Feeding your cat, your dog, your kids, or any living creature who depends on you for food.
Showing up at your job so you can earn a living.
Caring for elderly parents or challenging aunts.
Being on time.
Suiting up and showing up for your team.
Helping your brother stay off the streets.
Attending funerals, family holiday dinners, and buying wedding gifts.
Saying thank you for the thoughtful gift, even though you hate it.
Honoring your word, your contract, your promise—even when it’s incredibly inconvenient.

These are all obvious obligations, right? We’re OBLIGATED to do these things, aren’t we? If we don’t do these things, we could be acting immoral, heartless, irresponsible, out-of-integrity.

“Obligation” is a heavy duty word. You can hardly squeeze a quarter cup of vitality from it. By it’s very nature, it restrains, binds, and requires obedience.

Energetically, “obligation” blows.

Strike “obligation;” insert “choice.”

You’ve got free will. All of it is a choice. Even if you have to decide to rise to each committed occasion, you are choosing to be moral, loving, responsible, integrous. No victimhood, no obedience, no torture. Just free will. Freed. Don’t you feel lighter already?

Re-frame obligations into conscious choices. Then your obligations become more power-full service.

. . . . . . .

xo.

Danielle LaPorte is the author of The Fire Starter Sessions: A Soulful + Practical Guide for Creating Success on Your Own Terms(Random House/Crown). An inspirational speaker, former think tank exec and business strategist, she is the co-creator of Your Big Beautiful Book Plan. Her next online program launches November 2012, called DESIRE: The Map to What You Truly Want.

Over a million visitors have gone to DanielleLaPorte.com for her straight-up advice — a site that’s been deemed “the best place on-line for kick-ass spirituality”, and was named one of the “Top 100 Websites for Women” by Forbes.

You can find her on Facebook and Twitter @daniellelaporte

*Photo by Max Klingensmith.