The Key to Personal Freedom

I currently am sitting in a coffee shop on my day off in sunny South Florida reading books, looking up research, studying, and typing away on my computer. It is about 95 degrees out, not a cloud in the sky, and I am about 1 mile from the beach. Some of you may think I am absolutely crazy to not be at the beach or lying out in the sun but there is a very specific reason I am resisting the temptation to stop what I am doing, pack up my computer, and head over to the pristine waters of the Fort Lauderdale beach. I made a commitment to myself earlier in the week that Thursday afternoon would be spent reading, writing, and studying. So now I pose the million-dollar question. Does this make me a slave or does my discipline to stick with commitments really make me free? I live a very structured and disciplined life. I am very rigid on the fuel I put in my body in the field of nutrition, I exercise what some people would refer to as religiously, and I tend to live my life far from the societal norms. I cannot tell you how many times I have heard comments like “I could never do what you do because I want to be free to eat whatever I want” and “I hate to exercise because it takes up too much time and I want to be free with my extra time” and “I could never give up my television because I want to be free to watch the shows that really make me happy.” I could go on and on with the list of things that people believe defines themselves as being free. Most of society would claim they want to be free but are actually living in complete contradiction to what they say they want. Allow me to elaborate. I have a friend who loves to watch television. He watches hours of television everyday and records whatever he misses to watch at a later date. Even his schedule revolves around watching certain shows and is irritable if he does not get his daily dose of television. How would this person feel if the television was completely removed from his life? How long would it take for depression and boredom to set in? Does watching television for this person represent a freedom or an addiction? What many people regard as freedoms are actually addictions.

True freedom actually comes from living a life of discipline where every action is a volitional conscious choice. It is having the power to resist or move forward; to stay put or persist onward; to eliminate or include. Freedom comes from having and executing the power of choice and not from escaping the necessity of choice. Freedom does not come from sleeping in until noon on Saturday because you find it too difficult to wake up early. It does come from having the power to wake up early and making a conscious choice to sleep in late. This is a very important distinction! The distinction between being free or not does not come from living a “perfect” life as if there was such a thing. Freedom comes from having the power to make choices based on your values and not on your emotions. Here is an example from my own life. I enjoy a cup of iced coffee a few days a week. There are times when I have been drinking it for a while and I start to crave it. I plan my day around going to Starbucks because I feel like I need a cup of coffee to clear my head and wake me up. I am aware when I develop that need within me and I discipline myself to go without coffee until I feel like I regained control over my emotional attachment to it. Only then will I go back to drinking coffee again.

By developing more discipline in your life, you actually become more free to do the things you really want to do and not the things that you have developed a dependence on. There is nothing more empowering than gaining more control over your life through the power of discipline. By creating more discipline, you become the captain of your ship instead of heading in whatever direction the wind happens to be blowing that day. Think of an area in your life where if you really think about it, it is really an addiction or a vice. Maybe its coffee, alcohol, junk food, lack of exercise, being chronically late, procrastination, television, or it could be an infinite amount of other things that could be added to this list. You will find that your degree of freedom will be directly proportional to the degree of discipline that you execute and your life will never be the same because of it. It will open your life up to new realms of possibility where you break the chains of addiction and open up your life to one that you can truly stand behind and love.