4 Signs Your Inner Child Ran Off With Your Money by O! Lila

by Rhonda Sheryl Lipstein | Jun 12, 2012 | Namaste Love Whispers

originally published on olila.com

Your Inner Child is adorable, precious and always putting things in its mouth that it shouldn’t. These are simply the things kids are and do. But did you really mean to sign over your bank accounts, wallet and earning power to the little munchkin?
Probably not.

So what do you do when your inner child has run off with your pocketbook?
Here’s how to identify what’s going on… and then we’ll tell you what to do about it.

4 Signs Your Inner Child is Playing Hide-and-Go-Seek With Your Money

1. Somebody’s Playing Peek a Boo!

  Yep, children love that game… they close their eyes and all of a sudden you’re not there anymore. Peek a Boo!

  Yes, kids can be so cute and easily misdirected, right? Well not so much. An informal survey of some really sharp little tykes we know demonstrated that they’re not misdirected ~ they’re practicing imagination.

Such a powerful imagination can come to haunt us however when we put that same little tyke in charge of our money. For example, a friend of ours, Jessica, recently confided some disturbing news:

“I owe more than $35,000 to the IRS. And now they’re saying I didn’t pay or file a past return and want me to pay double – and I already really did pay!”

Both of us were shocked. Jessica’s a pretty well-put-together gal. But it wasn’t even the debt that was so fascinating. It was how she dealt with it…

“I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I know I can just call them and set up a payment plan. It’s so easy. Yet I can’t bring myself to do it. I don’t want to have to face them – face this.”

Jessica isn’t afraid of the Big Bad IRS – her inner child is. It’s the part of her that says, “I can’t deal with all this grown up stuff. I don’t want all this responsibility. Just give me an allowance and I’ll be on my way.”

Without meaning to, she’s playing that same old game hoping that if she closes her eyes to the financial mess then it will miraculously disappear. She’s fully aware that won’t actually happen. But the power of her imagination lets her pretend it will for the time being.

2. You keep agreeing to barter the services you offer.

One of the wonderful yet complex results of our struggling economy is that more and more people are becoming consultants and starting businesses because they can no longer find traditional 9-to-5 work (or don’t want it). Striking out on the path of the entrepreneur or the person of service to others is daunting however.

At some point you come up against the fear that a career and financial success may somehow oppose the heart-centered service you’ve chosen… or your closer relationship to God or the Divine. One of the reasons for this is that your Inner Child wants your relationship to Source to be innocent and pure, and so this part of you will often believe that to be of true spiritual service you can’t sully that service with money or abundance.

Logically we know this isn’t true.

Yet time and again, our energy and emotions when money and service come together, show us that at a deeper level we actually do believe it. Caroline Myss said it best: “It’s not your conscious mind that’s co-creating your financial situation. Your conscious mind picks up the pieces of what your unconscious mind is doing.”

So if you find yourself often agreeing to barter your services, or to always give them at a discount ~ or on the flip side, you find people never want to pay what you’re worth or they don’t pay you for services rendered ~ this is often a signal that your Inner Child has taken charge.

The Child is the part of you that gets uncomfortable when large amounts of money are up for grabs. It says, “I can’t accept that. I still have to live off an allowance {read: barely make ends meet}, I have no right to a salary.”

Bartering can be healthy and even profitable. Yet for most people, it makes them feel cheated. In the end it didn’t help them pay their rent or put food on the table. It just made them feel victimized and betrayed.

Know that you are worth what you want to charge. Any discomfort is your Inner Child preferring to play small so no responsibility is thrust onto him or her. Remember: your Inner Child includes the Wounded Child, which is the part of you that connects responsibility with suffering, because of all the ways it was forced to grow up too fast and suffer pain. It also witnessed all the suffering or anger the grown ups expressed ~ again, due to their responsibilities.

