Are you about the business of keeping your freedoms or losing them? Freedom has so many implications and impacts on the quality of our lives. After all, freedom is precious and always comes at great expense. In fact, who we become and what we accomplish all hinge on our ability to exercise basic freedoms. Can you recognize when you’re giving up your freedom unintentionally? It’s pretty easy to recognize the loss of freedom when it happens suddenly. It’s far more difficult when it erodes slowly. Yet, preserving and protecting our freedom is an everyday habit we must all fine-tune. Let’s chat about the valuable skill of freedom fighting in your own daily life.
3 Things to Know about Freedom Fighting
Most of us agree that in the past few months, we’ve had plenty of reasons to contemplate just how valuable our freedoms are. It seems there’s nothing more effective in creating value for our freedoms than having them reduced, challenged, or threatened in some way. For example, it’s likely you’ve had your freedom to move about and conduct business as usual greatly reduced because of COVID-19 restrictions. Your freedom of speech may have been challenged recently as you navigate intense social pressures and emotionally-charged issues. Your freedom to vote has been put into focus due to the upcoming national election. Even choosing your focus and overcoming fear (see last week’s post) is an example of your valuable freedom.
So, I ask you again: Are you about the business of keeping your freedoms or losing them? If you want to put up a good fight, here are three important things to know about freedom fighting:
- Your freedoms don’t come free.
- Freedom fighting is a daily choice.
- You win some, you lose some.
Your freedoms don’t come free.
Your big and small freedoms came to you at great expense to someone else. Just think about all the times throughout human history that men and women have stood in the gap, fighting against forces who sought to enslave them or their families in some way. We were created to be free and stay free so that we could become who we were designed to be. Pilgrims, African Americans, the Founding Fathers, Gandhi, Native Americans, and veterans of both World Wars are just a few examples of people fighting and sometimes dying for their personal freedoms or the freedom of others. Your freedoms today didn’t come to you free of a dear price. And for that reason, you must not take them for granted.
Freedom fighting is a daily choice.
Fighting to keep your freedoms is a discipline that must be exercised every day. Your personal freedoms are gained or lost with every choice you make. For example, you choose how you respond to your circumstances, regardless of whether they’re good or bad. No one can take this choice from you. Even when your options are reduced through no fault of your own, you always have the choice in how you respond. So regardless of whether we’re talking about your big “F” Freedom (from slavery of all sorts) or your little “f” freedoms (like where you’ll live or your career), you must thoughtfully choose your attitude toward your situation.
You win some, you lose some.
Even if you lose sometimes, the fight to exercise your freedoms is always worth your time and energy. Your freedom fighting sets an example for others upon which they can build. Your mistakes and the resulting loss of freedom in some area of your life is rarely a permanent situation. In fact, your loss is often a gain later on for you and those you love. WHY? Because losing freedom creates the motivation to get it back.
Know how you’ve been designed to fight.
So, want to be about the business of preserving, protecting and fighting for the freedoms that others fought to gain for you? Learn how it’s done on a daily basis in all of your little choices, as well as the bigger ones. Knowledge of how you’ve been designed to fight is important. This is so because, in your daily life, you’ve been created to choose the preferred ways of your inner design. Your inner design (your InnerKinetics®) reveals the unique set of drives and inner strengths that propel you into a life of freedom, fulfillment, and purpose.
Learn more here:
It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery. ~ Galatians 5:1