Free Will, How to keep it.

In our younger days, before major commitments, free will was probably easier to execute. We grew up and maybe got married, children and career. Free will now challenges by the largesse of moving more than just you.

This is not necessarily the free will I believe is haunting us as humans. The free will I am referring to is our environmental conditioning.

Parents, religions, school and many other conditioning experiences tend to form our perspective. These are learned behaviors or conditioning. I have read the ham hock story in many illustrations. The story goes that everyone in a certain family always cut the ham hock off before cooking. No one could explain the habit. New uses for the departed piece were found. Finally someone asked the eldest family member why they did that, and they stated because the ham didn’t fit in any pan they had.

Our fears, anxieties or stressors come from somewhere. I find in leading others that I am usually dealing with performance because one of these ham hock issues is present. I call them filters. Filters impact our free will by exacting a price or cost to move forward that in reality doesn’t exist. They only exist because it was a fear or anxiety that was present during a period of time but is now gone. But the sub conscious feeling or filter is present.

Some filters/alarm bells, when we hear BS, are good filters. But when we are discussing stretching ourselves or our companies and the bells develop a death toll, it’s detrimental. I had a manager that would always lead with, what could go wrong. I had some conversations about how this may be a “ham hock” issue and we discussed possible times in their life they may have developed the fear of failure. I gave this individual a wooden coin with “no” written on it. I asked that they present everything they thought we need to be successful. If we couldn’t make it work in the end, pull out your “no”. But fight for the yes until you couldn’t anymore. It worked.

Free will lies in our ability to challenge our fears and anxieties through understanding where they came from. I can remember every time we picked up sticks to sword fight as kids I would hear,” don’t do that you will poke your eye out” To this day I get anxious when I get near a broom. Well, my wife didn’t buy it either, I just put on my safety glasses and sweep.

When you feel the fear or anxiety approaching in discussions, realize you can say no anytime; support the effort until you see the right way to go. Don’t lead with fear.