn in childhood are “specialness” inhibitors, and most of us spend our whole adulthood trying to pick up the pieces of our shattered selves in the aftermath of having our specialness crushed. A lot of the anger and pain we walk around with everyday is a direct result of this, and we resent the people who have their feeling of specialness intact.
The way to reconnect with our “specialness” is to heal the pain and disappointment we feel at having it crushed or taken away from us, and to reconnect with the person we should know best: our younger selves. Do you remember what gave you that spark-like feeling of excitement? It feels like a fluttering in your stomach, or like riding in an elevator when your chest jumps into your throat. What was the source of your childhood magic and where has your “specialness” gone? Remembering what it was like when your childhood imagination ignited is absolutely essential for connecting with a higher form of self-confidence and a stronger capacity to create.
