4 Ways to Live Your Life with More Personal Freedom [Episode #765]

This week’s topic is: 4 Ways to Live Your Life with More Personal Freedom

Sometimes we don’t realize that what we’re seeking is freedom, or the spiritual term for this is enlightenment, however, it really is what we’re looking for. Freedom is the freedom to be in our true nature, which is just unparalleled joy and peace and expansive love. It means that we aren’t hindered by old ideas, constricted, limited beliefs, old wounds or ways in which the past shows up into our present moment and constricts us.

That constriction can be perceived as the removal or reduction of our full freedom. It’s what keeps us in cycles of feeling deep, not enoughness or anxiety or just frustration. This is a really important topic today, and part of this is going in and sharing what has been taught by the great ones, the guides that have come before us, and also from my own personal experience. As we bring in more of this rejuvenative energy of freedom, we see the reversal and potentiality, this energy starting to come out, this true joy.

Today, as we get into our show, I really want to leave you with four key ways to work towards freedom in your life. These tools that I leave you with are long-term tools to start working more towards in our life. Because this journey, walking one step after the other, towards freedom, towards enlightenment, just by getting on the path, we start to experience exponentially more peace and more centeredness.

I LOVE HEARING FROM YOU!

There are lots of ways to share your responses or questions about the podcast:

• Comment below
• Connect on Twitter: @_kimberlysnyder
• Follow the conversation on my Instagram
• Comment on my Facebook Page
• Ask a question: mysolluna.com/askkimberly

Be sure to Subscribe to the Podcast and follow me on Soundcloud, so you never miss an episode!

HOW TO SUBSCRIBE

You may be really intrigued by podcasts, but you may just know how to listen or subscribe. It’s very easy, I promise! To listen to more than one episode, and to have it all in a handier way, on your phone or tablet, it’s way better to subscribe so you never miss an episode!

Want to know what to expect from other episodes of the “Feel Good Podcast with Kimberly Snyder”? My passion is to inspire and empower you to be your most authentic and beautiful self. We offer interviews with top experts, my personal philosophies and experiences, as well as answers to community-based questions around topics such as health, beauty, nutrition, yoga, spirituality and personal growth.

The intention of the Feel Good Podcast is to well…help you really Feel Good in your body, mind and spirit! Feeling Good means feeling peaceful, energized, whole, uniquely beautiful, confident and joyful, right in the midst of your perfectly imperfect life. This podcast is as informative and full of practical tips and take-aways as it is inspirational. I am here to support you in being your very best! I have so much love and gratitude for you. Thank you for tuning in and being part of the community :).

LEAVE A REVIEW ON ITUNES

Listeners really respect the views of other listeners, so your response helps people find good material they are interested in! If you enjoyed the podcast, please tell your friends and give us a rating or review. Many thanks in advance.

[RESOURCES] 

• SBO Probiotics
• Detoxy
• Digestive Enzymes  
• Feel Good Starter Kit
• FREE Gift: 7-Day Meditation Series (DIGITAL COURSE)
• YOU ARE MORE
• Beauty Detox Solutions
• Beauty Detox Foods
• Beauty Detox Power
• Radical Beauty
• Recipes For Your Perfectly Imperfect Life
• Be a part of the community Join the Feel Good Circle
• Additional resources in transcript

[❤️ FAN OF THE WEEK]

Other Podcasts you may enjoy!:

• How To Recognize and Free Yourself of Co-dependent Relationships in Life
• How to Build Strength in Your Life through Peace Using the 4 Cornerstones
• How To Energize Your Full Potential In Life and Let It Shine Through with Hubby Jon Bier
• Managing Your Energy Using The Four Cornerstones

Powered and Distributed by: PodcastOne

• Feel Good SBO Probiotics: Use code: boosthealth for 20% off

Transcript:

Note: The following is the output of transcribing from an audio recording. Although the transcription is largely accurate, in some cases it is incomplete or inaccurate. This is due to inaudible passages or transcription errors. It is posted as an aid, but should not be treated as an authoritative record.

