Restoring Your Personal Autonomy

Restoring Personal Autonomy

Deepak Chopra has said, “Every time you are tempted to act in the same old way, ask if you want to be a prisoner of the past or a pioneer of the future.” What comes up for you when you read that?

It almost sounds like a bit of a wake-up call doesn’t it? That’s exactly what can trigger a reaction or a response. What defences go up? After some reflection you might find it takes you on a path of self-determination to adjust your sails and make sure you are moving in the right direction.

Your personal beliefs, values and skills can empower choices that can best serve your interests, needs, and grow your abilities. Often we have very limited ideas about what we are capable of. 

Many of these thoughts are dis-empowering and can give rise to shame, feeling incompetent, and self-doubt which can limit your experience of life. It’s akin to self-sabotage. Persian poet Hafiz encourages us with the quote, “We have come into this exquisite world to experience ever and ever more deeply into our divine courage, freedom and light.”

“We have come into this exquisite world to experience ever and ever more deeply into our divine courage, freedom and light.”~ Hafiz

Certainly that sounds like a much more inspiring way to live so how can we transmute these self-defeating thoughts and actually BELIEVE we are capable of so much more?

Believing Yourself Into Being

One way to shift into a different mindset is to remind yourself that you are a spiritual being having this human experience. Freeing your spirit to direct the life you were meant to live opens you up to a whole world of possibilities. 

What is you were to look at the world with eyes of wonder? Remembering what it’s like to be child-like- exploring, asking questions from a place of curiousity.  Be open to what is available for you to experience.

Call Back the Dreamer

Restore imagination and call back the Dreamer, rather than using your imagination as a vehicle for worries that you project into the future.

To truly feel free, see if you can detach from the past and the future so you can be fully present in this moment. Each moment arrives on each breath and reminds you that you are alive. So long as you are alive you can make and believe your life into any form of reality.

As author Paulo Coehlo writes, “Imagine a new story for your life and start living it”. Stir up some inner alchemy and start creating the kind of life you want. 

Some say they are starting a, “new chapter”. I think in the quickening changes and accelerated ascension that’s happening you might even say you are starting a whole new book. What would you call your next chapter or book? Who are the characters? What would the main plot and subplots be? Take a minute (or maybe 10) and jot down some ideas that come. Or just sit and dream and see what images form.

Freedom and Fulfillment

Another way to restore personal autonomy is to recognize that autonomy is a basic psychological need and when you live it as a value, you feel better about yourself and your life and busy starts to come productive and even fulfilling. When you don’t feel you have freedom or autonomy, you start to become bored and just keep going through the motions, and may even become sick or contracted. Likewise, experiencing more freedom in your life expands your health and well-being.

If you truly felt you had control over your life, you would more easily adapt and adjust to changing circumstances, rather than grasping at old ways of living and being that just aren’t working or serving you anymore.

It all starts with a decision about who you want to be and how you want to show up in this world. So going back to quote by Deepak Chopra, Will you be a prisoner of the past or a pioneer of the future? 

How will you choose to live your life from this point forward? Each moment is a gift. A “present” moment and a chance to open it to the possibilities and potentialities that reveal themselves to you as you unwrap it with child-like wonder.