We’re Out of the Cage. Now What?

Exploring Glennon Doyle’s Untamed

It’s not enough to identify our cage and unlock it, we must also understand how to be free. Otherwise, we may find ourselves tamed again inside our cage. So what does being free really mean?

The first important element of being free is knowing who we are. Really knowing who we are. Not who we want to be or who we fantasize being, but who we are naturally. Who we are without trying to be anyone. To do this, we must create space for our true, natural wild selves to emerge.

These days, we have so many distractions at our fingertips. In fact, we have too many things demanding our attention so we never really experience a lull. We look at our phones, set them down, only to pick them up a moment later to do another task that our brain has served up.

Doyle points out that “inside the itchiness of our own skin is where we discover who we are. When we are bored, we ask ourselves: What do I want to do with myself?” (p.157–158). We only experience that itchiness, that boredom, when we don’t have distractions. When we can’t connect to the internet or turn on the TV. In that space, we get curious, turn in, and invite our intuition to speak. This is how we begin to see our true selves emerge.

“The moment after we don’t know what to do with ourselves is the moment we find ourselves. Right after itchy boredom is self-discovery. But we have to hang in there long enough without bailing” (p.158). We have to hang on and make it through the discomfort in order to create space for our instincts to emerge.

That is where the magic happens. We might get a small nudge to bake our favorite dessert, even though we haven’t touched anything in the kitchen in years. Or, we might feel called to reorganize the furniture in our room so it feels a certain way. Or maybe we want to sit down and write, for no apparent purpose but to let things flow from our mind and our bodies onto the page. This beautiful space is where we get to know who we really are, and we get to see what our instincts look like.

People who are endlessly busy and overwhelmed often say that they feel like they’re missing something. They likely are — they’re missing out on the unique, interesting, natural person that they are. We invite you to see boredom in a different way: as an invitation to go inward and get acquainted with who you naturally are.

• When was the last time you allowed yourself to feel bored? What came next?
• Think back to when you were little when you didn’t have a phone. What did you fill your time with when you were bored?
• What is your number one distractor? How can you reduce that distraction in your life and create space to get to know your true self?

One thing that often distracts us is our desires. We get caught up in what we’re yearning for, and how we can make it happen. There are so many ways to fill our time preoccupied with what we desire.

Doyle makes an important distinction in “beach houses” between our desire and Knowing. What we consider our desires are often what she calls “surface desires” (p.120). They’re influenced by our environment and context — seeing photos on instagram, hearing about what others have or are experiencing, grabbing what is easy and close (that convenient bottle of wine). We know they are surface desires because our intuition gives us a nudge that this desire might not be right. We feel some resistance, a misalignment. Our Knowing doesn’t trust surface desires (p.120).

When we sense this, Doyle encourages us to go deeper, asking “what is the desire beneath this desire? Is it rest? Is it peace?” (p.120). If we keep seeking out what is at the core of the surface desire, we begin to see something emerge that resonates deeply. Something that makes our whole body hum. Connection. Love. Acceptance. These are our true desires, the ones that light us up. They aren’t born out of what others have or what they say, they come from our inner experience. We know we’ve found it when it feels aligned for us — as something has locked into place.

Doyle reminds us that our true desires don’t call for us to ignore our intuition. “Our deep desires are wise, true, beautiful, and things we can grant ourselves without abandoning our Knowing” (p.120). Instead, they are aligned with what our inner wisdom is telling us. By getting curious about what we’re really wanting, we can cut down on the distractions that our surface desires create and at the same time get a better sense of who we are and what we deeply want. All of which supports us in being free.

• Is there a desire that’s been catching your attention lately? What is it?
• What’s the desire below that? And below that?
• What does it feel like for you when you uncover your true desire? What do you hear? What do you see?

The next important element of being free is trusting ourselves. More specifically, trusting our intuition. Our inner knowing. Our instincts. Seeing them for what they are and accepting them without doubt, without overthinking.

A common experience when we’re in the process of connecting to our intuition is to turn information and thoughts over and over in our heads. All we hear is noise. This is because our brain wants to own this process. It’s been the star of the show for a lot of our lives, and it has a hard time quieting down so that our intuition can emerge. This overthinking creates doubt and makes it hard to trust our intuition — let alone hear it.

Doyle walks us through a time when she was over analyzing and stuck on what to do, and how she received a reminder to quiet her brain and connect to her body. She was on the phone with her friend talking, talking, talking in circles when her wise friend stopped her and said, “You are in your head. The answers you need this time aren’t in there. They’re in your body” (p.123).

Her friend Martha goes on to explain why listening to intuition is important:

Your body is nature, and nature is pure… It’s wise. Your body will tell you things your mind will talk you out of. Your body is telling you what direction life is in. Try trusting it. (p.124)

Our bodies are indeed nature, and they contain our wildness. They house our instincts and the vital information our intuition delivers. Talking in circles, justifying everything, feeling stuck — these are all things that we can begin to see as signals that we are residing in our head and ignoring our body wisdom. To be free, we need to learn how to notice when we’re in our heads, learn how to quiet our mind, and trust our inner wisdom that resides in our bodies.

• How do you know when you’re in your head? What’s your first signal?

Finally, as we’re getting to know and trust ourselves, we may need a way to remember who we are and that we trust our intuition. We’re all human. We’ll drift into overthinking or doubt. In those moments, it’s helpful to have an anchor to help us remember how to be free.

For Doyle, this was her Touch Tree (p.145). She shares where she first learned about the Touch Tree: Watching a reality tv show, the “fraudulent Survivorman” advised viewers to find a “Touch Tree” if they’re lost in the forest and need to be found. He explained that a Touch Tree is a big tree that you can recognize and find your way back to. That way you can go out into the woods and get food and things to survive, but by coming back to the Touch Tree often you stay in roughly the same area so you can be found (p.145).

She then applies this metaphor to her life as she describes how at one point she’d been “lost in the woods of pain, relationships, religion, career, service, success, and failure” (p.145). Throughout that time, her Touch Tree had been outside of herself (p.145). She had been relying on things external to her to anchor on, which kept her feeling lost.

Now, she recognizes that she is her own Touch Tree, her own home base to return to when she feels lost (p.145). She turns in and settles into her body, using a visual of becoming an actual tree. This is what we call an anchor — something to return to, that grounds us. It can be helpful to find our own anchors to help bring us back to ourselves, to trust our inner knowing, and to be curious about our true selves. These anchors help us find our way back to being free when the cage starts calling.

• What will be your anchor?
• How will you access it? Is there something you say to yourself? Something you see? Something you hear?

Being free doesn’t just happen as we exit the cage. It goes beyond that. It’s about how we live each day. It’s about being in alignment. It’s about being curious about who we are in each moment, and what is true for us. It’s about listening to our instincts and intuition, and remaining anchored in our wildness.