Today’s question is: What if I don’t want what everyone else wants? If you’re outside the box, leaning into a life beyond what everyone else wants, this one is for you. Watch for the part about what you’ll need to do to get what you really want. Receiving this straight to your inbox? Click here to watch the video.

Q+A: What if I don’t want what everyone else wants?

If reading’s more your jam, the written version is here

Here’s the thing that might be unexpected.

When I get this question or dive into inquiry around this with people it often leads to this conclusion: that they actually do want what other people want, they just don’t want to do what they think they have to do to get there. I spent a lot of time in this place: We want money, we just don’t want to have to sacrifice our souls. We want freedom, we just don’t want it to come at a cost to other people. We want to be able to buy what we need and want, we just don’t want to have to work all day every day in order to be able to do that. If you take one thing away from today’s monthly uplift let it be this—let me be a voice for “you can have it, and you don’t have to do all that stuff.” You don’t have to sacrifice your soul, your heart, your passion.

But you will have to sacrifice something.

Something even harder to let go of—any ideas around money that don’t serve you, that keep you playing small; any internal attachment to the idea that choosing freedom means you get to opt out of facing yourself and all the yucky stuff that comes up when you embrace the world; any attachment to the idea that choosing to be someone who doesn’t value her work or working is better than being someone who does. You’re gonna need to sacrifice all of that. All of those misunderstandings and mistruths. All those ways of opting out of living out as your authentically successful self—living as the fully expressed truest, most powerful version of the core of who you are.

I get it.

I’ve been in all of that. I used to walk around sincerely believing there was something better about earning less—that it meant I was valuing the right things in life. I used to walk around sincerely believing that choosing freedom for me was selfish. So I did it in a small way, vs wholeheartedly embracing it. And I was really really worried that to get where I wanted to go and be what I really wanted to be would require way too much work. It was under the surface, but it was there. It was only when I decided to focus on and explore all my attachments to these misunderstandings that I was able to actually begin to live in a place of creating what I really wanted. It was only when I was willing to sacrifice those.

And I held onto those misbeliefs fiercely.

It was hard to throw them in the fire, to let them burn away. Habits and comfort are easier—until staying curled in so tight gets more uncomfortable than opening up. There are pine cones that only release their seed after a fire. The heat opens them right up. Then, they can fly out, root down, rise up, grow.

So my invitation to you today is this:

want what you want, what aligns with your soul, and then put all the much-loved misbeliefs about what it means, or what you think you’ll have to do to get there in the fire. So you can open up, root down, and rise.

Monthly Uplifts

I’ve got a hunch you’re leaning into an uplifted life. One filled with a steady source of gratitude, a happiness beneath all the turmoil on the surface, and maybe even some magical moments. The monthly uplifts help you get there. Each month, the Libre Living monthly uplift lands in your inbox, fresh from me to you. An invitation, an intention, and an anchor-point for your month ahead. ‘Cos how we begin something is often how it keeps on going.