What Most of Us Don’t Understand About Personal Freedom
And we lose power.
Here’s what I see a lot of us get wrong about freedom:
We think freedom is about having endless options available to us at all times.
And
We think freedom is about getting to pick and determine all that happens in our lives.
Freedom, however, is the ability to make a choice.
Freedom is not about having all the options in the world available to you. And it is not about being able to have only the outcomes that you want.
Understanding, acknowledging, and accepting this is what it means to be an adult.
Every choice has consequences. Some that may be pleasing to us and others that are not.
We don’t get to cherry pick the consequences of our choices.
Insisting that we do is akin to the toddler throwing a temper tantrum.
I can choose to eat a tub of ice cream every night, for example. I can not insist that this choice will cause me to lose weight. The consequences of daily ice cream consumption is that I gain weight.
Am I going to cry about this? And insist that my freedom is being impinged upon?
My freedom is in my choice and only in my choice.
The consequences may inform my choice but don’t impede on my freedom.
You, too, get to experience freedom in your choice.
And, friends, this is true even if there is only 1 option in front of you. How much more powerful is that?
© Lana Dragon-Ivy, 2022
