Would the child you once were be inspired by the person you've become?
My ten-year-old daughter recently made a throwaway comment during one of our bedtime conversations. She said, “But I thought grown-ups have everything figured out.” I laughed, because I know how untrue that is.
But that comment stuck in my mind and morphed into something else:
Would the child I used to be look at my life now and think, yes, that’s who I hoped I’d become?
Not just in terms of job title or income, but in how I live my life. Or how I make choices. In whether there’s a sense of authorship in what I do.
Personally, I found it a hard question to shake.
What would the child I once was think of me now? Would she be disappointed? Would she be annoyed? Or would she be forgiving, once she realised that life never really turns out the way you planned?
After giving it some thought, I knew what her first reaction would be. Girl me would kick me up the backside and scream her lungs out. She’d be angry and demand answers.
Why this question won’t leave me alone
I coach midlifers who are capable, experienced, and doing “well” by most external standards. They’re not falling apart or lying on the sofa questioning their existence. But a lot of them describe a strange sense of distance from their own lives.
What seems to happen as you get older is that responsibility starts to replace what actually feels right as the thing life revolves around. We become very good at asking whether something is sensible, realistic, or appropriate, and much less fluent at asking whether it actually fits us.
That’s why the question about the child you once were is so powerful: it cuts straight through logic and status. It doesn’t ask whether you succeeded. It asks whether you stayed recognisable to yourself.
A light psychological angle (without turning this into a therapy session)
There’s a simple idea from psychology that helps explain why this question has such an impact.
As children, we learn how to belong. We notice what brings approval, what brings trouble, and what keeps things calm. From that, we develop ways of behaving that make life easier. Some children learn to be useful. Some learn to be pleasing. Others learn to stay out of the way. And still others learn to perform. We adapt to the world we grew up in.
The problem is that we don’t leave these patterns behind when we grow up. They just grow up with us.
So the child who learned to look after siblings often becomes the adult who feels responsible for everything and everyone.
The child who learned to keep the peace becomes the adult who avoids conflict and difficult conversations.
The child who learned to perform becomes the adult who equates worth with output.
None of this is “wrong”. In fact, much of it is rewarded. But at some point, usually somewhere in midlife, people notice that the strategies still work while the payoff has changed. The things that once protected you now start to box you in.
What this looks like in my own life
Just like my daughter, I once believed that grown-ups chose their lives. I assumed that, as the main character in my own story, I’d run the show.
What I actually became very good at was doing what was needed. I became competent, reliable and the person who could handle things. And that worked perfectly well for many years. Until I noticed I was very skilled at explaining things, structuring things, making sense of things for others. But I was much less skilled at listening to myself.
As a child, I loved questions. I liked understanding people and stories. I could disappear into books for hours. I’d sit on a chair in the dining room, completely lost in a story, so absorbed that I didn’t hear a word my mum was saying to me. It drove her mad. To me, it felt like the most natural thing in the world: being curious, being transported, wanting to understand how people and lives worked.
The adult I became was efficient and outcome-driven. That’s not a tragedy, but looking back now, I can see that I had become more rigid than I wanted to be. Less open than I once was.
What people say when I ask them this
Since I couldn’t get the question out of my head, I decided to ask 10 other people what their answer would be.
What struck me was how quickly most people answered with a clear “yes” or “no”, and how confidently they justified it. But after a few days, several came back and asked to change their answer to something that lived much more in the grey zone.
- One person told me their younger self would admire their stability but be bored by their caution and shocked by how serious they’d become. They had built something solid, but had removed risk and, to some extent, lightness, joy and excitement from their life.
- Another said their younger self would be proud of the father they’d become. Someone who plans trips and activities, teaches his kids about life, supports their dreams and has fun with them. He said, “I never had that, I was always so jealous of kids who did. And now I’m doing it myself.“
- Someone else told me, after a long pause, that their younger self would be impressed they came out relatively “normal” from a dysfunctional parental relationship and messy divorce. That they’d chosen to focus more on maintaining healthy relationships than keeping score on who was more hard done by.
- Another admitted their younger self would probably be disappointed with the way life had turned out, and think they’d forgotten what was important. Because they’d followed every logical step without ever checking whether it was their ladder in the first place.
And when I look at my own answer now, I believe that, after the initial shock wore off, little me would realise that life is what has made me, and that people and circumstances change the course you once imagined.
I suspect she’d feel sad that I lost my way for a while, when I treated life like an obligatory chore. But I don’t think she’d be completely disappointed after she delved deep into my soul. I like to think she’d see that I’m paying attention again and that all hope is not lost.
If you want to try it for yourself
A small suggestion: be honest.
Would the child you once were be inspired by the person you’ve become?
Note that I didn’t ask whether they’d be impressed. I asked whether they’d be inspired.
Think about what they’d recognise. What would surprise them. And what might disappoint them.
And please: be kind to yourself. Most of us are doing the best we can with what we learned early on. This question isn’t meant to judge your life. It’s meant to reconnect you with it.