It’s nearly 6pm on Saturday evening, and my three girls are currently raiding the recycling box for junk.  Every instinct in my body and brain is jangling, telling me that I MUST stop them from making so much mess, that they should be getting ready for bed and calming down, not creating elaborate models of goodness-knows-what that I’m going to have to store somewhere for months, cluttering up the house even more than it already is.

The arts-and-crafts box has also been opened and up-ended, and as a result my kitchen floor is scattered with a wide variety of stickers, glitter, paint, scraps of torn paper and sellotape.

A tentative enquiry into what they are actually doing leads to the response “We’re inventors Mummy!”.

Ordinarily I would have put a stop to this madness a while ago.  But tonight, something made me let them continue… and I’m glad.

Most of my day-to-day conversations with my daughters centre around me asking them to get ready for school/to go out/for bed, asking them to tidy up, asking them to stop fighting with each other etc…  But every so often, in the midst of the chaos, is a gem of a conversation that makes me realise just how important my job is in helping these little humans of mine to grow.

Mimi presented me ceremoniously with her creation – a telescope that is also a rocket ship.

It’s made out of a cardboard tube from a finished kitchen roll plus an empty toilet roll, and it’s decorated with lots of gold star stickers and felt tip drawings of all of the planets in our solar system.

She gazed up at me and asked anxiously “Do you like it Mummy?”

“I love it!”, I replied.  “You know what though Mimi?  It doesn’t matter whether I like it or not.  All that’s important is that YOU like it and that YOU are proud of it and the hard work you put into it”.

Then I addressed all three of my daughters.  “You are likely to come across many people in your life who will tell you that your ideas are silly, or that you’re dreaming too big, or that you can’t do something.  Don’t listen to them.  You can do anything you want if you put your mind to it and keep on trying.”

“We know Mummy,” Mimi muttered distractedly, making a last-minute adjustment to her telescope/rocket.  “I’m not going to let anybody stop me from doing ANYTHING”.

I can’t remember the last time I believed that about myself – that I wouldn’t let anybody stop me from doing anything that I wanted to do.  I suspect it was a fairly long time ago.  I’m guessing it’s probably the same for you.

So I got to thinking… what if I wasn’t going to let anybody stop me from doing anything?  What if I just did exactly what I wanted to do, and shifted my life to the kind of life I want to have?  What if I made myself into that person?  What if you did the same?

The thing is, you already are that person.

And so am I.

We’re all capable of doing the things we want to do, being the version of ourselves that we want to be, achieving the things we want to achieve and creating the life that we want to live.

We just let other people’s opinions and thoughts and ‘advice’ and judgments get in our way.  We let that little voice in our head, that doubting little voice that whispers that we’re not good enough to do all of those things, or don’t deserve to do all those things, get in our way.

What if we didn’t?

Think about it.

Who would you be if you didn’t let anybody stop you from doing anything?

What would you create?

What would you do instead of what you’re doing now?

I’d love to hear your thoughts on this, so please do leave a comment below and share your ideas.  Also, feel free to share this post with your friends and colleagues (indeed, anyone else you think might find it interesting!).

Thank you 🙂