How to live in a Constant State of Emotional Freedom
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By the time I am done writing this blog, I would have found out whether or not I will be running The Amazing Race Israel. Yes, that’s right! Now, this is what most of you might be thinking: Are you crazy? That’s cool, but how can you take a month off? You are going to leave your family for that long? You’re fifty! Are you in shape? Aren’t you afraid of everything? Yes , yes , yes, and yes !
These have been the comments and questions I have consistently heard from other people about my life in general. People often wonder and praise me for having time to do everything I do. For being a hurricane, as one of my good friends calls me. I consider myself the master of lifestyling. But, a few years back I started to wonder if I am in fact doing too much and losing sight of the most important thing in my life: my family. And it was around that time, coming back from a convention, that my oldest son asked me: “Mami, how do you do everything you do?” I first checked if he was asking because he felt I didn’t have enough time for them. He said, “Absolutely not.” In fact, he was amazed that with everything I do, I always made time for them. I felt happy, relieved, and proud all at once. But how is it, then, that I manage to do everything I do? How is it that I can literally have the cake and eat it too? Believe me, I have asked myself that question many times, but I never really took the time to answer it. I never had the opportunity to dig deep and discover how and why am I able to sustain a constant rhythm in my life that allows me to pretty much do what I most want when I most want it. How is it that I can juggle so many things at once and still manage to be present to the most precious people in my life ?
When the opportunity to co-author this book came around, I saw this as the space I needed to figure out what my secret was to lifestyling. Well, I found it. The secret: emotional freedom. So in the next blogs, I will share with you what I now know to be the mantras that have allowed me to live in this constant state of emotional freedom. Remember, these are my ideas, based on my experience. I invite you to open up your eyes, your ears, your mind, and your heart and take from these what serves you.
Strong Values Create Clear Choices
Emotional freedom to me means that I have the ability to create what I want; that in any situation, I have the freedom to choose. To choose how I react, what I do, where I go, what I say, how I think. It is living in an abundance state where I know that I am truly free. It is understanding that you don’t need a permission slip to make a choice; that you don’t need to wait for anyone to decide for you; that you don’t depend on the time of day, the weather, the year, the economy, the government, or any outside circumstances to choose what you really, really, really want. I know what you’re thinking: easy to say! You are right, it is easier said than done. But what has made it simple for me to make choices is being grounded in my core values. I am so clear about what is important to me that it just makes it easier to make choices, especially the tough ones.
When you can measure every decision against your core values, the ability to choose becomes effortless. This is true even when faced with conflicting decisions. When I chose to go to a convention and miss my son’s birthday, the core value that I chose at that time was security/freedom. But I didn’t just choose that over my son; I shared that decision with him and explained why, so he can fully understand and support me. When I passed on invitations to go on a girls’ weekend so I could watch my kids play hockey, it was because the value of family trumped the value of fun at that particular time. You see, when you understand that values are like a deck of cards and you have the freedom to play any card at any time, this will empower you. Just like any other skill, you must learn to pivot from one value to another. This will only happen once you’re clear on what is important to you.
I have been using a simple system every year to identify what my core values are at any particular time. I make a list of everything that is important to me and choose the top five. Then, on a scale of 1 to 10, I rate how much of each value do I currently have. That helps me understand what I have to work on to fulfill those values. When you are clear on what is important to you, when you feel it to the core, making choices becomes easy and simple, no drama, no regrets. This is when you know you have emotional freedom!