Kimberly: 00:02 Loves and welcome to our Monday solocast episode where our topic today is 4 Ways to Live Your Life with More Personal Freedom. And I’m very excited to get into our show today. Sometimes we don’t realize that what we’re seeking is freedom, or the spiritual term for this is enlightenment, but it really is what we’re looking for. Freedom is the freedom to be in our true nature, which is just unparalleled joy and peace and expansive love. It means that we aren’t hindered by old ideas, constricted, limited beliefs, old wounds, just ways in which the past shows up into our now moment and constricts us so that constriction can be perceived very much as the removal, the reduction of our full freedom. It’s what keeps us in cycles of feeling deep, not enoughness or anxiety or just frustration. And so this is a really important topic today, and part of this is going in and sharing what has been taught by the great ones, the guides that have come before us, and also from my own personal experience.

01:23 And I’ll say that at the beginning of my wellness journey, which really started, I would say when I was backpacking around the world after college, I was looking for relief. I was looking to get rid of the bloat. I was looking to have better skin, get rid of the acne. I was looking to lose weight. I was looking for all of these physical markers. And then when I cre, you know, was able to achieve them or create them, however you wanna think of it, I realized that there was more, there was, there was deeper for me to go. There was, there was more to be, to be experienced, there was more to be cleared. And it wasn’t necessarily in the physical sense of the body or the food anymore. And this is when I started diving deeper into the emotional body, the mental health aspect and the spiritual aspect, which is really the underlying energy connecting all things.

02:20 You can also think of spirituality as love, which is beyond just the ups and downs of human emotions. It’s a, it’s an energy field, right? So I realized that in order to create this real freedom, which translates by the way, into more freedom in our relationship with food and our relationship with the things that we have in our lives, we don’t have to be so attached. It doesn’t have to feel so dire or so serious at the same time, we can experience this flowing in and this flowing out of things in this very free way. It means that we understand that our and the love is inside of us. So this literally changes your whole life. As we move towards more freedom, there’s less of this stress. And so of course this stops ravaging your body. The, the way, all the ways in which we throw ourselves around with fight or flight, and the imbalance of our nervous system, the cascade of the onslaught cascade of stress, hormones and just different signs of fatigue and wear and tear, where whereas, you know, it could be premature gray hair or just a creepiness, creepiness, not creepiness, starting to come into your skin, patchiness, just this feeling of, oh, you know, I’m breaking down so quickly.

03:47 All these different ways. As we bring in more of this rejuvenative energy of freedom, we see the reversal of all of this, a lot of this anyway, we see this potentiality, this energy starting to come out, this true joy. So today, as we get into our show, I really wanna leave you with four key ways to work towards freedom in your life. Now, it’s not as, not gonna be as simple as, okay, drink an extra glass of water a day or have five strawberries. But these tools that I leave you with are long-term tools to start working more towards in our life. Because this journey, walking one step after the other, towards freedom, towards enlightenment, just by getting on the path, we start to experience exponentially more peace and more centeredness. So it’s not this hurry, it’s not that we have to get to this place, it’s just that getting on the path in the first place is going to exponentially improve your life.

04:52 And that’s actually something that I mentioned in the beginning of our latest book. You are More Than You Think You Are when I talk about this enlightenment. The subtitle of the book is called Practical Enlightenment for Everyday Life. We love the practical part. The enlightenment is really just more freedom and freedom is what we’re looking for. You can look out and see across the world, across our society, there are people that are really focused on making more money accumulating wealth. In that way, it’s still a sense of freedom, right? They want the freedom to buy whatever they want to have, the lifestyle they want to get the car, whatever it is, it’s still underneath that human desire, that attraction towards freedom. So what we’re gonna talk about today is, is seeking that from the inside so we can enjoy external things like fashion and fancy cars and nice watches and all of these things. There’s nothing wrong with it. But at the same time, this craving, this attachment starts to melt down into the true place where we find freedom, which is and will always be from within.

