If you’re feeling lost, stuck, or unsure of why you’ve ended up wasting your time doing things you don’t want to do and feeling unfulfilled in life as a result…
…you are not alone.
Most people run into this issue. Way too many of us are caught working jobs we hate in order to survive. Or maybe you’re stuck in a toxic relationship and don’t see a way out.
You’ve probably sensed that there is more for you. You want to love your life and feel excited about what you have to offer the world. You want to experience a healthy relationship where you feel safe and loved and able to create that same nourishing container for your partner.
But how do you get there?
How do you create a life where you feel connected to who you really are and your purpose?
Being a human is tough, and you may have found yourself living a life that doesn’t feel like your own. Like you were forced into a certain situation or felt like you were never really in control. And if we are free to make our own choices, why do we feel so trapped? Why don’t our choices leave us feeling connected and empowered to live the life we always dreamed of?
It may come down to whether or not we are actually using our Free Will, or we just think we are.
Are You Exercising Your Free Will?
The truth is, you may not be using your free will as much as you’d like to think you do!
Most people think this is a no-brainer: we all make many voluntary conscious choices every day. Some really bad choices may even land you in jail or worse. But it’s always your choice – your free will, right?
Society is structured around this very idea of free will.
Supposedly, humans only ever do anything because we either want to or we’re forced to.
But we can’t actually choose what we don’t want or desire. If it seems like we have chosen something that we don’t want, it’s only because we want something else more. 
As long as we are living on ego autopilot, all our life experiences made no other choice possible than the ones we have chosen.
That means we don’t always act with free will.
Hear me out.
If our ego is comprised of patterns that have formed due to our life experiences, it follows that certain things will play out according to the ego’s unconscious beliefs.
We are slaves to our coping mechanisms and automatic reactive patterns of thinking, believing, feeling, and behaving.
No “free will” to be found there.
UNLESS we become aware.
UNLESS we wake up from the ego and realize that we don’t have to act from those ingrained patterns.
Only then can we consciously exercise our own free will.
We can reprogram our brains to form new, healthier beliefs that will better serve us so that we can make informed choices and take care of ourselves. Even if we can’t make the choices we would prefer, we will be looking at our choices and our lives from a grounded and level-headed perspective.
Perspective
It seems that most everyone is doing the best they can with the information they have at the moment. If “I” was born in someone else’s body, I’d be them and therefore, make the same decisions. Because the “I” is only a collection of beliefs and patterns formed through a specific human experience.
That is how the ego develops.
Take the experience of being born in a slum to a widowed mother with 3 other kids. That person will look at life very differently than someone born in Malibu with parents that have millions of dollars and a mansion. Different choices will be available. We are all prisoners to our body-minds until we learn how to free ourselves by becoming aware so that we can act from our free will or higher consciousness. Our higher consciousness is what Christians would call “God’s will.”
We only have a Choice or Free Will when we become aware of our patterns and come into the present moment. When we are fully conscious then we can actually make a choice. Otherwise, we are just running on the autopilot of the subconscious mind, trauma responses, and conditioned false beliefs.
This is not your fault. This doesn’t mean there is something wrong with you. It only means you are human.
But, of course, we all want to be free and to feel peace.
So how do we become conscious so that we can actually use our free will and stop letting our monkey mind run our lives?
There are 4 steps to help us reprogram! Recognize, Identify, Flip, and Act.
Recognize
1. We have to RECOGNIZE when we are caught in a pattern or cycle. 
When you feel anxiety, depression, boredom, insecurity, or anger, recognize it. Name it. Feel the sensations in your body. Don’t try to repress, deny or escape it. Are these feelings familiar? Do you find yourself feeling certain emotions more than others? What’s the pattern? Do specific types of situations come up in your life repeatedly? What types of people are involved in them? What are the specific thoughts and feelings you are having that are attached to these situations? Be in the moment and observe. Stay with the feeling and give it your full attention. What is it trying to tell you? It will start to dissipate once you have put all your focus on it and released resistance to it. When we surrender to our emotions we learn lessons hidden in the body.
If you have a hard time feeling your emotions or naming them, I recommend writing down a few words to describe the sensation in your body and the feeling every time you do recognize something coming up. Practice!
Identify
2. Next we need to IDENTIFY the false beliefs that are fueling these patterns.
What is the story you are telling yourself about these emotions? Are you blaming yourself or others? Are you constantly finding yourself drawn to certain types of people that make you feel the same way you felt as a child? Are you labeling yourself as the victim? Are you setting up limits for yourself? Do you find comfort in clinging to certain emotions, thoughts, and beliefs?
When you recognize and name your emotions, identify the thoughts and deeply ingrained beliefs that are keeping you in this cycle. I’ll write more about this in detail in a future post.
Now comes the reprogramming part! There are 2 essential steps to reprogramming your brain and changing your reality and behavior.
Flip
3. First, we FLIP those beliefs into something that is closer to the truth. 
Turn the belief around. If you found that one of your false beliefs is “I’m not good enough,” then make it “I am enough,” or “I am worthy.”
Don’t force yourself to write a positive if that’s not what you feel authentically yet. Go for neutral. For example, if you struggle with shame and feel like something is “wrong” with you, don’t jump straight to “I’m so perfect in every way!” Your ego will fight that statement. Instead, start by saying something like “I’m learning about all the great qualities in myself that I have overlooked.”
