Freedom
"Freedom grants the opportunity for greater meaning, but by itself there is nothing necessarily meaningful about it. Ultimately, the only way to achieve higher meaning and a sense of importance in one's life is through a rejection of alternatives, a narrowing of freedom, a choice of commitment to one place, one belief, or (gulp) one person."
The Essence of Freedom
David Goggins was an ex Navy Seal who decided to take his life approach in an interesting direction. Every morning this man wakes up at 3am and runs for 15 miles. When he gets home he bikes 25 miles to work after having his daily dose of blueberries and oats. At 4pm it is time for him to go home and he bikes 25 miles back and then goes for a 5 mile run. When he comes home he will then eat dinner which consists of a strict diet of protein, carbs, and fat in order to keep his body regulated and sustained. He then spends the rest of his night spending time with his wife and reading before going to bed. When he wakes up, he will do the same thing again for the entire week.
Now let’s look at Kanye West. Okay, bad timing. Let’s look at pre-nazi-psycho Kanye West. The man has tons of money, big houses, cars, jets, you name it. If Kanye wants to go to Paris tomorrow to eat slugs and then spend the night in Hawaii to sleep under a bungalow, Kanye West has the means of doing that. He said here in an interview:
“I feel very blessed, but with great blessings come great responsibilities”
What he’s actually talking about with these responsibilities is how limited his freedom actually is now that he has chosen to pursue too many options. Kanye West has no routine, as his lifestyle no longer allows that. His marriage failed because the amount of options this man had was overwhelming and consumed not only his lifestyle, but his mental health. Never able to take the time to dedicate himself to one thing made him lost. He realized he had no true freedom in anything anymore.
The thing that a lot of people don’t understand is that David Goggins has infinitely more freedom than even Kanye West. He accomplishes this by intentionally limiting his choices each and every single day. Freedom is not the ability to try one thing to another, it is the ability to grow and adapt with specific ideas, places, or people that will align with your core values that are fixed. Thus creating a sense of comfort in the idea that he now has the freedom to further immerse himself in his routine, his diet, and his wife. David Goggins has money, he can choose to stop running, stop going to work, or to stop loving his wife. Yet he chooses to further invest himself in the aspects of his life that have meaning to him. He has the freedom to break his commitments to himself and others, but makes a conscious choice not to. Whereas Kanye will portray this illusion of freedom by bouncing around from one thing to another at will, yet there is no connection to any place, any option, or any person. No growth is happening there because he will always juggle with too many moving variables at once without committing himself to understanding the value of adapting to any one thing.
Bargaining Freedoms With Values
Every decision you make in your life that you think will better yourself comes at a cost. It is the trading of what you value that makes these choices impactful. Your new car, even though it is nice and shiny, now comes with a higher monthly bill. Your new house, even though it is now bigger, comes with more cleaning and maintenance. Your new girlfriend, even though is hotter, now lacks the modesty from that of your old. Your new puppy, even though it is cute, now comes with the responsibility of having to pick up turds that litter your carpet. Your new clothes, even though they make you look better, now come with a dent in your wallet. Your new job, even though it gives you a sense of stability, now comes with stress and mundanity.
How much you are willing to sacrifice in order to enjoy your freedom and attain a new, is measured by the metric in which you previously valued your old. If those values are held in high regard, abandonment is inherently a mistake.
I’ve been trying to overhaul my life in a lot of ways recently. For example, I have started working out a lot. I have the choice not to, but I choose to commit myself to doing it because I value health and self confidence. The more I limit my freedom to my commitment to exercise, the more I immerse myself in routine, and therefore reinforcing the things that I value and allowing me to see the fruits of my labor that line up with those principles that are important to me. This however comes at a cost. Whereas before I started working out, I had the option to lay in bed and browse my phone for hours, or put on a movie. The bargaining in this case is worth it. I weighed out the values that were conflicting with one another and decided which one more aligned with who I am. I could have chosen comfort and pleasure over health and self confidence, but I chose to sacrifice comfort and pleasure instead because those values are inconsistent and not nearly as influential to my life. This choice gives me freedom to further invest myself in my values, as opposed to distracting myself with my downfalls.
I have made a goal that by the end of the year I will be moving into my own apartment. Having my own apartment and being independent in it of itself won’t give me any more freedom than I have by living with my parents on a responsibility level. With this new responsibility, I will be having to cook, clean, pay rent, and work. Whereas living at home I would be saving money, and enjoying home cooked meals from my family, and not have to work. I thought about it, and the sacrifice that would come with it. And I have determined that I value independence more than comfort, and therefore the trade is going to be worth it. In turn, being able to pursue a goal and gain something that I personally value, will allow myself a new routine that I have the freedom to control and commit to.
"Freedom is not the absence of limitations and constraints, but it is finding the right ones, those that fit our nature and liberate us."
The most common way people make very impactful bargaining decisions is by choosing who they commit themselves to. Now that I have been working out and building self confidence by cleaning up my appearance, more options in the women’s department begin to open up for me. This feeling of having options now does not mean I have more freedom in having multiple things I can commit to at a time. It means now my choice of who I commit myself to has to reflect the values that I now look for in a partner. Everyone is different, and there are certain metrics that people will be lacking in that others can excel in. Nobody is better than anyone by every single metric.
