Mental Freedom isn't a blueprint for the "correct" or "perfect" human being. In fact, it's quite the opposite. I would ask, "Correct or perfect for whom?" Human beings are as diverse as fingerprints or snowflakes. What is perfect or correct for one person could be a tragedy for another.
Mental Freedom offers principles that can be practiced to increase a person's access to emotional freedom while helping them see and expand their choices, evaluate potential outcomes against their wants, needs, responsibilities, and relationships, so they can make conscious, thoughtful choices. It doesn't prescribe which choices they should make.
Who Decides What's Best?
Personal development programs sometimes carry unspoken ideals. They exist to help people become more confident, set boundaries, leave relationships that aren't working, forgive, speak their truth, think positively, become independent, etc.
But what if that isn't what you want? A relationship someone else thinks you should leave may be working just fine for you. Maybe you don't want to think positively because you perceive that to be a setup for disappointment. You might not want to be independent because independence isn't your highest value.
Principles, Not Prescriptions
Mental Freedom offers six principles as ways to increase a person's mental freedom. But sometimes other things are more important to a person than increasing their mental freedom, and they may choose not to use a particular principle. That's fine. Someone may even reject all six principles. That is their right. Every individual gets to choose how much they want to access and practice Mental Freedom.
These principles aren't six instructions telling participants what decisions to make. They are principles that can help people make informed choices that move them closer to Mental Freedom.
Here are the six principles and what each asks you to examine. You decide whether, when, and how you use them.
- Responsibility vs. Response-ability
- Unconditional Trust Challenge
- Victimizing vs. Empowering Language
- Rewriting the Stories in Our Heads
- Signal vs. Solution
- Appreciating the GLOW
Then, you get to decide what those ideas mean in your life and what changes, if any, you will make because of them.
Mental Freedom has an aim, but it doesn't prescribe a model of perfection.
Two People, Same Principle, Different Choices
One person may set the boundary. Another may preserve the relationship.
One may speak. Another may intentionally remain silent.
One may forgive. Another may decide forgiveness isn't available yet.
One may continue trying to change something. Another may accept it. And still another might leave.
Those choices may not provide each person with equal access to Mental Freedom. That's not the point.
Practicing Mental Freedom can give you greater access to it, but that doesn't mean Mental Freedom will always be your highest priority. Sometimes you may knowingly choose something else because, in that moment, it matters more to you.
The questions are:
- Am I aware of what I'm choosing?
- Am I choosing intentionally?
- Do I own my choices?
- What am I prioritizing by making this choice?
Freedom Isn't Independence
A Western personal-growth model can quietly equate freedom with independence.
But freedom also includes Response-ability: freely choosing to take on a responsibility that isn't technically yours because doing so aligns with the person you want to be. Someone may choose family obligation, interdependence, tradition, commitment, or sacrifice. A freely chosen response-ability can be deeply satisfying for both you and the person who benefits from it. You may choose something that isn't technically your responsibility because it aligns with the person you want to be, helps or supports someone you care about, and is something you genuinely want to do.
You may choose to care for an aging parent, sacrifice for your family, honor a cultural tradition, remain in a commitment, or place another person's needs ahead of your own because doing so reflects the person you want to be. This doesn't mean you're less mentally free than someone who chooses the more independent route. It doesn't represent less agency. In fact, it may be an expression of agency.
The Facilitator's Restraint
Facilitator restraint becomes especially important when the facilitator believes the participant is making the "wrong" choice.
A Mental Freedom facilitator may see a participant make a choice they wouldn't personally make. Their job is not to steer the participant toward the facilitator's preferred outcome. The facilitator provides information, asks questions, creates safety, and trusts the participant's agency.
Relationship remains important, but it should never be used as leverage for compliance. A strong relationship may help participants hear and consider the information we offer, but it shouldn't be used to get them to choose what the facilitator thinks would be best.
The decision for action always rests with the person who lives with the consequences of that action.
There Is No Model of the Perfect Mental Freedom Person
There shouldn't come a time when you believe you've completed Mental Freedom. There isn't a finish line to cross. There isn't a model graduate, or creator for that matter, who:
- Never gets angry
- Always forgives
- Always chooses independence
- Never tells themselves stories
- Always finds the GLOW immediately
- Lives unaffected by the life unfolding around them
That's not Mental Freedom. People remain human, with all their foibles. You can practice Mental Freedom for a lifetime and still get angry, overtake responsibility for someone you love, use victimizing language, tell yourself stories, ignore a painful signal, and struggle to find the GLOW.
Mental Freedom is something you can develop greater access to. It isn't somewhere you permanently arrive.
So Who Do You Become?
Perhaps the answer isn't who Mental Freedom tells you to become. Rather, it's someone who is increasingly able to recognize:
- This is what I'm thinking.
- This is what I'm choosing.
- This is what it's costing me.
- This is what I want.
- This is what matters most to me right now.
- And this is what I choose to do next.
Reflection
If no one else got to define what growth and success should look like for you, what would greater freedom look like?