While reading the book ‘The Art of Choosing’ by Sheena Iyengar, I came across the concept of two types of freedom. They are ‘Freedom To’ and ‘Freedom From’. All of us enjoy our freedom to buy things whenever and whatever we want. We work hard so that we can have more freedom to buy more things. We enjoy our freedom to take vacations in places which are famous, far away from our homes and expensive. We work even harder to go to more famous and more expensive places. The same theory applies to our cars, gadgets, dresses and many more. This is ‘Freedom To’. But most of us do not realize that there is another form of freedom, i.e., ‘Freedom From’, that we need to nurture as well. It is the freedom from negativity, freedom from distractions that slows us down from reaching our goals, freedom from people who fail to inspire us and add value in our lives, freedom from obligations to run others’ races instead of running our own, freedom from following bad leaders, freedom from buying things that we do not need but others expect us to have, freedom from judging others without knowing their true story and many more. It is very easy for us to nurture only ‘Freedom To’ and completely ignore ‘Freedom From’. It is just like cleaning and organizing your living room when some friends are visiting, and locking everything dirty in our bedroom. We all have done it, didn’t we? What matters is whether we have a meaningful life. A resourceful life is a waste if it doesn’t have a meaning, a purpose.
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AuthorAbhimanyu Gupta lives in Chesterfield, Missouri with his wife Nilanjana & son Anusurya. His profession is software testing and his passion are music and books. He can be reached via Email, LinkedIn or Facebook. Archives
January 2017
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