Episode 026 – Free Will Is An Illusion (This Changes EVERYTHING!)

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Note: This blog post serves as an accompaniment to the corresponding podcast episode of A Changed Mind, where we’ll distill down the core ideas of this week’s theme, along with additional distinctions and insights. If you haven’t listened to the episode yet, you can go here to do so.  Enjoy.

If you look up “free will” in the dictionary, you’ll be met with these entries:

-the power of acting without the constraint of necessity or fate

-the ability to act at one’s own discretion.

I’ve got a counterintuitive definition: free will doesn’t exist.  Now, I’m not saying that you’re not the one who’s responsible for making choices in your life.  I’m suggesting that thinking that we have free will typically causes an unnecessary amount of stress, anxiety, and overwhelm, significantly diminishing the quality of our life experience.  Chances are that if you’re here you’d rather live with a little more ease, flow, and enjoyment – so let’s unpack this idea of free will together.

The Curse Of “Free Will”

I don’t know about you, but in my own day-to-day experiences, I find myself questioning what I do or don’t do and the decisions I make quite a bit.  This can be as trivial as promising myself that I’m going to wake up at 6 a.m., but instead, I hit the snooze button until seven.  Or that I know I should be doing certain things to grow my business – work on a webinar, review some copy, record a presentation – and I simply don’t feel like doing it.  So I find ways to distract myself or put it off for as long as possible.  As a result, I started to judge myself for not doing the things that I’d told myself I should be doing to grow my business.

Most people experience this in one form or another.  We criticize ourselves for the way we handle certain conversions, situations, and relationships.  We feel guilt, shame, and regret over many of the decisions that we make daily – and we often feel those effects months, years, even decades later.  We spend inordinate amounts of time judging ourselves, judging other people, and engaging in this internal debate of what we should or shouldn’t be doing or the things we’ve already done or haven’t.  If you ask me, it’s a big waste of time, energy, and effort and begs the question: do we really have free will?

Being The Main Character In The  Movie Of Your Life 

Let’s say you watch a movie multiple times, does anything change from the first time you watched the movie to the second time you watch it?  Do the characters make different decisions based on what time you watch the movie or how many times you watch it? No, of course not.

Every single time they make the same decisions, the plot stays the same, and the movie has the same ending.  No matter what circumstance or situation they’re in, somehow the plot line evolves so that they’re able to get through some harrowing situation and get to victory at the end.  In my opinion, an interesting correlation can be drawn between 2 hours of Hollywood storylines and our own lives.

I’m sure there were times in your life when you didn’t think you were going to be able to make it through a certain situation or event.  Yet, somehow, you navigated through it either through some perception that you were able to do it via your own will, or there was some miracle that occurred that helped you through, or your higher power/the God of your understanding worked something out and contributed to you making it through.

Now the idea I’d like to propose is: what if we were going to make it through every situation and circumstance regardless?  What if all of our choices were predetermined? In other words, what if your life was just some version of a movie and, as the main character, you got to experience being the character rather than watching the movie?  What if you had no choice but to make the decisions that the “great screenwriter of life” had already predetermined that you would make?  

If this were true, wouldn’t you relax a little bit more about the decisions that you’re making? If you knew, in advance, that no matter what you did, you had no free will and it was already predetermined, wouldn’t you enjoy being that character a hell of a lot more?  Now just in case you’re skeptical about this proposal or you’re thinking “David, this doesn’t make any sense” – allow me to address this on a more practical level.

Your Choices Are Dictated By Your History

I was recently a guest on a podcast and the interviewer was sharing a story about how her mother would try to get her to speak to relatives she didn’t want to speak to over the holidays.  She was telling me that – in her opinion – her mom has a choice whether or not she pushes her daughter to reach out to relatives she doesn’t want to speak to.  She felt like her mom wasn’t respecting her boundaries. 

I’d argue that her mom doesn’t actually have a choice.  Because of who her mom has become, based on her early childhood programming, the beliefs that she has, which determine the way she thinks now in the present moment, the personality that she’s developed, the emotions that she’s feeling, and the actions that she has habitually tied to those emotions, isn’t it predetermined that her mother is going to push her to reach out to her relatives?

