This webinar was held for members of Lyubov Latypova’s Women’s Club in October 2010. I present its text version for your attention:
The world we live in is an amazing mirror that reflects outward everything we have inside.
If you want to be feminine, femininity must be felt from within.
If you want to prosper, prosperity must be present inside you.
If you want to be free, freedom must flow from within you.
I have come a long way from an English teacher to the author of several successful internet projects. And along the way, getting bumps and bruises, I gained experience that can be useful for any woman: how to feel free in any situation…
The state of inner freedom in my understanding is allowing yourself to be yourself in any situation.
7 keys to the state of inner freedom
Key 1 — Self-love
Can you say with 100% certainty that you love yourself?
If you do not love yourself, it is unlikely that the people around you will love you. Until you find love within yourself, you are unlikely to receive it from somewhere outside.
The main principle is putting yourself first. Many people, especially women, are afraid to put themselves first because they think it is selfishness. A selfish person is something bad, no one wants to be bad.
But if you approach this issue from a slightly different angle, everything will look completely different.
When I put myself first, I have more resources to share with my loved ones, I am in a good mood, and I have many achievements and victories in my life, making it easy for me to share them with the people around me.
In any situation, you ask yourself: do I need this or not, can I do this or not, will it bring me joy or pleasure, or am I doing it to be good, so that no one gets offended, etc.
It is important to understand: if you help everyone and everything without listening to your own feelings and sensations, if you are tired, people ask you to do something and you do it, then the result will be minimal.
If you do the same thing when you are full of energy, when you have rested, the result will be maximum. If you want to give people your maximum, then you put yourself first and calculate all your actions based on whether you want to do it or not.
The second component of self-love is accepting yourself in every way.
We often say that we love ourselves, take care of ourselves, but in reality we cannot fully accept something about ourselves: rejection of the physical body, rejection of our voice, rejection of some behavior.
A way out of this can be to tell yourself: yes, I can be a good mother, I can be a bitch, today I was like this and I accept myself. It is important to understand and accept yourself in any situation. As soon as you take this small step, life begins to play with different colors.
The third component is setting your boundaries.
See also Egoism and self-love. What is the difference
Key 2 — Independence from others’ opinions
At the core of dependence on others’ opinions lies the feeling of being good or the need to be good.
If you worry about what other people will think, you go against your own truth, against what is inside you. This causes a wild feeling of discomfort, a sense of guilt, disappointment. It turns out that you yourself are not in control of your life, you give it into the hands of other people.
It is impossible to be good to everyone. When you try to adapt and please absolutely everyone, you forget about yourself. What is good for one person will not be good for another.
I once heard a phrase that helped me: what others think of me is their problem. The world is a mirror. When people look at you, they do not see the real you; they see what they want to see. They look through the prism of their own experience and feelings.
If I feel that I need to act in a certain way, I do it. And if I make a mistake, nothing terrible will happen, because essentially there are no mistakes, everything is experience.
Accept that if you make a mistake, it was your choice. If it is your choice and your action, then it only says one thing: that you can make a different choice and take a different action. And look at the result.
If you use this approach to everything in life, then you will have neither a feeling of regret for a mistake nor a feeling of guilt.
See also: How to overcome dependence on others’ opinions
Key 3 — Trust in Yourself
It is important to learn to trust your feelings (not emotions). Women are luckier in this regard, as they possess female intuition. This is a very powerful tool that can be applied to various issues and areas of life.
At the initial stage, to develop your intuition, I suggest keeping a diary and recording different signals that precede certain events in your life. Then see what ultimately happened.
For example, you are invited to a meeting, but inside you have a feeling that you should not go. Write down that feeling, go to the meeting as an experiment, get the result, and then check what your inner sense was telling you.
Thus, record your sensations before making a decision, your choice (action), and what ultimately resulted. At first, some things will match and some will not, but with experience you will understand that intuition, inner instinct, does not deceive.
See also Affirmations for chakras on self-acceptance and trust in the world
4th Key — Liberation from the Power of Emotions
Excessive emotionality works against us. It is important to free yourself from excessive emotionality if you desire inner freedom. It is important to distinguish between the concepts of feelings and emotions (See the article Emotional Immaturity. How to Move from Emotions to Feelings).
When you feel an intensity of emotions, pause. For example, you were communicating in some chat, and someone wrote something unpleasant to you. Do not reply immediately, otherwise it will continue: they write to you, you write back. Wait, switch to something else, calm down, and if in a calm state you still want to continue the dialogue, it will no longer be insults or complaints, but simply a response.
In relationships, it is similar — take a pause: walk the dog, interact with your child, restore your emotional balance, then you can communicate calmly.
Furthermore, if you see that the same behavior in different people triggers intense emotions, it means there is a similar part within you that you have rejected and do not accept. People whose behavior irritates you are simply showing you this part so that you can see and accept it. When you accept it, you become freer and stronger, and that behavior ceases to be a trigger.
A universal formula when you feel on the verge of a breakdown:
- I forgive (myself, that person, and the situation)
- I thank (myself, the person for showing me, and the situation for what)
- Letting go (of resentment, all destructive emotions, the situation).
Simply repeat these phrases until you feel relief.
5th Key — Honesty and Sincerity
If you have this “good person” syndrome, then you likely find it difficult to say what you think to someone’s face. You will look for workarounds.
Firstly, the person may sense that you are insincere, and secondly, in this way you cause colossal harm to yourself.
When you do not tell the truth, do not speak your mind, do not carry your truth, it leads to various physical illnesses, ranging from bronchitis, tonsillitis, and so on.
You reject yourself, your inner part, you step on your own throat, and as a result, it is blocked. The throat chakra becomes blocked, a block appears, and in life this manifests as people no longer taking you seriously, simply not hearing you.
But there is no need to be blunt either; speak with love, with tenderness, the main thing is not to compromise your truth. At the same time, it is important not to impose your truth on anyone. What matters is that you have it. Do not speak out without being asked.
It is also important to learn to say “no.” It is very difficult to refuse in relationships. But here it is important to understand: do you love yourself, or do you love everyone else except yourself? A question to ponder.
See also What prevents you from being honest with yourself
6th Key — Passion
How do you think passion relates to inner freedom?
Ideally, everything we desire should be honest, sincere, coming from the depths of the soul, plus — there should be passion in everything.
When you don’t want to do something but have to, completely unnecessary emotions arise inside you: disappointment, fatigue, lack of drive.
To feel complete freedom, you need to do only what brings you joy, pleasure, what interests you, what gives you that drive and passion.
The ideal scenario is to do everything in your life with passion.
Don’t confuse this with irresponsibility. There are things that must be done, and you don’t get much pleasure from them. But if you understand why you are doing them (to realize your dream, knowing that it brings you closer to your cherished goal), then even ordinary actions will have a share of passion.
Key 7 — Uniqueness
There are 8 billion people living on the planet, and each one is unique in their own way. Everyone has their own unique gift, and often more than one.
We have already written a lot of material on this topic, but beginners often ask questions about what their uniqueness is.
Whatever new you start, or when you move to a new level of development, a situation always arises where you have to answer the question: what is my uniqueness (in work, in business)?
When you go to apply for a job, study the competitors, the requirements for the position and profession, and try to understand how you differ from everyone else, what you do differently from others.
With each such time, when a new facet appears, you find yourself, become more whole, and gain more confidence.
See also: How to Find Your Uniqueness – A Simple Way
So, I have highlighted 7 main keys to the state of inner freedom. Depending on what lessons you are currently learning and what stage of development you are at, each person will have one key as the main one.