The Cage Door is Open
“Why do you stay in prison when the door is so wide open?” - Rumi
A few years ago, I noticed how the way I usually thought had begun to radically shift. I wasn’t actively trying to achieve this; it was a byproduct of trying to simply be present in each day of my life. As I practiced this, I began to feel something happening that I couldn’t name yet.
I found myself being naturally more aware of emotional and thought states. I’d stopped feeling the vast array of emotions I’d grown accustomed to experiencing on any given subject. I found myself in more of a state of observation mode thought. In that observation, I found something unsettling at first, and then unexpectedly calm.
I was clear in a way I’d never been, and it was the most blissful feeling I’d ever had, which made me immediately suspicious of it. In this clarity, I realized that most of my fears and beliefs came from no one else but myself. What I was thinking and believing was self-imposed. This realization, which was both liberating and terrifying, meant I couldn’t blame anyone else for building the cage I felt myself living in.
You see, the way I was perceiving my world had led me to put myself in a mental prison tied to how I thought I should be living. But this was also a physical cage, as I anchored myself to environments, that could no longer hold me energetically. And the only person keeping me in these prisons was myself, because the doors were unlocked and I could walk out at any time.
The Architecture of Self-Imposed Cages
I started to write and explore this (in fact, this post is based on something I wrote two years ago, but now have the ability to expand), the Rumi quote above came to my mind, and it expanded into:
We all live in cages with the door wide open. We have the freedom to make our own choices and pursue our dreams, but we limit ourselves because of fear, doubt, and the stories we’ve been telling ourselves for so long that we mistake them for truth.
I asked myself why we choose to live in these self-imposed cages, and the answer was more complicated than I wanted it to be:
The reason we live in cages is not just because of fear, but it’s also protection. We imprison ourselves because we want to avoid failing, being judged, experiencing pain, and feeling the full weight of our own responsibility for our lives.
We want to avoid discomfort, which sounds reasonable until you realize that by protecting ourselves from these things, we’re also shutting ourselves off from the possibilities, insights, and versions of ourselves that only emerge after the discomfort. The cage keeps you safe, but it also keeps you small.
I also realized this was about identity (something that I’ve spent the entire month of September covering) I had built a prison out of who I thought I was, who I thought I needed to be, and who I believed others needed me to be. Every bar was a story I told myself about my limitations, my role, my acceptable range of behavior. And the most difficult part was realizing that some of these stories had served me once, had protected me when I needed protection, but were now just keeping me from living.
Look at What Actually Imprisons You
When you start to see your cage clearly, the first feeling isn’t freedom, it’s grief. You’ve invested years, maybe decades, in building this particular version of yourself, and now you’re looking at it and seeing all the ways it’s kept you from experiences, relationships, and aspects of yourself that you can barely glimpse. There’s a mourning that happens when you realize how much time you’ve spent living in a story that was or not representative of who you actually are.
So you start by being willing to look directly at the bars you’ve built. Take some time to identify your fears, limiting beliefs, and the stories you tell yourself about who you are and what you’re capable of. Not the aspirational version, but the ones that actually run your life. Sit with these questions and write down what surfaces:
What am I afraid of? Not surface fears, but the ones that make decisions for me?
What doubts show up when opportunities arise? What do they say about who I am?
What beliefs do I hold about myself that might be keeping me small?
What story do I tell myself about why I can’t do certain things, be certain ways, or pursue certain paths?
Write them down exactly as they appear in your mind, with all their convincing logic and self-protective care. Don’t edit them to sound reasonable or justified. Let them be as raw and uncomfortable as they actually are when they show up in your thoughts. This list is the architecture of your cage.
Challenge the Stories You’ve Been Living
Once you can see the bars clearly, the disorientation begins. When you start dismantling your cage, you discover that your identity was built on those very bars.
Who are you without the story that you’re not brave enough, not talented enough, not worthy enough?
Who are you without the belief that you have to earn your place in the world, that love is conditional, that safety means staying small?
The answer is genuinely frightening because the answer is you don’t know yet. Take each belief you identified and challenge it by asking questions that create cracks in the story. This isn’t about surface level answers that come to mind when you practice mainstream self-care, this is about examining whether the walls you’ve built are actually solid or if they’re made of assumptions you’ve never questioned:
Is this belief actually true, or is it a story I’ve been telling myself?
What evidence do I have that supports this belief? What evidence contradicts it?
Where did this belief come from? Whose voice am I hearing when I think this thought?
What would become possible if this belief wasn’t running my life?
What am I protecting myself from by holding onto this story?
The point isn’t to immediately replace these beliefs with better ones. The point is to see them as stories rather than truths, as bars you’ve constructed rather than walls that actually exist. Some of these stories might have kept you alive once. Some might have protected you when you needed protection. But they might not be serving you anymore.
Take Action Into the Discomfort
I found myself in moments where I literally didn’t know how to behave because I’d removed the operating system I’d been running on. Someone would ask me what I wanted, and I’d freeze because I’d spent so long focusing on what I should want, what was acceptable to want, what wouldn’t disappoint anyone, that my actual desires had gone underground. They were there, but I’d taught myself not to see them, and now I had to learn to see again.