Fan of the Week

Kimberly: 05:56 So, very excited to get into our show. Before we do, wanted to leave a, oh, I wanted to mention our fan of the week. Her name is cierrarayreviews and she writes such a good show. This show has helped me make small but meaningful changes in my life that I am so grateful for. Well, cierrarayreviews, I am so excited that these changes have helped to improve your life. I’m so grateful that we are connected, which is really the essence of the show, is sharing with one another and connecting. So thank you so much from the bottom of my heart for your review. I appreciate it so much and sending you a huge virtual hug wherever you happen to be in the world.

Please leave a review on iTunes and Subscribe

07:00 And my loves please leave us a review as well for your chance to be shouted out as the fan of the week and simply to just support the show. It can be one sentence like our review today. It can be a little longer, whatever you feel in your heart, but the point is the support is there and I appreciate it so much. So thank you in advance. Please also share the show with anyone that you think could benefit. It could be a, um, friend, a loved one, a colleague who could scare, share a link or a screenshot. And that is wonderful for expansion.

Get Your Copy Of YOU ARE MORE

Please also be sure to subscribe yourself so you stay in the flow. And as I mentioned earlier, the new book Baby or the latest, she’s about a year old now. You Are More More Than You Think You Are – Practical Enlightenment For Everyday Life, which is available now in paperback. Please be sure to pick up this book if you haven’t yet already, which is really a practical guide for working with energy, for changing your life from the inside out.

07:53 Especially if you like our resonate with our topic today, you will really love the book. So I always say books are the highest value. You think about courses and retreats and what we spend on products and things. These books are like under $20 and there’s so much packed in them. So it’s a really wonderful way to gift for yourself and to get really great value for what you can gain. I mean, it’s like infinite <laugh>.

Solocast: 4 Ways to Live Your Life with More Personal Freedom

09:58 Okay, so let’s get into our show today. And first I want us to understand, I wanna go a little bit deeper into this idea of what restricts our freedom, what’s creating all this suffering. And so the core is that we continue to identify with this false sense of self. And the false sense of self is constantly trying to better itself. It’s trying to be seen, it’s trying to be validated. So it ultimately becomes a prisoner of the external world. We are looking to the outside time and time again to tell us who we are, to tell us if we’re good enough to tell us if we’ve done enough, and all of these exhausting ways in which we continually give away our freedom.

10:58 So the, the big overarching idea here is that the false sense of self will continue to constrict our freedom until we align more and more to the true self, which is not the body, it is not the mind, it is not the thoughts, it’s not the achievements. It’s not what you own materially. It is this formless energy inside of you, which can feel abstract, but it can be experienced through practices like meditation, which is our first step here, is to go beyond the constriction, go into experiencing freedom, even if it’s in these limited periods by sitting in meditation. This is where we experience the truth, where the false self drops away from our consciousness. As we close our eyes and tune inward, if you try the practical enlightenment meditations, our free library that we have on our website, my sal luna.com, you’ll find that the guidance is to come into the breath, come into the spine, and then we practice the I am mantra in the form of speaking down to who we are.

12:24 So these regular practices, especially meditation, especially morning meditation, even if it’s seven minutes, which is how long our guided meditations generally are, it’s the experience that is so critical in creating freedom. Because if we just know about it, we know, oh, peace is supposed to be like this, or oh yeah, there’s energy inside of me. That’s what it is. It’s very mental. We have to experience this expansion. We have to experience freedom where we are not so obsessed about our weight or what our main nail polish looks like that day or what’s going on at work. We need to experience that. And then more of that will start to expand in our life. So even though we feel really great in meditation of seven minutes, we come out into busy life, we feel like there’s this like in out. It really does start to bridge over with consistency, but it’s primary.

