I remember those magical days of child. The days where the summer sun shone down on an afternoon that felt 20 times longer than afternoons do now. I remember collecting caterpillars, making dreamcatchers from fishing line, chasing butterflies, crushing up wildberries to make food for the birds, climbing trees, catching tadpoles and watching them grow.
Those dreamy days don’t have to be a distant memory, but instead an active ever-lasting perspective and way of life.
How? In this blog post I’ll tell you how to re-discover the magical dreamy feeling from childhood and how to hold onto it. And of course, how to share it with your children.
1. Take notice of the light. Set the atmosphere.
The way the sunlight filters through the window and paints the room in a golden glow. Or the way it plays peek-a-boo through the trees while you’re driving. The way everything appears changes so much through the day just by the different lighting. Notice it. Notice when it looks pretty. Notice the shapes and shadows it creates.
At night when you’re relaxing at home, create lighting that feels nice. Warm. Cozy. Relaxing. Atmospheric.
I can’t understand people who keep their ceiling lights on at night at home. That is pure madness to me. At night I put on the Christmas/fairy lights I keep up year round, a candle, and a lamp. No overhead ceiling lights – no no no!
In the bedroom I use a crystal salt lamp and more fairylights. Sometimes a lamp if I need more light.
Other ways you can set the atmosphere are through music, candles (especially scented), burn incense, put the “fireplace video” on your tv, decorate your house in a way that feels warm and joyful.
Pay attention to your atmosphere and actively create a beautiful one. It changes how you feel and how those around feel, too. I remember I volunteered at a Crisis Helpline and for my interview it was SO calming because it was in a room with a soft chair, a lamp and low warm lighting. Then when I got the role, the room we worked out out of had Christmas/fairy lights up, blankets and pillows and really helped keep us calm during stressful phone calls. ATMOSPHERE IS EVERYTHING and the biggest aspect of atmosphere is LIGHT.
2. Seek out and honour beautiful things.
Seek beauty. It’s out there waiting for you to find it. Take a drive, a walk, a hike, an adventure. You don’t have to go far to find something beautiful waiting to be appreciated.
Pick wildflowers. Add them to a vase. Put them on your table. Live in a city? Buy flowers. Walk around and look at gardens. While you’re doing that, listen to the sounds – the birds, the insects, the wind, the sounds of people living life.
Create a mandala of nature items. Honour it’s beauty. Appreciate it and bask in it. Decorate your mind with these beautiful sights and thank them for improving your outlook.
3. Spend time off your phone. And when you do use your phone, use it to create.
Take time to just sit. In the sun outside. In the windowlight in the winter. Drink tea and taste it. Do nothing but watch the wind in the trees, watch the birds play, watch the clouds pass by in the sky. This is why childhood afternoons felt so long. You were actually paying attention to the time passing.
And when you do use your phone. Use it to create. Take pictures. Edit them, upload them, share them. Take videos. Honour the beauty you see like it’s art that deserves to be displayed. This is basically like a visual gratitude journal.
So many people take pictures of a night out, a birthday, or some special occasion. They forget that they can also use their form camera as a tool to create simply for the sake of art and capturing, sharing, spreading beauty.
You may think you don’t have a photographic eye. So use your real eyes. What do you see? What makes it look beautiful? What aspects of what you are seeing do you want to highlight in the picture? Then take the picture. And the more you do it, the more you will alter your entire perception to see and notice beauty and be able to capture it the way you see it.
4. Spend time in nature.
This one is so easy. Just go outside. Sit, walk, drive, hike, whatever you want to do. Pack a picnic.
Notice the insects. What do you see? Butterflies? Moths? Caterpillars? All the bugs you thought only existed in childhood are still hiding out there in this big world somewhere!
Listen to the different birdsongs.
Pick berries. Eat them.
Notice the moon phase, always. Look at where it is each night. Look at the stars. Check the Northern Lights forecast. Watch for them.
Look for fireflies.
Watch the water. Smell the flowers. Go for a ride and look at the deer.
5. Don’t be afraid to be silly, to play, to embrace your inner child. Make-believe.
That inner child is still in there somewhere. And they probably still want to play!
Don’t be afraid to get down on the floor and make believe with your kids. Try get into their world and see from their perspective. Play pretend.
Look for shapes in the clouds. Faces in the moon. Make up stories and your own folklore about why things are the way they are.
If you’re bored or your kids are bored and you can’t think of anything to do just create any random make-believe game or scenario and go with it. They’ll probably love it.
Think about what you used to like to do as a child. What was the most fun you remember having? Why not try create that!
I remember playing in the snow and creating “houses” and designing the rooms by walking on our knees in a big open space. I remember playing a game where a witch had to come guess your name (a name you chose based on a colour) and if she guessed it, she’d get to take you away. I remember loving going for picnics, taking our dog to swim and throwing sticks for him to catch. I remember loving when my dad lead us through the bush on walks. I remember making home movies or skits and showing them to family members.
Who’s stopping you from creating a movie? Nobody. Just you.