Write your old beliefs down on one side of a piece of paper. Draw a line down the middle and write the flipped neutral and truthful belief on the other side. Cross out the old one and repeat the new one as much as possible. You can write your new beliefs on post-it notes and put them all over your house or keep them on a poster in your bedroom. Set a timer on your phone throughout the day with a special message.
Get creative!
Act
4. ACT accordingly. We reprogram our subconscious mind by practicing our new beliefs.
Reprogramming is more than just repeating affirmations. Now it’s time to make NEW choices. This will reinforce the new beliefs and actually give the subconscious evidence to support its new growing identity. Because we have to actually change our idea of who we are.
We are building a new person.
Who do you want to be?
Create yourself!
Be Free!
That’s it! Recognize and surrender to your emotions, identify the story or thought patterns and beliefs that are attached to those emotions, flip the beliefs around into something you would like to use as a stepping stone to your new programming, and then act according to that new program!
Boom! You’re creating a new you!
Remember to celebrate every time you become aware of your unconscious behavior. That’s the moment when you can tap into your free will, your higher consciousness, unconditional love, god, source, or whatever you like to call it.
It’s all your Choice.
Free will should be at humans disposal since only slave are under someone else’s rules and have to follow what they are told. But I’ve realized from this article that free will is not an easy choice and you may think you are exercising your free will whereas you are not even close to it. By following the steps in this article one can be able to classify free will and slavery.
It’s true Johnny. So often we unconsciously hold ourselves prisoner. At some level, we are trying to protect ourselves, or we are unquestioningly following the expectations that others have laid out before us. We are all stuck in patterns that we aren’t aware of and the only way to break free is to become more aware and to face our fears head-on. Thanks for reading!
I love how you say “we are slaves to our coping mechanisms and automatic reactive patterns of thinking, believing, feeling and behaving” as it is so true. I too often behave in a way that other people expect me to behave. So I don’t voice my opinion loudly, and rather stay quiet than possibly “rock the boat”.
Thank you for these tips to get me to reprogram myself and provide me with the inspiration to do so.
I truly hope that these steps help guide your way into becoming free from the expectations others put on you and those that you put on yourself. Becoming more authentic is challenging but so worth it!
Your article brought to mind another post I read about the states of efficiency and awareness, Its premise was being a slave to efficiency made us robot-like. While having a heightened sense of awareness, made us more human.
The various examples you used to give more depth to the state of awareness were very helpful. When you are more aware of yourself and others, you act for the benefit of others. The more you apply your time and effort here, you will leave a legacy and be remembered for a long time after you leave the earth.
The opposite is the case being focused more on efficiency. In this case, the chances are you will accumulate great wealth in your lifetime. But you will not be remembered after you are gone.
This was a profound post to read and make me think more about the importance of awareness. One of the outcomes is to first be cognizant of having free will and then act on it to become your higher self as you concluded.
Cheers.
Edwin
Thank you, Edwin! I’m so glad you found this post insightful and helpful. I agree that material wealth is not the priority. Of course, we need the material world to survive and live our human lives happily. But when our lives become only about the accumulation of wealth, we tend to act in selfish and thoughtless ways that hurt others. That is not the kind of legacy I’d like to leave behind. I think if more of us focused on building internal wealth that comes from healing and spiritual practice as well as relational wealth (building healthy compassionate relationships with others), the world would be a much better place. And we would probably be better at taking care of each other’s material needs as well. How could we let others go hungry and homeless as we each become more aware and compassionate? When we are seeing clearly our personal power to do good?
I’m looking forward to a more heart-centered world as opposed to a profit-driven one.
I get inspired to write this comment after reading your awesome blog post,
I’m so glad she shared her thoughts on awakening in a world where it is so hard to look within.
We all have days where we feel like we are going nowhere in life or that our time is getting wasted. We make excuses to keep going back to what doesn’t work.
But it’s important to realize that this is a natural part of the human experience and not something that you are doing wrong. It doesn’t have to be this way, however!
One of the main obstacles for most people is their ego. We often find ourselves in situations where we are uncomfortable and don’t know how to react. Our ego keeps us from taking risks, keeping us from asking for help or reaching out to others because we’re afraid of being rejected.
Sometimes, when your conscious mind is feeling overwhelmed it can be difficult to know what you can do to help yourself. However, as soon as you become aware of any behaviors that you’re not proud of, it’s time to celebrate. Celebrating these moments means that there is a glimmer of hope in the darkness and that your efforts are actually working.
Thanks Nicole for sharing awakened thoughts.
You’re right. Our egos do hold us back out of fear and a need to protect. Sometimes this is necessary, but often, we need to bravely take a step forward and realize that some risks need to be taken if we are interested in our personal growth and happiness.
Thank you for reading and sharing your comments, Prashant!
Yes its sad but true, we can be slaves to our beliefs, in our jobs that demand lots of work, other people that are ignorant, that disrespect you at work. Emotions of hate anger,fear, all those ugly thoughts can enslave us like a big python constricting our free will to be children of our Divine inheritance. We need too seek our true selves who we are in spirit, by meditating on our true source to be free in mind and spirit. They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength and mount up with wings like eagles they should run and not be weary and not faint, as these chains of slavery will be removed in our illusionary unconscious minds. So all our brothers and sisters seek the Kingdom of God and then all be added for our inheritance Freedom!!!
It’s really tough to be human sometimes. You’re right, we deal with a lot of ignorance, disrespect, fear, and anger. And it’s up to us to make sure we are open to our divine inheritance, as you put it. Thank you so much for your beautiful comment encouraging us all to seek freedom:)