LOOSE YOURSELF AND LET YOURSELF GO.

LOOSE YOURSELF AND LET YOURSELF GO.

There is a tragedy worse than lacking intelligence: possessing brilliance but living bound.

Lately, I have watched brilliant, educated and highly accomplished people surrender their capacity to think because somebody told them that questioning a rule was rebellion. Sometimes it comes under the guise of religion. Sometimes tradition. Sometimes family expectations. Sometimes culture.

People who survived the intellectual rigour of demanding degrees suddenly become afraid to interrogate ideas that are shaping their entire lives. And slowly, the genius disappears beneath layers of inherited instructions. I have cried twice this week after 2 of my new clients left my office.

If you can no longer reconcile the person you know you could be with the outcomes your life is producing, perhaps the question is not simply, “What am I doing wrong?”

Perhaps you need to ask: “What has bound me?”

There is a fascinating story in the Bible about a man named Lazarus. He had died, and Jesus called him out of the tomb. But when Lazarus emerged, although he was alive, he was still wrapped in grave clothes.

He was alive but bound.

Whether you approach that story through faith or simply appreciate its imagery, there is a powerful metaphor in it. You can be gifted, educated, powerful and successful and bound. You can possess enormous potential while living inside invisible restrictions you have never stopped to examine.

You were not consulted before you were given your name. You did not choose the family, culture or religious environment into which you were born. You did not select many of the schools, teachers and environments that first introduced you to the world. Long before you developed the intellectual capacity to interrogate ideas, ideas were already being installed inside you.

You were taught what success meant. What marriage should look like. What a good man or woman should be and what was possible for you. Some of those things were priceless gifts but some may have become grave clothes.

And with multiple streams of information coming from family, religion, education, culture, social media and personal experiences, it is possible for the original you to become buried beneath layers of inherited instructions, fears and expectations.

Perhaps that is why one of the most powerful parts of the Lazarus story is not merely that he came back to life. It is what was said next: “Loose him, and let him go.”

Maybe this is your week to uninstall some self-sabotaging software. To audit rules that have governed your life but never delivered what they promised. To question inherited limitations.

To distinguish convictions you have consciously chosen from beliefs you merely inherited and to recover the parts of yourself you buried because belonging required you to become smaller.

Freedom is not irresponsibility; Freedom is recovering responsible agency over your own life.

I like to think about it this way:

FREE + DOMINION
Here are my four freedom moves for you this week:

1. AUDIT THE RULES.
Write down five unwritten rules currently governing your life. Ask: Who gave me this rule? Why do I believe it? Is it true? Is it wise? Does it still serve the person I am becoming? What has obeying it produced in my life? You do not have to reject everything you inherited. But adulthood requires examining what you inherited and consciously deciding what deserves to remain.

2.IDENTIFY YOUR GRAVE CLOTHES.
What continues to bind the person who is already alive inside you? Fear of disappointing people? Approval addiction? Shame? Family expectations? Religious fear? An old failure? Fear of being misunderstood? The need to belong? Name it. What remains unnamed is difficult to confront.

3.RECOVER YOUR MIND.
Your intelligence was not given to you so somebody else could permanently do your thinking for you. Read. Investigate. Ask questions. Seek wisdom. Examine evidence. Challenge your assumptions including your own. You can respect people without surrendering your capacity for independent thought. Your mind is too valuable to permanently outsource.

4.GIVE YOURSELF PERMISSION TO LIVE.
Take one action this week that the freer, healthier and more responsible version of you would take. Make the call. Apply. Write. Create. Set the boundary. Start the project. Ask the question. Say no where necessary and yes where conviction requires it. You do not need visible evidence of your entire future before you begin walking toward it.

I have created the following affirmation for you.
I am coming out of every tomb that has contained my possibilities. I give myself permission to examine what I have inherited, retain what carries truth and wisdom, and release what keeps me bound. My mind will think again. My voice will speak again. My gifts will breathe again. I refuse to surrender responsibility for becoming the fullest expression of who I can be. I am alive. I am learning. I am evolving. And I am walking into freedom.

You may already have come out of the tomb. Now remove the grave clothes.

LOOSE YOURSELF AND LET YOURSELF GO.
Have a freedom-filled week.

Praise Fowowe

If you are already on the waiting list of our closed community called family house please expect a mail from us this week for a meet and greet. www.praisefowowedtech.com/family-house-waitlist