David W. Zierk, PsyD

Anything is possible; just ask your inner child.

It seems beyond naive to think that adults can learn a thing or two from children. But it’s true, so true.

Enjoy the story of a first-year middle school girl who is one thing - wizardly.

Emma’s smile is never finished, and she has an attractive, attentive, and contagious energy. When pigs fly, it is the only time Emma will struggle with not having things to do. Being bored is implausible. Her creative and creating mind is constantly engaged. Even when she’s not moving, Emma travels to places yet to be known. She loves to create and bounces between flux and fixation. Emma is gifted at forming and being formed by her surroundings, real and imagined. Having an empty canvas and blank journal page is not the beginning for Emma but the next opportunity to dazzle and find solutions to problems not yet imagined.

While she makes time for friends and has plenty to choose from, she strikingly prefers to vanish into her world of make-believe, the special space she calls “wonder walls.” That’s where the possibility of everything exists, and anything can happen. If you could hear what Emma cannot say, it might sound like, ‘Why place my feet on the ground when having my head in the clouds is so exhilarating?”

Emma’s mind is beyond optimistic; it’s effervescent. She bends reality with agility and in ways that strike the notes of playful genius. From Emma’s formalized testing, she has been diagnosed and, as one of her evaluators wrote, she is “clearly diagnosable.” Gifted? Of course. But not in the ways most people know or may ever know.

In her preferred world of constructive escapism, with eyes closed or open, she has learned that taking chances is everything. Somehow, amazingly, she even knows that even in the world of simulation, the chances she takes don’t always work. No problem. Emma’s singing spirit allows her to reshape the universe by preferencing shaping over being shaped.

Didn’t I tell you Emma is wizardly?

With confidence exceeding possibility, Emma won’t struggle with following her dreams and aspiring to great heights. She must navigate the low-hanging branches of others' expectations and their envied judgments. Without trying, Emma stands out. Fortunately for her, fitting into the conventional world is much less pressing than creating worlds around her from which everything fits together.

What we can learn from Emma is the gift of magical thinking.

Magical thinking is the mental sandbox of toddlers and young children. Here, mounds become villages, shovels become dream makers, and lines in the sand transform into the road less traveled. To this age group, anything is possible, and nothing gets in the way of youth-inspired improvisation.

Appearing vividly in young children through the end of elementary school, magical thinking is a quirk in human cognition.

The concept of magical thinking was identified by the gifted and keenly observant talents of the developmental psychologist Jean Piaget. It was Piaget who first noticed how a child’s belief that what happens inside of them influences what happens in their outside world. Magical thinking is the invisible thread between musing and being amused by having no limits to what’s possible and being able to synthesize whatever happens with what is preferred. Having no boundary between the “inside” and “outside” is spellbinding.

Whenever you watch young children play, they’re at work living out their imagined world. A toy dinosaur becomes real when it loses its toyness. Building blocks become towering cities. To these children, they’re not playing but living here and now and connecting themselves with the then and there. Quite magical, indeed!

Watch what happens to a kindergartener at his birthday party as a simple but sad example. Josh is turning five and his mother put together a fantastic party, including a bouncy castle and a water balloon contest. Everyone is having fun, which is easy when your dreams come true. When it came time for Josh to blow out the candles of his birthday cake, at the exact moment he closed his eyes and exhaled to extinguish the flames, a bird flew into the window and died instantly.

The adults in the room saw these events as being independent and disconnected. To Josh, however, he fell into deep sadness driven by his internalized guilt based on his belief he killed the bird when he blew out the candles.

To Josh, his trauma was created by magical thinking. Someday, when this story gets retold in his adult years, he’ll be able to laugh along with others. But deep inside his little boy brain, his sensitivity to hurting others likely grew a thousandfold that fateful day, making him now a fantastic friend, thoughtful colleague, and trustworthy life partner.

Adults can learn from children how to trust and engage in magical thinking. Reacquiring the personal power associated with believing that dreams do come true creates tremendous freedom. Instead of feeling trapped by circumstances, an adult practicing magical thinking makes what they want to happen next happen. Breathtaking, right? To underscore the importance of this idea, consider the motivational energy in the phrase, “Your future moves in the direction of what you do next.”

Having mental powers to make things happen you never thought possible, like starting a business or writing a book, is elevated when you believe in and practice magical thinking.

Summing up and moving on, magic is not just for kids. Just ask Emma.

Press the button below to learn more about how your mind works as described in Dr. Zierk’s book, Mind Rules: Who’s in Control, You or Your Mind?