8 Ways To Reclaim Your Childhood

Life passes by and light speed and before you know it; you're sitting in some cubicle, pounding out reports, fighting through traffic, and plopping on the couch, your brain numb to the stresses of everyday life. However, you don't have to be a victim on the rat race, here are eight great ways to reclaim your childhood and keep your life fresh and fun.

1. Lighten up and laugh will ya!
For God's sake, stop taking life so seriously. There is absolutely no need to over think and over analyze it. Life will go on regardless of what happens to you in the course of a day. So don't sweat it. Everything works out in the end.

2. Get moving!
One of the biggest problems for most adults is the time to exercise. But, it is vitally important not just for your physical health, but for your mind as well. There have been a ton of studies to the benefits to physical fitness, but one of my favorites is that when I go tobogganing with my son, my body isn't aching all over after a few trips downhill, and I actually don't feel like I'm going to pass out after climbing back up.

3. All you have to do is dream!
Don't let being a grown up make you forget that there is still a whole life ahead of you, and you can choose to change your direction anytime you like. As we age we learn to become cynical and pessimistic. However, as long as we have dreams we have hope. And quite frankly... I'd rather be hopeful than not.

4. Reward yourself.
In this day and age, where costs keep rising and our pay stays the same, there is no better time for us to reward ourselves for work well done; goals achieved, and just plain being a good person. Splurge and spoil yourself.

5. Get a hobby.
So what do you do with your spare time? Do you go home and watch TV all day? Do you spend all your time cleaning the house, running after your kids, and running errands? You don't have to do it all you know. Find sometime during your day to spend time on the things you want. Learn a hobby, take a course. Whatever you do, don't do anything. You'll become resentful.

6. Be uninhibited.
When we were young, our world was our oyster because we believed we could be anything we want. Fear and experience have taught us to be cautious. Perhaps too cautious sometimes. Sometimes you need to just say, "Screw it! You only live once!" That is the mentality you have to adopt. While you plan for your retirement, don't forget to live for the moment too!

7. Put down the laptop, turnoff the smartphone.
Being connected is great for so many reasons, but there are times where you just need to be in your own space, unavailable to every call and email. Remember, when we were kids, there was only the telephone and the postal service. We got by then; we can certainly get by for a day, or a weekend without the distractions and stress being connected can bring.

8. Pig out every now and then.
One of the things I love about my son visiting is that I eat everything I shouldn't. Piles of ice cream, pizzas, candy... you name it. And do you think I fell guilty about it? Not a chance! I'm not going to pass up the opportunity to have fun, by being all "adults" about it! Let yourself go every now and then. Have a good time and stop worrying.

Feeling young starts in your mind. It's how we view ourselves, that is reflected into the lifestyle and habits we adopt and become. We don't have to be burdened with the stress of life.We can only control what we can, and everything else will work itself out. No matter what your situation in life, we all have a reason to reclaim our childhood.

When we were young, the world was our oyster because we believed we could be anything we want. Fear and experience have taught us to be cautious. perhaps too cautious sometimes. Sometimes you need to just say, "Screw it! You only live once!" That is the mentality you have to adopt. While you plan for your retirement, don't forget to live for the moment too!

Elliot Zovighian is a life coach, speaker, author, blogger is the owner of EZ Lifestyles, a life coaching company from Toronto, Canada. His daily blog offers articles and advice on such subjects as life skills, work and career, relationships, parenting, featured videos and more. http://www.ezlifestyles.ca/

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Childhood Stories Can Be Clues To Your Next Career

When you were seven years old, what did you want to be when you grew up? Believe it or not, taking this nostalgic journey back to a simpler time may be exactly what you need to begin the career defining or career transition process. Why? Because your instincts at that age while play acting, before the "shoulda, woulda, couldas" began to impact your choices (hint - someone else's influence) are the first clues to our natural career interests and skills we must use to be happy.

When I was seven, like many of us, I wanted to be a teacher. I used to force my four year old brother to sit down at a "desk" while I doled out the assignments and used my precious blackboard to "teach" him the lesson for the day. My desire to become a teacher stuck with me through college. After I got my Bachelor's Degree I took another year to become a certified secondary education teacher (required in California). I was 25 at the time and once I completed my course began to look for teaching jobs. Like today, jobs were not plentiful, but I also learned that, while I enjoyed teaching, I did not enjoy teaching high school students. They were too close to being my peers at the time. So I gave up on teaching until I entered the Vocational/Career Counseling field at 29.

My desire for teaching never left me, however. What I realized is teaching takes many forms and does not always take place in front of a classroom. I love to lead workshops, to give talks, to lead groups, and to teach through my counseling. From age seven, the teaching is a recurring theme in everything I do.

I challenge you to really examine what you enjoyed play acting as a child and see if there is a connection today to your work-related interests. It may seem like a stretch, but if you really examine it, there is a very good chance you will see a correlation. If you do not have Career Happiness, you may want to see how far you've strayed from your seven year old career dreams.

In the work I do, I ask my clients to write stories about a time at any point in their lives when they accomplished something they felt good about. It could be something as simple as learning to swim to researching and executing a project that impacted thousands of people. This is one of the exercises that Richard Bolles uses in What Color Is Your Parachute. It is a timeless exercise because it provides an organic way for clients to identify skills that they enjoy using in a work or career setting.

One such story a client recently wrote was from age three. She and her family were vacationing in Greece. She was in the ocean in an inner tube. Her parents were close by, but her father was a little farther out in the water. She did not know how to swim, but she saw her father and knew that she had to find a way to get to him. She had a problem to solve. If she kicked her feet it would propel her to move forward toward her father. When she got in the water, she didn't have a clue how to make herself move. But by solving the problem and seeing the end result of how to get to Dad, she accomplished her goal and was rewarded with a proud smile.

Her next story was age four and the prominent skill was again problem-solving. In deciding what skills she MUST use in her next career, her choice of stories is clear - she must use problem-solving skills to love what she does in her work. Although she had always understood this to be a skill she enjoyed, writing the stories offered additional clarification, which increased her confidence in the process.

These examples illustrate small pieces of the career design puzzle. They emphasize the need to do the inner work necessary to ultimately find a niche that will take you down the Career Happiness path.

Shell Mendelson, MS is a veteran Career Counselor who specializes in Career ADD. With over 22 years experience in the field of Vocational and Career Counseling, Shell's client base reaches Teens through Retirees. Midlife Career Changes, Small Business Owners and Entrepreneurs. Shell has leveraged her own diagnosed ADD and formal training with a dynamic program entitled The Passion To Career System, a program that is flexible enough to reach even the most disorganized and/or distracted thinker, to focus on defining a dynamic career filled with passion, possibility, growth and financial rewards

For more information, http://www.passiontocareer.com/, 830-237-2735, shell@passiontocareer.com

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