When people reach out to me about working together, it’s often because they’re seeking freedom. Freedom from pain, or from financial stress, or from feeling trapped in a dysfunctional job or relationship or pattern.
They don’t tell me that they’re seeking freedom, though. Here’s what they tell me:
…I need to finally start living more healthy and lose weight
…I keep getting in dysfunctional relationships and losing sight of myself
…I’m sick of being somebody I’m not and having to put myself last in order to make everybody else happy
…I want to find work that fills me with meaning and purpose
…I am tired of feeling anxious and overwhelmed whenever I see my bank account. I want to be able to travel, to live life on my own terms.
I’m not saying these people who don’t want these things, or that these things aren’t worth wanting. But the true WANT at the heart of all these desires is freedom.
Gandhi once wrote, “I want freedom for the full expression of my personality.”
And isn’t that what we all want? The total freedom to be completely ourselves, and act and think and speak as we want. Freedom to live life exactly as you want, to know yourself, to feel like you can be yourself in any situation, to feel unrestricted, unburdened.
Like many of my clients, I’ve also spent a big part of my life hunting for freedom. I’ve changed lovers, changed homes, changed jobs. And after all that, here’s the thing I’ve learned about freedom.. It doesn’t come from changing our circumstances. That’s why so many of us leave unhealthy relationships for healthier relationships and still find ourselves full of resentment, unable to be honest and open, to ask for what we want or set boundaries. That’s why some of the richest people I’ve ever met feel the most trapped and stuck. Some of the most free people I know can tolerate situations that the rest of us would never accept.
There’s a reason that freedom and acceptance go hand in hand, two sides of the same coin.
XO,
Rae
