Embracing Your Wild Side: Unleashing Your Untamed Soul

Do you sometimes feel caged in, like there are other parts of you—those wild parts—that have gone underground? And you’ve kind of just become this... I don't know... performing to keep up an appearance, so to speak?

I think, personally, we live more and more in a society that wants us to appear as if everything is fine all of the time—smiley, smiley, smiley. "How are you?" "Oh, I’m so great!" And there’s nothing wrong with being in a good mood.

But I’m talking about the pressure to always be overly nice and suppress when things don’t feel right.

For example, this might pertain more to women, but perhaps to everyone—I’m not sure. I remember years ago, I read Untamed by Glennon Doyle, which was all about becoming unapologetic. The interesting part of all of this is that often there's this kind of wildness, this wild part of ourselves that we all have. We are part of nature. Look around in nature—nature is wild. That’s what it is. We are part of it, so we have that wildness that is kind of our soul.

If we think we have to be a certain way and edit ourselves down, there’s nothing much left, in my opinion.

That’s maybe the tough part—the gold is to be found in what we feel is our inner brokenness.

You know, in all the depression and everything that lies underneath it all—the layers of anger, grief, and fury that we, well, at least I have, for example, been pushing down. And I think, of course, it’s not safe to express that in certain environments, but one place where I believe self-editing or trying to be pleasing should not be is in creative expression. That’s where we want to feel this edginess of ourselves, the rawness, where we can see what’s going on with ourselves without apologies.

I see that many people bring this pleasing part and are very, very worried about how what they create.

For example, they are wondering a lot how it is perceived by others. But for me, art and creativity are about expressing what I’m feeling and reconnecting with myself.

So, I’ve written this little story called I Feel Like a Caged Tiger. It’s not that old—maybe two months old—and I recorded it on my podcast. It’s beautiful to use as a little meditation, where you can touch back in with yourself, where you feel caged, and just sit with it. You might want to create something afterward and just see what comes to you.

I really want to give people permission to reconnect with themselves more and to allow themselves to be a little bit more edgy or, I would say, dangerous.

If on this journey of becoming more wild again you need help, you don’t have to do it alone. You can always book a coaching session with me if you want to, and you can listen to the full story here:

Here’s to digging for the gold in the brokenness and un-caging ourselves a little bit more. You creative rebel.

Anja