I still remember reading The Fountainhead, Ayn Rand’s pivotal book. I was maybe 21 at the time and it fried my mind. It also paved a very important path for me, being, in all seriousness if you want to do something, who is actually going to stop you.
Mostly I have found it’s just ourselves. Our ego wants to keep us small. Or we list all the ways we cannot do X because of all the things we have created for ourselves. Perhaps we forget we don’t need permission from anyone to live a creative, dynamic life. And we want to blame something outside of us for our living small.
I recently had a friendly but big discussion with someone working in the corporate space here in Australia. And they argued strongly that this statement didn’t apply to them, because ‘the man’ was stopping them from everything. The company had rules and systems that were unable to be broken or shifted and changed in any way and they felt suffocated. I countered, that perhaps that was true, but no one can stop them from acting with integrity, from holding themselves with grace, from thinking creatively in any moment and from not getting bogged down in the nonsense. We ended up laughing about how much fun it is to hold things outside of us accountable for our own
If there’s something brewing for you right now, maybe an idea, a yearning, or a small but pulling idea, ask yourself the question, in all honesty, who is going to stop you. You’ll find the answer very enlightening indeed.
Sent with love,
Jac x