Have you ever woken up from a nightmare in the middle of the night, thinking: “That was a pretty shitty dream”?

I was drowning in an ocean inside a dive cage. The cage was sinking to the bottom, and I was surrounded by darkness. I was screaming with rage but there was no one to hear it. I was completely alone.

I looked up and saw a glimmer of light coming from the surface.  A promise of life I was about to lose.

“I’m going to die inside this cage,” I thought. “I’m gonna drown despite being an excellent swimmer.”

I can swim for hours without ever feeling tired. I can rest in the water, then keep going across the lake.

So as I looked at my body stuck inside the cage, I thought: “What a pity. This woman, so capable of making it to the surface with little breath, is gonna die inside that cage despite her abilities.”

Now, that’s a shitty dream!

But it made me think about my life and life of so many others.

What is your cage?

We live in a society where we are groomed for tribal consciousness.

We are told how to think, how to act, when to laugh, and when to cry.

We’re told to be brilliant but there is so much criticism and pressure, that it’s simply easier not to stand out.

With time, we adopt the cage that we were put in.

 We become comfortable with the uncomfortable.

We resign ourselves to the destiny of drowning in our unfulfilled hopes and unrealized dreams.

And you may look at your cage and say: “THEY did this to me. THEY drowned me. I had my skills. I had my big visions, but THEY chained me down.”

And that’s okay to think that way because often you’re right.

It may have been your parents who told you that you were not good enough.

It may have been your high school friends who called you a geek and never invited you to their clique.

It may have been your boss who, no matter how good you performed, never appreciated what you had done.

But if it’s them, then you’re going to die as a disempowered being because you let their cage enslave you.

Are you going to stand up for yourself?

Will you decide to no longer play the victim?

Will you realize that on some level, at some point you just gave up?

You accepted the cage.

There is no shame in it. There is no guilt.

We all did what we had to do to survive.

We did what we thought we needed to thrive.

But thrive we did not.

Today, we can break out of the cage.

We can set ourselves free.

Free to crumble and free to triumph.

Free to try, to fail, and to succeed.

Most of all, we can give ourselves permission to be who we are and as we are, with all our shortcomings and all the brilliance.

Today, we can break the bars, swim up to the surface, and rediscover who we want to be ON OUR TERMS.

We can reach towards the light, and let it guide us out of the darkness like a lighthouse beacon on a stormy night.

Because inside that cage, there is no longer a disempowered woman. She only felt powerless because she thought there was no way out.

Freedom doesn’t come from breaking out of the cage that is jailing you. It starts when you make a decision to be free.

When you give yourself permission to explore yourself beyond the limits you have accepted in the past.

When you decide to redefine yourself.

When you focus on your potential and possibilities instead of inadequacies.

When the cage is no longer comfortable.

That’s when the slave becomes the master.

Master of your own life.

Master of your own destiny.

Master of your own future.

Break the cage. Now!

With love,

Dagmar Fleming
Founder, Unlock Your Success