We all know the power of love, it’s no secret. Most of us live and would die for it. We base almost everything we do off of love; whether it’s through the sacrifices we make, the inspiration for our life’s work, or the direct or indirect affection we show to the people around us. No matter how subtle the gesture, we find the source of it to be either out of fear or love. When it comes down to it, what is fear but simply the feelings we feel related to losing something or someone we are attached to?

For something that has such a profound affect on people’s lives, I don’t think love gets the respect it deserves. We treat it as something that is supposed to be reciprocated back to us in the exact way that we expect, a mirrored expression of what we sent out. And to receive anything less than our expectation somehow has led us to put restrictions and conditions on our love out of fear of being hurt. We start to change the language we have in our heads about loving people. We go from a simple ‘I love you’ to ‘I love you, unless you do this’, or ‘I love you, until you start loving someone else’. In order to protect ourselves from hurt or rejection we withhold the most beautiful thing about ourselves.

If your idea and expression of love is based off of the possession of someone, you are fighting a losing battle. You’re not coming from a true place of love, but a place of fear. Maybe it’s the fear of being alone, or a feeling that you just aren’t good enough without this other person. Whatever your reasoning for doing so, you are putting the impossible task of keeping you happy in the hands of someone else. No matter how good intentioned that person is, they are human, and they will mess up. When they inevitably do, it’s your duty to love them anyway.

If it comes to a point where the person you love decides not to be with you for any reason and you find yourself in a position where you feel you can never forgive them, ask yourself if it was truly love in the first place. True love is the willingness to let go of someone for the sake of their own happiness. Anything else is rooted in selfishness.

“If you love a flower, don’t pick it up. Because if you pick it up, it dies and it ceases to be what you love. So if you love a flower, let it be. Love is not about possession. Love is about appreciation.” -Osho

The power of love is in it’s unconditionality. We say and do questionable things outside of our integrity because of our fear of losing what or who we are attached to. You can’t take anything with you when you die. You were born alone and you will die alone. Your futile efforts to maintain your grip on all the things you are attached to will ultimately only lead you to more suffering.

So start loving for free. Love the person who broke your heart. Love the person who wronged you or hurt you intentionally. Love your enemies, your fears, your obstacles, even the people who have hate in their hearts for you. Love them all, if even just for the lessons they’ve taught you. Forgive those who acted against you out of their own fears and insecurities. But most importantly, forgive yourself. Don’t overcomplicate what this life is all about.

You deserve better, and you are loved.

How many people do you know that you can’t tell anything to? You can present them with a powerpoint presentation full of graphs and bullet-points illustrating why it is that your argument is factual and somehow they will still find an excuse as to why they are right. How many people do you know that are just never wrong, even when the entire universe disagrees with them?

Maybe you’re in a disagreement with someone and you realized it was you that was wrong. Maybe you were actually right, but saying so, or at least saying so in a certain way, could lead to you getting yourself into trouble. Maybe you’ve been blatantly disrespected by someone for some unforeseen reason. Maybe you find yourself in a rut financially and you’re forced with the decision of whether or not to ask for help.

In your never-ending quest for self-development, you’re frequently going to find yourself in situations that test your character. I’ve seen too many people (including myself) shoot themselves in the foot because of their desperate attempts to protect their ego. When you live your life as a slave to your ego, you give every person or circumstance that tests it the power to control you. You start to develop these unconscious defense mechanisms that end up leading you deeper into the ditch you keep digging for yourself. What’s even worse, you keep complaining about it to other people until the only ones left are the those with the exact same mindset. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy you keep reinforcing while you spiral down until you eventually hit rock bottom.

“Complaining is one of the ego’s favorite strategies for strengthening itself.”  – Eckhart Tolle

If you’ve ever found yourself in a physical altercation with someone that wasn’t a result of self-defense, I’m willing to bet you that not only was it completely unnecessary, but your chances of being worse off afterwards would be significantly higher than had you chose not to engage. The only thing that a fist-fight solves is who has the bigger ego. It’s purely a primitive response that any intelligent, mature, and well-grounded person would never resort to unless absolutely necessary. True power comes from the ability to understand that you are above your emotions, and you refuse to let anyone dictate your response to their words or actions, no matter how heinous or disrespectful.

Imagine if we evolved enough as a species to at the very least understand the power of not  being controlled by our ego. This simple realization could have the potential for peace and prosperity throughout the entire planet. Maybe I’m a dreamer, but one thing I know for sure: a world dominated by the size of our own individual egos will most certainly lead to immense suffering and destruction.