#1 Tip: 4 Ways to Live Your Life with More Personal Freedom: Morning and evening meditations

13:24 And so I list, this is number one, if we wanna create more freedom, we have to go into freedom deliberately. We need to carve out that space in our busy life and actually sit in a space of freedom. So even though your meditations may feel restless at first, over time, the energy and the consistency builds and it supports your practice.

So number one, do your meditation in the morning evenings if you can. But we must experience the, the experience of being in true self nature. The expansion means I’m not confined by the body, I’m not confined. My energy goes beyond this body. It will go beyond. When this body passes away, it goes beyond as this body ages and shifts and changes. So we go into this formless place, not just to relax, we’re not just closing our eyes and <laugh> tuning out the world, but we’re actually directing energy back inward.

14:20 This union with the true self, with spirit is very powerful and it has to be experienced. It can’t just be something we talk about, but we really need to go into that.

#2 Tip: 4 Ways to Live Your Life with More Personal Freedom: Forget about the past every day

14:20 And then number two, we forget the past every day. So what does that mean? It means in the morning as we a rise, rise up, awaken into the day. This is a practice I do. I say Spirit, please help me forget any sense of self. What I thought I was yesterday, who I think I am. Let me forget all that and just be here in this present moment. It’s the past that comes into the present that creates all this suffering, right? It’s like something happened in childhood that created a reaction. And so as adults, we still play that out. The past is making us a prisoner. It’s constricting freedom. So this is easier said than done, but we want to really focus on staying here, staying present.

15:24 Let me forget the past in relationships, this is so key, right? Relationship with self, let’s talk about that first. In the new book, we talk about being whole, letting go of past behaviors, learning and forgiving ourself because we tend to hold a lot of guilt and shame. So we’re bringing this heavy energy of the past into this moment. We can’t show up in the full joy of expression and freedom. When we are hindered by this bag of heaviness, which comes from the past. We are carrying it with us. It’s almost like we think we deserve it if we messed up. But that’s not the truth. The truth is again, we learn, we let go. This is how we can actually serve spirit in the world. And the highest way is to show up in our fullest vibration. This helps to heal the planet. So we wanna keep forgetting the past.

16:18 When the mind goes to the past incidences, let it go. Just say to yourself, let it go. There’s exercises to strengthen this as well in the new book, or someone comes before you that has already apologized for something that happened. Let go of the resentment, let go of the anger, right? That keeps us a prisoner. We keep staying right here as much as we can just stay present. And so number three is to notice tightness and reactions. So this is building a little bit more physically on our last point. So forgetting the past becomes this intention in the morning, the day, let me just be here. Let me forget everything that I thought that I was. So it’s this intention mentally to let go of the false sense of self and all the ways in which it continues to be reinforced.

#3 Tip: 4 Ways to Live Your Life with More Personal Freedom: Use your body to notice when you’re getting tight

16:18 But number three, we use our body to notice when we’re getting tight, where is that coming from? What is the source of that? So it’s either gonna be a limited belief or trigger or something that happened before that we are repeating in the present moment. It could be, I’ll use a couple examples. Let’s say we tell ourselves, okay, you need to get all of this done on your to-do list, otherwise you didn’t do enough. You are not good enough, right? So this limited belief that somehow our

Kimberly: 17:49 Is tied to what we do from the past, from something that happened in our childhood continues to push, push, push us into this present moment. So we wanna weak into that. We wanna say, well, why do I push myself so much? Why does it have to be like this? Why does this so stressful, right? And so as we awaken to where this is coming from, we notice this tightness. We notice our shoulders are getting so tight, we notice our stressful reaction, this pushing us. Then we can start to contemplate and then pivot and change the way in which we’re looking at things. And this starts to change everything. All we need to do is start to notice that the false sense of self has come in and created these ideas and now we’re actually believing them and now we’re tightening up or we’re reacting or we’re doing something that keeps us from feeling truly free.

