 What is freedom? You go up to a kid and you ask him are you okay? What is freedom? The kid might tell you freedom is the ability to play basketball with all my friends Watch a movie and not be judged when I get home to go home without a curfew You say okay cool You go over to the guy who has been oppressed by his government you ask him what is freedom, sir He'll tell you freedom is the ability to have a democracy and to vote for how the country is operated Okay You ask the homosexual What is freedom, sir? He'll say freedom is the ability to have same-sex marriage without being judged Fair enough All these are valid examples of freedom But these are superficial Levels of freedom. There is a deeper level, right? and more fundamental level and That is self mastery The stoic epictetus once said No man is free who is not master of himself and I don't think any true words have ever been said You can have all these freedoms depending on your circumstance But the one that's at the core is self mastery If you want to quit smoking But you can't go a day without the maribou reds or the winnie blues You don't have freedom if you want to quit pornography but each time a picture of a young woman pops up on your screen Dressed in a particular way and you give in to the urge. You don't have freedom if You want to stop your Habitual eating but each time you walk past the grocery store and you see that cupcake on special You just have to buy it and dive right in you don't have freedom Each time you get the emotional surge of anger and you snap on someone impulsively And later regret it. You don't have freedom Freedom is self mastery. It's the hardest freedom to get That's why so many people don't have it because it involves a lot of effident energy on your side For true self mastery, you need to dig deep you dig deeper than you probably Have dug before in your life. You need to find out your habitual thinking patterns What type of thoughts you constantly have you need to understand cognitive biases the Default mechanisms of your brain, right? You need to understand your emotions your emotional reactions what triggers them How you usually react to them? Right, there are many layers to self mastery So many layers So much energy on your side But when you have self mastery when you have this freedom is the sweetest freedom That you could ever wish to have it's going to be the best thing that you could ever attain in life because Once you have this self-monstery you can sit down Think deep Decide on what you want to do with life Decide on what you want to accomplish before you die make a plan and stick to it and That's it. You just stick to it and achieve it and prosper Sounds simple doesn't it? But it's not you have everything against you when it comes to building self mastery you have a brain that is only Bent on survival and baser needs you have these higher ideals of a demigod But you have the body of a mortal You want to achieve these things, but your body and your brain Don't really give too many shits about them. So it's up to you truly Do you realize your potential or do you go back to the base level of animal? Reacting with no true fundamental level of freedom of self-control So this is the end of the video you must have really liked it if you go this far. Yeah, right? Okay, if you liked it, please click subscribe and hit the post notifications because YouTube is doing this weird thing right now where if you subscribe doesn't show you my videos very strange very strange stuff But yeah, click those post notifications. Well good. See you next time