Creating Space Within and Giving Yourself Room to Grow and Explore

As children, it is often of paramount importance to us to have our very own room. Although for economic reasons, we often must accept shared accommodation with siblings, and in times of poverty or exorbitant and uncontrollable inflation, you may all find yourself in the same room, or if the situation is even dire, you may not have shelter to speak of, let alone your own space. Notwithstanding, it becomes clear that for each of us, it is important to have our own personal private and un-intruded space.

This is part and parcel of and even a visible and tangible sign of independence, yet at the same time, it also comes to represent the place where we can be truly and fully be ourselves. If we have liberal-minded and permissive parents, we may even have a say in how we wish to decorate it. Moreover, in the comfort of this space, we can engage in activities that we enjoy, that resonate with our inner core and that give us pleasure.

As life progresses, many of us lose that access or at least certain aspects to that sort of privacy. In our college days, we may have a roommate or types of shared accommodation where we can be ourselves and feel perfectly at home, but it may come with certain limitations. Later, when we are living with our partner, that space is lost physically, yet we may maintain it in our minds by spending time away from home, either with friends or on our own. It then becomes a figurative or invisible space where we can be completely who we are without any pretense or excuses.

Incidentally, I am currently writing this not from my home but from a café. The idea, or rather the reason I tell myself, is to be less distracted but that is not always the case and that is not the main reason I choose to do so. It is rather looking for a different kind of space where regular distractions are warded off against and where I can experience different facets of myself. Add to that, the unexpected where I could potentially run into someone or meet someone new, which, however, rarely happens not necessarily due to a lack of people but because of my own timidity.

Oddly enough, I find that ideas in this “other space” tend to flow more freely, which may not be too surprising as there are various others who appear to tap into the same vibes and frequencies or thought patterns. As a university student, I would indeed often “escape” my room, which was tiny, but it was purely my own living space as part of the residential college I was at, and I would go to nearby beaches, including a nudist one, to do many of my assigned readings. Reading outdoors is just more fun, whenever the weather cooperates of course, and the surroundings are not too distracting.

As you can probably tell by now, the room I am talking about here is as much mental as it is physical, if not more so. We all need a room of our own was a song by Billy Joel and it is also a previous blogpost of mine based on and inspired by a podcast I did with creativity coach Eric Maisel. His view was to redecorate and redesign our mind and mental space and give it the renovations, uplifts and upgrades that we wished to have.

The concept is very interesting, and I would like to add to it here. It is not so much the way the room looks, whether your curtains are grey, blue, or multi-colored but how big or small it is. Size does matter. We often take up a more unassuming space not only in reality but also within our mind and spirit. In the real world, it is often due to financial pressures or limitations, and it is no secret that the increased square miles come at a rather significant cost.

Nonetheless, we take on the same mentality and apply it to our psychological space. It may be due to modesty, humility, lack of confidence, or fear of being seen as pretentious, arrogant and ungrateful, or simply because we think we do not deserve the extra space and have to accept and deal and content with what we got and what we get in life as the Rolling Stones remind us that we can’t always get what we want in life.

But those are limitations that we are setting ourselves and sometimes even imposing upon each of us. I agree with setting boundaries to protect ourselves, whether it is physical or in terms of effort, time, and energy invested but I disagree with these types of artificial barriers that we may unconsciously fence ourselves in and with. It is not only about what our room looks, like Eric Maisel explains in his book and on my podcast quite eloquently and creatively, but also how much space we give and allow ourselves. And in our imagination, should the sky not be our upper and topper most limit?

I am saying this at a moment in my life where I find that I have been selling myself short. It comes with the fact that I feel I have come up short and that I have been generally underappreciated, which at the time I assumed was only my imagination until I realized that it was not. It had its roots and anchors in facts and reality. Yet, in all fairness, I have not been doing myself any favors with my own false sense of modesty. This is the type of modesty that lacks true understanding of the facts and actual situation and circumstances. It is false because consciously or unconsciously, it denies and even diminishes if not denigrates our own skills, talents, and abilities.

Put differently, I need to expand my (mental) room because it does not allow for my essence and talents to exist fully. I do not have to continue living in my shabby self-imposed apartment because it is not where I currently belong. Perhaps it is time to move out or move up or even move altogether to a new mental space.

Psychologically speaking, this small room has been difficult because I have been limited myself in many ways. This is what Dr. Carla Marie Manly would designate our jail cell, the place that may be our so-called comfort zone but where we are willingly staying and lodging because we have shut the door with locks and all and barely dare to look out the window.

On one hand, this limited space restricts movement. If your inner space does not have much “legroom”, you will find it hard to go to places. You are not free but often restrained and constrained. You are also filled with negative expectations that seriously hamper your outlook and chances. Anything that is beyond the room you are occupying is not seen as an invitation or a welcome challenge but quickly brushed off as simply not for me.

In our cocoon, we live in an artificially set comfort zone, which is not comforting in the sense of its culinary cousin comfort food, which, although often not the healthiest option out there, fills us up with warmth, pleasant sensations, and pleasing memories. Here, we just remain entrenched in our “home” and filled with fear. The small black-and-white television gives us comfort although we are aware that there are more modern and much better options and variations out there.

Additionally, to grow, we need the room to do so first. Like a potted plant, that needs a bigger pot, so we need an area to expand more freely. That means, we need to tweak our views, perspectives, and expectations. We also need to take a good look at our fear and insecurities, which often turn out to be defense mechanisms based on previous situations that are simply outdated and no more valid. But we hold onto it like our tiny black-and-white TV set in front of us in our shabby apartment space.

We need not only a room of our own but room to grow. And to get there, we need room for error. It is a misnomer that we can get it right just right off the bat. No one can really do that because it is not realistic or feasible. You cannot expect to play Beethoven without taking piano lessons and without those hours and hours of endless practice and millions and millions of fumbles and mistakes along the way. I do not think that practice necessarily makes perfect, but it certainly helps us to tackle things much better. Yet, all this involves both effort as well as the willingness to make errors and be ready and willing to occasionally or often fail as we do so.

Give yourself room for errors and failure. They are not the end of the world but as vital and necessary for your growth as learning scales on the piano. It may not always be fun but if you have your eyes and heart set on a bigger living space, then you must accept this as a part of necessity. Incidentally, once you give yourself the much-needed extra space, you will also give others more room in your mind. They also need space, but it is hard for you to see that when you yourself can barely move.

Finally, you must be willing to accept change and to welcome it into your life. This is a hard thing to do because we get used to and entrenched to certain things and places. We get accustomed to our room as it is the place we know, and we have lived in for a long time.

Moreover, the job that we have may be far from perfect but it is the devil we know. It is better than nothing, we tell or try to convince ourselves. The person we are with we assume to be the best possible option because no one will love us more or better out there. It sure beats being alone and lonely, we tell ourselves. The country we live in, whether it is our home or the home of our choice is simply where we belong, for better or for worse.

Certainly, all or any of this may be true, no doubt. This cannot be judged here without additional details and some scrutiny as well as complete honesty and after serious, intense, and intimate introspection and reflection. Yet, there may be a change in the offing or at the very least some room for improvement in your living space, be it physical or mental, in your relationship or at your place of work.

But if we are blind to it, if we do not see it or choose not to perceive it, it does not mean it is not there. The best way is to expand our room, to not only look out of the window but step out, and then take a second look and find out for ourselves. We may be surprised that we have been living in an unnecessarily confined place but no more starting from now on.