The most widespread addiction is not a substance: it is the approval of others. Stefano identifies it as the invisible constraint that prevents most people from living the life they desire. When your decisions first pass through the filter "what will they think?", you are not free — you are hostage to an audience that is not even watching. Freedom from dependency begins the moment you accept that the only opinion that matters is that of the person you see in the mirror.
What Stefano says about freedom from dependency
From Letter 01 — Here we go again
Trading. Forex. A blog. Videos. Social media. Travel. Every time I saw the wave before others and every time I rode it I got off before it reached shore.
From Letter 02 — Choosing who to be
I showed a version of me built to survive. A pile of habits collected over time — some from childhood when I was looking for attention, some from my teenage years when I was looking for respect, others from adulthood when I was trying to prove I could make it.
I wrote in my journal: "I always thought others were better than me. That they had something more. That they were more capable, more attractive, more performing."
From Letter 04 — Week 4 of 54 — Happiness is a habit
I've always been afraid of being alone. My greatest strength is independence, but it implies my greatest weakness: being alone.
We're born alone. We die alone. And in between, we live often unable to tell others what we're feeling. But it's precisely in that solitude that you find yourself. Not at parties. Not in distractions. Not in noise.
From Letter 05 — Week 5 of 54 — The real cancer
"I don't believe in myself, so I always have to prove things to others to make them true."
I spent my whole life wanting to be someone in the eyes of others.
From Letter 06 — Week 6 of 54 — Monkey mind
Why am I getting these results right now and not others?
And where does it come from? Doctrines. Academic teachings devoid of life experiences. Books studied without living them. Family patterns we might not have chosen. Voices of others we mistook for our own.
From Letter 07 — Week 7 of 54 — The art of defining your boundaries
Generic like a hotel room: clean, functional, identical to all the others. You sleep there and tomorrow you don't remember being there.
And until you wait for others to define you, you're interpreted. You don't exist.
From Letter 08 — Week 8 of 54 — Those who don't come down from the mountain
And that, from the inside, is a harder life than all the others. A life of private dreams that will never see light.
From Letter 09 — Week 8 of 54 — Those Who Don't Come Down from the Mountain
And that, from the inside, is a harder life than all the others. A life of private dreams that will never see light.
From Letter 10 — Week 9 of 54 — The music we keep inside
It was: what about me? And others like me? And the children from last week's village?
And we, who were born in contexts of do whatever you want, pay the price of that freedom that's never sufficiently acknowledged.
From Letter 11 — Week 10 of 54 — The Man on the Roof
He arrives before all the others. Always. At seven he's already on the roof — the roof of a building that doesn't exist yet, exposed rebar sticking out of concrete, wooden planks, no protection, as if he were immortal.
For the first half hour he's alone, him and the cold. Then the others arrive, but meanwhile he's already started: the blows on the iron rise up to my window while the city, behind him, wakes up calmly.
From Letter 12 — Week 11 of 54 — The traffic light
And you know, the victory isn't the traffic light: it's the ability to decide without observing or waiting for others.
From Letter 14 — Week 13 of 54 — The Punishment
And after a while something strange happened. The children who were rewarded started drawing less. The ones who received nothing kept going like before, for the pleasure of it. The others didn't — the reward had switched something off. They had stopped drawing out of love, and were only drawing in relation to the prize.
It was the closest thing to freedom I have ever felt.