ship at sea header

Freedom Masks • Shifting Tides Freedom (Part 4)

In this series...
Unfulfilling Freedom
Untethered Freedom
Mirage Freedom
Shifting Tides Freedom

Leena creates product suites and marketing materials for the travel industry. She’s a free spirit and citizen of the world. She moved 11 timezones in pursuit of career opportunities, which came knocking from London to Singapore, from Dubai to Sydney. To her surprise, she also found love! They were an unlikely pair, but together fostered dreams of splitting their time in Europe and Asia. She thrived as an expat and was beloved by her local friends and adopted family.

case-study-shifting-tides-freedom1.png

After 6 years together, her partner’s very traditional mother forbade their marriage. To her utter shock and disbelief, her partner obeyed his mother and acquiesced to the conditioning of his culture.

case-study-shifting-tides-freedom2.png

Without realizing it, the culture that first brought her awe and delight began causing emotional resentment. As her free spirit battled the pressure to shrink into the perfect subservient daughter-in-law in hopes of winning his mother's favor some day, she sacrificed and lost huge career opportunities, and what started as wanderlust adventure in a far away land became a prison of her heart. How quickly tides can shift. 

case-study-shifting-tides-freedom3.png

When we began coaching, she was so jolly on the outside and you would never know her inner agony. The more she resented her geography, the smaller her career shrank, the more turbulent her emotions, and the more shackled she felt by a culture that wasn’t even hers. Micro-resentments turned into a sense of full blown betrayal. They had co-dreamed so many dreams and he just cancelled them all, without her input.

She initially came to me for guidance on creating a business that would fit her “new life situation.” We spent an intensive month sifting and sorting through her emotions, clarifying and discerning her Sacred Contracts (Who am I? Why am I here? What am I meant to learn? What am I meant to teach?). Then and only then was she ready to speak the truth: that she was trying to build a teeny, tiny life to match the smallness of the mother-in-law’s consciousness


LOVING THE FANTASY MORE THAN THE REALITY

Two hours after her decisiveness declaration to let him go, her entire life, along with its rightful abundance of opportunities and true belonging came flooding back. She realized that she was more in love with the fantasy of her own “Eat, Pray, Love” happy ending than she was with him, the actual person. How quickly tides can shift.

If tides can shift so fast, then how do you anchor yourself? You don't. You become a master sailor, rather than an anchor seeker.

You want to succeed in business, lifestyle or creative pursuits? Do the inner mastery work first. Become a master spiritual sailor. Then you'll be able to cross any ocean, gracefully, with ease, peace, joy, truth and trust.

With infinite grace,

xo, Ella

(First Published May 5, 2020)

454
views
Ellany-Lea-Pen

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Having lived, died and traveled 131 countries, 87 emotions, 16 career reinventions, and 46.5 traumas, Ellany Lea inspires and guides women overachievers, phoenixes, wisdom keepers, and entrepreneurs to free her genius, so it frees the world.