18:46 So we’re in fear, we’re on that hamster wheel again. We’re just depleting and draining ourselves. And so we need to step back and say, Hey, what is behind this tightness? What is behind this reaction? And this is the power of the con, the contemplative lifestyle that great teach some great teachers have taught beyond just sitting in meditation. We need to really contemplate truth and contemplate and really see ourselves. If we don’t see ourselves, we can’t be free. So we need to get really honest with ourselves when we might get snappy or when we might get terse or sharp or withdraw or passive aggressive or whatever our tendencies are, we need to be able to see when we are not in full love. It doesn’t mean we’re bad, it doesn’t mean any sort of shame needs to come in, but it does mean we need to see and look into that.

19:46 And so the more we just start to look and understand, the more we can be free. This is something that I also go into more depth about in the fearlessness chapter of the book. Um, all tightness, all restriction, all judgment, all the, you know, where we feel the need to make a comment or gossip or tear someone down. This is because something from the past, something related to our sense of self, our false sense of self has been triggered now in this moment. So we have the opportunity to see that. And then once we go underneath to the root and really see it, we can start to be free. We can start to move into another space. We just don’t comment or we say something loving or we change the topic or whatever it is. <laugh>, we’re not participating. We are able to come into more freedom. And ultimately that feels so much better. <laugh>, so much, so much, so much better.

#4 Tip: 4 Ways to Live Your Life with More Personal Freedom: Simple contemplative practice

Kimberly: 20:48 So number four is the, the idea of, we mentioned contemplation, but going a bit further into this practice, which comes from originally I believe it becomes from re, Ramana Maharshi, who was a wonderful deep enlightened yogi from India who went to aala this mountain and basically meditated and lived there for his life. And he started to teach this simple meditation or the simple contemplative practice, which you can just reflect on, whether you do in the shower or pops up here and there, or you wanna journal about it. Who am I? Who am I? Who am I? And so I actually first came across this practice with Deepak Chopra who does this in some of his seminars. And Deepak’s guru, his teacher, one of his primary teachers was the Maharishi, who I believe Lineage also initially learned about this practice from Ramana Maharshi. But anyways, if you really go into it, let me start by saying, well, who am I?

22:11 And then the egoic false sense of self <laugh>, excuse me, characteristics start to drop out of your mouth. Like, oh, I’m a, I’m a woman, I’m 36 years old, I have two kids and I blah, blah, blah. I have a podcast. I am a teacher, I have three siblings. When you go deeper, who am I? Ah, who is that? Who are you? Regally? And then underneath it’s like, well, huh. If you are this 36 year old person, then who were you when you were born? Are you something different? Oh, I guess I’m beyond age <laugh>. Well, I have um, black hair, but when I was a baby, I had blonde hair or someone older may say, but I have gray hair. So who am I? If I’m beyond the aging body, the difference in my body, whatever. And then it’s again, experiential. Who am I that is watching these thoughts and the thoughts in my mind?

23:23 Because I can witness these thoughts. So I’m not the mind either. And then we get into this place where really is beyond words. This contemplative exercise takes us to the place where we go into, oh, I’m just awareness. I’m just awareness. So this awareness, this loving awareness Buddha taught is benign. It’s whole, it’s complete. It is changeless and eternal across all the stages of your life from the teenage years, the childhood years, they a adolescent years. It’s still you. It’s still you when you mess up, it’s still you when you have some huge wonderful thing that happened. It’s this consistent you. And so the more we connect to that, the freedom builds because the false parts of you can be enjoyed, or we can breathe through the difficult moments. They come and they go. And we don’t have to get swept up into it. So isn’t that the ultimate freedom, the freedom the yogis talked about of equanimity?

