Untethering My Soul
People ask you when you’re little, “what do you want to be when you grow up?” and I never really had a good answer. At one point, I wanted to be an archaeologist and, at another point, an RAF fighter pilot. But after that, I didn’t have a clue who I was, what I wanted or how I felt and ended up just taking whatever jobs I could find.
I’ve always envied people who knew what they wanted, those people who had a passion in their lives when I didn’t know who I was at all. Thankfully, I have now started to figure out who I am and what I like through an epiphany I gained through two unrelated things.
I am currently moving from paid employment into a freelance lifestyle and doing some workshop tasks around this. One required me to look at the books on my bookcase and write down their genres to hone in on my knowledge and who my ideal client would be. Secondly, I have been listening to two of Michael Singer’s books unrelated to the workshop tasks.
I think I’ve listened to the books the wrong way round, but I feel it’s actually helped me more in doing so. I often choose to listen to non-fiction books on audio instead of reading them; I like the idea of a kindly voice guiding me in life.
In his book The Surrender Experiment, the author tells the story of his life and how he surrendered to each new event or opportunity, ultimately having experiences and finding himself at places in life he could have never envisaged. It was a relatively interesting life story with a big takeaway for me, breathe, let the universe do its thing, and you’ll end up where you belong.
The second book I listened to is The Untethered Soul. One particular chapter of this book made so much sense to me, that pain is energy that gets blocked through our wish to not feel it and patterns are repeated to resolve the blockage. I know I’ve spent years running away from how I felt, trying everything to stop the feelings, and I have learned this before, but my brain chose to ignore it. This time, my brain was ready and open to receiving the information.
I can look back on my life and see so many repeated patterns, all stemming from my desire to avoid feeling the pain I felt inside. In this sense, my fear of feeling the pain became a bigger problem than letting myself feel the pain would have been. It’s as if we have blinkers on shouting, “no, I’m not looking at that”, “no thank you universe”,, etc. etc.
When I listened to this chapter, it absolutely made sense as to why therapy works (for some people), why chakra cleansing works, and why the phrase “you’ve got to feel it to heal it” encapsulates everything around healing. I needed to turn around and look at my pain — which the recent self-reflection marathon gave me a chance to do — the blockages are being released, and I finally feel free to move forward.
So how does that relate to who I want to be when I grow up? After the book exercise, I realised my books told me who I am meant to be, who life is telling me that I really am, what I enjoy, what I am passionate about. It’s been there, right in front of my face, this whole time.
The books I have are all because they mean something to me; I am interested in the content; they are not just course books I’ve been required to read. I feel anyone could look at my bookcase and know me, Emma, who I really am.
And the Michael Singer books combined with the self-reflection marathon helped me understand how I want to feel. The synchronicity of the timing of all these things appearing in my life has not gone unnoticed to me.
Right now, the most essential thing in my life is trusting that those feelings can guide me. I can choose work that creates those feelings; I can say no to work that doesn’t. I can choose activities that create those feelings; I can say no to activities that don’t.
This is how I really discover who I am and what I want to be when I grow up; by removing my self imposed limits and living freely. It might not yet always come naturally to me, but it’s a positive habit I’m aiming for.
