Embrace The Child Within

This unique episode takes the listener to a relaxing state of mind while also educating on how to focus better by using a counter-intuitive approach.

[Sound of a calming ocean wave]

Welcome to Voice of Sayar Henry, the podcast you come for when you’re longing for an audio experience that is not only educational, but also inspirational. We have explored so many things together throughout the past 52 episodes. And today, we’re going to take a look at something we haven’t done before – peace.

In its simplest form, peace can be defined as the absence of conflict, within our mind and with the external world. It refers to a state of calm and tranquility, where we can experience a sense of satisfaction and security. Peace can manifest in various forms. It can be seen as the opposite of chaos, violence, or war. Or sometimes, it can be seen as our physical, emotional, and mental state. Regardless of its form, peace is often considered a universal human value and the core of our existence and the root of all that we do and why we do. Whether we’re pursuing success, health, relationship, or just a sense of fulfillment, peace is the common factor that ties it all together.

But unfortunately, peace is often elusive in our fast-paced and highly stressful modern world. We’re constantly bombarded by distractions and competing priorities, making it all too easy to lose sight of what we really need and what is truly important to us. 

However, there are ways to tap into the power of peace – ways that can help us find calmness, clarity, and direction for our path ahead. I am sure that listeners of this podcast are already familiar with the concept of mindfulness and being present in the moment. I believe you already know that meditation exercises and spending some time with nature are proven ways to do just that. So I’m not going to talk about these today. Instead, I will try to approach it from a slightly different angle.    

Have you ever noticed that children are more successful than we are when it comes to mastering peace? 

It might sound counter-intuitive at first, especially when we think about how children are always playing around and how easy it is for them to be distracted from one thing to another. Even research and reports have shown that children have shorter attention span compared to adults. Children are also emotionally sensitive, and they have limited self-control. 

And yet, when we see a kid who is playing with his or her favorite toy or drawing pictures, it seems like they don’t need anything else in the world. They show no hunger, no laziness, no tiredness, no sign of frustration, and no internal or external conflict whatsoever that we, adults, often have to deal with. It seems like they’re the most peaceful creatures in the world at that moment. So there’s got to be something that we can learn from children if we want to be a little bit more peaceful.

Well, based on my experiences, the key to being in the state of peace lies not only in understanding its connection to happiness, satisfaction, and but also in realizing its association with focus. People usually talk about how crucial it is to have peace if they want to focus on something. But actually, it works the other way too. If we have focus, our mind calms down and a sense of peacefulness comes in. So instead of constantly whining about how hard it is to have peace in our environment or blaming external factors that we can’t control, we should just learn to be fully absorbed with the task at hand, from which peace can grow.   

So let’s take a closer look at the nature of children and see what we can learn from them in pursuit of focus and peace.

In general, a child’s power to focus and enjoy the task at hand comes from a combination of factors. These include their lack of experience, their open-mindedness, curiosity, enthusiasm for learning, and of course their lack of worries about the future. But for the purpose of making this episode as brief as possible, I’m just going to discuss only one of these which I believe is the most interesting to me at the moment. 

Now, as adults, we tend to believe that lack of experience is not a good quality to possess, right?

But here’s an interesting counter argument. Children’s lack of experience can actually help them achieve higher levels of focus in some cases. That is because having no prior experience can allow them to approach tasks with a fresh perspective and avoid getting discouraged by any preconceived notions. This can lead to increased levels of creativity and a better sense of exploration. I mean children are free to experiment and try new things without feeling constrained by what they already know. This helps them approach tasks with a sense of play and adventure, which keeps them engaged and motivated to continue working on the same thing peacefully. 

It’s important to note here that we are not talking about using critical thinking skills to determine the most efficient or effective way to do a task. We are talking about approaching things with a sense of freshness and novelty, which can strengthen our ability to focus on the task at hand. If we translate it to the context of our adulthood, it essentially means that we should find new ways to do the same things we are already familiar with. That will give us a chance to look at the same old seemingly boring tasks with a fresh perspective. 

For example, if washing dishes is boring for you, try to be playful by observing if you can do it with just one hand or your eyes closed. If you’re a student who is struggling to focus on writing an introduction of an essay, flip things around by trying to write the conclusion first. Once you start experimenting like that, you will find yourself more easily immersed in doing the dishes or writing the essay, or whatever that you’re trying to work on. You’ll also notice that external factors such as noises or distractions doesn’t bother you that much at all. You will find yourself in the zone and you’ll feel like you’re gaining momentum. And most importantly, you’ll find yourself peacefully interested in something. And that, my friend, is the peace and focus that you’ve been looking for, and the kind of peace that we are talking about here.     

Well, ladies and gentlemen, this is the end of this episode. I intentionally made this episode as brief as possible because I too wanted to experiment with the idea of delivering only one concept in a single episode to see if it helps you to not just absorb the concept better but also to put it into practice more easily right after listening to my podcast.   

I hope you learned something to experiment with this week, and I believe we can figure out our way of focus and peace by observing children around us. And by embracing our inner child, we can increase our focus and a sense of peacefulness. And remember that peace is the foundation of a happy and fulfilling life. It’s the root of everything we do and strive for, and therefore by inducing it with a fresh perspective, we might be able to open up new possibilities for happiness, satisfaction, and a sense of purpose. So, take a deep breath, and let peace and focus guide us on our journey in life. I will see you in the next episode. Goodbye for now.

[Sound of a calming ocean wave fading away]