3. You Approach Money as a Piece of Paper That Rules the World

 Since you’re here reading this, it’s safe to assume that you do not abuse money to rule or harm others. Rather, most conscious people have the opposite problem: we fear money’s ability to rule or harm others.

And so a funny thing happens for those of us who choose to work in the consciousness field or pursue our spiritual journey: one of the first things we do to show how dedicated we are is to try and sever our relationship to money.

But this is a child’s way of seeing money. We’ve just made it Monopoly Money ~ a piece of paper with no value outside of the game… and our fear of that piece of paper can monopolize our ability to serve.

 Money isn’t just a substance. It’s an entity and energy with which you have a relationship. It can be one of the most intimate companions you will ever have in life, and as with any intimate companion, you put that relationship in jeopardy when you refuse to look at and truly understand that relationship.

Know that money holds the energy of abundance and trust yourself to do the right thing with it. Acknowledge that you deserve to have and harness it, just as you deserve to harness powerful emotions, energy and the power of your own physical body. It’s all made of the same cosmic stuff. 

4. You’re waiting for permission from someone else that it’s okay and you can do it.

Our own Jaime Mintun only recently became aware of her tendency to do this. Her own inner child is deeply rooted in the Magical Child (ask any of her schoolmates how they used to make fun of her for going to “Unicorn Camp” as a child!) and so the way the Child ran her finances was largely hidden. Due to rich usage of her imagination and a sense that anything was possible, Jaime was good at making money, such as six figures in a single month.

But we did say this was a game of ‘Hide-and-Go-Seek,’ right? So as soon as Jaime would find money, her Inner Child would run off and hide it again! And in this way, no true wealth ever accumulated.

During a talk with her mother about all her fears finally following her dreams with O! Lila and our new website, Jaime watched as something beautiful happened: her inner child began talking to her mother. And her mother told the child exactly what she needed to hear…

“Jaime you can do this. You’re not that 21 year old no one will listen to anymore. You’ve been through your paces. You’ve proven yourself. And you’ve always succeeded at whatever you’ve put your mind and heart to. I know you can do this. It’s going to be so wonderful.”

If you too have been resisting the path your soul most yearns for, because of all the financial fears, doubts of your ability, and all the logical reasons it won’t work ~ just remember that all of that is simply the rich imaginings of your sweet Inner Child who just needs you to say, “It’s okay. You can do it. I believe in you.”

* Photo by Bindaas Madhavi

How the Child Can Support You & Restore Your Abundance

The Child is the part of you that carries hope and new beginnings. The Child will always believe in the basic goodness in you and others and in its innocence, it will think that what’s best for you is to find someone to take care of you, because a child should never have to handle things themselves.

So how can you shift your relationship to money without denying or harming this wonderful, innocent and vulnerable part of you?

Give your Inner Child room to imagine, create, scribble all over the walls of your being and dream up grand visions of your new life. Give the child in you permission to be magical and then harness that child-like vision of your new beginning, project or career.

Because here’s the crux of the whole money problem: You already know that there’s a new avenue in life you want to pursue. But you probably tell yourself you can’t do it because of money. Then maybe you kinda give it a try and when it doesn’t work, you say, “Aha! See, I knew it. I can’t do it.”

How many times have you so dearly wanted your life to change but the reason you don’t pursue that dream is for financial reasons?

Remember how we said the Inner Child can’t manage money? The up-side of this is that your child within doesn’t want to manage money. This means you can step into this part of your psyche in the creative process and instead put it in charge of creation, mad magnificent ideas, and harness that glittering imagination to install the belief that ANYTHING IS POSSIBLE.

So go ahead: find some crayons, gargantuan poster board and finger paints. Give your Inner Child permission to roam free and imagine whatever he or she can think of. Promise that you won’t judge, criticize or even strategize any of the ideas that present themselves. You can do that later when you put your Adult hat back on. Right now, give the Child within free reign. Give him or her a voice ~ and tools to create.

And don’t you dare color inside the lines this time.