In just about every spiritual teaching, ego is viewed as something we need to overcome. In Buddhism, the very root of our ego is fear. Enlightenment is the ability to distance yourself from this fear in order to liberate the spirit. There is a growing number of people, particularly in the west, who are even partaking in ceremonies of the ancient tribes of the Amazon in order to cleanse themselves of negative unconscious behavior. The ceremony involves drinking a hallucinogenic brew called ayahuasca, which allows people to separate themselves from their ego in order to obtain inner-peace and self-knowledge.

While I’m all for self-realization and enlightenment, I want to make the important distinction between the elimination of ego, and the control of it. Ego is tool that I believe we all need in order to progress as a society. It allows us to understand how we communicate with each other and identify any potential dangers we might encounter. As much as I would love to see us all live together in harmony, it’s important to understand that there are people with bad intentions out there that will try to take advantage of you. Our egos allow us to overlook the naïvety of our good-natured tendencies.

How well you respond to the inevitable conflicts life will throw at you will ultimately determine the level of suffering (and happiness) you will experience.  To the extent we can set aside our pride, ego, and past thought-patterns that don’t serve us, and begin to understand the power of our ability to take control of our lives, we will be able to achieve the ultimate level of individual freedom and growth.

Rather than regurgitating the “hindsight is 20/20” mantra, how about taking a second to think about why it is that we are having this response in the moment itself? Whatever it is you need to do in order to be more present, whether it’s meditation, reading, exercise, or worship, make it a point to practice these things regularly. Set aside some time for yourself to be in solitude, and to ultimately be comfortable doing so. Find your peace and practice it daily. I promise you that the rewards of self-mastery are worth it.

As much as we would like to, there is no way for us to predict the future. At any moment we can be faced with a scenario in which we lose practically everything we have worked so hard for, and may never be in a position to get back to where we were. For many people, particularly people who have others dependent on them for their well being, this causes what I call ‘progression paralysis’. People can become so concerned with losing what they have that they stop trying to progress in fear that they will lose their perceived comfort and security.

Of course, there are also people who might use these circumstances as motivation to keep progressing in fear of ending up in these same unfortunate situations. These types of people can easily have the mentality that because the potential for losing everything is always there, no amount of things they can collect can protect them. As a result these people sacrifice their health, time, and relationships being driven by the fear of not having enough. No matter what side of the coin that you find yourself, the fact still remains, sometimes things happen that are completely out of your control, and that’s okay. You should never let these things cripple you into becoming the person that’s full of regrets or never satisfied.

One of the most important philosophies I practice on a regular basis comes from a stoic philosopher by the name of Seneca. Seneca had this idea of what has since been coined, ‘practicing poverty’, which emphasizes that since we can’t predict the future, we should purposely simulate the experiences we fear in order to gain perspective on their true severity. What we find is that the actual situation doesn’t usually hold weight in comparison to the fears that we conjure up about it. We think of the worst case scenario and plan our lives around this thought process when in reality it’s rarely as bad as we make it seem.

“Set aside a certain number of days, during which you shall be content with the scantiest and cheapest fare, with course and rough dress, saying to yourself the while: ‘Is this the condition that I feared?'” – Seneca

Being what some would consider a minimalist, my lifestyle tends to cater to this way of thinking naturally. Apart from my usual frugality and low debt, I regularly detach from technology and make a point to focus my time on simple things like deepening relationships with the people around me. Some days I will even go so far as to eat strictly rice, beans, fruits, and vegetables, all the while reflecting on how little I really need to survive. I can’t describe the level of deep appreciation I feel knowing that I have everything I need, so anything else I gain in life is simply a bonus.

Teach yourself to be resourceful

As easy as it is to be comfortable in an environment where we have an abundant supply of things, we should place more importance on our ability to sustain our quality of life with less. How many things have you paid someone else to do that you easily could have done yourself? Or if it’s something you couldn’t do yourself at the time, how much time did you spend, if any at all, researching the topics and actually trying to learn how to do it yourself? In every setback there is a lesson. Take the time to learn and grow from it. In this way, you always win. Even if you don’t realize it at the time.

BONUS: Seneca on the shortness of life.

Whether we like it or not, nothing in this world is free. There’s no such thing as something for nothing. There is a universal law of cause and effect  that is irrefutable. When I speak of freedom in any context, I am speaking of putting yourself in a position to make your own decisions, and not having to rely on other people or outside forces for your quality of life. With this being said, every decision you make comes with a cost, so making sure that those decisions are calculated and well thought out is essential for you to meet your goals.

