The ties that bind

This post is a continuation of the theme I explored 2 weeks ago in my post titled, “On letting go”.

I never make New Year’s resolutions, but I do decide on a theme for each year that will inform and inspire all my actions and decisions for that year. Last year (2009) my theme was “Freedom” and I certainly achieved a great deal of freedom from many things last year!

Below is just a small list of some of the things from which I freed myself in 2009:

Freedom from debt and concerns about money
Freedom from the competition, conflict and stress associated with a career in the corporate world
Freedom from my own expectations and the need to achieve, perform or prove myself
Freedom from a number of foods and other chemicals that were not beneficial to my body
Freedom from relationships, situations and possessions that had lost their meaning and value for me
Freedom from fear that expressing myself would lead to ridicule or censure
Freedom from demands to be anything other than my truest, highest self
Freedom and space to discover and express the authentic me

However, over the past few weeks, I have felt somewhat like Gulliver when he awakens only to discover that he is held captive by hundreds of tiny Lilliputian ropes! I suppose that I had, somewhat naively as it turns out, believed that freeing myself from my corporate job and the expectations of myself and others, would mean that I would finally “awaken” into a new life in which I would be free to follow my heart wherever it might lead me. What I now realize is that quitting my job was merely the beginning! There are so many other ties that bind me to the socially sanctioned life, the life that conforms to the expectations and the needs of others. It takes a whole lot of concerted effort to extricate oneself from the responsibilities we so blithely take on when we are striving to meet the expectations of society. I am gradually cutting these ties, one-by-one, but it is an ongoing task that is certainly not easy. In the process I have also discovered that society is definitely NOT going to reward me for showing it the big middle finger!

We are rewarded for buying in, not for cashing out.

Aside from the tangible ties that bind, from which a clearly identifiable process is required in order to release ourselves, there are other invisible, and far more insidious, ties that bind us. It is not always easy to recognise these ties and it is even more difficult to release ourselves from them. These are the ideas we have about ourselves; the roles that we choose to play.

Some of us have an idea that we have to play the role of provider or the role of the person who sacrifices themselves and their happiness for others. Others find their value in seeing themselves as the victim of circumstance or perhaps as the rescuer of others. These ideas and roles are immensely powerful traps that keep us tied to the status quo.

I keep discovering new layers of previously unexamined concepts of self and roles that I have subconsciously believed that I must play in order to be acceptable to myself and to society; in order to be “worthy” of love. These include the roles of being the person who’s always on top of everything and in control of her emotions, her finances, her whole world; the role of the person who is always reliable and who cleans up everyone else’s “mess”; the role of the rescuer and many, many others. Now, there may not, at first glance, appear to be a problem with any of these roles, as, after all, they might seem to be quite positive and affirming, not to mention, useful, roles to play. However, many of these roles may no longer be authentic for the person I am becoming and certainly several of these roles keep me very tightly bound to my old way of being. For someone wishing to find, and become, her most purposeful and highest self, it is appropriate to discard any self-limiting beliefs and ideas. It is also important to interrogate whether the “love”, affirmation and recognition one receives when playing these roles actually contributes to, or detracts from, one’s quest for meaning and purpose. I will explore this theme in a future post.

So, what is on the other side of this process? Hopefully the outcome will be a more authentic, fully actualised self; a person who has discarded fear and pain as motivators. I suppose I’m taking a leap of faith into the unknown with only the gentle guidance of my heart to show me the way. But, if I become still and listen to the quiet voice within, I actually have a sense of knowing about the outcome of this journey. In any case, I am acutely aware that there is really no turning back now.

And so the journey continues…

Next: Being Here Now

Lisa-on-purpose?

My name is Lisa. I am about to embark upon the scariest, most illogical, most exciting journey of my life! I am leaving my well-paid corporate job, with excellent prospects, to go and find my life’s purpose in the Tsitsikamma forest on the East Coast of South Africa. This is my personal experiment to discover whether it is indeed possible to find an authentic, fulfilling, meaningful expression of Self that will create abundance in my life.

This is Lisa-on-purpose!

I have decided to start this blog as a means of creating a chronicle of my experiences in this new phase of my life. I will be writing about finding, and living, my purpose. This is a way for me to keep friends and family updated on my progress but it may also be useful or perhaps entertaining (or even cautionary!) to others contemplating doing something similar.

So, how did I get to this place in my life?

I have spent a lot of time acquiring qualifications, firstly in Science and latterly, in commerce. I have been driven by an ambitious desire to be successful, to be “The Best”. I have always been motivated by doing what I thought was expected of me and what was the “right thing” to do; what would get me the most recognition and affirmation; a desire to “live up to my potential” and not let anyone down etc, etc.

I never really asked myself what it was that I most wanted to do; what my passion could be or how I could find happiness and a sense of connection through what I did for a living. So, hardly surprisingly, I did gain a lot of affirmation and recognition through my achievements but I often felt the lack of a sense of meaning or purpose in what I did every day. Sure, I felt satisfied every time my business achieved the budget or beat out the competition, but a whole lot of the time I felt empty and unfulfilled, despite my outward success.

