Freedom is a theme that keeps coming up for me and it’s something that I definitely struggle with back home in Melbourne. Yesterday I had a bit of a light bulb moment and simply must share what lit up for me.
So let me just quickly speed you up on my life right now. I’ve been accepted into the Chinese Medicine course that I’ve been wanting to do for lord knows how many years now and will be finishing up work with my corporate job on the 8th May! It’s still pretty scary, every so often I think about being a poor student for the next 4 years and feel a little sick but then I come back to the day I went to the open day for the course I thought I’d be there for an hour max, sus a few things out and then be on my way. I ended up staying for 5 hours, it all just made sense in a way that nothing else ever has not even yoga and I knew it’s where I need to be.
While all this greatness is in place to happen in the future ask me how my current life is? How’s my work life balance? I’ve resigned from my corporate job and I’m teaching a few classes a week everything should be great right? Not so much… I’m still falling into the trap of taking on too much. I could go into the detail of all the craziness, my insane lack of sleep, the things I should have said no to and all the excuses I make to justify my overload. But I’ve come to realise this, it doesn’t actually matter what the stuff is that I’ve taken on this is just my pattern and it’s going to follow me around. I tell people that things will be better once I start studying and that I will have more time but that’s probably not actually the case either.
I think a lot of us fall into that trap, giving the things that we need now future dates or believing that certain goals once attained will bring the desired emotion; I’ll be happy once I’ve got blah or I’ll be less stressed once I’ve gotten through blah. Now I’m not about to say that you shouldn’t plan or have goals but I’d like to know what feelings or emotions have to attached to a future goal or situation. And then I’d like to know do you really have to wait to experience that emotion, why can’t you feel how you’d like to feel now? If you’ve got a really seriously good reason why you can’t feel however you’d like to feel right now I’ve got one more question for you – How true is your reason?
In an amazing workshop yesterday with Krista Jane I was asked how do I want to feel? It’s a question I’ve never been asked before but I knew the answer without hesitation, I want to feel free. I just as I had started to decide that freedom was a once I’ve finished my corporate job thing I was asked what can you do to feel more free now?
It seems kind of bizarre to me now to say but I actually hadn’t contemplated feeling more free now. I had resided myself to the fact that life is going to be super crazy for the next few months and that’s ok I’ll get through it and then things will be better, I’ll just automatically feel more free from not having to do the 9-5pm daily grind. Sure not being in my corporate job and moving towards something that I’m so passionate about will be liberating but it’s not going to bring about the type of freedom I’m looking for. I fall into this way of think that time equals freedom, that if I have more time I can do more of the things that bring me joy, I’ll be more connected with my true self and everything will just fall into place. Part of this way of thinking also comes from people continually giving me the advice that I need to say no to more things and yes I know I do need to do but if it were as simple as just saying no I would be doing it already. Which is what leads me to believe that not overloading myself is really more about self love and caring about myself enough to say no I wouldn’t do that to myself (that’s another blog post to come).
So back to Freedom. Freedom is only going to come from me, my freedom resides within me, it’s not about a certain environment or situation it’s purely about my state of mind and how I choose to see things. Freedom is about vulnerability, connection and worthiness and let me tell you I’m not very good at any of it. The work I need to do is around figuring out what past experiences have shaped my aversions to these emotions and how I might be able to make peace with what has been so that I have a more authentic tomorrow.
The work starts now, no more putting things off or believing that emotions are only accessible in a future environment or situation, The time is now, the place is here and the person who’s going to make it happen is me.
Live well beautiful souls
xxx
Rambling Yogi 