24:39 This even mindedness. So when we, as we, when get to this place, again, it’s not this destination per se, but as we move more and more towards anchoring into this, this equanimity as a way of life, a way of being, we find that we need less and less from the outside. Again, we can enjoy the outside. We can say, oh, I love this color. I really wanna have this beautiful sweater. Great, but the neediness, the attachment, right? It starts to just melt away. Or this like, I need people to really like this post, this TikTok video, or I need people to like me. I will need to be invited cuz it means something. It means something about my worth is what we subconsciously believe underneath. I need this. No, you actually don’t need any of that from the outside world. It’s this huge revelation that starts to build and build.

25:37 So maybe it starts in little steps and you the the triumph, right? When we realize we don’t need the cheese, we don’t need the ice cream as much as we thought to feel better. And then it starts to translate into, I don’t need my partner to understand me to be really happy. We can create <laugh>, you know, love connection and, but I don’t need them to see things exactly like me. And then it translates into, oh, I did my best, you know, got laid off from this job. It doesn’t mean anything about my worth. I’m gonna find another job. This is the freedom we carry around with us, this inner anchor, this portal of love and peace. And so the more we anchor into that, the less and less we need, the less and less dire and serious the world around us feels. And so what happens, all that’s left is that we enjoy life more.

26:33 There’s a steadiness that comes and the joy and the peace that arises from that is indescribable and also priceless. It must be experienced. It is the stepping off the hamster wheel, not getting more efficient and being on, being on the hamster wheel, shining it up, wearing a different outfit when we’re on the hamster wheel. But literally shifting out and saying, whilst I will continue to use my will and energy to create good in the world, and whilst I will be a loving human to all others that come across my path, I don’t actually need validation. I don’t need all this stuff outside of me. I am free. I am free. I am here, I am not attached, I am free. I can show up in love and acceptance and support and compassion. I’m no longer attached. So as I mentioned at the beginning of the show, this is something we work towards step by step.

27:37 And as I can say, I’ve been working on this for years and it really does work. You guys, the practices when I’m sh when I’m sharing with you guys that have come down from the great ones before, the yogi, the great yoga masters per mahan, yo, the great ones that showed us this path of love and freedom. Jesus Buddha, right? Saints from all around the world, all the different cultures, Kaber, Rumi, the freedom’s on the inside. So to review, we wanna go into that freedom and experience it. We have access to it through meditation. And we build that. We say, this is really important to me. So even though my meditation seem to fluctuate, they seem to feel very surfacey at first it’s okay because I understand that they will improve and deepen over time with my consistent effort. Number two, we forget the past.

28:38 Every day we make that our intention to live here. Now to forgive, to let go. Number three, we notice tightness intention. And so we start to pick underneath what is the limited belief? What is something that’s not processed or unfolded yet that’s keeping me from freedom? And this awareness and seeing ourselves clearly starts to grow. And number four, we live this continuingly growing contemplative lifestyle asking who am I? We contemplate that when we get stuck in, oh, I don’t feel good about myself because I wasn’t invited to this party, or people didn’t like my post on Instagram or, um, you know, I’m aging or whatever it is. We say, well who am I? Who am I really? And it just helps to put things into perspective. So we combine the practices with the contemplations, which is part of why journaling is so important in our lifestyle.

29:42 And we continue to just move one step forward towards this beautiful enlightenment and freedom. Please, please let me know how I can continue to support you in this. This really is such a huge key to everything <laugh>, and it’s been a huge key in my own wellness journey. So I really am passionate about this. This is why I wrote the last book. There’s all the free guided meditations on the website. There’s also supportive foods and recipes and many, um, much more information on the site that you can check out other podcasts, I think you would enjoy articles. So it is my sincere intention to support you in this journey towards your own freedom. The world will benefit, your family will benefit, your community will benefit. The more of us that step more into this expansive place, it benefits the whole. So as always, I’m here. I’m supporting you, I’m listening to you. I love you. I will be back here Thursday for our next q and A show. So until then, take great care and sending you so much love and so much blessings and best wishes for your expanding freedom. [inaudible].