Freedom, Are YOU Living the Life You are Meant to Live?
Today, being President’s Day, I started thinking about “Freedom” OK I know that’s more about Independence Day but is it really? The first President George Washington’s birthday we’re celebrating today, doesn’t he represent us being a free nation? All of this got me thinking about our own lives…
Are we truly free? Here are my thoughts on freedom:
“Remember you are dust and unto dust you shall return.” The day you realize someday you’re going to die, is the day you start to live. For me, it happened the day I turned 60. A good friend had told me months preceding my 60th birthday “the day you turn 60 is going to change your life.” I never quite understood what he meant by that until I woke up on the morning of my 60th birthday. I remember it as if it were yesterday.
I woke up and felt this immense freedom, I realized I’ve gotten this far in life, and someday I’m going to die, and I don’t really give a “&@#% anymore! In other words, I was free from worrying about “what are they going to do to me if…” It was an exhilarating feeling, I wish I could wake up every day like on the day I turned 60.
We could all learn something from Steve Jobs commencement address at Stanford University:
“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.”
We’re too worried about what “they” think, and trust me there’s a lot of “they” in the world, starting from your parents, your neighbors, your significant other, etc. etc. Once you accept the fact “life is short and you’re going to die” your priorities change. Then you’re truly FREE to live your life how you want to. I heard Wayne Dyer speak several times, but once he said something I’d never forgotten, “don’t die with the music still in you.”
I don’t think when you’re six-feet under or burnt to a crisp you’re thinking about your failures – Hell No, you’re wishing you had done more of the crazy things you wanted to do, loved more, traveled more, you can fill in the blank. Hell, I walked on fire (twice) and on purpose. I traveled across the country alone, during December, and moved to San Diego, during the start of the recession, (of course, I didn’t know that at the time).
I spent ten years living in San Diego, and trust me I went through some hard times and learned some tough lessons, but I also “LIVED my life, my way” me & Frankie (Sinatra, in case you’re a millennial & don’t know who he is).
To be totally FREE you’ve got to do THREE things:
Let go of control – ouch, I can already hear that’s a challenging one for some of you. You can only control what’s in your boat, everything else is outside of the realm of what you can control. Just visualize in your mind’s eye for me, going done the Zambezi River (Africa), one of the most treacherous in the world, with its dangerous falls and rapids. You can only control how you navigate the boat, there ain’t a damn thing you’re going to change about the speed or depth of the falls or the plethora of animals who roam the area. People do raft it, and some have probably died trying, but there’s only so much you can control.- Detach yourself from the outcome. True FREEDOM is being true to yourself and your beliefs. Once I worked a telemarketing job (very briefly) and you had to sell a certain number of Time magazines and TV Guide (remember them?). You weren’t “allowed” to sell any other magazine unless you met your quota of the aforementioned. The supervisors would listen to everything you said on the phones on their headsets. One day as I was making my automatic phone calls (the system just random dials numbers all over the country) a girl told me she was getting married and wanted to buy a subscription to Bride’s magazine and another guy was a fly fisherman and he wanted a subscription to Flyfisher magazine.
- So I sold both of them their respective magazines, and the supervisor came over and said he wanted to see me in his office (it might’ve been a she, I don’t remember). I was reprimanded for selling the magazines and was being written up and was told I had to sign this pink slip. I said “I’m not signing it” then was told I could lose my job. Then I said in these exact words “I am a single mom, and have a small child at home, and a mouth to feed, I’d rather walk out of here with NO job, then sell my soul one more day, I quit!”
Quit Shoulding on Yourself. Quit living everybody else’s version of your life. I even wrote an entire book on this subject by the same name (click on the sidebar to order). It’s YOUR life, and it’s meant to be lived by you. I personally believe we were all born with a deep desire within, along with certain gifts and talents. We are meant to follow that burning candle inside of us, not your candle, or our parent’s candle (unless of course, that same burning desire has been placed inside of you as well).
- So, get off the “should” bus and wake up to what makes you sing, what makes you jump for JOY, what could you get lost doing for hours upon hours? These are the questions to ask yourself.
Start saying “YES” to life, when you let go of the vice-grip you have on control, when you take your superglue fingers away from the outcome, and when you quit listening to other people tell you what you “should” do, that’s when the magic happens.
You’ll be surprised and amazed when opportunity starts knocking on your door. When you start waving your magic wand and let the Universe take over, then the fairytale begins. I may not have done everything on my bucket list, but I’ll die trying…
This is Eva Starr saying “If you can dream it ~ you can do it”
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