The truth about "living on your own terms"

Freedom. Liberation. Spaciousness. These are all words to describe “life lived on your own terms,” and in my case, they’ve been the backbone of every good decision I’ve ever made.

My soul has made it clear in this incarnation: I need to live life on my own terms. Perhaps that's you, too.

The Truth about Living Life On Your Own Terms

1.) Doing it “your way” needs to include space for collaboration and cooperation. Living on your own terms means coming to the table knowing what it is that you want—not knocking everyone else out of the way and taking up every seat.

2.) Living on your own terms isn’t inherently selfish. It’s selfish if you only consider your own perspective, but if you know who you are and what you are trying to create for your life, and you communicate that clearly, and you collaborate where you can, that’s not selfishness. Some people will take it that way, assuming that if you don’t do what they want you aren’t open to collaboration or cooperation. Especially, at first, this is painful to experience.

3.) Being disliked or called selfish for living on your own terms will not be the worst thing in the world.

You will actually survive, and eventually come to see that people don’t dislike YOU, they dislike experiencing the Story they tell themselves about you.

This is okay. This time of second-guessing will feel awkward, but you will become increasingly familiar with what is yours, and what is not yours because it’s someone else’s projection onto you, and that will be powerful.

4.) If you “live on your own terms” long enough, you will start to see themes emerge with the people you interact with. The themes will have some consistency to them, regardless of content. The general theme is this: the more comfortable someone is with themselves (the more they live on their own terms), the more comfortable they will be with you doing the same.

The less comfortable they are, the more they will project things onto you that really have nothing to do with what you’re trying to achieve.

5.) If you “live on your own terms,” you’ll need to learn how to not write people off. The second you think that the answer is to tell them to fuck off, you’re actually joining them where they’re at. They make you wrong for living on your own terms, so you’re making them wrong for making you wrong (yes, it gets very meta, doesn’t it).

Freedom can be caged in many ways, and the most pernicious cages are those that we put ourselves in. Retaliatory disconnection is such a cage.

I am concerned by a society that thinks going no-contact is the only way to resolve a conflict. Conflict is not abuse, and conflict resolution is always healthier than conflict avoidance.

Just keep pouring on the love. Do your best.

6.) Living “on your own terms,” paradoxically, also includes *not* doing things on your own terms, in a way that is... “on your own terms.” Sometimes our values are in conflict. One thing we want to do is in conflict with another thing that we want to do, or we realize we need to do it because it supports our values in a bigger picture way.

You’ll eat the food you don’t like. You’ll go along with the family plans, when you really feel like staying home with a book. You’ll burn the midnight oil to meet a deadline and wake up the next day, and do it all again. These wouldn't be your first preferences.

But--

--you’ll be doing this from a place of conscious choosing, not from obligation. You’ll do it knowing that resentment will come up, and with a willingness to deal with it as it arises, and release it, because you’ve chosen--and chosen consciously.

This is really what “living on your own terms” boils down to.

It’s not about “always doing what you want.”

It’s not about “never doing what anyone else wants.”

It’s not about rebellion or bucking a trend.

It’s not about being a loner who isolates because the only other (perceived) option is to bow to the needs of others.

Living on your “own terms” is really about consciously choosing your terms, rather than accepting terms by default, or just doing what other people want so that you won't rock the boat (note: that's just manipulation).

It’s about consciously seeing the times when “terms” are helpful, and the times when they are not and it’s time to say, “No terms for me. Sorry. Gotta go renegade on this one.”

I have this hunch that if you muster up more love than you can imagine, and you’re ferocious and fierce about that love, and unwilling to get sucked into anyone else’s drama as you stay true to your own internal compass, something really beautiful is possible.

Other people don’t need to see it.

Only you need to see what you are about and honor those values.

To choose love for yourself and others while you align with your own values? That's the best way of "living on my own terms" that I know.