Be a Free Spirit
People often have a very limited, stereotypical perspective on what it means to be free-spirited. If you truly want to be a free spirit, keep the following in mind.
Steps
- Understand what it means to be free. Society likes to serve us up a very narrow interpretation of what constitutes a “free-spirit.” Images that immediately come to mind are the globetrotting bohemian, the manic pixie dream girl, the free-wheeling artist, the minimalist philosopher, or the co-op-inhabiting environmentalist. Maybe your vision of free-spiritedness was defined in high school by that tattooed, trilingual, punked-out guy who never failed to remind people of how many countries he’d been to when, really, it was the quiet, dorky girl who spent every lunch break in the library who couldn't care less what you thought about her. Instead of falling into the trap of molding yourself to some predefined role, live your life as a free agent and don’t be afraid to contradict yourself. If this means you wear hemp one day and leather the next, hang out with hipsters, clubbers, and LARPers, or put both Tom Waits and Kesha on your workout mix, all the more power to you.
- Pursue your passions. Being free-spirited means having the courage to not only follow your dreams, but also take the time to figure out what they really are – which is arguably much more difficult. Maybe you’ve given up on getting that master’s in Native American studies because you’re afraid it isn’t practical. Maybe you play a wicked diddley bow but don’t think you’ll ever meet the right folk fusion band. Maybe you’ve been raised by former hippies who have never understood your burning desire to go into real estate. Take the time to unearth a secret passion that maybe you didn’t even know you had – and then take the plunge.
- Let go of whatever is holding you back. This entails a lot more than thinking about all the ways that The Man is keeping you down. If a bad experience has left your faith in people broken, rebuild your strength until you’re able to get close to people again. If a strict upbringing has left you with little sense of who you are, work on stripping away these artificial layers to find what’s underneath. And of course, don’t forget to think about the ways that you hold yourself back. Maybe you have a tendency to play the victim and revel in your own misfortunes. Maybe you’re a hopeless romantic who keeps making the same relationship mistake over and over. Maybe you’re afraid of asking for help because everyone expects you to be strong all the time. Only when you’re brutally honest about the barriers in front of you can you find solutions for moving past them.
- Let go of whatever you’re rebelling against without a higher purpose. If your sole motive is to react against a system, whether it be political, religious, social, parental, communal, environmental, or anything else that might rub you the wrong way, you are still allowing that system to dictate your behavior. Disliking something simply because it’s conventional is just as mindless as liking it for that same reason. On the other hand, rebel if there is a higher purpose, a higher ideal. We are born to make a better world, not to leave it intact.
- Live in the moment. It’s easy to spend so much time in your own head that you never actually connect with the things around you. Maybe you’re playing out fantasies, arguments, or zombie apocalypse scenarios in your head when you’re supposed to be having a conversation. Maybe you’re trying so hard to imagine how you look to the people walking past you on the street that you don’t even notice what a gloriously sunny day it is. Engage with the people, places, and things around you on a deeper level and you’ll find that your reactions to them will suddenly become a lot more authentic.
- Keep your ego in check. There’s no denying that people who do their own thing (or do a good job faking it) have a magnetic effect on those around them. This, of course, is a slippery slope. If you have success in your adventure in being a free spirit, resist the temptation to self-congratulate, lord it over those you perceive to be “conventional,” or keep the people you attract on a leash with your charming unpredictability. Remember, you want to be a free spirit, meaning your thoughts, beliefs, and behaviors should be coming from a deep place within you. Ego is the death of authenticity; once you become more interested in impressing than being, everything you’ve been working toward will disappear.
- Honor other people’s freedom. Free-spiritedness isn’t about promising one thing and doing another, getting whatever you want without paying your dues, showing up to every date a half hour late, or leaving a trail of broken hearts behind you. Remember that your freedom ends where everyone else’s begins.
