What does freedom look like to you? For me it’s about recognising and stepping out of those unhelpful habitual patterns.
Like this morning for example, I woke up all cosy, wrapped up in the duvet like I was in some kind of chrysalis!
I wanted to stay there all warm in my slumber, nesting, enjoying the sweet bird song as the sun rose. Of course at times there's great value in that, but I knew how the day would unfold if I lounged around until the little loves of my life woke. Family life would then hijack any ounce of personal quietude and it wouldn’t be long until the snappy yappy me would emerge!
And that’s where I would once have stayed. In bed, too tired to move, too achy and sore to feel enthused, stuck in the story that I was never going to heal or wake up feeling energised like I once used to in my life. And that’s what I would carry into my day with me and into my relationships. A feeling of lack, of not enough-ness, the frustration that there was no time to do the things that might help me to feel more like me again and the irritation that I hadn’t just got up in the first place to make the time. And so the cycle would continue…
But now I am learning another way. That despite the resistance, the heaviness, the tiredness, I can make a choice in that moment to put my energy towards little daily
do-ables that feed me and connect me back to my centre and to my own internal energy resource. If I want it, early is the only time I can get it! No one else can make it happen, I have to!
But for that metamorphosis to occur, it takes getting uncomfortable, of setting the alarm earlier than most, of stepping out into the cool morning air, in order that I can commit time to feed me.
And these daily do-ables are not huge gestures or grand plans that create overnight epiphanies, but rather a chipping away in the right direction towards a more aware and enriched life.
For me it’s a large mug of warm water to hydrate me, a journal where I scribe those things I feel really grateful for, a few minutes of seated mindfulness and as many more as time allows for breathing and movement on my yoga mat. All with the intention that it nourishes me and feeds into my values of how I would like to show up for the rest of the day. For you, it might look very different, it’s not about the when and what but the how, how can you choose to prioritise your own moments of freedom?
And actually more than anything, it’s that first bit that’s the key. The choosing, because in that moment I choose me and you get to choose you. You get to choose a different way to show up and that is really where the expansion and transformation takes place! That for me is the emergence, the freedom and – the butterfly moment! Best bit, everyone else benefits too.
So I ask you, where can you find freedom in your day today and every day? What is it that’s going to expand you to fly?
Comment below or join me on the mat Tuesdays via zoom 7:30am for 45 minutes if you feel called to explore all of this and more through mindful movement.
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