Remember, leaving the cage isn’t a single decision or a moment of revelation. It’s a practice of noticing when you’re standing at an open door and choosing to walk through it despite every instinct screaming at you to stay where it’s familiar. Once you’ve identified and challenged your limiting beliefs, ask yourself what action steps you can take to create cracks in these stories.
Here’s how to work with the thoughts and beliefs that imprison you:
Acknowledge that your thoughts are just thoughts. This sounds simple but it’s not. Your thoughts feel like facts, like accurate assessments of reality, like protection against disappointment. Remind yourself that thoughts are stories your mind is telling, and you can choose which stories to believe and which to question. Notice when a limiting belief shows up and name it: “This is the story about how I’m not capable enough” or “This is the fear that I’ll be rejected if I’m myself.”
Identify the source of the thought and belief. Ask yourself where this particular bar of your cage came from. Whose voice are you hearing? What experience taught you this limitation? What were you protecting yourself from when you first built this wall? Understanding the source doesn’t make the belief go away, but it helps you see that it came from somewhere specific, which means it’s not an immutable truth about who you are.
Do something small that contradicts the story. Not to become someone else, but to create a crack in the wall. If your story is that you don’t speak up in groups, speak once. If your story is that you can’t handle being alone, spend an afternoon with yourself without distraction. If your story is that you need to control everything to feel safe, let one thing unfold without your intervention. If your story is that you can’t ask for help, ask for something small.
Notice what happens in your body and mind when you cross that boundary. This is where the real work happens. When you act against your limiting belief, you’ll feel fear, guilt, discomfort, the sense that you’re betraying something essential about yourself. Notice these feelings without trying to make them go away. Notice the internal voices that protest. Notice the urge to rationalize the experience away or retreat back into the familiar story. This discomfort is the story of fighting to survive, and staying with it instead of resolving it is how you learn that you can exist outside your cage.
Replace the limiting thought with something that makes you feel alive. Not a positive affirmation that feels fake, but a question that opens space.
Instead of “I‘m not capable,” try “What if I am capable and I just haven’t seen it yet?“
Instead of “I‘ll fail if I try,“ try “What if failure is just information?“
Instead of “I need to be who others expect,“ try “What if being myself is enough?“
After you act against a limiting belief, do something to anchor the experience in your body. Take a walk and notice how the world looks different. Talk to someone who knows you’re doing this work. Write about what you noticed, what scared you, what surprised you. The point isn’t to celebrate conquering the fear. The point is to prove to yourself that you can survive outside the cage, that the thing you were afraid of didn’t destroy you, that there’s more space to move than your story allowed.
Stay with the Not-Knowing
What changed for me wasn’t that I became fearless or transcended all my limitations. The cage is still there in some form because we’re human and our brains need some structure to navigate reality. But I learned to see the bars as stories I’m telling rather than walls that actually exist. I learned to notice when I’m choosing the cage and when the cage is choosing for me. Some days I still walk back in because it feels safer, but now I know I’m doing it and why.
As you move through this work, resist the urge to immediately build a new cage out of different beliefs. There’s a space between the old story and whatever comes next, and that space is uncomfortable because we’re trained to know who we are. Stay in that not-knowing longer than feels natural. Let yourself exist without rigid definitions for an hour, an afternoon, a day. This is where you discover what’s been waiting behind the walls you built.
Track Your Movement Through the Door
Changing the way you think and the stories you believe takes time and continual effort. This isn’t a one-time breakthrough. It’s a practice of noticing when you’re at an open door, choosing to walk through it, and learning from what happens on the other side. Make time to reflect on your progress without judgment:
What have I discovered about myself when I’ve acted against my limiting beliefs?
What lessons have I learned from the discomfort of crossing my own boundaries?
What new behaviors or ways of being have emerged when I’ve let go of old stories?
What parts of myself have I glimpsed that my cage couldn’t contain?
What opportunities became visible when I stopped filtering them through my limitations?
When do I still choose the cage, and why? What is it protecting me from?
The point of these questions isn’t to grade yourself or measure progress. It’s to notice what’s actually changing as you practice living with unlocked doors. Some changes will be subtle. Some will be disorienting. Some days you’ll feel free, and some days you’ll want the cage back because at least you knew who you were inside it. All of this is part of leaving.
The Practice of Open Doors
Living outside the cage isn’t about positive thinking or manifesting. It’s about recognizing that the cage was always made of stories, and stories can change. It’s about building a different relationship with fear where you can feel it without letting it make every decision. It’s about discovering that who you are is larger and stranger and more complex than any single story could contain.
The doors are unlocked. They always have been. But walking through them means being willing to not know who you’ll be on the other side, and that’s a different kind of courage than most self-help advice prepares you for. Being able to live outside the cage successfully is found in the reframing of our assumptions of what is and isn’t possible, of who we believe ourselves to be when no one else is watching.
So dig deep into the questions above. After you move through the fear and discomfort, step outside the cage, close the door behind you, and start to live in the uncertainty of who you might become. I’m still learning to walk through those doors, still discovering versions of myself that my old stories couldn’t contain. I’ll find you along the way, and if you like, we can walk together.