Part 2: How to be More Free (2 practical examples)

Many people are stuck in situations they don’t like.

You’re probably dreaming of when you’ll have the freedom to do what you want.

“Once I graduate I’ll…”

“Once I save X amount of money I can…”

This feeling sucks.

Not only do you have the negative feelings of the situation, but also the negative feelings of not being where you want to be.

Being free is a question of time allocation.

If you give enough time to an area of your life you’ll get what you want.

When where you spend your time is aligned with your goals, desires, and wants life is amazing.

Think back to when you were a kid and had all the time in the world.

You were able to spend much of your day doing what you wanted to do.

Maybe it was building that Lego world, or playing soccer, or creating a new dance routine with your friends to show your parents.

The interesting thing is you can be like that right now, with a simple perspective shift.

Let me explain.

Kid You vs. You Now

Remember how I said freedom is about time allocation?

Well if that is what freedom is you can be just like your free younger self (I’ll show you how in a second).

First, you must shift your perspective and remove the doubts in your head.

Let’s say the end goal is building Lego castles.

Keeping in mind, with enough time given to any area of your life you’ll get what you want.

Let’s compare the two yous:

Kid:

Responsibilities – Eat, sleep, go where mom says, school.

That equals to about 15 hours on average per day.

Meaning you have 15 hours per day you literally can’t build Legos.

Giving him 9 hours per day to build the castle.

You now:

Responsibilities – Eat, sleep, work/school, assignments/projects, Family, relationships.

That equals to about 21 hours on average per day.

21 hours per day where it’s impossible to be building the castle.

This means you have 3 potential hours to build Legos.

If the castle takes 15 hours total to build.

You both can go about achieving this goal. The difference of course is that it will take you 5 days and kid you will be done in 2 and a half.

The perspective shift is expanding your time horizon and realizing you can start living your end goals NOW on a smaller scale.

You can start now with 20 minutes a day and if that’s the life you dream of, why would you wait?

Kid you is More Skilled

There is something else that separates you now from when you were a kid.

It’s a skill you had as a kid that you forgot.

In a vague sense, it’s discipline.

But more specifically it’s the discipline to allot your time towards your highest ideals.

How many people do you know, you included, that take personal time to scroll on Instagram and then act as if they never have time to start training Ju Jitsu, or paint, or whatever they REALLY want to do?

You have to reawaken this skill if you want to be more free.

Now that we have that, here are 2 ways I have used discipline to instill freedom.

Physical Freedom

The first way has given me freedom in the physical world.

I am personally inclined to a messy room.

Having a messy room doesn’t bother me and I don’t like to clean it.

I kind of find it cozy.

Disclaimer when I say messy I don’t mean food and drinks and nasty stuff everywhere.

More just clothes here and there and miscellaneous things scattered around my desk.

However, there is a drawback to this.

I don’t have the freedom to use the space in my room to do things.

This is specifically problematic because as a part of my morning routine, I like to do a series of movements and stretches called the 5 Tibetan Rites.

There are a few parts of the routine I prefer to do in the sanctuary of my room.

Anyway, because of the lack of open floor space, I will skip that part if I don’t have my room clean.

Having a clear space also gives me the freedom to do other things like paint, play guitar, and stretch.

(Yes I could just do it in the living room. But this is a great example of how discipline creates freedom. It keeps us from living out our whims giving us room to do the things we deem important.)

The point is a little bit of discipline and keeping my room clean has given me the freedom to use the space as I please.

Time Freedom

Social media is the biggest modern time waster.

Even if you design your feed with high-value accounts.

How much are you learning by scrolling past hundreds of short-form-depth-lacking posts from great accounts?

Not much.

1 or 2 key points from an hour of scrolling don’t seem worth it to me.

That’s why having the discipline to take time away from Social Media is important.

You’ll be surprised how much time you will free up.

And if you apply that ‘extra’ time to the things you’ve been putting off, you’ll make enormous progress much quicker than you thought possible. The joy you gain from progressing will trump any short-term pleasure you get from scrolling.

There are many ways to do this besides the obvious of not going on it.

Here’s what I enjoy:

- No phone first 1.5 hours of the day or delay as long as possible (been doing past noon lately)

- Carve out an end day no phone period (I tend to want to use it then)

- Delete social media for a few weeks every few months

You can use discipline to fight back against the things holding you back and to progress your dreams. Find these areas of your life, apply some discipline, and become more free.

I hope this letter helped you and don’t forget that perspective shift.

Remember nothing changes if nothing changes.

Until next time.

-Xan