Look back and reminisce how you were as a child. Chances are, you felt carefree, you focused primarily on yourself, and you rarely gave your thoughts and actions a second glance. The whole point was to have fun, explore, and discover the world around you. People just leave more than they ought to once they move into adolescence and adulthood. Maybe it’s time to reclaim at least a part of that child and temper it with some hard-won wisdom that you attained through experience.

Girls, in particular, have a more difficult time getting back some of their childlike qualities. There are so many reasons why they’ve lost some of their inner selves as they mature. During adolescence, girls somehow start to believe that they need to be effortlessly perfect. They feel pressured to fit in socially and do well in school. While these things are a natural part of growing up, you sometimes sacrifice a bit of who you are when you achieve these goals. Women immediately assume that they need to be people-pleasers so they start to conform to what they believe people want them to be. The urge to conform can even extend physically. You spend more time worrying about your appearance instead of enjoying your favorite hobby. You wanted to be well-liked so you took less risks that could’ve made you stand out in a sea of nameless faces.

As a child, you can devote hours to dreaming and doing things just because you enjoy doing them. But as life accelerates, you get busy. It soon becomes second-nature to neglect the things that truly make you happy. The devil-may-care attitude gets lost, and this is actually quite sad. That deeper sense of who you truly are comes in handy as an adult. This helps get you what you truly want by heightening your feelings of joy. Of course, this does not suggest that you completely go back to your childish ways. This is actually more about realizing what’s missing, bringing back some of the facets to your personality, and using them to your own advantage.

Define what’s missing by taking a simple look back at the person you once were and comparing her to who you are right now. Pay attention to the things that you truly miss and translate them into your adult world. Don’t just rely on your memory. Mementos help a lot because childhood pictures and journals give you tangible proofs of your old self. Hook up with old pals as well. Who better to bond with than the people who saw you through your most awkward phases in life? They will always remember you as a kid who had done memorable things. When you get to see all these, you’ll soon realize what you were looking for in the first place.

It’s time to reclaim your old self and stop worrying about the expectations of other people. Now is the time to focus on what you want so that you live your life the best way you know how. You are the only person who can best say what is truly good for you.