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08B - Freedom and Choice Is an Amazing Lifestyle
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Critical Tools
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About 08B - Freedom and Choice Is an Amazing Lifestyle
You need four critical tools for great relationships. You can say they help implement the SOLUTION and, at the same time, aren't effective without the energy of the SOLUTION. Great relationships depend on understanding how to effectively use each and every one of these critical tools. The SECOND tool helps you understand and accept that trying to control (manipulate or dominate) others, creates more energy for destroying the relationship than helping it. And, you will learn that when people are controlling, they are often doing it with good intentions, but that still leads to relationship problems.
The SECOND tool is one of the most crucial principles for any relationship, but it is easy to misapply or misunderstand. So, starting with the basics is critical. Used correctly, the tool works perfectly with love. Misused, it ignores love. It can transform your emotions for any action from dread to doing, maybe even delightful doing. That is the benefit of this outstanding tool.
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08B - Freedom and Choice Is an Amazing Lifestyle
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When someone does not act the way you want, manipulating or dominating to get them to change seems like the right thing. But that is the unwise, impatient path that leaves a lingering “smell.”
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Applying freedom to relationships emphasizes the critical truth that everyone can make their own choices. Everyone is responsible for their own decisions. You do not control them, and they do not control you. They are free to make and be responsible for their own choices.
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God is THE model for freedom in relationships. Consider a few statements about God. He is the only one who has complete control and sovereignty. He is all-powerful, and everything that happens is part of His infinitely good plan.
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Do you think you are free to be you? My bet – you are not as free as you think!
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You are not free if you live in the Left Circle, the React and Respond circle! You believe that life happens to you, and your job is to figure out what to do when it happens. Actions and feelings are driven by circumstances like pool balls, motionless until moved by outside forces. Your life depends on the external, totally at the mercy of the external.
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Now that you reinforced your freedom, you have another, probably more difficult, question to answer. Do you accept that others are free?
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Parents, understanding freedom is essential because while you have the responsibility to be a Godly parent, ultimately, children make their own choices.
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Even if you recognize that you are controlling others and stop, you will quickly reboot your control when you ask this question. But what if they never change? What if they keep their poor values and destructive behavior?
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If you decide to control, beware, it will hurt your relationships. Control truly or artificially limits a person’s options, making it difficult for them to see or make choices.
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You can give your Sunday school answer or answer by looking at your life. Living in freedom accepts the reality that God is free to do anything He desires with you.
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Control-oriented people – which can be anyone – are often “good people up to no good.” I could be the poster child for the control person disease. It created severe damage in all my relationships.
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If you are a control person, can you change? Yes! You can stop trying to get everyone to do life the way you want it. You can lighten your burden and remove the load you have placed on those around you. It only happens when you start practicing freedom not just for yourself but also for others.
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Fear is often irrational - especially when using our imagination. When you focus on now, you learn to see the real threats rather than the horrible future. You can focus on now when you can see the fear is imaginary, not real.
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This is the most important because God is all-powerful and can control, but He created and allowed freedom.
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You eliminate freedom and choice when you turn good things into obligations. A past promise or a goal you made can become an obligation. When you do that, you change a “want to” into a “have to” – draining energy from your life.
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You can change obligation to a choice. Any event in life can become tiresome or obligatory if you are not thinking clearly. Consider an athlete in training or a mother cleaning up after the kids. What about a family giving up an exciting vacation to care for a dying grandmother? How about just going to work or school?
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An improper view or belief about acceptance can hinder your freedom. Where are you seeking acceptance and praise? Who do you hope will accept you? Who are you trying to please?
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Accepting others can remove your freedom. Often, accepting others ends up controlling you because it is erroneously connected to the other person’s behavior.
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Bad behavior will occur with those that we have chosen to accept. Demanding change is an option, but often has a higher probability of creating rebellion than change. And, too often, the demand for change is about you wanting relief from their bad behavior. That drives improper emotions in you, damaging more than building the relationship.
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You can accept someone and still correct them. It starts with following the Spirit and listening to Him as He focuses your attention on your own behavior – not other’s behavior.
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If people are free, am I stating that they can say and do anything they want to me? Are they free to dump garbage on my lawn? Are they free to steal from me? Are they free to break into my home?
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Freedom is one of the highest and dearest principles for relationships. It is synonymous with, if not the same as, grace. Yet, it is not the most crucial element for superior relationships. If freedom is not below at least one other principle, relationships will suffer from irresponsible freedom
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The second self-governance tool is the Freedom V. It will help you live more often in the Right Circle. It is an excellent tool and principle because it helps you grasp how freedom and self-governance are linked. It is a simple, primarily visual tool, so it is easy to explain and draw.