Freedom

#Freedom through #Strategy Have you ever been lost? Not knowing where to go, what to do next, or the direction you need to take? Have you ever set out on an enterprise of some kind without a really clear idea of how you’ll achieve the outcome you want? It could be in any context, personal, community or ‘business’. To make sure you ‘get to where you want to go’, whatever it is, you need a ‘strategy’. Mostly we hear about this in a military context but it’s getting more common in government and business, although the majority of ordinary business…

#Freedom from #Death Really? Can we really be free from death? In reality, we are and we aren’t. You may know where I’m going here but if not it could make a world of difference to your life. In one of my Single Simple Secret masterclasses, I briefly covered the nature of life as being a state of energy. As living beings all of us, animals and plants alike are frameworks of third dimensional energy, in our case the human part together with the fourth/fifth dimensional energy, the ‘being’ part. The fourth dimensional part is the conscious mind and the…

#Freedom from #Time You may wonder how we can be free from time – what does this mean? It’s all to do with energy, you see time is not a form of energy, therefore, because everything is energy and time is not energy, time cannot exist. We use ‘time’ as a measurement tool. The sun rises and sets and then rises again – we call this a ‘day’, divide it up into 24 ‘hours’ and each hour into 60 ‘minutes’ and so on. We use this to measure what we do and how quickly – less time – or slowly…

#Freedom of #Speech Well now, this is always a difficult one. We should be able to say whatever we like without being judged, criticised, held to account or even physically assaulted but whatever culture we live in there are limits on what we are ‘allowed’ to say. After all, wat we say is only an expression of our thoughts, our experiences and those are what we’re here to share. But what we say can get us crucified, executed, put to death or at the other end of the scale ‘sent to Coventry’ (look it up!). The problem is many people…

#Freedom of #Thought Most people are or have been under the false impression we can think what we like. Maybe that’s what we think we think, but unless we’re off the grid, cut off from the rest of society, we are wrong. Viktor Frankl explained others can take everything of you away, but they can’t take away your thoughts. What they can do instead is manipulate them. Our thinking is controlled and managed by the culture and society we inhabit, mostly by the media we expose ourselves to and the people with whom we associate. Sometimes we find ourselves thinking…

#Freedom to #Develop The reason we are here on this planet is to discover, to develop, to create, to explore, to invent and lots more but most of all to grow and evolve taking our ‘human experience’ to the next level. But it’s not only the human experience, it’s the universe we’re part of which we are building and developing. It’s so exciting when you think about the amazing possibilities we haven’t even dreamed of yet. But – and this is a big ‘but’. At least half of ‘humanity’ has locked away its Soul in a vault, a place of…

#Freedom from #Propaganda Propaganda is everywhere, the thing is we don’t recognise it because it’s not what we expect it to look like. Most peoples’ idea of propaganda dates back to WWII or the Cold War: blatant political messages put out by governments. The propaganda today doesn’t just come from governments and isn’t exclusively about politics. There is some, and the recent ‘Brexit’ campaign, especially the name itself, was a prime example, but the main thrust of propaganda today is twofold, societal and commercial. The channels for propaganda are also different. In the past it was posters, movies and TV…

#Freedom from #Routine Groundhog Day – when every day seems to repeat itself, when we find ourselves seemingly on a hamster wheel, following the ‘same old, same old’ routine day after day. To some extent we all experience this, and we do it by choice because its reassuring, or comforting to know how each day is going to unfold. It feels safe. But, at the same time, although giving us some ‘certainty’ it also creates uncertainty. “What could I be doing today instead of this boring work, this tedious commute, this seemingly ‘dead end’ job or role. When will it…

#Freedom to #Stop Stopping – calling a halt to something is an action many people are very reluctant to take. Somehow it feels like an admission of failure or at least to having made a ‘mistake’. ‘Stopping’ can also be a result of changing our mind about something, and that by many people, is also seen as some sort of failure. Politicians and managers in particular always seem to be criticised heavily for changing their decisions, whatever the circumstances, and those who are pragmatic in this way are seen as ‘weak’. It is thought ‘leaders’ are supposed to make a…

#Freedom from #Uncertainty We do like certainty; we do like to know what’s going to happen. Many of us are quite prepared to give up a lot of our freedom, or at least our liberty, in favour of certainty. One of the problems, one of the causes, is our belief, or at least that of some, that what ‘happens in our lives happens ‘to’ us and we can do nothing, or very little, about it. The other key cause of uncertainty is lack of clarity about what’s going on. “What’s going to happen when . . .” or “if .…

#Freedom to #Explore It’s natural to want to ‘explore’, in all senses of the word. We like to explore – our planet, our relationships, our selves, and everything else; or at least, a lot of people do, it’s inherent in ‘human nature’ to be inquisitive, to “boldly go” – not just now to discover new worlds and new civilisations, but at least as far as the ‘next village’, the next new piece of technology or the next new way of thinking. Unfortunately, many people don’t feel free to explore. Far too many, usually those who subscribe to ‘Plan A’ of…

#Freedom to #Say No We naturally like and want to help each other. Because of this the majority of people find it very hard to say “No” and very often when we do say ‘no’ to someone they are taken aback or even offended or upset, which of course reinforces our reluctance to refuse a request or find some other way of fulfilling what they are asking for. Most of us have boundaries around what we are and are not prepared to do – “I’ll do anything for love but I won’t do that”. The thing is we need to…

#Freedom to #Do What You Love Love is a difficult word. It has far too many meanings and nuances for its own good but I’m not entering into that discussion right now. In this context I’m talking about what might better be described as passion – which also has multiple meanings but here it’s about what drives us. What is the one thing or maybe the most important thing, today anyway, which drives us to get out of bed in the morning – today anyway! Our passion is the thing, person or occupation which gives us joy. It may be…

