There’s a moment in personal growth when something quietly shifts.
For most of us, communication starts from a familiar place: How will this land? What will they think of me? Am I coming across the right way? We craft our words, soften our edges, perform versions of ourselves designed for acceptance. The ego runs the show, and we don’t even notice we’re manipulating ourselves to be perceived a certain way, a way that often has nothing to do with how we actually feel.
This isn’t wrong. It’s just where we are. It’s an honest reflection of our relationship with ourselves at that moment.
But something changes when healing happens. Not the kind of healing we announce or perform, the kind that settles in quietly, without fanfare.
Suddenly, the question shifts from “How will this be received?” to “Is my intention clean?”
That’s it. That’s the whole thing.
When I speak now, I think carefully,not about perception, but about origin. Where is this coming from? Is it rooted in something true? If the answer is yes, then the outcome genuinely stops mattering. Not in a practiced, forced way. Not in an “I don’t care what anyone thinks” bravado that’s really just another performance.
It simply… doesn’t register the same way anymore.
This is what freedom actually feels like: the complete absence of expectation around outcome. And here’s what I’ve learned—you can’t fake your way there. People try. They say the words, adopt the posture, but the attachment to outcome leaks through anyway. Because you can’t think yourself into this. You can only heal yourself into it.
When it’s real, it just is. You feel it. Others feel it too.
So if you’re still performing, still calculating perception, still managing how you land, that’s okay. That’s information about where you are right now. It’s an invitation, not a failure.
The work is the relationship you’re building with yourself. Everything else follows.
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