02 Sep YOU’RE A GROWN UP BUT STILL NOT AN ADULT..!

A couple of my favourite meme’s read “The first 50 years of childhood are always the hardest” and “If you haven’t grown up by 50, you don’t have to”.

Do you sometimes feel you lack the skills of adulting? That your behaviour at times doesn’t seem to be aligned with your age?

It’s nice to be young at heart but sometimes you really don’t handle situations like the grown up that you’re meant to be.

Your friends and family know you’re like this but they love you anyway. It doesn’t show up all the time, but when it does, it’s downright embarrassing.

And you can’t seem to change – even though you know it’s affecting your relationships.

Maybe it’s affecting your ability to engage with the world in a way that makes you proud. Maybe you have tantrums or maybe you’re your too timid to ask for what you want.

If everything stays the same, you’ll survive okay but you’ll also miss out on developing deeper connections with people and developing the life you really want for yourself.

It is only when children start learning the skills of assessing whether their reaction to their emotions is appropriate and what consequences might be involved, that they start to mature and build their lives.

Yes, you probably have it together in many areas already but what would it be like if you made all the choices in your life as an adult?

Now, this doesn’t mean never having fun or letting loose.

Being an adult means not reacting to your emotions in a way that leaves you feeling like you’ve behaved badly.

Being an adult doesn’t result in regrettable consequences:

Lashing out at a partner when they’ve said or done something that upsets you.

Wishing you could speak up at work and come across as someone confident instead of staying timid and feeling helpless.

And my favourite: opening a bag of chips and devouring the lot when you’re stressed out.

Being able to pause and consider your reaction to a situation and then choose actions that result in the best outcome for yourself and the people involved is called Emotional Adulthood.

It means identifying your feelings when something happens, noticing the uncomfortable feelings, allowing the feelings to be there and then choosing a course of action that aligns with how you truly want to show up instead of in your usual knee-jerk reactionary way.

Emotional Adulthood means choosing a different way to react, despite having the uncomfortable feelings.

This is a lot easier said than done and it’s a skill you have to learn.

You have to practice it. A lot.

But stepping into Emotional Adulthood can be one of the most rewarding things you do because it puts you in control of your life.

It gives you the ability to do hard things.

It gives you the power to respond the way you really want to in relationships and then build and connect in new ways.

Emotional Adulthood gives you the ability to create the life you want and show up in the way that you want to.

The practice is well worth it and you’ll be rewarded in all areas of your life.

Next time something triggers you, see if you can take a moment to pause before you decide which course of action you will take.

And if you consistently choose the wrong one, let’s talk.