Is fighting against the lack of freedom in our covid world creating a greater-than-ever desire for adventure? Don't look to your external environment. Your happiness in the current climate depends on the mastery of your perceptions and your ability to turn in.
Are you thirsty for adventure?
Is your desire stifled and causing you to look outside the four walls of your home, your job?
I speak to hundreds of people a month and there is one thread that is common amongst all, their desire for freedom and their repulsion from the constraints of COVID.
Freedom is a fundamental human need that connects us all. Freedom is different for everyone, and the experience of freedom is unique to the eye of the beholder.
For some, freedom can be experienced through the safety and consistency of a connected family. Others experience freedom in the forbidden, by doing the thing they shouldn’t, allowing them the sense of freedom.
I was on the phone last night to a Chief of a large listed ASX. He said this to me;
“Stella, there is no light, there is no joy, there is no freedom, I am not coping”.
And I asked him,
“What do you mean there is no freedom? What do you mean there is no light, no joy? You have a gorgeous family, safe and well, a top executive job, you get paid close to half a million dollars per annum and you are a fit and healthy individual? I am sorry but from my lens, there is plenty of freedom and joy in your scenario? Please explain.”
He responds,
‘Well my work is actually going good, and I got 140% of my on-target bonus, the kids are fine, my wife is happy homeschooling, and I have lost 3 kgs as I’m exercising every day.
But I still feel flat. I feel energy-less, I feel unmotivated, I feel like I have lost the desire to enjoy life”.
Can we have it all and still feel empty?
Well, it is all a matter of your perspective and your mastery over your own perceptions.
Why?
Because peace and joy isn’t found in the external. It’s found in the internal.
I realised through this dialogue that as a result of this lockdown there has been a depletion of imagination and creativity in how people experience freedom. The output of this is that people are beginning to disconnect from their families, their jobs, and even themselves.
The fact is that we need safety and security but what we want is adventure and freedom.
There is a happy tension between both and they live symbiotically with one another.
Covid has redefined how we can experience adventure. We can't travel, we can't socialise, we can’t enjoy group exercise and we can't even go to work in an office. Our options for adventure have been removed.
The result?
A change in how we experience adventure. From my experience, people are seeking to change jobs as an adventure that they can have inside of the restrictions of Covid. It's that notion of “let's change jobs as there is nothing else to change”.
So, I wanted to offer this idea.
Having Stone Heart Light Heart, you accept the conditions of your current moment as if it’s the only moment you have. By accepting your current moment, it injects power back into your hands and helps you see clearly through your motivations. If you are running towards freedom or running away from control, your motivation is still sitting in the external environment, you can’t really control the external.
Your thirst for adventure will not be quenched simply by changing jobs.
Before you take that leap to leave for leaves sake, deeply question your motivation. Are you bored? Are you looking for change to create a new adventure because you can't adventure beyond the four walls of your home. Is it that your privacy has been stifled? Your imagination is restricted?
Unless your motivations are grounded, you won't find completeness in another person’s home.
You need to turn in.
This talks to the very root of people’s purpose. Their want for security but their need for freedom.
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