6. Seek inspiration.
Sometimes there’s nothing like a morning coffee while scrolling tumblr to get your mindset into one oriented towards beauty, art and poetry. I find it helps. But there are other ways if you aren’t stuck in the early 2000’s like me. You can use Pinterest for example. Collect boards on things that inspire you. I have tons of unique ways to use pinterest creatively that I plan to share with you in a future post. For now, here’s a link to my Pinterest.
You can also find inspiration by visiting an art museum, attending a poetry reading, seeing a live play, watching an indie film. It’s endless. Even just going outside for a walk. It’s impossible not to be inspired by SOMETHING. Seek it out every day and decorate your mind with new ideas, and in time your life will naturally begin to flow in the direction of your inspiration and ideas.
7. Pay attention to patterns and synchronicities. Get in touch with your intuition.
This one is a little more abstract, maybe. I go in periods where this happens more than others. But basically it’s simply noticing patterns, themes, and coincidences or meaningful coincidences aka synchronicities. If you heard something on the tv and then later you see something similar. Or you had a dream about something and then it happens. Develop your intuition so much it becomes an every day tool you use in your decision making, parenting, life in general.
How to even begin doing this if you haven’t before?
Write down your dreams. See if you notice signs, patterns, things that show up in your waking life.
Write down themes you notice. If you use a bullet journal you can create a whole page for this. Notice themes of things happening in the world- on a major scale like stuff you see on the news, a personal scale, things on shows or messages in songs you discover. You may start to notice patterns emerge. Are they messages trying to tell you something? Who knows. For you to decide!
Check your horoscope. Do I believe in horoscopes? Not exactly because I don’t think everyone ever born in a certain time period can possibly have the exact same things going on at the same time, among other reasons. HOWEVER, I do believe in synchronicity. So sometimes I think when I need a certain message it might be when I think to check my horoscope and just so happen to get the message I had needed to hear. You know what I mean? It’s okay if not.
Try tarot cards. I enjoy using tarot cards as a way to talk to myself through another method, basically. I can ask questions and then use the cards to find answers. You don’t need to know every card or how to read every card. Just write down what you get back and then research into what it means and interpret what this could mean within the context of your own life. I find this to be almost therapeutic.
Develop your intuition. Just notice the feelings you get about things. Notice when you’re right. Notice when you seem to know what someone else was about to say. Notice when you seem to know what’s going to happen. Attune yourself to your child so when they’re upset or seeming to get overwhelmed – you know what they need in that moment and can respond. If I use my intuition enough it becomes like just another tool to get through day to day life. You can search this up more to find tools and methods to develop your intuition more if you’re interested.
8. Follow your curiosity down strange rabbit holes.
Check out podcasts, books, movies about interesting or mind-bending topics. Or tiktoks, blogs, articles.
Need ideas? Reincarntion, aliens & ufos, spirituality, meditation, lucid dreaming, psychology, etc.
I’m not encouraging you to go off the deep-end, but simply find that sense of awe from childhood again. This can be re-experienced by being introduced to new ideas or information that surprises you or makes you feel very intrigued or curious.
Have fun getting lost down endless rabbit holes and weird and whimsical ideas and tales! Even if you’re not convinced, it never hurts to open your mind and entertain it!
9. Wake up your senses.
As a child the world is so new. Everything is novel and interesting. This is part of what makes it so magical. You can still experience that feeling by awakening your senses through sensory experiences.
If it’s raining out – get out there. Go for a walk in it. feel it on your skin, let your hair get wet. Afterwards, smell the way the Earth smells. Jump in a mud puddle. Let your child fully play in a mud puddle! Take pictures. Laugh. Enjoy the moment. You can clean them off later. Right now is for enjoying.
If it’s snowing, play in the snow. Or go for a walk and listen to how silent the world is. Look at the snowflakes that fall on your arm, how each one is different. The beauty if there, all you need is to notice it.
Walk in a steam. Take your shoes off and collect rocks in the lake. Walk through the sand. Climb up a hill. Run back down. Blow bubbles. Go swimming.
Listen to new forms of music – try 8D music with headphones.
Read poetry. Find something that speaks to you or makes you feel something. Save it.
Try new foods. Go out to a restaurant and order something you’ve never tried. Try a cuisine from another culture. If you really want to awaken your senses, full on TRAVEL to another country.
10. Be spontaneous & joyful for no reason & no occassion.
Get in the car and take a random roadtrip. Do something weird or silly. Dress up just for fun. Set up a candlelit dinner on a random weeknight for no reason at all. Set up an entire dinner table and bring your meal outside in an unexpected location. Create fun shapes in your kid’s breakfast food out of nowhere. Paint, draw, sing even if it’s bad. Just do things because of the joy of doing it. Have a campfire. In the middle of winter. Build a blanket fort in your livingroom. Just do fun, random, weird, silly things from time to time for no reason at all.
These memories will become the childhood magic YOUR children will remember.
I hope these ideas will help you bring some childhood magic back into your life. Let me know if there’s anything you do to bring it back or keep it flowing that I forgot to mention!
