Two days ago I picked up my 7 year-old from school and as we got into the car he looked me dead in the eye and asked me:
“Imma (Mom), are you the tooth fairy?”
..I didn’t see that coming and quite honestly I was pretty thrown off my game because I’ve been keeping up this shenanigan for over 12 years since my 17 year-old lost his first tooth.
What I said to him next doesn’t really matter (though if you really want to know, wait till the end of the email and I’ll tell you). What matters is why I’ve kept up this shenanigan for so long (the guy is almost 8!) despite the push back and judgments from his siblings, my parents, my friends and anyone else who thinks make believe is silly and only for Disney World, leprechauns and 2 year-olds of the world.
This is the reason:
I genuinely believe that make believe is one of the most important skills to learn as a child.
More important than math. There, I said it.
Make believe is the #1 tool that can take your life from a good enough, happy enough, mediocre life, to a fantastical joy-filled experience that makes you want to create more and more again.
Life coaches, come to think of it, are in the profession of make believe. It’s what I’m doing all day long with my clients. Believing in the impossible-stretchy-never-been-done-before goals for my clients until they too grow their own make believe wings and fly on their own.
There is nothing sweeter in the world than to watch one of my clients go from not believing she can grow a small photography business to being fully booked with a waitlist.
Or watching a client follow her favorite fashion icon and drool over her every move, never believing she could be as cool as her, and then create the confidence and courage to ask her icon for a Q/A and have her say yes!
Impossible! Unimaginable! Until they decided to turn make belief into reality that is:)
My 11 year-old daughter has warned me for months how I need to tell my 7 year-old the truth about the tooth fairy or else he is going to find out from someone else and be very angry and incredibly disappointed that this whole tooth fairy story was a scam. But honestly, I didn’t care. I wasn’t worried that he would be disappointed because even if he would have been (p.s. he wasn’t in the least) it was worth it to see how lit up he became whenever he came into his room and plunged his hand under his pillow to find a new little toy and a little note written from Ms. Tooth Fairy herself. I will take disappointed any day if it means years of deep joy and fun of believing in the possibility of a little fairy with wings whose job is to collect little teeth from little people. And honestly, this is how I feel about our big stretch-y goals we set out to accomplish.
Humans choose not to go after something that feels impossible to them because of fear of disappointment. What if it doesn’t happen? What if I feel devastated?
So we stay in the exact same physical shape our whole lives (Ya know, 140lbs with very little muscle mass), making 50K in our businesses, never building that pool or taking that year long travel abroad trip and live a life that is good enough, but not fantastic.
But guys, what if we chose one specific result in our life we've never had before, let our minds go to a place where it's a done deal and maybe along the way feel disappointed but also maybe a little like anything is possible?? If you were courageous enough to go there, what impossible dream would you go for? (Stop. Take 3 minutes here to really decide just for fun.)
For the past few months, my 7-year-old's one-liner has been: “Ya never know, anything is possible.”
When he asks me if we can buy a dog and I say no.
When he asks me if we can move to New Zealand for a year and I say no.
When he asks me if he can have chocolate after dinner and I say no :)
"Maybe one day cause ya never know, anything is possible."
..And I have the tooth fairy to thank for that one.
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