Take, for instance, a person who has decided that they are done with the 9-to-5 rat race and that they are going to spend the best years of their life traveling the world, living every experience they can on their own terms. This person has to make a tough decision on what they are going to sacrifice in order for them to live what they consider a truly carefree life. Does this person sell everything they own and fly to some remote location, picking up whatever random jobs they can find as they vagabond their way through various countries living solely in the moment?

This approach, while bold, requires one to be very resourceful. It comes with the realization that at any moment they can have serious problems with their day-to-day living situations, or an emergency that they might not be able to pay for. What about if/when they want to retire? How does someone have the ability to sustain an income high enough to support themselves into their golden years? Another tough decision then arises when they need to ask themselves if they want this lifestyle, are they then willing to live with the bare minimum to cut costs down? Finally, this begs the question, if they really want to be liberated, are they willing to accept the fact that they will live a life rich with experiences, but impoverished in terms of financial resources?

Take another example of a person who decides their idea of freedom is to be able to have enough resources to buy whatever they please and go on luxurious vacations. The problem with this approach, which should be a bit more obvious, is that it is in no way an easy thing to accomplish this goal. There are few careers that will offer a high enough compensation to afford this lifestyle, and how does that work out in terms of time? Assuming this person picks one of these careers, they will spend a good chunk of their youth after high school with their noses in a book, constantly studying and being at the mercy of academia while piling on a mountain of student debt.  When they finally graduate, they are more than likely working over 40 hours a week in a high stress environment.

Of course, another route to financial freedom is for them to own their own business. But, if you think that person who owns a business has more free time than the person who goes into a high salary field, you probably haven’t started a business yourself. In addition to most businesses failing, an entrepreneur doesn’t typically make a salary for two to five years. If you play the safe route and start a part-time business on off work hours, you won’t have much time to sleep, let alone be free.

The bottom line is that in order to achieve a sense of freedom in your life you need two things:

1 – A clear definition of what freedom means for you. Do you want freedom of time, money, relationships, or social constructs?

2 – What is it that you are willing to sacrifice in order to achieve this freedom?

Most people say they want things because it’s easy. They basically are saying, “Sure, if it falls in my lap, I’ll take it”. Ask them what they are willing to do for what they want. Ask them if they are willing to give up the weekends they go out drinking with their friends. Ask them about waking up before they go to work or working late when they get off of work in order to get closer to this goal. Ask them if they are willing to put a big amount of money on the line that they would lose if they didn’t reach this goal. If they honestly can’t answer yes to these questions, they need to evaluate whether this goal truly is what they want.  What people really want lies in their actions, not in their words. If what you really want is to make enough money in a job you can tolerate, to spend more time raising a family while having enough time to hang out with your friends, that’s great. There is nothing wrong with living that lifestyle. The problem comes for those people who are miserable and don’t know why, or simply won’t do what it takes not to be.

In my days working in marine construction while floating along the intercostal, all I could see on both sides of the water were multi-million dollar mansions. At times I would build seawalls for these huge properties and get to see what real decadence looks like. Most of the mansions I’ve seen shared one important thing in common: they were almost always empty.  To me it just never made sense to be in a situation where I made so much money, but had no time to enjoy it. I’m sure some of the people who own these houses are doing what they love, but it would be a joke to say that they are more free in terms of time.

My ultimate goal is to live more with less. I would be lying if I said I didn’t want to make a lot of money so I could do/buy virtually whatever I wanted, but if I had to make the choice of sacrificing the one currency that is always diminishing, time, then I can’t honestly say I really want it. What I found for myself is that once I made a choice as to what I really wanted, everything else was a means to that end. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve spent years of my life studying and working toward my goals, foregoing many of life’s pleasures along the way, but I felt content because I knew what I wanted. Because I knew what it was that was the ultimate goal, I had the discipline to use my free time to my advantage and to continually move toward it.

To live a life of freedom is to understand that you also are choosing a life of discipline; there is no way around it. The real secret here is that the lesson is in the learning itself. The famous author Ryan Holliday wrote a book called ‘The Obstacle is the Way’, in which he explains that the more challenges you face, the more appreciation you gain for the process, and more importantly, for yourself. Will there be bad moments? inevitably, but that’s the point.  The idea is to learn to love the challenges, because that’s how you grow into the person who will change the world, or at least the worlds of other people.

In case you haven’t noticed, there is a general theme that is present in all of my articles thus far. Everyday I continue to see logical fallacies and victimhood mentalities sweeping through my environment like a cancer that feeds on negativity and blame shifting. How can we ever expect things to change (assuming it really needs to, and you’re not just creating problems other people would love the opportunity to have) if all we ever do is point the finger at other people?