Beyond just attraction, what I found I value in my romantic relationship the most is trust, commitment, and communication. These are to me very important because they will begin to lay a foundation for me to actually acquire true freedom by investing myself in somebody who will trust my actions, who will commit to making things work, and who will communicate needs and differences effectively to grow together. Having someone who listens to your odd music preferences, cringy movie tastes, and unhealthy food choices is nice and all, but having someone who will instead be understanding of the differences, and be accepting of who you are as a person is a far more consistent variable to commit to. I am not going to pursue a woman just because she likes Tool, drinks Heinekens, and has a high paying job, because in a few years all those things can change drastically. As you get older, your tastes will change, your appearance will get progressively worse as you dip into your 40’s and 50’s, and your beliefs will alter. If you choose to be with someone that doesn’t have trust, commitment, or communication, things will get very difficult because you will soon realize you have no true freedom in your ability to be yourself in your relationship anymore.
Too Many Choices, Too Many Problems
"And in a world where we have too many choices and too little time, the obvious thing to do is just ignore stuff. And my parable here is, you're driving down the road and you see a cow, and you keep driving because you've seen cows before. Cows are invisible. Cows are boring. Who's going to stop and pull over and say, oh, look, a cow? Nobody.
There was an experiment done in 2001 that tested customer satisfaction when confronted with having a certain number of choices. They placed a table in a grocery store that allowed customers to come in and try out different types of jams. The first table had 6 different types of jams that shoppers were free to taste as many as they liked. A few people came along and tried them out and were satisfied with an option, and went to purchase their new item. The next day they set up a table at the same store and put 24 jams out and again, told them to try as many as they liked. This time much more people flocked to the table, intrigued by the vast amount of options at their disposal. Except something strange happened. After comparing the amount of sales from the first day to the second, they noticed that the table that only had 6 jams sold considerably more than the table that had 4 times the amount despite the table with more jam attracting more customers.
This is because there is an effect as to how people will begin to second guess their decision making once they have the freedom to try many different things. As you try more and more options, you begin to compare the little nuanced details of whatever it is you tried last. You say to yourself, “well this is good, but I like this aspect of the other one. Okay let me try this. Hmm, I like that too! What about this?”. Eventually people get overloaded by their own decision making process and just leave without being satisfied with anything.
This same paradox can be seen on dating apps like Tinder. As you are swiping through you can match with someone who is very attractive, and who’s bio and interests intrigue you. So you start messaging them and getting into a conversation. After a while of you talking to this person, a notification lights up on your phone. New match. So you leave this person on read real quick and go check it out. Suddenly you notice this person is much more attractive, but the bio and interests don’t entice you the same. You say fuck it, and now start talking to this new person. Notification. New match. This new match is now more attractive, but in a different sense. Now you have three people and you don’t know who you should give your attention to anymore. You get overwhelmed with choices and decide to ghost all three and sleep on it. You wake up and decide to pursue one, just to find out you are now left on read because they are also being confronted with options, and in that short amount of time, you are old news.
What should have happened was a commitment to the first option, as that person was attractive and had interests that aligned with yours, and gave you a nice conversation. But now on a surface level, that person seems less significant and has flaws because you were face blasted with a ton of other candidates, and all of them progressively seem less and less attractive the more you get presented with alternatives, and therefore causing you to become more dissatisfied with your outcome.
This is why it is important to always limit your options in life. Not saying you should never try and spice things up. It’s good to try new things once and a while. But as you progressively try new and “better” things, you also progressively make more and more comparisons. If you were to open up Spotify right now and put on a random playlist that you made, you would notice you begin to skip a lot of the songs in order to get to one you feel like hearing. Instead, try picking one artist, listen to one album and don’t skip. Commit to the decision. What you will notice is this new world of investment opens up for you. As you commit to this one album, you get connected to it. You notice the transitions between tracks, the concept behind the record, and the story that’s being told. You’ve limited yourself to one thing yet you found it much more meaningful than being confronted with a bunch of different choices.
People who sleep around a lot tend to be bad long term partners because they make comparisons to all their ex’s and one night stands. As they bounce from one relationship to the next they begin to think about how Gretchen from 3 years ago was lacking in bed, but was a nice and loving person. Irma from that one bar was a freak in the sheets, but was a total B. How Ursula was beautiful, but struggled with commitment issues. Yes, I looked up “ugliest girl names”. Now the next person that tickles your fancy, you begin to subconsciously doubt yourself and make comparisons to Gretchen, Irma, and Ursula. That’s because you experienced too many options without the understanding that choosing to branch out and experiment will always leave you dissatisfied and confused when what you had originally with Gretchen could have been something beautiful and improved on.
This is also why you see celebrities get into new relationships and divorces every other week. They realize that because of their social status, wealth, and possibly good looks, that they can pick and choose nearly anybody that they want as they get flooded with DM’s and nudes. So they get into a relationship, notice a couple flaws, and then decide that the grass might be greener on the other side. 90% of the time that’s not the case unless there was abuse or toxic behavior, as again, nobody is better in every metric, and the cycle continues.
Freedom is an illusion of great new things. True freedom comes with commitment of one person, place, or thing that is willing to grow with you and adapt to circumstances. The more you try, the more you don’t buy. Immersive yourself in a world of limited choices, and tie yourself to your own values that are consistent and unwavering. Through this, your freedom of expression with these limited choices will allow you to shape into whatever you really want to be.