Free Yourself
Instead of finding your self which can feel confusing and vague - kind of like when someone tells you to just drop into your body... What the eff does it even mean??
One of the first things we do in personal style coaching is the practise of freeing yourself.
Although in many ways this can quite easily lead to you finding yourself I have found so much success with myself and in my clients in terms of how clarifying and literally freeing this is.
This doesn't require you to set big goals, have a deep soul searching experience, or cut ties with a bunch of things in your life.
It's a simple process of noticing all the things you use to identify yourself with that are outside of you, and freeing yourself from them.
There is no doubt you will find and rediscover parts of yourself as a by product, but the focus here is removing layers of what seems to make up your identity - if you took these things away you would have no idea who you are.
Essentially it is stripping away all of the stuff that is outside of you and getting a clear view of what is underneath. And we are going to talk about exactly how to do this!
Keep in mind we are not taking these things and removing them from your life. If you love your job we aren't trying to rip it from your hands and free you from it in that sense. The same goes for if you love being a mom or an amazing partner or friend.
We are distinguishing between what is you, and what is outside of you.
Once you can see everything that is external to your being you can free yourself from any obligations, rules, norms, or beliefs about who you are based on those things.
Before we get into the how I want you to know why this is so important.
Freeing yourself is invaluable because when you can see yourself clearly you no longer waver in knowing who you are.
You also don't lose sight of who you are as your life continuously changes (no major identity crisis when life changing event happen). Which means when you lose your job, or get promoted, or become a mom, you aren't explicitly tied to those things outside of you.
You get to bring yourself with you and to all of your life experiences. You get to bring who you are to being an amazing coach, to being an incredible mom, and to decide how you want to show up knowing who you are when life's inevitable failures and grievances occur too.
So, how do you free yourself?
You're going to start by noticing everything that feels like it makes up your life and identity and you're going to note everything that is outside of your being. Writing it down will help you see even more clearly.
Examples of things that could be making up your identity but could be "stripped away" would be things like: your education, your job, your home, your family and close relationships, your hobbies, and any titles such as mom, coach, doctor, etc.
Remember we aren't trying to get rid of any of these things, we are just noticing all of the ways we identify ourselves with things outside of us.
Once you have your list of things that have made up your current identity you're going to then in relation to each thing write out any rules, obligations, norms, or beliefs you feel you have to follow in order to keep these parts of your identity.
For example: seemingly simple things like because I am mom, I have to dress like a mom.
Or things like, because I am a mom, I have to do everything and be everything to everyone.
You don't necessarily have to do this part but it can provide incredible insight as to how you believe you have to be in order to be a good parent, friend, employee, boss, when those things might not be how you would actually show up if you were clear on who you were when these things were stripped away.
The second step is to write out and take some time to consider, once it's all "stripped away" what makes you you?
Now that you can see all of the things that were outside of you that you were making your identity you can more easily distinguish what is actually you from within.
Most of the time this looks like characteristics, values, beliefs, and feelings that do not come from outside of you and cannot be stripped away. These are things that no matter what is happening in your life you can come back to in yourself.
Examples of this could be that you know to your core you are loving, or radiant, or funny, or all of the above. It looks like knowing that you value adventure, or stillness but knowing you can create these things in your life, they aren't withheld from you because of the roles you hold nor are they just happening to you.
Another easy way to do this is the "eulogy exercise" from Stephen Covey which asks, "Imagine, you witness your own funeral. What do you want to hear people say about you?"
You most likely would want to hear about the things that made you special to the people in your life: you lit up any room you walked into, you spread love and compassion, could make you die laughing, was brilliant, etc over only hearing things like was great at her job, was an amazing mom, or friend. Nothing is wrong with these things, they are beautiful, but they say nothing about who you were in those roles and in your life and you are so much more than the things outside of you. Doing this work means getting to make everything outside of you that much more magical, beautiful, intimate, and connected.
This part can take some time so give yourself permission to consider this second half periodically and just notice the parts of you that creep into your day that have nothing to do with the things outside of you and everything to do with you actually just feeling like you're being yourself or you wanting to imbue a part of yourself into other areas of your life.
These are the things that can change how you believe you have to be in your life, they can give you valuable insight as to who you want to be in any given situation or role in your life. These things that make up who you are at your core can also free you from doing things and being someone you're not just because it is the widely adopted idea or way of being in a certain role or experience.
Free yourself today without any confusion, overwhelm, or judgement - booking a free consult call.
Love & Trust Yourself