Just think about how that might apply to a loved one in your life and your relationship with them.  In both their case and yours, isn’t every single decision you make on a moment-by-moment basis predetermined by your history leading up to that point?  When I think about my journey with recovery and the times that I gave into my vices – I decided to pick up a drink, smoke a joint, or look at pornography – I began to realize that, at that moment, I actually had no choice.

I had a perceived choice based on the pain I was in that day and based on where I was in that stage of my recovery.  But it was 100% predictable and calculable that I would pick up the drink, smoke the joint, or look at porn.  So too was it 100% predictable not to drink, use drugs, or act out because of the experiences I’d gone through leading up to that point – because of the scenes that preceded it in the movie.  I had developed a capacity to make a different choice that played out in those individual moments where it seemed like I had a choice – but I didn’t.

What I’m suggesting is the way that the human being operating system works is that in every present moment, whatever you’re doing, you have to do that thing.  It can change over time, but it cannot change in the individual moment.   So when you wake up in the morning and you decide to hit the snooze button – you have to hit the snooze button.  When you wake up in the morning and you get up right when your alarm goes off – you have to get up right when your alarm goes off.

Removing The Self-Judgement Of Our Choices 

So at each stage of our experience of life, we have the opportunity to step back and relax a little bit, knowing that we could not have decided in any other way, given all of the information that led up to that single moment in time and the choices we made.  I find this to be comforting at a really meaningful level, because if I can just accept myself and the decisions that I make on a moment-by-moment basis, it alleviates so much of the stress, the anxiety, the self-pressure, the self-judgment, and the overwhelm.

The greatest disruptor to our ability to experience more calm, peace, and joy in our lives is the amount of time we spend judging ourselves for not making different choices from the ones we’ve made.  But if we recognize that we actually don’t have a choice, we can relax into every decision.

Now, a lot of people believe that this pressure of self-judgment and self-criticism actually motivates you to operate at a higher level in your life.  Some people believe that if you weren’t pressured at all, you actually wouldn’t do anything.  I don’t find that to be true based on my own experience.  When I’m coaching entrepreneurs and they’re not doing the things that they tell me they believe they should be doing to grow their businesses, the pressure itself cripples them into a continued pattern of inaction.  

Permitting Yourself To Be Okay With Where You Are

This presents an opportunity to permit them to not do the work, but to be okay with it.  What’s interesting is that every time I’ve prescribed that as a solution, within a very short period, the person finds themselves doing the work that they had been resistant to for days, weeks, months, and sometimes years.

In other words, there’s a paradox that as soon as we feel okay, contented, or relaxed and we no longer put pressure on ourselves for not doing the thing we believe we should do, the removal of that pressure frees us to take the action that we’ve been wanting to take.  

So if we can permit ourselves to be okay with whatever decision or choice we make, whether that’s taking the action we believe we should take or not taking the action, whether that’s going to the gym or not going to the gym, whether that’s waking up early or not waking up early, there’s a natural reorganization that takes place within the freedom of that no stress zone that we start to adhere to the types of behaviors that are best for our growth.

Does this mean we should just accept not doing the things we know we should be doing and live with that reality for the rest of our lives?  Should alcoholics make it okay to drink all of the time?  Should out-of-shape people make it okay to never go to the gym?  Should struggling business owners stay in financial security forever?

No, what I’m suggesting is that you should continue striving toward your goals, but the worst thing you can do is judge and shame yourself when you make a mistake or recognize that you’re not yet where you want to be.  The solution to getting back on track is to remove the self-criticism and recognize that in the moment you’re okay – you’re exactly where you’re meant to be – and things will work out in the end, just like they do in the movies.

Try Living With No Free Will For A Day

To conclude, if we can accept that on a moment-by-moment basis we have to make the decisions we’re making, we don’t actually have a choice (free will), and we can free ourselves from the judgment, shame, and pressure, wouldn’t we naturally evolve into conducting ourselves in a way that better serves our lives and our growth?

I can tell you as a result of doing a self-experimentation, I’m starting to feel far less stress and anxiety this way.  I’m spending less time in my head thinking about the choices I’m making and judging myself for the outcome.  Doing this allows me to be more present in the moment, which results in more energy, more inspiration, and more alignment.  And the byproduct of that is taking more action in the ways that I’d like to be taking action.  Try it for yourself and let me know how it goes.