03/26/2017
https://www.luckrx.com/single-post/2017/03/11/Your-Freedom-is-Equal-to-or-Greater-Than-Your-Discipline
If there was only one lesson that my experiments at life have taught the 'me' now, that I could share with the younger me, it would be this. - The level of freedom you achieve in life will always be equal to, or greater than, the level of self-discipline you achieve.
This massive little tidbit of wisdom completely escaped me when I was younger. I had almost no self-discipline! Nobody ever really talked to me about it or tried teaching me the value of it. It was an alien concept to me. I was a totally wild, free-spirited, kind of person. I'm pretty sure that if you asked me back then what I thought about discipline's impact on a person's life, I would have said something about how I thought any act of discipline required a loss of freedom. - And I don't have time in this post, or the desire to waste your time, to recount how high a price I've paid in my life for this savory morsel of ignorance.
There were a number of things behind my learned lack of self-discipline, but there were two main driving forces. One was a kind of arrogance where I would tell myself that I could do whatever I wanted to do, and in one way or another it wouldn't matter, because everything would work out ok for me. In other words - for some reason I can't even explain now - I didn't think I could ever actually lose at life. I had some real, and unreasonable, sense of invincibility that I refused to keep in check.
This first issue also produced the second issue. The delusional idea that I could never really lose in life led to a completely unbalanced set of values and perspectives. For instance, because I wasn't taking the downside risks of my actions seriously, I would repeatedly forsake the habit of saving for the habit of instant gratification. I was equating instant gratification with freedom, and the discipline of saving as a compromise of my freedom.
Ridiculous you say! Me too! I wish I was the only person who ever made this mistake.
It's not hard to see reality here. Because I mistakenly valued temporary things [experiences, stuff, etc], and never practiced the discipline to carry out the habit of saving, whenever an opportunity of real value presented itself in my life, I didn't have the freedom to capitalize on it. My small minded acts of supposed freedom had made me a prisoner, and kept me locked away from the things that really had value in life. This is even true when it comes to how I handled relationships in the past.
Eventually I woke up to my ignorance and was able to shake it off. I ran into a lot of walls before I realized I was sleep walking. Please be hard on yourself and question whether or not you're doing any sleep walking. We all are in some ways.
These days my self-confidence is based on knowledge gained through personal experience, and not some childish sense of invincibility. I have also come to terms with what really matters in life, and I don't trade these things in for the fools gold of the superficial world.
All of my experiments at life have helped me develop the skills to live in harmony with this universe. All my experience drilled a more important realization into me. No skill, once mastered, could be put to use, until the self-discipline necessary to use it had been mastered. - Read that again please.
The most important thing I have learned about living wasn't any of the skills it takes to live well. It was the discipline to utilize the skills.
You can know what to do, and how to do it, but if you don't have the discipline to do it, you'll gain nothing. You may even find yourself wasting away.
Consider this. - What we think matters in life, in terms of material things and success, doesn't really matter that much at all. They are not ultimately important.
With that thought in mind, think about the concept of FREEDOM. Freedom is one of those handful of elements that give life real value. Take away freedom and life is worthless. That may sound harsh, and freedom may be regained if it is lost, but life without freedom isn't something that's much worth living for.
So when I think about the concept of freedom, I'm thinking about the things in life that really matter. We all know what those are. Love and healthy relationships, healthy bodies and healthy minds, the ability to be creative and self-determined, etc. Happiness.
These things don't come by accident, or by luck. They come by LUCK. They take intelligence, skill and discipline. - And the discipline to use your skills for right living create an abundance of good in your life. Good enough even to wipe out the effects of some of your bad choices.
I didn't create a turn-around in my life by trying to create a turn-around. I didn't create freedom in my life by trying to create freedom. I Labored [practiced self-discipline] Under [in harmony with] Correct Knowledge [the absolute truths of life that I learned through personal experience]. I worked at getting in tune with the universe that we're a part of. The rest took care of itself.
Instead of living like I was some separated piece of everything, fighting for my own slice of something I could never possess, I started living like a cohesive and balanced unit of something that I was always an equal party too, along with everyone else.
I didn't "earn" the freedom I have in life. It came to me. All I did was focus on the details and continued to develop my self-discipline. I didn't work for freedom. I worked for self-discipline. The freedom I have came to me as a result of the self-discipline I developed to stay in rhythm with the truths of life.
I'm not talking about some new age law of attraction non-sense. It takes more than positive thought and wishing to attract freedom. It takes labor. It takes knowledge. It takes practice and sacrifice. You attract the right things to you by understanding and practicing the right ways to live. You attract the wrong things to you by failing to understand and practice the right ways to live. - The latter here is referred to as ignorance. We all have some of it so hopefully we can all learn to help each other grow out of it.
The more discipline you develop to carry out your life in good terms with the universe - the more freedom you will find yourself experiencing. Experiment with this concept for yourself.
Let me know how it goes!
xo - sorry for the long post!
If there was only one lesson that my experiments at life have taught the 'me' now, that I could share with the younger me, it would be this. - The level of free...
