Freedom

I love the idea of freedom. One of the things that I've heard over and over especially from investors or business owners as well, I want my time freedom the reason why we emphasize that is that a lot of people don't have the time freedom, but actually, freedom is a very expansive idea and we need to understand what it means and usually what it means there is a general definition around it.

I'll go into that for a little bit, but. What does it mean to different people? Depends a lot on their value system. Depends a lot on what struggles they're dealing with right now. It depends a lot on their growth path, and what I would hope to do in today's session training session is to help you kinda think through.

What are the values? What are the challenges? What are the things that help you define freedom in the way that you have? Because more than likely you're trying to create an experience that is more aligned with your values, that is the opposite of the challenges that you've gone through in your life that is more aligned with the vision that you're creating.

And for me, the definition of freedom has actually evolved over time and I'll share a little bit about my experience around it too. So, for example. It was around seven-plus years ago when I jumped into entrepreneurship. My idea of freedom was to literally, it was a very general idea of like I really wanted control over my time and that was a big thing because I didn't want to just show up just because I'm on somebody's schedule for some reason, that became a very important thing for me.

There were several reasons for that and the other one was my freedom around my values. I wanted to be able to connect with people the way I wanted to, especially in the corporate and the corporate setting. I felt constrained by the way that people were interacting with each other based on the corporate culture at the time. Those were two big things and also when I was kind of jumping in, I also wanted to explore, Different aspects of myself. I wanted to be on a growth journey. A lot of times the things that I was doing were not aligned with that growth journey and like I'm spending a lot of my time doing this thing, but this is not what I care about deep down.

I want to grow in this way. So I wanted to do something that gave me the space, the time, and the environment that would help me grow as a human being, as a leader, as somebody who had a vision for a different kind of life at the time and as I've kind of gone through that process, I've realized actually first of all those, as they, as I started to connect with those values around freedom, as I started to move forward I realized that.

Some of the ideas around freedom came from my past experiences of struggling with it, which meant that socially I struggled a lot with freedom. For example, just growing up I had a very hard time expressing myself, so I didn't know how to communicate to people whatever I needed. A lot of it was I hoped that people, people around me would get what I needed.

Whether those were my parents, whether those were my friends, whether that was somebody I was intimate with I hoped that they would get it, and more likely than not, and more of a time than not, they wouldn't be able to get it. What would happen was I would develop a lot of frustrations around it.

I would get frustrated, I would feel disconnected. I would feel all that stuff, but I didn't have the tools to express myself. So I would feel a sense of lack of freedom, and I didn't know how to connect those dots. So like for me, it was like, I didn't feel free. I felt constrained in every relationship.

So my normal tendency was to run away and run away, initially, it started with, oh, I just wanna spend time alone. But later on it became more addicted to games. Later on, it became an addiction to alcohol, and later on, it became an addiction to drugs. Eventually, it became depression, and there were so many layers and facets of it, and over time, as I've kind of dealt with all aspects of those, one of them, it was an amazing connection for me that came through, was that.

I get a sense of freedom from connecting with people. Connection brings me freedom, but also being able to express myself brings me freedom. Being able to grow brings me freedom, a sense of freedom. Being able to travel brings me a sense of freedom sometimes, but not all the time. I used to think that I wanted to travel all the time, but when I started to travel, I was like, I don't actually wanna travel all the time.

It was just, I did, I watered it because I couldn't do it for a long time. But when I started going at it, I was like, yeah, I like it. I'll wanna do it a couple of times, maybe three times a year, but I don't need it that much. I cared about the quality of experience became much more important than the different variety of experiences that I thought I wanted and this is why it's so important for you guys to really think about where does the idea of freedom to you come from? And the way I've kind of broken it down and I wanna share a couple of other things that might expand beyond personal, because many people who are in the Western world, for example, and US and Canada, they might take this part for granted.

Political and social freedom is very big for a lot of people who come to the side of the world from other parts of the world. For example, back home where I come from, we couldn't criticize religion. Religion was not something you could criticize even if you had a legitimate criticism that affected somebody negatively.

I'm not talking about just making fun of things or something like that, but I'm talking about even if you knew that a part of this religion or a part of this political system or a part of this government affected your life negatively, you couldn't criticize. Because what would happen is you're likely taken to you are likely put in jail or you would be prosecuted for something or worse.

In other cases, you couldn't literally be kidnapped without any due process. You'll notice that a lot of people who come from a lot of other places, different systems, they come for that sense of political and social freedom to be able to express their political identity or social identity, whatever that might

and in my case, it wasn't that much of that, but it was more around personally. I felt constrained a lot of times because socially there were hierarchical systems around it. So for example, in my culture, it wasn't clearly defined. It was very odd. So you had to be at a certain level of age and status to be able to speak about.