As humans we hate to be uncomfortable. We are used to routine, but have an evolutionary tendency to try to create problems that aren’t really there. This ‘fight or flight’ response is great when you are trying to avoid being a predator’s lunch, but slightly less necessary when being caught up in who was bad-mouthing you about how you choose to live your life.
The issue here is that we’re too comfortable. We have all of our basic needs met, so our minds start to wonder about less important issues and assign higher priority to them. We secretly crave something to stand up and fight against. We are quick to rally into groups to fight against something before we educate ourselves or even ask questions about it’s importance relative to other things. Standing up for what’s right is what moves society forward, and it should always be embraced. The problem arises when we feel like we’re entitled to force our will on other people because we found enough people that hold the same belief of false victimhood.
If you live in the United States, you enjoy the highest standard of living in the world. Why is it, then, in a world where there are people dying to get here, we insist on demonizing people that enjoy more monetary wealth than we do? Have we been so focused on blaming corporations and the ‘1%’ that we’ve forgotten that we Americans are the richest 5% of the world? Are we so entitled that we believe we should be awarded things we haven’t worked for, even when we are born with the ultimate advantage?

Things aren’t black and white, and there is no such thing as a utopian society. All we can do is try to minimize disparities as much as possible without the use of force and violence. Ask yourself about the importance of the things you are rallying against. Be willing to engage in the tough question of what decisions that YOU have made that have resulted in your current situation. The second you assign blame to someone else for your misfortune, you give them alone power to change it. Unfortunately,  people tend to be much more willing to give other people power in exchange for the comfort of not having to make those sacrifices.
Believe me, there are going to be far more people willing to affirm your reasoning behind blaming others, because it gives them affirmation for the unfairness of their own shortcomings. As they say, “misery loves company”. My challenge to you is to lose some friends, sacrifice some time, energy, and (well invested) money to do what truly matters to you; as long as it is what you want, not what you’ve been told to believe.

I love every time I’m asked what my interests are. The moment someone thinks they can relate to me on one level, I come out of left field with something I’ve done that they would never do, people I associate with that they would never find themselves around, or have a certain thought process they have never took the time to consider. The feeling that people get when they don’t belong is a feeling I embrace to the fullest. It’s what reminds me that I am me, not a cog in society’s machine.

Nothing gives me more joy than to talk about new ideas with people. Now, I know it’s important that we talk about how hot the weather is and how much we just hate our jobs, but don’t you think there’s something of more substance we can discuss? Unfortunately, we live in a society that does whatever it can not to ‘rock the boat’ and keep everything on the surface level, as if it’s not in good taste to discuss topics that are essential to the human experience. We have become so much of a politically correct culture that we don’t even have our own ideas anymore. Every time we color outside the lines we are ridiculed and made an example of for not following the rules. Maybe what we should ask ourselves, then,  is “how well has following the rules really been working out for us so far?”

Think about every great person you’ve ever known. The ones that have really made a difference in this world. The ones that have caused a cosmic shift in our consciousness so great it’s affected the way us and future generations will live for years to come. One thing that is universally true in all of these cases: they were all hated by some group of people. Great ideas never come without a price. Galileo was imprisoned for daring to challenge the practically unanimous belief that the Sun revolved around the Earth. Martin Luther King Jr was murdered for preaching equality for all. Steve Jobs was fired from his own company because of his ‘unrealistic’ visions for the future of computers. Many of the things we accept as truth today were forged from someone who dared to be different. Growth and change don’t come from following the same ways of thinking that got us here. We need to foster a culture that teaches people how (not what) to think, and encourages people to be different.

One important caveat to what I’m proposing is not only to encourage individuality, but accept it in others, even when it doesn’t align with our values. If there is one thing that is being perpetuated now more than ever by the media, entertainment, and political spheres is this notion of divisiveness. As different as we might be, and as important as it is that we remain true to ourselves, we are also part of a planet that depends on one another.
Do I expect us all to sing kumbaya by a camp fire and live together in peace and harmony? Not at all. I’m optimistic, but I’m not naive. If there’s one thing I want to drive home its this:

You don’t have to be at the mercy of other people’s expectations of you.

Sometimes to be right is to be hated. Sometimes you have to stick with your principles, even if it’s out of alignment with people you care about. Having a libertarian mindset has gotten me into a lot of heated discussions when it comes to how a society should function. And, I admit, I am far from having all of the answers. What I know without a shadow of a doubt is that what’s good for me isn’t always what’s good for you, and that is a beautiful thing that should be embraced. I heard once that the true measure of a man is defined by the amount of uncomfortable conversations he is willing to have. Let’s challenge convention. Let’s push the boundaries of what we thought was possible, because everything is impossible until someone does it.