How To Be Free From The Shackles Of Life By Pursuing This One Thing.
It’s not about choosing everything you want in your life, but choosing what you will give up on.
Seek freedom and become captive of your desires. Seek discipline and find your liberty. Frank Herbert
No man is free who is not the master of himself.
You can’t eat junk all day and be fit.
You can’t be in a toxic relationship and expect growth to happen.
You can’t waste time on trivial things and expect to be productive.
You can’t learn if you don’t fail.
I know you get the gist. My point being to get to a goal you need to trade off something.
At its core, real freedom boils down to trade-offs. And to be free, you need to practice self-denial which is discipline.
What are you willing to trade with action to get your freedom?
“Trial and error is freedom.” ― Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Wishing, hoping, wanting, talking — it’s all useless without action. And to become free, you need a lot of action. While taking action is better than doing nothing or dreaming, action without thought is a waste of effort.
Life comes at an opportunity cost. The cost of what you are willing to trade-off with action is what determines the extent of your freedom.
So yes, spend some time — real, uninterrupted time — thinking about what’s important to you, what your priorities are. Then, work toward that and forsake all the others. It’s not enough to wish and hope. One must act — and act right. Ryan Holiday.
While our perceptions and principles can guide us in the selection of what we want, ultimately it is our actions that determine whether we get there or not.
“First tell yourself what kind of person you want to be, then do what you have to do. For in nearly every pursuit we see this to be the case. Those in athletic pursuit first choose the sport they want, and then do that work.” — EPICTETUS
Pain is the source of all value.
The greats all had to trade something to get to where they are now.
What makes gold valuable is the process it passed through to get to that stage. What makes Tiger Woods, Lebron James, Seth Godin valuable is the pain they have passed through in making their respective art.
Pain is the currency of our value. Without the pain of loss, it becomes impossible to determine the value of anything at all writes Mark Manson.
Sportsmen show up to practice whether they feel like or not.
Businessmen show up to their work whether it’s making a profit or not.
A writer gets to write whether he feels like or not.
A painter paints whether she is ready or not.
Taking action to do what’s right for you can be painful. But remember that only in pain can we find a purpose. And when we deny ourselves the ability to feel pain for a purpose, we deny ourself the ability to feel any purpose in our life at all.
The quality of our lives is determined by the quality of our character, and the quality of our character is determined by our relationship to our pain. Therefore making pain the source of all value writes Mark Manson.
In the truest sense, freedom cannot be bestowed; it must be achieved. — Franklin D. Roosevelt
Freedom and antifragility.
All that which takes us away from working on ourself makes us fragile.
You can’t binge on NetFlix all day and expect to build the next invention that’s going to save the world.
You can’t scroll through endless feeds on social media and expect not to feel empty at the end of the day.
A flower vase is beautiful on the outside, but it breaks when it falls making it a fragile substance. An oil drum is ugly on the outside, but it can withstand anything applied to it even if you roll it, or it falls down 100 times, it’s still going to retain its shape that anti-fragile.
Anti-fragility is synonymous with growth and maturity.
And the more growth you strive for towards attaining true freedom, the more anti-fragile you become.
When we avoid pain, stress, chaos, tragedy and disorder, we become fragile.
The only true form of freedom, the only ethical form of freedom is through self-limitation. It is not the privilege of choosing everything you want in your life, but rather choosing what you will give up in your life.
Fake freedom is addictive; no matter how much you have, you always feel as though it isn’t enough. Real freedom is repetitive, predictable and sometimes dull (boring). Fake freedom is seeing the world as an endless series of transactions and bargains which you feel you are winning. Real freedom is seeing the world unconditionally with the only victory being over your own desires. Mark Manson in Everything Is F*cked.
The goal is not the freedom to do whatever your heart desires. Rather, the goal is purposeful freedom.
Freedom that moves you closer to your life meaning. Freedom that moves you closer to being happy and useful with yourself irrespective of the outcome. Freedom that brings you lasting peace of mind is what you should strive for.
Freedom is everywhere to take but definitely at a price. The real question now is what are you willing to trade-off to achieve this real freedom?