 Serious topics like political topics or religious topics or whatever. Being very careful. But they wouldn't define it purely and I remember an instance when one of my cousins they were sitting around all these men who had a high status. They were doctors, lawyers, and all these things.

My cousin was very, he was a professional. He had his own income coming in. Everything he spoke about. One of his ideas around, I don't even remember specifically, I think it was around religion or politics. It wasn't a criticism, just his perspective and it was just shot down by a bunch of people.

Who do you think you are to share your ideas with? And he was like, 30 plus and in that moment as a kid, I'm looking at him, I'm like, oh, I can't express that. I'm just sharing some context because a lot of times you might not care about it because you already get it as a part of the system.

That you have the freedom to express yourself and this is part of the reason why this is coming in the political sphere a lot of people are talking about freedom of speech and other things like that, and it's important to protect them. So really dividing freedom becomes like your personal freedom and how you express yourself, how you connect live your life in the way that you want to, how you wanna contribute.

There could be social freedom around how you connect with others. People, the kind of people that you wanna be around. I mean, there's the bigger political freedom that you want might wanna have. So I want you to really think about what is truly important to you in all this, and how do you define that for yourself.

And I want you to connect it to your values around freedom and that's what I tried to kind of communicate when it came to my story is that for me growth was an important piece of freedom. For me, being on time was an important piece of freedom for me. Now, connection is a very important piece of freedom.

For some people, creativity is an incredibly important part of freedom. So the way whether that creativity is an aspect of your self-expression, or maybe that's an art form or something, the ability to wanna explore that gives you a sense of freedom, a sense of for you to create a sense of contribution.

If you. Some people are. So if you look at some people's jobs and like they're going through this career where they're moving ahead and you might have gone through this process, they're moving ahead, they're progressing, they're getting the promotions, but they don't feel like this is doing anything, any, it's not adding anything of value out in the world, even though it might actually be, but they're not feeling it.

They don't feel like they're making a big difference that they want to make a difference around. They want to contribute and feel that contribution. That gives them a sense of freedom, but they're not getting it. So they are not as engaged in their work and this is very common for people who have been doing the same thing over and over and they're part of a bigger system and they feel like a wheel in the cog.

Even though they're progressing, they're getting the monetary payment, they're getting the lifestyle, they're pretty much getting everything else, but they don't get that sense of contribution and if you don't get that impairs your sense of freedom. Because freedom is a very subjective experience.

So I want you to explore what is really important in terms of your values. Do you look for autonomy? Do you look for creativity? And in terms of values, when it comes that connect to freedom, do you look for adventure? Do you look for growth? Do you look for a connection or a combination of those and they might even be on an order where for some people autonomy might be more important than creativity?

For others, creativity might be more important than autonomy. For others, growth might be on top of the list versus connection for others. Connection might be on top of the list. So really write down for yourself, like what are the values that really connect with freedom for me? Because that helps you understand how to direct, where are you gonna direct your life when it comes to your vision.

 It's really important to think through it in that way and I also wanna talk a little bit about what are. Because we all have a way of thinking. Our thinking comes from our environment. When I say thinking, so we're all born in a family, in a specific group, in a specific culture, in a specific political system

and you're kind of born in it, one of the first things that you were taught is language. None of us came with a language here and whatever. Can I speak four different languages? And it's interesting because my thinking is fairly different in these languages. Some things are common, but there are subtle areas that I knew in one language that is very hard to communicate in another language.

In fact, when you actually look at translations of different languages like. Latin-based languages are fairly close to each other. But if you try to translate something from Sanskrit-based languages like Hindi, and Farsi, we're doing stuff like that it's very hard to translate the essence of it because some words don't exist.

Some letters don't even exist in the language on this side. For example, in my language, there's, there's a letter. Ha, you many people would not be able to say that in the English world. Very hard to say because you have to practice that from early. You can train yourself to do that over time and there are words that mean multiple different things at multiple levels and certain languages that don't mean other things in other languages, and it's connected to the experience of that culture.

So think about it, most of your thinking is developed within a culture-specific culture and if you come from a culture and then you are brought up in a different culture that's even more mixed up now think about it when you go to US and Canada, it's a mixture of different cultures. Now you're bringing different ideas together.

When you actually go to the political sphere, especially add to that the social media world and the communication of information, when you actually look at it, no wonder people are confused because nobody knows what to think because we're converging and we're trying to make sense of our ideas and ways of living.

So coming back to. What we're exposed to initially starts with language, starting with people telling us, this is your name, this is how you are, these are your strengths. Literally, like when you're going through your, so like if you watch the trajectory of a kid growing up, parents are telling them who they are, the kind of value systems that they're a part of.

