Inside Out Visual Journaling: Freedom July 2008 Inspiration Page

Journaling Prompts:

Be yourself: How have you released yourselves from the shackles that so many of us experience early on – those voices that told us we couldn’t be or do what we saw in our hears? Unchain yourself – what would you do, what would your life be if you didn’t care what anyone said or thought? What could you do to let your true self shine though? What are some of the ways in which you can free yourself right now, and which ways would take work?

The living is easy: summer is a season of freedom – kids are out of school (and you were too as a child – summer was a time of freedom for you then) and you felt it in your bones. It was a time of sea and sky – rolling waves and warm breezes. You played with abandon and shared with your friends. You camped out in the woods, ran on the beach and ate ice cream every day. Today that feeling still creeps in as summer approaches. July 4th rolled around, and sparklers and fireflies filled the air. You can almost smell the BBQ going, the soft green grass and the dirt below filled with life. You feel like you can fly, soar and spread your wings. What does freedom mean to you today? Is it a day off or a true vacation?

A complex world: With Independence Day in July, you may be thinking of some of the freedoms we share as Americans. We’re lucky to have those. Not all of us are so lucky, though – we live with poverty and hunger in our own backyard. So many people around the world are not free either – to worship as they believe, to provide for their children in a harsh climate or a poor country, to live free of political control. We’re more free to make choices that many around the world will never experience because of abject poverty. What do we sometimes take for granted?

Who inspires you and whom can you inspire to be free? It could be a grandparent who taught you by their example that you could be anything you wanted; or your new puppy playing with such abandon that you’re reminded that you can be free as well. Sometimes it’s the other way around – you may have memories of being constrained. If you feel more free today, how did you make that happen? Tell your story. Who would you like to inspire to be free? Your children, a close friend, your Mom?

Music:

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Quotes:

Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom.
Soren Kierkegaard

Without freedom from the past, there is no freedom at all, because the mind is never new, fresh, innocent.
Krishnamurti

I want freedom for the full expression of my personality.
Mahatma Gandhi

The moment we choose to love we begin to move towards freedom...
Bell Hooks

Freedom is not worth having if it does not connote freedom to err.
Mahatma Gandhi

Freedom of expression is the matrix, the indispensable condition, of nearly every other form of freedom.
Benjamin Cardozo

In the truest sense, freedom cannot be bestowed; it must be achieved.
Franklin D. Roosevelt

Freedom is nothing else but a chance to be better.
Albert Camus

The secret of Happiness is Freedom, and the secret of Freedom, Courage.
Thucydides

Ultimately we know deeply that the other side of fear is a freedom.
Marilyn Ferguson

My definition of a free society is a society where it is safe to be unpopular.
Adlai E. Stevenson Jr.

One word frees us of all the weight and pain of life: That word is love.
Sophocles

To freely bloom - that is my definition of success.
Gerry Spence

Life is like a game of cards. The hand that is dealt you is determinism; the way you play it is free will.
Jawaharlal Nehru

Our thoughts are free.
Cicero

Freedom is what you do with what's been done to you.
Jean-Paul Sartre

Freedom lies in being bold.
Robert Frost

Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms -- to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way.
Victor Frankl

I wish that every human life might be pure transparent freedom.
Simone de Beauvoir

Freedom is the oxygen of the soul. Moshe Dayan

All good things are wild and free.
Henry David Thoreau

I only ask to be free. The butterflies are free.
Charles Dickens

I imagine, therefore I belong and am free.
Emily Dickinson

Photos: