Is it something keeping you awake at night?  Is it stressful?  Is it something really important to you, or it is something you wish you could forget or just let go?  Does it fit with your agenda, or have you let your thought life be stolen from you?  How did the thought get there?  Did you invite it in?  Did you let it in?

Now that it’s there, how are you treating it?  Are you letting it have its way?  Do you like the way it makes you feel?  Can you step out of the thought and see it from the outside?  Can you see how it fits in your life and in your mind?  Can you look at it objectively, without feeling and observe what it is doing for you (or to you)?

We don’t often stop to think about what we’re thinking about.  We manage our time, our schedule, our appearance, but we don’t manage our mind.  Our mind is where we have the most opportunity to increase our freedom.  Free your mind and the rest will follow.

It isn’t easy.  It takes time.  Training your mind is not unlike training your body.  If you want results, you have to be intentional.  You have to exercise.  You have to be aware of your strengths and your weaknesses so you can leverage the good and shore up the bad.  You have to know yourself.  To think about what you’re thinking about.  To think about how you think.  About how you react to stimuli.  About how your state of mind changes your perception of things – are you weaker when  you’re tired or hungry, are you sharper in the morning or evening, are you better after a nap or a workout?

Let’s just focus on awareness now:

1)  Think about that one thought or topic that has been foremost on your mind today.  It may be a big thing or a small thing, it doesn’t matter what it is.  Separate your conscious mind from the thing.  Observe its characteristics and how it fits into your thought life.  How does it make you feel?  Does it always have the same effect on you, or does it “depend.”  What does its affect depend on?

2)  Resolve to own the thought rather than letting it own you.  Do not let it have free reign, free access and control over your thought life.  You are more than it.  You lived and thought before it arrived and will do so long after it is gone.  Decide what to do with it.  Will you take some action to make it go away?  Will you solve the problem?  Will you just let it go?  Will you talk to someone to help you process it?  Do something to own it.

For example, most people agree that if I have a couple oranges, it means I have two oranges.  So why do both words exist?  There are times when a couple seems more appropriate than two because it conveys a less exact sense of the count.  We’re thinking that its about two, probably two, but if its one or three, that’s okay.  If we are paying for them, we’ll tell the fruit vendor we want two, not a couple.

So what does this have to do with freedom?  Let’s look at the difference between the words “busy” and “full”.  As in the response to “How was your weekend?”  You could say “It was busy.” or “It was full.”  For me, “busy” has a slightly negative connotation, like you regret being “busy”.  It also conveys a sense that you don’t have control.  Being “busy” is something that is thrust upon you, not something you choose.

On the other hand, “full” makes it sound like you are intentional about the fullness.  Like you tried to squeeze out every ounce of benefit from the time you had.  It says that you are responsible for your own schedule.  It makes it sound like you are blessed with full life, rather than cursed with a busy life.

Or how about the difference between “have to” and “get to”?  It is true that I have to get up for my corporate job every morning, but I don’t have to go to my son’s baseball game.

What about language that labels intent?  The other day someone told me I was being “used”.  I had two problems with this.  First, I make my own choices and in this case, it was definitely my decision to do something or not.  Second, the third person had merely asked me to do something for them, something they considered an opportunity for mutual benefit.  To say they were trying to use me was to imply some kind of selfish intent on their part.

My friend was just trying to suggest that I already had enough responsibility and should not take on a new one.  In the end, I agreed.  However, I called her out on her choice of words.  Even though it was subtle, it implied something that was not necessarily there and gave a negative connotation to something that did not deserve one.

These observations about language might be too nuanced for some, but for me, they are meaningful.  I am very aware of letting negative, freedom stealing language creep into my everyday speech.  Not only that, but by intentionally choosing better words, I am emphasizing my freedom and mindfulness to myself and others.

What about you?

1)  Try replacing the word busy with full for a few weeks.  How does it feel?  (If your schedule really is busy and not full, then you should work on that too!)

2)  What is another word you use too frequently or hear others use that could be replaced with something more positive?

When something enters to disrupt the regular routine of life, you slowly make adjustments.  Small choices that become the new routine.  New habits.  It could be a small pressure that now makes an old habit harder to maintain, a new block of free time you need to fill, or a new responsibility.

One of the significant transitions I face every year is the in fall.  This is a time in the midwest US when the weather turns colder and the daylight hours narrow.  My favorite time to run is in the early morning as the sun is rising, the birds are chirping and most of my family is still sleeping and won’t miss me when I slip out.  For years, I would just stop working out when it became dark and cold in the mornings.  Over the course of a month or two, I would fall into the habit of sleeping a little later and exercising a little less until I had completely given it up until spring.

Two years ago, it all changed.  I realized I was just letting the transition wash over me.  I was letting good habits slowly fade away while the bad ones crept in.  I decided to take back control of my habits and be intentional during the transition.  It wasn’t easy.  It required focus, discipline and persistence.  I first had to admit that I am too much of a fair weather runner to fool myself into thinking I could maintain my old habit through the transition of seasons.  So I came up with a plan I knew would test me, but I thought I could handle.

I started working out over my lunch hour at the gym.  At first, I told myself it was an experiment that I would try for one month.  During October, I set a schedule that I thought would work.  I blocked my calendar at work and tenaciously protected the time from meetings, walk-bys or “urgent” emails calling out to me.  I kept a close watch on the things that were threats to keeping up the habit beyond the experiment period.  Things like little excuses that crept into my mind or small logistics that I could control.  For example, I like to change out of and back into my work clothes quickly and comfortably, so I took to wear loose-fitting, more comfortable and casual clothes on my work-out days.  This may seem like a very small thing, but it was an important adjustment for me, and one that had the benefit of forcing the “will I work out today or not?” decision to early in the day versus the last minute.

Focusing on an exercise habit is a good example of being intentional and in control during transitions, but I’ve successfully applied this to many other habits as well.  Every year I go back and forth between driving to work and taking the bus based on my kids’ school year.  Giving up the freedom of a car is not easy, but worth it.

I recently managed to go back to my habit of healthy eating after a binge on entertainment food during a long vacation.  I almost carried my food-as-entertainment habit back into regular life, but after seeing what was happening for a week, I refocused on my transition back from vacation and nipped the bad habit.

My family has another big transition coming soon as the kids finish school and begin summer vacation.  You can bet we will be watching what kind of habits our kids adopt in the first weeks of summer!

Letting your feelings, your negative tendencies and your environment steal control over your future as life transitions wash over you is not a smart way to live.  Having the self awareness to see when you are in transition and manage your time and habits accordingly is a profound way to take back your freedom and own your agenda.

Here are two things to think about right now to make this idea real in your life:

1. Think of a time when you had a good habit going that has fallen away.  What took it’s place?  Reflect on how you lost the habit.  What was going on in your life at the time?  Was there anything new that disrupted your daily pattern?  Be a student of your past and of your own responses to life’s situations.  Learn and adapt.
2. Pick one habit that you’d like to adopt now.  Are you coming up on any life transitions – major or minor – that open the door to inserting the habit?  Think of the things that will get in the way of sustaining the habit, adjust to them if you can, but at least be aware and face them head on.

In the past twenty years or so, there has been a lot of research done on happiness.  Some of the results confirm what most of us already know in our hearts, but other results are surprising.  I want to focus on one area in this post, but I’m sure you’ll hear more on the topic from me because I find it fascinating.  If you’re interested and want to cut me out of the middle and go direct to the source, you can look up Sonja Lyubomirsky.

Her research suggests that sources of happiness can be put into three very broad categories:

1. Life circumstances – wealth, possessions, marriage, physical appearance, etc.
2. Genetics – disposition, personality traits, tendencies, etc.
3. Behavior – choices we make, responses to situations, etc

The striking, no, shocking, thing to me is that our life circumstances contribute only about 10% to our overall happiness, yet we spend 90% of our energy trying to be more happy by “improving” our circumstances.  We strive for more money, more education, better jobs, bigger houses and new gadgets.  We dream of winning the lottery.  We stress about our physical appearance.

The research shows that these things may give us a short term boost in happiness, but the effect does not endure.

• Princeton University research shows that higher income results in greater happiness, but only until income reaches $60-$75K.  Increases in income above $75K did not show any correlation with increased happiness.
• Studies have also shown there is no relationship between physical appearance and level of happiness.
• Surveys of couples show that the happiness bump from getting married lasts about two years.  After that, people generally return to the same level of happiness they were at before marriage.

So why do we still pursue so hard after all these things?  Why are we still so easily taken by the marketing and cultural messages that tell us what we need to be happy?  A long time before the data was available to prove it, a really smart guy wrote that it was all just chasing the wind.

For me, this is an issue of freedom.  To know in my heart, through intuition and experience, that happiness does not come from things or my life circumstances, then to have it validated through scientific research sets me free from a lie.

So it is liberating to know what does not give us significantly more enduring happiness, but then where does our happiness come from?  What should we be chasing?

Lyubomirsky’s research shows that about 50% of our happiness is determined by genetics.  That’s another shocking result for me.  On the surface, it implies there is nothing we can do to change that 50%, but I don’t think that is the case.

Our genes may drive our disposition.  They contribute to our personality traits.  They influence our tendencies.  A great example is how much people vary significantly in their level of neuroticism.  This is the measurable personality trait that inclines a person toward experiencing negative feelings.

So if you’re wired for high neuroticism, does that mean you are bound to be unhappy and there’s not much you can do about it?  No way!

The really good news in all of this is that our behavior contributes about 40% to our level of happiness.  This tells me that you can have even more leverage in your behavior if you understand and lean into (rather than deny and fight) your genetic tendencies.

I could not say it better than Lyubomirsky does on her web site:

… sustainable increases in happiness are possible through the practice of intentional cognitive, motivational, and behavioral activities that are feasible to deploy but require daily and concerted effort and commitment.

The first step in maximizing your freedom is to let go of the things that are dragging you down.  Do not be conformed to the things of this world that have you enslaved.  Then begin to pursue the things that offer you true freedom, joy, enduring happiness and fullness of life.

Here are two action items for you to make it real in your life:

1. Recall five goals you have achieved or things you have acquired in the past.  Think first about the feeling of desire and anticipation you had before, then think of your life situation and feelings as they relate to the object several months after.  Meditate on this to drive the understanding of the unfulfilled promise deep into your memory so you can call upon it later.
2. Identify one thing (not all things, just one) that you are pursuing right now with the expectation of greater happiness.  Be honest with yourself about what the result will be.  Envision yourself six months after getting the thing you desire.  Recognize that you may be handing over your hopes, dreams, energy and thought life to an empty promise.

At home it is different.  My wife and I may have some family goals that we need to collaborate on, but for personal outcomes, I focus on habits, not goals.

Years ago, I used to read all the latest business management and “success” books.  They have had a huge positive influence on me.  However, looking back, I see the emphasis on goal setting just made me miserable.  I got into a cycle of setting high expectations for myself, only to feel guilt, inadequacy, anger, confusion and disappointment when I didn’t meet them.  Even more damaging was how my focus on a long range goal took my eyes off the present.

In addition to my refocus from goals to habits, I also finally admitted something about myself.  I am very much inclined to to seek out immediate gratification, to take the path of least resistance and to focus on something just a few days or a few hours in the future than a long range goal.  I procrastinate with the best.  I am often lazy.  I seek out distractions to fool myself into thinking I am too busy or don’t have the time to take on something I don’t want to do.  Looking back, I regret that I wasn’t more honest with myself about this sooner.

When I was first out of college, I took a job as an actuarial assistant.  I spent five miserable years studying for actuarial exams.  This involved self teaching and self studying of complex mathematical and statistical material to prepare for exams given twice a year.  Six months of trying to motivate myself to study material that I was only somewhat interested in to pass an exam that was just one step toward a designation that would likely take me 8 years to achieve.

I managed to make it about half way to the designation before throwing in the towel, but it was not a happy time for me.  I always had a low grade feeling of guilt hanging over my head that I really ought to be studying more.  I was constantly rationalizing with myself that “tomorrow” I would really buckle down.  My friends, coworkers and boss would ask how my preparations were going and I would lie.  On top of that, I started drinking more.

The guilt for me was more than just because I was procrastinating.  It ran much deeper.  At the time, I didn’t see it, but it is so clear looking back.  I was trying to be someone I was not.  I was going against the grain of my personality.  My guilt was because I was not able to be the person I expected myself to be.  Where did my expectations come from?  I had pieced them together from bits and pieces of inputs over the years.  I was good at math and science, so my teachers, councilors and aptitude tests all said I should do this kind of work.  The culture told me to work hard, be self-disciplined and I would make something of myself.

As time went by, I knew that I was not only failing to meet this expectation, but I was becoming a fraud.  I was pretending to be successful, and enjoying just enough success to make it believable from the outside.  I was pretending to continue to want what I was told to want.  And I was feeling more and more guilty and trapped the longer the charade went on.

I finally found a graceful way out.  I arranged to move into a different job if I failed one of the big exams on my third attempt.  I passed the exam, but still made the move.  It brought me temporary relief, but it was more like boxing up the problem and shoving under your bed than solving it.  I’ll save the rest of the story for another time.

Have I given up long term goals altogether?  No way.  Since the actuarial days, I completed a masters degree in another field, but only after picking something that would allow me to take classes I enjoyed.  Fitting it in between full time work and family life, the degree took me four years to complete.  The difference was that I focused more on each class and on enjoying and learning the material I was studying.

Last year, I completed a marathon.  This meant rigorously and religiously following a 20 week training program.  But my focus was on running each day.  Most days (but not all), I looked forward to my run.  The marathon was not primary.  The running habit was.

I feel liberated after admitting who I am, what my tendencies are, and what I really want out of life.  I am no longer a slave to unreasonable expectations that other people set for me.  Since I figured this out, I have accomplished more and I am generally more happy, more satisfied and less stressed with life.  I am done trading my freedom only to try to be someone I am not.

So what can you learn from my experience?  Here are two next steps to help you on your own path to more freedom:

1)  Think about one of your primary goals.  It doesn’t have to be explicitly written out, just something you aspire to in life.  Examine the motives for that goal.  Why do you want it?  Be brutally honest with yourself.  Go at least three levels deep with your “why?” questions.

2)  Once you’ve settled on a goal that you really feel good about, think about it in terms of habits instead.  For example, rather than have a goal of losing 30 pounds, have a goal of becoming a person who is fit and healthy.  Start to adopt the daily and weekly habits of a fit person.  The weight loss will follow.

We are naturally wired as selfish and sometimes prideful beings.  As a result, we often try to blame our suffering on someone else.  Our society makes this easy by giving us lots of targets.  Our employer, the government, our spouse, our parents, our kids, the economy, our church, or even God himself.

The other day I was chatting with the woman bagging my groceries.  She said she needed to get more hours in because her husband couldn’t find a job.  Not only that, he blamed her for not being able to find work.  How could that be her fault?  Because she is the one who called the cops when he abused her.

During the latest presidential election you could see the blame game played out everywhere.  I am particularly annoyed by people who complain about the national debt when there is a 47% chance that they carry a month to month credit card debt themselves.  Our government, our elected officials and our popular culture are just a reflection of ourselves.

On a more personal level, do you have a relationship where you’re always trying to get the other person to change?  How does that make you feel?  Annoyed, frustrated, stressed, impatient?  By allowing the other person to cause these feelings in you, you’re giving control of your freedom to them.  You’ll have better success changing yourself than changing them.

In The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen Covey talks about the space between stimulus and response.  This single idea has made a huge and lasting impact on my life since I first read it many years ago.

Most animals act on instinct.  Their reactions are triggered by outside stimulus.  Some dogs just can’t help but bark when they see a squirrel.  But humans are unique.  We have the gift of self awareness and the ability to choose how we will react to something – a space between stimulus and response.  Instinct is not our master.

Here are two practical things you can focus on in the next week to start accepting more responsibility and taking back your freedom:

1. Find something in our world that bothers you, that causes you to be annoyed, frustrated or stressed and think about how it may be just a reflection of your own personal life, or the daily choices you make.  Redirect your focus to changing yourself rather than changing the world.
2. Be mindful of the space between stimulus and response.  Pause to be aware of your real feelings and intent before you reply to someone.  Think of each event and your reaction to that event as two separate things.  Start to establish your reaction as independent from the stimulus.

There are so many things grabbing at our freedom, competing for our attention.  At my corporate job, there are days where I just show up with no particular plans for what I’ll get done that day.  I boot up and begin reading my email, waiting for the first distraction, knowing the day will take care of itself.  The same thing happens at home.  I walk in the door and the kids are there telling me about their day, needing help with homework, asking for dinner, my wife tells me about something that broke in the house, or that our computer has a virus, the toilet is clogged, someone needs a ride to practice.  It is easy to be reactive and just let the wind blow you around.

These things really aren’t so bad.  I chose to take the job I have and get paid to deal with the emails, fight the fires and occasionally be proactive about something.  I chose to get married, to buy a house, to have six children.  I may not have fully counted the cost (more on that another time), but it was a decision I made.  I’ve willingly exchanged my freedom for a pay check, the rewards of career success, the joys of raising children and comforts of owning a house.  There was some level of awareness then choice in these transactions.

Giving up some of my freedom was part of the deal, but its too easy to take this reactive perspective into the rest of your life.  To let your freedom be taken from you by channel or site surfing by slick marketing, peer pressure or social ‘expectations’.

The stuff I own, or worse that I want to own, the tv I watch, the sites I visit, the petty relationships I maintain, the goals I have,  the expectations I take on.  Am I really aware of the cost to my freedom and is my choice intentional when I give it up to them?  Usually not.

I recently heard an ad on Pandora for a tv show that was on that night.  Apparently it was a blockbuster, the episode of the season and they said I couldn’t afford to miss it.  It didn’t have the intended effect on me.  Instead, it got me thinking about the people hearing it who started mentally re-arranging their evening to be in front of the tv at 7:00.  These ads are everywhere, so they must be working on someone.

We all have experiences where we sit down at the computer for ‘just a few minutes’ to look up a movie time, then find ourselves still sitting there two hours later after a completely unpredictable, although not totally random, string of clicks.  Maybe you’re having one of these moments right now.

Then there’s the friend who you can never quite seem to get rid of.  My wife has one of these.  She has spent hours one the phone with her, met her for coffee, composed long emails to her trying to help her with some problems.  On top of that, Betsy has even dominated the conversation between my wife and I, when she isn’t even there!  ‘can you believe what Betsy said?’  ‘I talked to betsy today…’  ‘why doesn’t she just…’  ‘Betsy still hasn’t responded to my email…’.  There have been times I have actually felt violated.  Angry that Betsy has stolen my wife’s precious time and has seized control of our conversation.

How about the commercial for that new phone [car, vacation, Keurig,…].  Until you saw the commercial, you didn’t even know you needed a phone upgrade.  Now you find yourself noticing what phone your friends have, thinking about when your contract is up and you can score a good deal, rationalizing to yourself how it will make your life so much better and you really need it.  Three days ago, you weren’t even aware of the gaping, phone-shaped, hole in your life and now it dominates your thoughts.

I could go on and talk about the pressure of cultural, family, social expectations that we unthinkingly put upon ourselves, but you’ve got the idea.

So who’s setting your agenda?  Your friends, the media, your feelings?

Here are two practical things you can focus on in the next week to start taking back ownership of your agenda:

1. Be aware of every time you think critically about someone else.  Anger, jealousy, fear, stress are all reactions to events.  Usually you can’t control the events, but you can control your reaction.
2. Read some marketing blogs like Social Triggers or Entrepreneur.  Better yet, take a marketing course if you have time.  If you have a better understanding of the tactics and tricks marketers use, you’ll be better equipped to see through them rather than fall for them.

free·do·nom·ics  - A social science that studies how individuals make choices to trade their limited freedom to satisfy their unlimited wants. Freedonomics can generally be broken down into: macrofreedonomics, which concentrates on freedonomic choices with long term or aggregate lifestyle implications, often affecting others; and microfreedonomics, which focuses on decisions with short term consequences which generally only affect the individual.

“Choices” and “trade” are the key words in the definition above.  Most of the time, we don’t realize we’re choosing to trade our freedom for something.  You’re trading a free mind for the ideas on this screen right now.  Even as you read each word here, you’re choosing whether to continue or not.  Is this blog worth your time?  Is it worth thinking about?   Who is this guy that I should let his words into my head anyway?

Freedonomics is the study of making better choices so you can take back responsibility for your own mental, physical, spiritual, financial, relational and social freedom.  It is about being more aware of the things that compete for and even steal your freedom away.

Micro-freedonomics is about the little things that steal our freedom day in and day out.  For example, do you think this post sucks?  I hope not, but if so, why are you still reading it?  Shut it down and move on to some more productive pursuit.  If you’re still reading, you’ve just made a proactive, micro-freedonomic decision that your time is worth investing here.

Macro-freedonomics is about the big decisions we make in the ebb and flow of our lives.  The decisions that have long-term and far reaching consequences on our freedom.  Should I get married?  Should I take this job?  Should I buy this house?  Should I keep this friendship?