Creativity, curiosity and courage are at the root of all freedom. It takes creativity to dream big, curiosity to explore how it might manifest and courage to keeping moving forward–despite your past experience, your current circumstances or the number of naysayers in your life. Once you’ve envisioned your desired future and crafted a plan for getting there, it takes tremendous courage to stay the course no matter what. When you perceive obstacles and the going gets tough, it takes sustained creativity, curiosity and courage to continue pressing on.
Any time you go after what you really want—especially when it involves stepping into the unknown—doubts and fears may surface. Even if you encounter no external critics, traversing new terrain is a common time for the members of your internal personal board of directors (sage, guardian and muse) to shift into gremlin mode because they’ve started fueling themselves with fear rather than unconditional love. As I share in my book, Choose Your Energy: Change Your Life!, such situations require lots of deep breathing and self-awareness.
When my clients report that their fears have reached up and grabbed them by the ankles yet again, I congratulate them. That means you are on the threshold of a big growth spurt, and your sage, guardian, and muse have “gone gremlin” because they are afraid they won’t be able to keep you safe when you get that big. The answer?
- Seek to understand what old concerns have been brought out of hiding.
- Help them differentiate the remnants of past pain from today’s reality.
- Remind them that small does not necessarily equal safe for an adult.
- Clarify that following your authentic path with love and without fear is what safe looks like now.
- Harness their loyalty.
- Leverage their core gifts of discernment, discipline, and imagination to keep moving yourself forward into a life you love.
I am often asked whether my board’s gremlin energies are stirred up by big opportunities. Yes, when they choose to be gripped by fear, because that is what fear does to us. Their clever and dire warnings include such classics as, “Honey, it’s been hard enough to keep you safe as it is. How are we going to manage to protect you if your presence in the Universe gets any bigger? You do this and you might as well paint a big old bull’s-eye on your back for all the naysayers to aim at. You remember how badly that’s gone in the past, right?”
What do I do when my personal board members—Claire, Ella, and Bee—become freaked out by fear and shift into gremlin mode? I do what I encourage my clients to do. As with so many of the things I coach, the only way I know it works so well is that I have the opportunity to practice it myself with regularity:
- Pay attention and breathe.
- Engage with love, respect, curiosity, compassion, and gratitude.
- Reassure and redirect.
- Repeat as necessary.
The way to develop a stronger rapport with your board members and help them build more constructive working relationships with each other is to pay attention and get curious. For more details on harmonious collaboration with your board, check out chapter 6 of my book, Choose Your Energy: Change Your Life!.
Enjoying greater freedom requires creativity, curiosity and courage. Daring to dream. Daring to plan. Daring to take the first baby step. Daring to keep going and stick with it until your dream becomes a reality.
As you exercise your muscle of daring, you will develop increased strength to forge the path to the greater freedom you seek. The joy of that freedom will be well worth the effort it takes to achieve it!
Choose Your Energy: Change Your Life! 