204: Labels limit you and inhibit your sense of freedom

Today we are talking about labels and how they can be really fucking damaging, inhibit your growth and hold you back from your goals and desires. Trigger warning! I will be referencing labels like anxiety and depression, I am not gaslighting your experience or inferring that you don’t suffer from anxiety. What I want you to be aware of is how you are limiting yourself because you are attaching and holding onto the comfort that this label gives you.

LISTEN TO EPISODE 204

It seems these days that everyone has a label, the label itself has become a solution of sorts because it validates the issue, stops you from searching for the root cause and finding an actual solution. Without a label you have nothing to hide behind, you have to keep fighting to find answers and solve the root problem.

Labels include flippant remarks like blaming your zodiac sign for being avoidant or more seriously, limiting your capabilities with a label of anxiety. Labels can be something you place upon yourself or have handed to you as an adult, a child, by society or doctors etc.

Regardless of where or who your label came from the damaging part is when people use their label to excuse something. ‘Because I have (label) I can’t do XYZ’. When you label yourself, you limit yourself.

I believe that social media, the media, fear of missing out (FOMO) and constant comparison has led to an addiction to dopamine. We have a constant desire for pleasure and as a result we are simultaneously looking for cop outs and excuses for when we aren’t feeling that pleasure. When we feel that pleasure, we feel more productive, have more energy and get more work done. When that external source of pleasure is missing our productivity declines, what I am seeing is that people then blame that decline on something. Rather than taking responsibility, they blame it on something to ensure that they don’t have to blame themselves. If you blame your label then you’re not blaming yourself, then you don’t have to fix yourself. If you blame your anxiety, then you don’t need to look at the problem. If you blame your polycystic ovarian syndrome (PCOS) that gives you an excuse to not look into your skin issues.

It is this blaming that gives us a sense of validation, which we are addicted to. This constant blaming cycle is also an example of procrastination and self-sabotage. The more self-awareness you have however, the less you are going to blame and self-sabotage. When you lack awareness, you place yourself in boxes and then use those labels as a cop out tool.

When you slap a label on yourself you don’t get to stop and see if you want the results, to see whether you are willing to be a little bit uncomfortable and shift a few things inside yourself in order to get the results that you want. The label feels great because it allows people to stay stuck and therefore continue to rely on external sources of power to make themselves feel safe, healthy and validated enough.

When people don’t live by labels, they have a problem, and they strive to fix it. When it’s fixed, they feel a sense of solution inside themself and that creates a really powerful motivational force where they keep rising rather than outsourcing their power and never getting to the root cause.

This is great for the empowered men and women who have chosen not to live by labels however it is not great for pharmaceutical companies because people solving their problems at the root cause doesn’t make them any money. Society and the media have done an amazing job at creating loops for us where we give our power to somebody else and essentially have somebody else make our decisions. We believe them like disempowered children believing a big parent. This loop means you constantly rely on the ‘parent’ for your sense of self and your validation.

Labels prevent you from addressing the problem, they allow for avoidance. When you are in avoidance you think and are led to believe that you are in your truth but because you haven’t done the work to heal the trauma you aren’t in your truth. Slapping a label on yourself to avoid the trauma is easier and faster than facing the trauma but it is also an excuse. It’s an excuse for not growing into the version of yourself that you want to be, for not looking at your shit and an excuse for not doing any work on yourself. Doing the work and clearing your shit means actually feeling the depths of your pain, this is uncomfortable and it’s not pretty, but you need to learn to see beauty in the pain. When you can see beauty in the pain, the struggle and the hard times whilst focusing on an outcome the journey becomes beautiful because it is human! There is no perfect journey, feel everything because the down times allow you to feel the up times. The moments that feel hard are the moments that allow us to really cherish the moments that feel like fucking bliss!

Don’t try to avoid the human experience and the feelings. Instead, feel the feelings and be turned on by the idea of healing this shit! It can be such a pleasurable experience, you do the work to feel the pleasure on the other side, and that pleasure is indescribable. It is up to you to decide whether you want to experience that pleasure or whether you want to stay living in this mediocre half-assed life because you are too afraid and too entitled to deal with a few weeks of pain for years of the most colorful world you will ever see.

So please, notice where you are labelling yourself and decide from now on that you will do the work to get rid of these labels. Commit not only to dropping the label but to healing and fixing what is underneath so that you never have to worry about that issue again because they are no longer true for you, I want that to be your reality.

If you are ready for that reality, Queen Alchemy is open ladies and already over half full and for the men, The Man waiting list is open for the second round. I have two 1:1 spaces left for the rest of the year and there are still some tickets available for the NYC immersion.