5 Principles of Feral Living

Are you sick of feeling overwhelmed and stretched too thin?Here are 5 principles to live by to find contentment and freedom:

1. Independence

The only way to be successful in the search for freedom is to be independent. This doesn’t mean that you cannot work with others or ask for help, but help should be a “nice to have” and not a need. Once you need a job, a substance, an item, a person, etc., you’ve given your power away. Once you are powerless, you can be controlled.

Feral living is about taking back your power, removing the ability for other things or people to control you, and living life as it pleases you.

2. Love Yourself

Probably the most challenging thing to master is loving oneself. After years of hearing lies (often starting from childhood), about how you are not enough as you are, you start to believe the lies. You start to believe that love is earned by meeting goals that were set for you by others.

How do you love yourself? Start with adjusting your self-talk. When you catch yourself saying unkind things in your head, stop and ask if you’d speak to a loved one that way. Talk to yourself the way you’d speak to the most important person in your life.

The next action you can take in the journey of loving oneself, is to start prioritizing your needs and wants over the requests of others. Learn to help others after you feel satisfied. The only exception should be if the other person is an infant in your care, but other than infants, anyone else can wait for your needs and wants to be taken care of first.

 The cool thing about loving yourself is that you can stop people pleasing and start doing things that are in your benefit. The results are life changing.

3. Harness the Power of “No”

We’re socially pressured to agree to the requests/demands of others, whether that be a boss, a spouse, a parent, a child, etc. Saying no to requests reserves your time to prioritize your wellbeing and goals.

4. Wellbeing First

Feral living prioritizes psychological and physical wellbeing above all. We’ve all heard the saying, “You cannot pour from an empty vessel.” There is joy in helping others but only if we are in a good place.

Focusing on physical and mental health is connected to loving oneself. Neglecting self-care can result in chronic illness or pain. You deserve better than an outcome like that. Taking a minimum of 15-30 minutes a day to be active is not impossible. Being mindful of what foods you put in your body is not impossible. If it feels impossible, that means your priorities are not in the correct order. Identify what is stopping you from putting your health first and put it lower on your to-do list.

5. Acceptance of Social Consequences

Remember the saying, “Freedom isn’t free.”? It’s true in this case as well. Marching to the beat of your own drum can and will upset some people in your life.

Good news! It’s a quick and easy way to identify people in your life who do not truly care about you. The people who find their inability to control and use you to be unbearable, will self-eliminate. They will cut you off from their life because they think they are punishing you with their absence, but honestly, they’re doing you a favor.

The social consequences are simply payment for your freedom.