Sometimes the way we are viewed and perceived by others matters so much to us that we slowly start losing our authenticity and start living for validation. On reflecting, we may realise that in living up to the expectations of others and protecting our self-image, we often lose the freedom of being true to ourselves and living the way we really want to.

We start limiting our choices and shy away from doing things when we may be in the minority. It doesn’t mean that we need to rebel and be different just for the sake of being different, but stopping ourselves from really being the way we want to be because we care more about the opinion of others, is falling into a trap of living a limited life.

Our inner conversation is our pivot for freedom. When ‘how it looks’ starts becoming more important than ‘how it feels’, we know we have traded our joy of freedom for pleasure of self-image.

Customs and traditions have their place and meaning when understood correctly. Yet, when we find ourselves doing things not because we want to but we feel we have to, because of the way people around us expect, we may not realise it but we have slowly started shifting the seat of our security from inner self-confidence to outer self-image.

A life of freedom is a life of joy because by nature, we are free-spirited. Every time someone has curtailed us or stopped us from doing something, we have reacted sharply, not so much from the thing itself, but more from the fact that our freedom was taken away. And yet, how easily we sacrifice our freedom at the altar of the opinion of others.

When we find ourselves having many things in life and yet feeling a sense of inner struggle and suffocation, we will realise that many of our limitations are self-imposed. Often, it is not the world that stops us but we get trapped in our own image.

(Picture – Ships between Alibag and Mumbai)