Where they, like, what do they value? Who does, should they work? Who should they interact with? Who should they not interact with, what they're modeling, that base that creates the structure of your thinking and we underestimate how deep that is. There are multiple levels of that thinking, and every level of thinking has an emotion connected to it and an experience connected to it.

So when we kind of, as an adult, are exposed to circumstances, we react to them. We're not just reacting to the circumstance, we're reacting to the multiple layers of how we've been brought up in a specific culture and context. So part of the conscious process of designing your life becomes this really understanding what are the beliefs that help me create this kind of life?

They could be positive or negative. Some of those positive beliefs might be your parents might have given you a model for a free life that feels aligned with you. Some of those beliefs might be things that you have picked up in your environment that don't feel aligned with you. In fact, they hold you back.

Sometimes we call those limiting beliefs. So really think about like what. Might be affecting my idea of freedom positively or negatively and I want to kind of go through this. There's a lot of material here. I want to go through a couple of those. Now, some of those beliefs might be, and none of these some of these are conscious, some of these might be subconscious.

So you're not actually aware of these happening, but it shows up in your behavior. Some of these are thoughts that are kind of going through your head. So for example Alec was talking about doing social media posts, so there might be resistance there. So the resistance is that, Hey, I'm doing this social media post, but you can't pick it up because you feel it emotionally.

But they're not, might not be thought around it, or there might be thought around it. Some of those thoughts might be, I'm not capable of this, I'm not good at this, or I don't deserve to do this thing. Or let's say you're creating an idea of life where you have limitless resources, for example, and the underlying belief might be is you don't deserve these limitless resources.

Who am I? Why shouldn't this other person get this? Or you might have a contradictory belief that, well, there's so much power in suffering. Why should I have that? And these are like undercurrents of your thinking that might be going on that affects your idea of creating freedom in your life and it might be so for a lot of people who are kind of jumping from their W2 to an entrepreneurial world, or even in business scaling their business, the idea might be it's too risky and it might not be based on any specific factors or metrics.

It might just be an emotional thing. It might just be them watching other people repeating that over and over. People who might have been credible in their life. So for example, parents that you looked at as credible, or teachers that you looked at as credible. Or mentors who might say, well, it's too risky to go, for example, into real estate.

Or It's too risky to invest in these kind of things. So that affects your idea of freedom moving forward. Or it might be, it's not possible. So that's a common thing you might hear around you is like, well, that's not possible for you to create this thing. It is just people repeat these things, but as soon as you add conviction to it, your mind creates a sense of program or something around it that doesn't allow you to move forward, which will show up in the form of procrastination, self-sabotage, or a feeling of stuckness or a feeling of resistance.

It might show up in your body and you might not know what it means unless you've explored these others might and this is a huge one because we're a social species, whether we like it or not, we're seeking approval and like one of the most amazing things that I've learned, like working with people all the way from 13 years old all the way to 73, I think 73, 75 years old.

You find that even people who are there in their seventies, Their parents might be long gone, but they're still seeking at a mental level, an emotional level. They're seeking approval from their parents, but they're all long gone. But because of the way, our DNA is hardwired, we're social species. We need that approval and a lot of times we kind of wait for it without being conscious of it is like somebody needs to tell us, Hey, here's a ticket you got.

You can do this on your own. But, it sounds funny in the sense that somebody needs to give you permission to do something even though you're an adult, but being part of the conscious process is to give yourself that ticket. Say, Hey, you know what? I've decided to do this and I wanna move forward

and so I wanna kind of summarize this. There's a lot in here that we're gonna be exploring in depth in our group coaching session, but really thinking about freedom doesn't mean one person's idea of freedom will be very different from another person's idea of freedom. If you're designing your life based on your values, based on what matters to you, there needs to be a level of exploration that's important to you, which means that you need to understand.

Where did you come from connecting the thoughts to, what did you struggle with growing up? What did you struggle with as you went from your early adulthood to now or from childhood to early adulthood? And what are you trying to get over? Whose approval are you looking for? What are some of the recurring thought patterns or emotional patterns that stop you from moving ahead toward what matters to you?

What are the values that matter to you on your path that connect to freedom? And so there are multiple layers around this, and I know I threw a lot of stuff in here. But this will help you kind of start to kind of think about it a little bit or kind of contemplate this as we go into our group session on freedom, which we're gonna explore this much deeper and we'll, you'll have the space to kind of dig deeper around and we'll have a discussion, deeper discussion about it too.

And you'll get a powerful tool that'll help you go even deeper than that to get you to define, not only define, but kind of create and design your idea of freedom and also in the process, be open to the evolution of who you're becoming. Because what you value now around freedom might not be what you value in about two years

and that openness which we also call the growth mindset, is very important for you to grow as a human being and to the kind of person who is consistently growing because a lot of happiness, fulfillment actually comes from growth. It comes from us stepping into a better version of ourselves

and that's essentially what we're doing here.