20 Child-Like Things Grown Adults Can Do Daily To Build Inner Peace

When adults embrace their child-like side, they often find that the worries of the day fall away.

By Liz Zed — Written on Apr 15, 2023

Photo: Smile19 / Shutterstock

Here’s the rain again, tapping at the windows, drumming on the roof. Are you picking up the vibes of inner peace?

You get to imagine meaning, even from the weather. In the realm of imagination, everything is up to you. Next time, when you hear the sound of rain at the window, why not go outside and play? Slip on a raincoat. Step into rain boots. Leave the umbrella behind.

Offer up cheeks, chin and eyelashes to the wash of raindrops. Find puddles outside. And invite your happy-go-lucky, free-spirited child out from the shadows. Ask your little kid out with delight. Let jumping and splashing through puddles be fun.

Bringing to mind a gleeful feeling jump-starts the motion. Ready to try being childlike again?

Bring your child-like imagination to a day at the beach

At the beach, you can watch children playing in puddles left by the outgoing tide, or digging and log-jamming rivulets that stream down to meet the sandy beach on its journey to the ocean, taunting or trying to trap temporary residents of tidal pools teeming with life at the rocky shore. Invite your small self to go look inside the tide pool. Get curious to see and feel. Join the creatures of tide pools just where the tide meets the beach. Put your bare feet in, childlike, splashing water drops, kicking, then flicking off toes, tiny and large droplets sparkling in the sunshine.

Grab a beach find to fill a plastic bucket, turn it upside down & tap out a sand castle. Playing is fun.

Find an interesting piece of driftwood and make it into something useful. Collect a small bucket of rocks. Bring them home with you. Find your fascination. Remember that since you were small you’ve been barraged with a steady stream of labels, theories, and somebody else’s explanation of how things are. Over decades we’ve traded most explanations for new ones and inevitably those will change again and again.

Here are some soul-satisfying suggestions to embrace your child-like side and start building your inner peace:

Find the silly in everything and laugh
Wish upon a star
Try moonlight bathing
Get a teddy bear friend
Daydream & contemplate
Practice magic tricks
Make up a game or make a crossword puzzle
Color inside the lines
Pick a flower
Find a seashell
Start a piggy bank
Lick an ice cream cone
Buy a roll of drawing paper & doodle draw to your heart’s content
Make a treasure box then fill it slowly and mindfully
Paint your face
Practice focusing on your heart’s desire to make your wish come true
Cast a spell or chant
Create a play space where you live

The value of creative pretending

Children haven’t learned all the labels, and haven’t heard all the explanations. They bring childlike curiosity to almost everything. Imagination rules! Give yourself access to yours again. Building inner peace can be one wonderful reward, but there are no limits to the power of exercising your imagination and curiosity, or childlike sense of wonder, every day. Along the way, you should rediscover your ability to tap into your magnificent and unique power.

Ready to let your "pretending self" out? Tell yourself a story. Write it down. Arm yourself with paint, charcoal, pastels, colored pens, glue sticks, drawing pads, notebooks, and all manner of sparkly, shiny and not-so-shiny objects of creative expression. Go ahead and create. Post up your creations and please keep the well-intentioned commenters out. There isn’t room for judgment here. Post a sign. “No comments please!” “What about compliments?” they will ask. Tell them “no”.

Think about it. Where is your child artist hiding? Where is your little singing, dancing, twirling, giggling, music-making, silly, obstreperous self hanging out today? Did the judgments of the past send you scurrying?

Think back to childhood — and relive those sweet moments

Didn’t you build forts with blankets and big old cardboard boxes? Didn’t you make hand puppets on the wall with shadows? Did you invite imaginary friends in for tea? Insecurities be gone! Shine the light instead, on your childlike curiosity. What will you do today? Will you search out a bouquet of moss-covered twigs, bits of vine, leaves, buds, and blooms? Will you make a daisy chain in the grass, or blow your breath into a grass whistle held tautly between your thumbs? Will you stay vigilant keeping watch for grasshoppers to flutter by, caterpillars, slugs, brilliant blue bog bugs, dragonflies, and damselflies? Will you make something with mud?