This year seems to be about creating freedom, which first requires that I understand what I mean when I choose to be free. The more I work with this specific Enlightenment Intention (Free) the more I understand that for me, freedom is about letting go of identifying with the labels I live. To live empowered (and so to live enlightenment) means I get to choose when and what I identify with. It also means I can stop defending and protecting the labels I have…which seems to be an integral part of my being and the biggest contributor to my state of suffering. What do I mean by a label ? Well in my mind I define myself as a superior business analyst, which means that is something I have to defend and continually see reflected back at me by the peoplei work with. The problem is that this is just one of the labels that define me. For the most part, I don’t even see the label that is wreaking havoc in my world. Work is the perfect example.

Over the last 15 years I have established a reputation (in my own head naturally) for excellence and over performance. So now that I find myself in a large corporate I am battling. Firstly I am no longer visible, secondly, my success is integrally linked to the performance (or more often than not, non-performance) of people I can not influence. My frustration has subsequently hit all time highs and with that frustration comes an extreme effort to be heard and create change…. which is always (and I have 15 years of experience creating this) dramatically self destructive. The less I am acknowledged and heard, the harder I push back .. the more drama and conflict I create…. and so we spiral down and down and down until finally I can not cope anymore and fed up I leave and start all over again…in a new place that this time will be filled with the right people – people who understand, who are high performers (now their is a contradiction of note, an A-type personality that bonds and cares about the well being of others), who will create that safe place of belonging where I can blossom. Yes, fairy tales are alive and well in my psyche which is quite a depressing thought after over 20 years in the so-called ‘adult’ world.

To cut a long story short, at the end of all this I am left with the feeling that I am really schizophrenic (or is it just multiple personality disorder?) because it feels like someone else is creating all this and I am an innocent bystander who is left to clean up the mess. I know there is something I have to let go of, I just can’t see it and if I can’t see it, I can’t stop holding on!!

So when well meaning friends and confidantes tell me I need to leave, that this place does not appreciate me, it is not worth it, I stay. My answer is not in escaping. We live in a world where it is to easy to run away from our problems and distract ourselves with a new place, a new challenge (a new significant other). I need to stay right here and confront this part of me. I need to live in the flames and see what happens if I refuse to give in, if I refuse to live this. So here I sit, refusing to jump ship, just breathing and allowing my world to flow, refusing to give up and escape to another job.

There is another reason for staying – the corporate world is the one place that still swallows me up whole. It is the one place where I can not seem to Live Empowered. My world record create a moment where I was able to escape being invisible and less. For the first time in my life I was truly empowered. That lable of deepest was something I choose for myself, something I fought to bring into being. It was the first taste I had of freedom and an experience I wanted in all areas of my life. Which is why I created Living Conscious Enlightenemetn.
Now at work, I am finally starting to get a glimpse of what it will take to recover my power and my first step is going to be a hard one – to stop identifying with the labels I carry with me into work. Which means creating awareness in every moment so that I can stop just being a collection of unconscious habits. I need to own the me that created this mess and start to slowly release her.
It is with relief that I can fall into the process of Conscious Enlightenment and with my own coach (there are just some days I can not escape my own mind by myself and need an unbiased observer to ask me the ‘obvious’ questions) I am going to focus on what it is I want to create – because it is not enought to know what I don’t want. You can not create a negative and if I want to live something new, I have to know what that new is so that I can start to make choices that create that. Only and only in that process will the old disappear.
It is going to be hard to ignore the temptation to search for the labels that are creating this drama and instead work on disinvesting and disconnecting and creating consciously who it is I want to be. But, I suspect that the labels will show themselves when the time is right and when I am able to let them go. Until then, my focus is going to be on stepping into my power and consciously creating me. That way if it all goes pear shaped at least I made the choice – it was not something that happened to me. I find my life easier to accept when the consequences are a result of the choices I MADE! I can accept being wrong, but when someone or something else chooses for me and I have to pay the price, then I am not such a graceful looser.

How do you escape the trap of being ? Start to consciously choose and trust that you will find the baggage along the way. Anything else is a trap, keeping you from going forward, keeping you from your power to create your own life and your own experiences.