Moving Beyond Chasing The Freedom Fallacy, Into Sovereign Collaborative Co-Leadership

Are you someone, who while growing up, there was nothing that you wanted more in the whole world than your F̳r̳e̳e̳d̳o̳m̳?.

Financial Freedom.

Geographic Freedom.

Sexual Freedom.

You know…..all the shiny things.

I know I did.

I identified as a strong young woman and I didn’t want to ever NEED anyone or have to get PERMISSION for anything.

As a dependent child and teen, I had felt stifled in a family, culture, community and lifestyle that didn’t feel like it aligned with who I was inside.

I imagine there are plenty of you new paradigm-types out there who probably felt similarly growing up.

So trying to “fit in” felt like it limited me to a relatively small set of social norms, cultural values and habitual experiences.

In being dependent, I always felt like I had to either get my parents’ “approval” or “permission” to do what I wanted (which was unlikely to be forthcoming if it didn’t qualify as “normal”) or I had to acquiesce to their wishes, ultimately because they were the “boss of the house” and they had the financial power.

I resented the “No”s, used them to further reinforce how different and misunderstood I felt and allowed them fuel my rampant desire for freedom and independence.

Again, I suspect this is a common story.

There was no particular failing on my parents’ part; they were loving, generous and beautiful people who showered me with privilege.

I just felt perpetually frustrated by my dependence and lack of freedom. And, naturally, if other kids had more freedom than I had, I compared myself and was jealous.

Which is probably something that every child, teenager or adult dependent can relate to at some level.

As I got older, and got a job, despite the plump paycheck, that feeling of being bound-in transferred to my employer, as the new sole source of my income. As did the frustration I felt in having to garner permission or approval to speak up or act upon my creative inspiration within the strict hierarchy at work.

And my jealousy transferred to the celebrities, entrepreneurs or online marketers who seemingly had more freedom than I did.

So I left the law and started my own business.

I became a licensee running a coach training business, and despite making $1million + in revenue in the first 16 months, the feeling of being bound-in and frustrated then transferred to the licensor with it’s established brand and protocols.

So then I left there too.

I was yearning for freedom, but what I didn’t see at the time was that it was coming from a pronounced aversion to feeling needy, trapped, dependent and resistant to authority.

Over time I came to learn that by clinging to an attachment to freedom from that place, I was arming my ego with everything it needed to keep me firmly rooted in the very dependence I was attempting to flee from.

I was convinced I was doing what was necessary to achieve my freedom, but outside of my conscious awareness I just kept finding new bolt holes to avoid stepping more fully into my power; after the licensor, my dependence transferred to my team for my resources, and then, after that, to our benefactor.

And time and time again I would find myself feeling trapped by my external circumstances, because I was projecting my own internal resistance to claiming my sovereignty onto a perceived limitation I felt victim to in my work, business or my relationship. Which would then only feed my freedom fallacy and my aversion to NEEDING anything from them.

For example, it turns out that I had a whole bunch of both conscious and unconscious resistance to sales, given how icky the traditional sales approaches felt and the doubts I harboured about my own self-worth, so I avoided the discomfort of putting myself out there in the world.

And then I’d blame the experience of feeling trapped and dependent from not putting myself out there, on my relationship dynamic or how someone else was showing up in the business.

That then fortified my ego in the belief that it well and truly wasn’t my fault (conveniently) and therefore must be something I could only deal with by leaving and claiming my freedom and independence, only for me to end up in another similar dynamic next time around.

And if you’re someone who has habitually cheated on partners or bounced out of intimate relationship after relationship, don’t be surprised if this all smacks of something uncomfortably familiar. Because the avoidance of dependency is also tied in to a deep fear of intimacy, but that’s a topic for another post.

Ultimately, it took being willing to do the most uncomfortable thing, to stay in the crucible of both business and intimate relationship through the alchemical fires of transformation, to illuminate what was happening in me, stop sabotaging myself and surrender to staying IN my collaborative endeavour while also stepping UP in my leadership as an individual.

This recognition of our own responsibility and choice to do what it takes no matter how uncomfortable it may feel in the moment, is what matures us into the kind of human beings who can participate in the sovereign collaborative co-leadership that Life is now calling for from us.

So, women, if your attempts to secure your freedom keep having you continually blaming and bouncing out of business or intimate relationships, and you’re ready to stop freedom-chasing and step into the kind of sovereignty that supports true collaboration, and you’d like to have a conversation about how I can support you, post the word “FREEDOM” in the comments or DM me for an exploratory connection call.