The Freedom Fantasy

My definition of freedom was wrong all along

“I’ll be happy when…”

One of the most delusional phrases in the English language.

I try to keep my audible uttering of these words to a minimum, but if I’m being honest, I’m thinking these words practically all the time.

I’ll be happy when I can move into a place with more space.

I’ll be happy when my son starts sleeping through the night.

I’ll be happy when my net worth hits a certain number.

I’ll be happy when I can finally see my family.

I’ll be happy when it’s the weekend.

I’ll be happy when I get through this project.

I’ll be happy when I can spend more time in nature.

And on and on. Morning, afternoon, and night.

Underneath these thoughts is almost always the belief that:

When I get these things, I will experience more freedom, and with more freedom, I will experience real happiness.

I am constantly fantasizing about quitting my present circumstances to start living my ideal future. A future with more freedom.

My freedom fantasies have lots of different flavors: freedom from time constraints, freedom from financial constraints, freedom from stress, freedom from deadlines, freedom from other people’s mistaken perceptions of me, freedom from rules that don’t suit me, freedom from any situation that has the potential to be better.

I hold these freedoms on a pedestal.

My hunger for freedom can often feel counterproductive. The more I hunger, the less I feel free. To deal with this well-known phenomenon, the “self-help” section of the bookstore will tell you to stop hungering. If you just reduce the desire for something, then not having it won’t be as bad. This might work for a beach house or a BMW, but for freedom?

Impossible. I’m famished. I’m starving for freedom.

Experiencing freedom is core to what we humans are all about. So my hunger for more freedom is not something that I should (or can) rid myself of. My hungering for freedom is not counterproductive. But what I am realizing is that my definition of freedom has been wrong all along.

My understanding of freedom is proven to be mistaken on an almost daily basis when my mini freedom fantasies come true. A difficult project comes to a close. The weekend rolls around. My son starts sleeping 12 hours a night. And yet, the freedom never seems to bring the kind of happiness that I had in mind when I concocted the fantasy in the first place. The freedom never seems to bring real freedom.

This is the freedom fantasy.

A personal example of this myth was when I left my corporate job a few years back. I had fantasized about that day for more than a decade, the day when I would finally quit in a blaze of glory (and with a standing ovation) to pursue my passion. In my mind, I had checked the boxes of the freedoms that I wanted, mainly financial freedom and freedom from desiring another promotion, before I could make such a move. And I was ready to start living my fantasy full of new freedoms: freedom from 50-hour work weeks, freedom from a boss, freedom from having to wear a suit, freedom to live wherever I want, freedom to do work that I would find meaningful and enjoy in a deeper way.

And yet, when the excitement (and validation) of the day eventually subsided, and I got down from my high horse of having quit Goldman Sachs to do something to “help the world,” I didn’t feel more free. In fact, it felt like I was standing at the bottom of a mountain with a whole new set of peaks to climb.

The French author, Alain de Botton, wittingly illustrates this point in his book The Art of Travel with his observation of what typically transpires when we plan our vacations: We look at pictures in a travel brochure, thinking how amazing it will be when we get there. We fantasize about it for weeks. And then when we finally book the trip and make our way to the exact same spot that looked so attractive in the brochure, we find that we aren’t as happy as we imagined. We wonder why, but eventually it dawns on us that we made the crucial mistake of bringing ourselves along for the journey.

As a coaching client recently remarked to me in one of our sessions, “I just want freedom from myself.”

My client was onto something. We do want freedom from ourselves. But it is not freedom from our real selves. It is the freedom from our egoic selves.

We’ve all had tastes of this freedom. For me, these tastes have come while going camping in the wilderness, during experiences at music festivals jamming out to great music with good friends, during intense yoga class in a hot room, letting loose on the dance floor at a friend’s wedding, giggling with my son as we roll around on the floor, and taking a walk by myself on a warm summer evening with house music coming through my noise-canceling headphones.

Make no mistake. These experiences are not experiences of the real self. They are worldly experiences that give us a sense of something closer to what the real self must be. They hint at what true freedom feels like and give us an idea of what starts to happen in our internal world when we move away from the egoic self.

More specifically for me, the ever-present and excruciatingly loud voice of my inner critic reduces in volume; the parts of me that carry anger, frustration, and judgment don’t feel so angry, frustrated, or judgemental; the need for attention and praise starts to soften; and the “I-me-mine” centered view of the world doesn’t feel as important or true. I feel less of a pull to prove myself to the world and to defend the ego identities that I have worked my whole life to propagate.

It’s certainly not the case that music festivals or intense yoga classes are the answers to our hunger for freedom. And it’s not that we should avoid pursuing goals like financial freedom or freedom from a job in which we feel trapped. But we are deluding ourselves if we think those kinds of freedom are going to allow us to feel truly free.

Many people have gone their entire lives thinking that if they were just a little more successful or had a bigger house for their family, then they could finally start to enjoy life. And then one of two things happens: either they go to their grave feeling like they never could be happy because they hadn’t achieved what they were chasing OR they work 20+ years toward that goal only to find continued existential angst and unease even after they achieve it.

To help us on the path toward true freedom, we first need to be deeply honest with ourselves about whether how we currently spend our days will eventually bring us freedom. For most of us, the truth is that it will not. And if you aren’t sure because you haven’t tasted the success or identity that you crave, then just ask someone who has it. And second, in order to satiate our desire for freedom, we must start to find ways to soften the attachments that we have to become bigger, better, and more of whatever our ego tells us we should be.

There is only one true freedom: freedom from the ego. And it is the freedom from the ego which gives us the freedom to be our real selves.

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The Upbuild podcast, www.upbuild.com/podcast, helps you understand your ego and the unconscious motivations, insecurities and emotions that affect your every action and relationship.