#Freedom from #The Heart Wall What is a ‘heart wall’? Like trapped emotions its something few people have heard of but its safe to say almost everyone has one. Most people think we only have one brain – well we do, but there are two other centres in the body which have a massive influence on who we are, how we feel and what we do. Ever heard the phrase “I have a gut feeling” or “follow your heart”? Think about it. When something unexpected happens do we get a feeling in the pit of the stomach, in our heart…

#Freedom from #Trapped Emotions What are ‘trapped emotions’? Probably not a term you might have heard before unless you’ve read ‘The Emotion Code’ by Dr Brad Nelson. You see, what happens in life is we have emotional reactions to the experiences we go through. Some are good, some bad – positive and negative. Depending on the intensity and nature of these experiences these emotional energies can be trapped or blocked in the body and give rise to lasting effects. The thing is, they remain hidden as emotions, we don’t feel them as emotions, most likely we don’t feel anything at…

#Freedom from #Expectations Expectations are a curious phenomenon; they can be both positive and negative and related both to ourselves and others. The negative side expresses when we have expectations of others to do things for us, behave in a certain way, or meet other ‘requirements’ we might have placed on them. Expectations of ourselves can also be difficult to deal with, especially when they aren’t fully thought through. Why do we have ‘expectations’. Why should we ‘expect’ anything of ourselves or others? Expectations quickly lead to stress and anxiety when whatever we ‘expect’ doesn’t come about, either being delayed…

#Freedom to #Be Yourself Freedom to express oneself and to ‘be who we really are’ can be surprisingly restricted. It goes along with ‘freedom to tell the truth’ – our truth – yours or mine, to express our opinions and to behave, dress and ‘operate’ in the way which suits us, you and me, without being criticised or ‘held to account’ by people who think we should, in the situations or circumstances we find ourselves, be behaving differently. Quite often people will ‘take offence’ at what we do, say, or wear. Quite often when we comment on something which hasn’t…

#Freedom from #Procrastination There have only been a few people I’ve encountered who are blessed enough to be free from this, and even then it’s only been in specific contexts. A former consulting client never procrastinated at work, everything was done as planned or even before, but it turned out at home he was completely different! Procrastination takes different forms and works in different timeframes according to the situation and context. If it’s not kept under control or eliminated it can be debilitating, undermining any or all the plans we may make. Things which ‘need to be done’ build up…

#Freedom to #Let Go Freedom to ‘let go’ is the opposite to many aspects of the desire for ‘freedom from’. The thing is we often don’t feel we can ‘let go’ of whatever it is troubling us. At the same time, we may have a ‘fear of letting go’ as if we were holding on to something which might be ‘keeping us safe’. The other aspect is the ‘what if?’ we let go of something, what will replace it? Will we still have ‘something to do’ if we let go of what we have? What if we’re making a mistake…

#Freedom from #Impostor Syndrome I wrote about this disruptive condition in my weekly newsletter a couple of weeks ago and explained in more detail how there are only a few people unaffected by it at some time or other in their lives. As I said in the newsletter it’s quite difficult to pin down the root cause and unfortunately there is no one answer we can apply for everyone. It’s not an ‘illness’ so there’s no treatment, vaccine or ‘pill’ we can prescribe to get rid of it. It’s also very difficult to deal with it alone. A ‘diy’ approach…

#Freedom from #Loneliness Not many people like to admit to feeling lonely but from time to time most people do feel this way. No-one is really ‘alone’, which is something completely different, and it’s quite hard to be ‘alone’ in this world of global communication. There’s also a difference between being alone and being ‘on our own’ when we’ve chosen to isolate from others for a period for some reason or other. Loneliness is more insidious, more subtle. It encompasses feelings of being ‘lost’, not geographically, but emotionally and of being, whether true or not, ‘ignored’ or ‘forgotten’. Loneliness creeps…

#Freedom from #Limiting Beliefs Limiting beliefs are part of our make up. They define who we are, what we do, how we operate and how we see others. We could say this of all beliefs, they all limit us in some way if that’s how we want to look at them. Even positive beliefs can be limiting as they operate within certain parameters about what we can do. If we fully believe we are ‘invincible’ and can ‘do anything’ there are always boundaries and limits, and we may not want to get rid of some of these. But when people…

#Freedom from #Missing Out http://thefreedomletter.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/Freedom2.mp4 This is closely related to FOMO or ‘fear of missing out and is one of the key tools used in sales. The idea of scarcity of something created by limiting numbers or time is why we’ve seen flash shortages of many everyday products. There only has to be a rumour of scarcity for people to rush out and buy whatever is ‘going to run out’ – and of course it does, because people desire to be free from missing out on whatever it might be. This is one of the strongest examples of ‘freedom from’.…

#Freedom from #Money Worries ‘Money worries’ seem to afflict many people but what does this mean? There may be some people who worry about having too much and there are reasons, often arising from the idea “money is the root of all evil” and also from the fear of losing it somehow. The most common though are about not having ‘enough’ or as much as might be desired. If you’re in a situation where there is a regular flow of money coming in then the worry may be about cash flow or having ‘enough’ which should be resolvable by budgeting…

Introduction to #Freedom Freedom ‘of’, ‘to’ and ‘from’ In #Freedom I discuss all aspects of personal freedom – but what do I mean by ‘personal freedom’? This isn’t anything to do with anarchy or revolution, fighting for freedom, or any idea or belief freedom is granted by others or has to be ‘won’ or taken from others. Even though it may sometimes seem dependant in some way on others, freedom comes from within, created or found within ourselves. The intention of this #Freedom series is to help you do just that. I will talk about the freedoms ‘of’ like speech,…