In recent years I have discovered that the things that brought me the most satisfaction were the human connections I made with colleagues and customers, the growth and development of my team, the times I had a sense of creating real, lasting value for customers on a personal level. In short, the warm, soft, fuzzy things that are not really valued much in the corporate world!

Over a period of about 8 years I have been engaged in a process of finding love and acceptance of Self. As my journey progressed I became more-and-more disinclined to do what I thought was expected of me and more-and-more inclined to find out what I really wanted to do with my life. In my chosen career, I had started to feel like a highly trained monkey, adept at creating wealth for shareholders, but not really finding connection or meaning in my daily work. This situation had become increasingly unacceptable to me. I knew I HAD to find the courage to make a change.

The event I am about to relate may sound very strange; particularly coming from someone who is not at all religious. However, this event was the main catalyst for all the recent changes in my life. I don’t require you to believe this story, as it is my own subjective experience. However, I am unable to ignore it:

About 18 months ago, I was hiking in the Tsitsikamma forest. I had stopped for a breather during a steep climb out of a forested gorge when a little voice inside told me to turn around. I gazed, transfixed, at the magnificent view before me – the steep, forested mountainsides, the azure ocean, the river winding its way through the gorge below, each individual fynbos petal and blade of grass outlined in golden light, and suddenly it felt as if my heart was cracking open. I was utterly overwhelmed by powerful emotions, the likes of which I had never experienced before. Finding that my legs could no longer support me, I fell to my knees, with tears streaming down my face, saying, “Yes, yes, yes…” over-and-over again. I didn’t know what I was saying “yes” to, but I did know that I was irrevocably changed forever. Suddenly I knew that THIS was how I wanted and needed to feel; everything else was simply a pale imitation. The concept of career success, acquisition of wealth and belongings, approval and acceptance by society – these things seemed unbelievably trivial by comparison. Why try and acquire things to feel good about myself when I had discovered the most astounding, unimaginable feeling of connection and love?

As I said before, I am not at all a religious person, but I do believe that I experienced a connection with some Higher Power on that mountainside. In subsequent reading and research, I have reached the conclusion that what happened to me could be classified as a so-called “peak experience”, as described by the psychologist, Abraham Maslow. Of course it is possible to try and find a rational explanation for my experience on the mountainside and, as a trained scientist, I can advance all kinds of theories. However, as a human being, I knew that I could simply not ignore what I had experienced; I was dramatically changed forever and I knew that this change required some action from me. In my heart I unambiguously knew that I had to quit my corporate job, divest myself of all that did not resonate with my true Self and to make it my quest to discover the unique, authentic, meaningful contribution that I was destined to make to the world. I actually had no real plan; I just knew that I should follow my heart, wherever it would lead.

My heart’s desire was to move to the Tsitsikamma forest, and this is what I have been planning for the last year-and-a-half. I have latterly become aware of the fact that I don’t NEED to be in the forest in order to find my purpose. So, although it may appear as if I am preparing to move to the forest, I am actually moving to ME! It just happens to be easier for me to be ME when I am in the forest!

In the intervening months my life has changed SO much. The materialistic, acquisitive me has been replaced by a person who seeks meaning and connection in all things. I have been involved in a process of “weeding out” everything that no longer has meaning or contributes to my life and I have subsequently donated bags and bags of clothing, bedding, curtains and other stuff, collected over many years, to the Lifeline thrift store. I have also gifted, thrown away, recycled and otherwise disposed of, many, many other prized possessions that I previously believed were absolutely essential to my life. Every time I give something up, I feel lighter and freer. I realize that owning things brings with it added responsibilities, which, in turn, reduce our freedom. My goal is to be in a relationship of conscious ownership with every one of my possessions and to only have things in my life that I truly love and which create meaning and beauty in my world. In fact, I have started to realize that I actually don’t own anything – I merely have the privilege and responsibility of stewardship over my possessions whilst I reside on this Earth.

Relationships in my life have also started to change and, sadly, several friends and acquaintances of the past have drifted out of my life as I found that I no longer resonated with them. Fortunately, many new relationships that reflect my own growth and development have started to enrich my life.

So, what is the plan? Well, strangely enough, for an erstwhile “control-freak” there is not much of a plan at all! I need to finish disconnecting myself from the last vestiges of my old life, take stock and then actively start creating my new life. The old me would have felt unbelievably threatened and frightened by what I am about to do. I would have found it impossible to believe that I could survive without my corporate salary, my city lifestyle, the trappings of success, my work title, my status, my possessions… When I start to intellectually analyse all that has happened I find that I do start to feel anxious, but if I reside in my heart, I find complete peace and a sense of calm acceptance that all is EXACTLY as it should be.

Thanks to our corporate jobs, my partner and I have a fully paid-up home and sufficient funds to survive frugally for 2 years. We intend moving to the Tsitsikamma forest, initially to a rental property and then to possibly purchase a property once we have sold our house in Cape Town. For the rest, there is no plan other than for me to finish the book I have been writing on-and-off for about a year and for my partner to also complete his own on-line book. We want to start growing our own food and to investigate the possibility of living a self-sustaining life, as far as we possibly can. Other than that, our full-time “job” will be to discover and express our passion.

And, so the journey continues…

Next: My Final Goodbye to the Corporate World