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When I was a boy, I associated being grown up with physical size. As I grew into a teen, I still felt smaller than adults, despite my growing body, and I realized it wasn't physical size that made the grown up; they had a certain presence by virtue of experience and maturity.

Now I'm in my thirties, yet I still don't feel any bigger. I've worked hard and have an important job with a lot of responsibility, but I don't feel any sense of accomplishment or self-mastery. On the contrary, I feel like a child, doing what I'm told to avoid a scolding -- chasing after toys instead of carving out my place in the world.

Has anyone else ever felt like this?

Stop resisting what you really want. If you want it, you want it. You cant change these things. Accept yourself entirely! You never really "grow up". Dont put boundaries on yourself like that. The true enjoyment of life is to be childlike and you will be happy. Just because you are childlike doesn't make you any less of an adult. On the contrary, it makes you fun, free, and enjoyable. You have nothing to prove and you should stop trying. The world isn't judging you for what you have.

I think you may be overthinking some of your actions and believing they are childlike when they are perfectly normal. Of course you follow directions in your job, you'd probably be fired if you didn't!

Most people retain quirks and such they had when they were younger, the majority of which are likely considered harmless by others. If you genuinely feel some of your actions are not befitting of an adult, then choose to try and act differently next time. No-ones perfect so don't be too hard on yourself when you screw up.

One of the best things I can advise is to try and consider things from a neutral perspective, its not always easy to do but sometimes it shows me that I've been worrying over nothing and overanalysing so perhaps it'll help you.

p.s. I am rather childish at times too, however I like to think its nothing more than cheeky grins at inappropriate jokes and so forth.

"Critics who treat adult as a term of approval, instead of as a merely descriptive term, cannot be adult themselves. To be concerned about being grown up, to admire the grown up because it is grown up, to blush at the suspicion of being childish; these things are the marks of childhood and adolescence. And in childhood and adolescence they are, in moderation, healthy symptoms. Young things ought to want to grow. But to carry on into middle life or even into early manhood this concern about being adult is a mark of really arrested development. When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty I read them openly. When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up." - C. S. Lewis

Pretty much as everyone else has said, really. The only thing I have to add is that (in my opinion at least) being grown up is more a matter of how you act in serious situations than what's going through your head the rest of the time.

arthurb wrote:"Critics who treat adult as a term of approval... - C. S. Lewis

Whoa! This is about the last place I ever expected to find a quote from C.S. Lewis.
He makes a good point. I think I may frame that excerpt and put it on my desk. Thanks!