You see, I’ve been thinking lately about how many self-imposed rules we carry through our lives without even noticing.
Not the explicit ones.
The ones we never wrote down but somehow agreed to anyway.
Rules about looking composed, sounding certain. Or looking good…
Keeping the surface smooth so no one sees the questions underneath.
They’re subtle, but they shape so much of how we move.
For example. Writing posts here. Sometimes I feel the familiar pressure to get it “right.”
Not right in the inspired sense, but right in the “don’t look like an idiot” sense. Not wanting to really say what I see for fear of what you might think or how you might react.
Put simply - trying to preserve the image you might have of me.
Ridiculous, right?
But behind that, I can feel something else. The part of me that longs to follow what feels alive, not what feels appropriate.
Inspiration is like that.
It doesn’t fight for space.
It just waits… offering a small golden thread that leads toward something more honest.
And I mean honest, as in true to ourselves. To what we really desire rather than what we think we should desire.
Trouble is, self-imposed rules can be louder. They promise safety, predictability, a kind of polished version of ourselves we hope others will approve of.
That familiar to you too?The tug-of-war between who you’re expected to be, and who you actually are when no one is watching.
I had this belief that if I followed those rules, they’s help me hold everything together.
And they did. The image of me, at least.
Competent. Steady. Responsible.
The thing is images don’t breathe. They aren’t alive.
And when inspiration calls, it’s rarely asking us to maintain an image.
It’s asking us to step into something real. Aliveness, presence. It probably has uncertainty… but it’s still unmistakably ours.
The more I listen, the more I realise how often I trade honesty for approval.
Or vitality for consistency.
How many times have I exchanged the possibility of feeling lit up for the comfort of staying within the lines I drew decades ago, innocently based on early life experiences.
There’s a cost to that.
You only really feel it when you sense the golden thread in front of you and suddenly realise how long you’ve been walking in the opposite direction.
So lately I’ve been asking myself a simple question:
Is this choice coming from the rulebook or from the part of me that knows how to feel inspired?
Maybe it’s a question worth sitting with for you too?
Photo by Carlos Domínguez Olalla on Unsplash