When we want freedom

I remember chilly winter evenings in Slovakia when I dreamed of tropical beaches. I even spent one Christmas holidays playing a game on the Nintendo Wii, a game in which I was stranded on an island and had to find a way out. Except, I was more into building tiki houses and spearfishing than looking for a walkie-talkies to I actually get off the island.

I loved watching Pirates of the Caribbean and dreamed of just hanging around, living somewhere warm and not having to worry. What I longed for then, I called freedom.

I also remember a time when I lived surrounded by palm trees and warmth, worked six hours a day instead of eight, I ran every day along the beach, and my account was overflowing with money because I had nowhere to spend it. And it will probably sound strange, but do you know what I dreamed about? About freedom.

It was the times of covid when I “couldn’t” go home to Slovakia and was “forced” to stay in Australia. I’ll get to the word “forced” later.

All the glitters is not gold

It is interesting that although the love of freedom has been with me all my life, what I imagine when saying this word has changed over the years and probably each of us imagines it differently.

Going on vacation whenever I want?

Decide not to work?

The possibility to buy anything I like?

To flirt with anyone I like?

Decide to come home the next morning?

If this was freedom, in that case only (some) entrepreneurs or rich kids could call themselves free.

Or people who don’t care about anything and anybody. Because what I describe above is more arbitrariness than freedom.

The irony is that the more of this material or physical freedom we have, especially if we got it without work, the more we rely on it and we may miss that seemingly invisible but real inner freedom.

Whatever happens

Think of the last situation when something pissed you off or really upset you. Personally, I don’t need to go too far into the past, I see myself two days back.

Remember your reaction, maybe you said something you didn’t want to, maybe you were alone and were cursing like a truck driver. And maybe you controlled yourself and said nothing outwardly, but you spent hours arguing with your imaginary enemy in your head. Or you were asking yourself how did you deserve to deal with this.

And now imagine that the same situation would arise and you would say to yourself that there is no point in getting upset. And… you WOULDN’T GET UPSET :))). You would just skip all that drama. Just because you would decide. Because you know it doesn’t make sense to get upset. The situation will get solved or won’t get solved. Getting upset has no real value.

And this is one of the manifestations of absolute freedom – the ability to decide what we will let influence us, and what we won’t. It sounds simple, but it is not easy. It takes training and the ability to self-reflect. And sometimes we can’t do it. And then we try again anyway.

Freedom means ability to choose. And everything is a choice

Completely everything.

I consider myself to be a woman with a very free spirit, and yet the word “must” often falls out of my mouth. For me, these moments are a signal that my thinking is stuck in a box and I’m waiting for someone to unlock it. While I am holding the keys all the time.

I don’t have to do anything.

You might think that you have to go to work, otherwise you wouldn’t have money. Well, that’s a choice too. If it wasn’t, there wouldn’t be people who don’t go to work and live off Centrelink. Or there would be no people running businesses.

They chose it this way and you choose it differently.

The same was true for my “situation with covid”. I told myself that I couldn’t go home, but the truth was that I could go to Slovakia. Well, I wouldn’t be able to go back to Australia after that unless Australia reopened the borders. And I didn’t want to risk that. So the conclusion? I could have gone home, but I DECIDED not to risk it. So much for “I can” and “I can’t”… In principle, in any situation, although circumstances have contributed to it, we decide to what extent.

When a new door opens

The amazing thing is that when you realise that you choose and therefore have freedom in absolutely everything, you suddenly see completely different possibilities. Everything is somehow easier to do. Just drop the word “must” from the equation and everything is kind of merrier. You stop seeing the world around you as predefined, you can go “out of the menu” and choose something else.

For example, for a long time I did things like coaching, courses, or writing in the mornings or on weekends because I work full-time. I did this for years (with poor results) and was so used to the idea that I didn’t even think about how to change it. I told myself that one day I would start getting up even earlier, or I would just “somehow” finish the course.

Wake up call

One day I met a woman who has a lot more time for her business and it sparked a thought process.

I felt frustrated that every time I worked on something in the morning, after an hour I had to stop and start doing the “real job”. And suddenly I met someone who didn’t do it this way. Who could spent hours working on ideas, studying something, etc. I was recording a voice message to my friend and talked about it and I suddenly I got an idea “how great would it be if I could squeeze my five-day work week into four days?”

And then I thought – “why not?!” I couldn’t stop thinking about it. I recalculated the hours, prepared a pitch and talked to my boss. He approved.

It’s been a month already. And every week I pray that it will last. Because I LOVE IT. On my first free Friday, I completed amount of coaching course assignments which would normally take me two weeks . Because of focus.

