Freedom is not doing what you want. It is not having to do what you do not want. 54 explores the real price of personal and professional freedom.
From Letter 02 — Choosing who to be
It's not meditation. It's not a mantra. It's a decision. Deliberate. Every day.
And when you start choosing your behaviors, deliberately, one at a time, something unexpected happens. Those new behaviors create a new identity. And that new identity creates a new reality. And that new reality creates a new life.
From Letter 03 — The price no one wants to pay
Last week I told you about choosing who to be. About deliberate behaviors. About new habits that create new identity.
My brain was screaming: stay. It's easier. You have a secure salary. You'll build your thing calmly, in your free time.
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.
From Letter 06 — Week 6 of 54 — Monkey mind
October 24, 2021 — "My greatest strength is independence, but it implies my greatest weakness: being alone."
Up next: the art of defining your boundaries.
From Letter 07 — Week 7 of 54 — The art of defining your boundaries
All the people I see not achieving, myself included, for years, did the opposite. They dispersed in the name of openness. They confused themselves in the name of freedom. They refused to choose in the name of not missing anything.
Week 7 of 54 — The art of defining your boundaries
▎ "The limit. The boundary line, the keystone. Everyone has one, but often it's not enough. Often it doesn't mark existence, it marks resistance."
From Letter 08 — Week 8 of 54 — Those who don't come down from the mountain
Depending on where you stand, the same sentence is either a condemnation or a liberation.
From Letter 09 — Week 8 of 54 — Those Who Don't Come Down from the Mountain
I was in a village up in the mountains, at the foot of the Himalayas, the greatest boundary that exists. (read the previous letter here if you don't remember what boundary means ;) )
Depending on where you stand, the same sentence is either condemnation or liberation.
From Letter 10 — Week 9 of 54 — The music we keep inside
And we, who were born in contexts of do whatever you want, pay the price of that freedom that's never sufficiently acknowledged.
Every now and then, in between, you have a free hour left to try to do something.
It was given to them for free. We have to build it ourselves. Ten years late. With monsters already installed.
From Letter 11 — Week 10 of 54 — The Man on the Roof
I remember when I used to do jobs like that. In Galluccio I picked hazelnuts, chestnuts, olives, mowed the lawn ten hours a day — in September, October, back bent for hours, hands that wouldn't close anymore at the end of the day, the dampness of five in the morning that would freeze on you.
From Letter 12 — Week 11 of 54 — The traffic light
Let me tell you this properly, because here we're talking about free will, about actions that weigh on our entire life. Because you know, it's never just a traffic light... it's everything behind the real problem.
I'm not telling you that now I'm the free man who decides everything for himself. I still have a lot of sidewalks where I stand planted watching if someone else goes first. On some I'm still the same as before.
From Letter 14 — Week 13 of 54 — The Punishment
It was the closest thing to freedom I have ever felt.