How to be More Creative: Embrace Your Inner Magical Child

Your Inner Magical Child and Creativity


Discover your Inner Magical Child and enrich yourself and your creative process. 



We all have many facets to our psyche, with each facet contributing its unique characteristics that all together make us who we are.

But during our maturation process from infant to adult, we start to identify with only some of these facets and we push away, or disown, those parts of ourselves we believe we no longer need or that we find problematic in some way.

The inner Magical Child is one of those inner facets – or inner selves – for many people.

Creativity is something we all had available to us as children. But because it is an expression of a part of the psyche that is associated with childhood, as we mature and identify increasingly with the more grown-up and rational adult selves, we leave behind this child, along with all its wonderful creative spirit.

People who are creative as adults maintain access to their inner Magical Child.

Some even identify with this part of themselves so fully that they can find it difficult to take care of the more responsible, practical aspects of life. We’ve all heard of the artist who has no idea about managing finances or dealing with the mundane yet essential aspects of parenting.

Keep in mind that the Magical Child isn’t the only creative self there is – there are artistic selves, musical selves, writer selves and more.

What the Magical Child does is see solutions and opportunities that the rational mind cannot see. In a way it fuels the other artistic selves. People sometimes describe receiving answers to problems as coming from nowhere or from left field – this is often the Magical Child contributing. Inventors and business entrepreneurs who see things others can’t perceive, often have strong inner magical children yet would not be considered as creative in the artistic sense.

The Qualities of the Magical Child

The Magical Child is extremely imaginative, it often doesn’t make sense, and it sees magic in its environment.

You can see it in children when they make up fantasy worlds and sing non-rational rhymes and songs, putting in silly words instead of the correct ones. (I believe that the extraordinary success of books like the Harry Potter series is due to the widespread disowning of this inner self and our yearning to have some of it back in our lives.)

This inner child (and also other manifestations of the inner child, particularly the Vulnerable Child) becomes disowned or repressed in many people because the more adult, powerful, rational selves become the primary parts of the personality and they don’t understand this child, and so see no need for it. It seems silly and irrelevant to them.

So if you feel you are lacking creativity or are always concerned with the more mundane or practical aspects of life, you can reclaim your inner Magical Child and bring some of its energy back into your life.

If you are a creative person anyway, this inner child can bring you fresh new perspectives and add another dimension to your work.

If you are primarily logical and rational, the Magical Child can literally add magic to your life and can give you new ideas in regard to your usual activities.

Exercises to Help Access Your Magical Child

1. Set out to write a poem, but don’t try to write something ‘intelligent’ or to fit in with a particular poetic style. Instead just allow yourself to write whatever comes to you. Pick a topic to begin with, such as eggs. Write a line about eggs and then another one, and so on. For example: Eggs are best when scrambled up, they roll and dance around a lot, eggs can smile like humpty dumpty, who is very fumpty lumpty. Keep going and don’t censor yourself with your more rational adult self. What you write doesn’t have to make sense.

If you allow yourself to do this, no matter how silly your poem is, you will soon be able to draw on the immense reserves of creativity coming from your Magical Child and use them in many areas of your life.

Keep in mind that it is likely your Inner Critic will be activated when you do this exercise. Read my post on how to handle your Inner Critic, a self that affects us all, particularly creative people.

2. Get some coloured pencils, crayons or paints and some paper, and have some fun drawing with them. Allow yourself to draw or paint whatever you feel like. Don’t worry if you think you can’t draw. Abstract art is all you need here. Just allow yourself to experiment with mixing colours, with drawing shapes and patterns – much like a young child would.

3. Buy or borrow some good children’s fantasy books and read them. There are so many good books available, by many talented (magically-minded) authors, or you can start with the obvious ones such as the Harry Potter books or the Narnia books by C.S. Lewis. Such stories will delight your Magical Child, and reading them will serve to honour it and to make it a part of your life.

4. Let your imagination go by playing with toys such as building blocks which allow you to create your own designs.

5. If you have children of your own, or grandchildren or nieces and nephews, spend some time with them while they are in a magical state. Don’t just observe them and/or question them about what they are doing but bring out your own Inner Child and play with them!

6. Look around you with an attitude of wonder. Look closely and curiously at the objects in your environment, the trees outside, the birds, and get in touch with your sense of amazement about it all.

Read this post on how your personality forms for an introduction to primary and disowned selves.

Please Share!

Which Self are You? Meet the Inner Selves that Constitute Your Personality

Meet Your Selves

This guide introduces you to 44 selves. As you get to know them, you’ll discover which selves are primary in you, which are disowned, and how they all affect your life experience.

About Which Self are You?

Available from ScribdAmazonApple Books, Google PlayBarnes & NobleKoboSmashwords, Gumroad

Leave a Comment

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.