Every Friday I coach women, and it’s great. I’m focused and looking forward to it. Because I don’t do it at six pm when all I want is to have dinner and switch off.

It’s incredible what possibilities we can discover, if we stop for a moment and examine whether the things we do still make sense and how we can change them. Sometimes, we need an impulse from outside, as a new friend was for me. But we can do it ourselves. We have the freedom to explore and look at our lives from a different perspective.

Nothing to hide, nothing to prove

So, we can choose how we respond to stimuli, and we’re also able to examine our lives and make decisions every day, instead of just going on autopilot.

There is another kind of freedom – allowing yourself to be you.

“Nothing to hide, nothing to prove.” I heard this during Sarah Grynber‘s podcast with Peter Crone and it totally got me. Do you ever hear something and think about it for hours? And you are wondering how this applies to your life and situations that have happened to you?

My own struggles

For example, I was always quite honest and assertive, that’s what my friends back home were saying and they loved it about me.

However, I noticed that the longer I was in Australia, the less I spoke my mind and less I felt like myself. I realised that it was probably related to the long-term feeling of not having anyone here, the feeling that I had to rely on a few people I knew. I started to suppress myself a little. It’s quite ironic, because people go abroad to get to know themselves. However, getting to know myself and getting lost a bit is not mutually exclusive. I learnt a lot about myself in the process.

I realised that I’d learnt to be nice even when I didn’t feel like it. Because otherwise you can’t work in a bar.

I learned to tolerate manners from my boss, which I absolutely wouldn’t tolerate in Slovakia.

I went out with people with whom I had nothing in common. Because I didn’t know anyone else.

Yes, I met great people, and travelled with them and alone as well. But I definitely got into many situations in which I didn’t know how to be myself or stand up for myself.

This was happening for years, and honestly, every time I see a photo of myself from this period, it makes me sad.

This habit that I have formed over the years has gained strength, so even though I realised it some time ago, I still catch myself reacting in a way that I no longer want to react. However, I believe that I am on the right track.

Moment for self-reflection: Imagine, that one morning you wake up knowing that you don’t own anything to anyone. Nobody is expecting anything from you emotionally, mentally and you have all the money you need to live your live. You can do whatever you want. How would you spend your day?

How to cultivate inner freedom?

For me, the key was realising that there is a freedom that is apparent at first glance, but can be as changeable as the weather. Sometimes you’re up, sometimes you’re down. We can go on vacation and feel like we’re on top of the world. Then we go back to the office and we are back in “reality”.

We live in a visual world. There is so much to see and experience, so many places where we want to go (well, at least I want to). Then we get to the point where we only see the horizons, far away from us, and we don’t see what is currently available to us.

There is a freedom that may not be visible at first glance, but it is there, like air that we cannot see, but is available to us all the time.

Freedom that never goes away.

Many examples:

Our freedom to make your own daily schedule.

To decide whether to exercise or not to exercise. Morning or evening?

To go to work or not to go?

Find someone else or stay?

Work more or less?

Start listening to what our partner tells us, or keep scrolling?

Freedom to choose your mood. Yes, that is also possible.

Freedom to choose friends.

To choose clothes.

Freedom to choose make-up.

To choose an attitude.

Freedom to listen or not listen to your emotions.

But we often do not perceive all this. We go through life like automatons, we say yes to things we don’t even want to do, we dress as expected, we do the makeup we always do, we buy clothes that are similar to those we already have, we go to the same places with the same people, we automatically get upset if there is a lot at work to do or it’s Monday.

It’s okay to do things the way we’re used to them, as long as they still suit us. Habits save energy. But often we don’t even think about what suits us.

Then there is the other side of the coin, when we just want to deal with the circumstances and everything that bothers us, instead of changing our perspective no.

Golden mean

I’m not a Buddhist monk, and I definitely don’t live and don’t want to live a life where I just choose to be internally happy with anything, and thus I don’t have to struggle with anything.

First of all, I’m not perfect and I’ll probably get upset about something in the near future. And also, I enjoy working on my goals and yes, I still want to go on vacations and be better than I was yesterday or a year ago. I enjoy creating more of that apparent, external freedom.

My point now is that it’s all secondary.

A prerequisite for freedom is CHOICE. Change things that do not suit us and can be changed. And those that cannot be changed, well, then you have to change the optics on them. I write about the circle of influence and the circle of interest here.

The paradox is that the more we focus on that inner freedom, on how we cultivate our views, emotions and attitudes, the easier it is for us to change the outer one – because we rely on it less and let it fall apart if things don’t go according to plan. Which they rarely go.

So, good luck my “freemasons”, I hope you set yourself up well inside, may it be easier for you to build outside.