To be free, you must learn to stand apart from society.
Photo by Rupert Britton on Unsplash
To be free, you must learn to stand apart from society.
What does it mean to Stand Apart?
To stand apart from society means to drop all of society’s expectations. It does not mean leaving your community and living alone in a cabin in the woods. Instead, it means finding a way to live in society while maintaining your goals and self-worth independent of what society expects of you.
Why it Matters
When you stand apart from society, you are truly free. Free to pursue what is meaningful to you. Free of the judgment and expectation of others. Free to live your life in a way that satisfies you.
When you separate your thoughts from society’s expectations, you stand apart.
What You Stand Apart From:
You stand apart from the goals and expectations of the people and groups around you. These fall into five broad categories.
Formulas — Like the formula for success, which says you must go to college, get a good job, work hard, get married, have two kids, and live in the suburbs.
Rules — We need some to keep society functioning. For example, people must all drive on one side of the road. But many others have been responsible for societal horrors like slavery.
Opinion of others — When you worry about what others will think and say about you, your actions are not your own. To live your life your way, you must rise above the opinion of others.
Desire for success, fame, wealth — In the end, all these are empty because they are vague qualities with no clear endpoint. No matter how much of any of them you get, it will never be enough.
Fear of failure — Failure is a natural part of learning. We try, we fail, and then we try again better. When society convinces us not to try out of the fear of failure, it keeps us from growing and improving.
Most men lead lives of quiet desperation.
— Henry David Thoreau
How it works
The American naturalist and writer Henry David Thoreau lived alone in a small cabin he built on the shore of Walden Pond. He famously pointed out, “Most men lead lives of quiet desperation.” Caged by society’s rules and expectations, most people chafe and feel stilted.
Unlike Thoreau, you don’t need to leave society to live apart. The critical element is not to physically separate yourself from your community but to do so in your mind.
Society’s power comes from the expectations it places upon you to be a good man or woman, worker, spouse, member of your church, and so on.
You separate yourself when you refuse to accept expectations that don’t fit your values. This change happens in your mind.
Living apart occurs in mental, not physical space.
So What Can You Do?
Your solution is not to agree with society’s formulas. If you withhold your consent to society’s rules, you are living apart — you are free. It’s really that simple, but that’s not easy.
Freedom comes from living by your values and refusing to conform to society’s rules blindly. Master that, and you will become your own person in a world determined to mold you into what it wants.
Withhold your agreement to society’s formula and you are free.
What Holds You Back?
The biggest hurdle to living apart is recognizing the expectations that bind you to society. Once you have agreed to a societal rule, you internalize it. Once internalized, it feels like a part of you. You come to identify yourself with the external rules imposed on you.
Internalized societal values come to feel like a part of your identity. It isn’t easy to separate your desires from what others have told you to desire. That makes these false beliefs difficult to dispel because they are challenging to recognize.
Society’s formulas may not have been yours to start with, but they come to feel like they are.
My Story
As a successful surgeon, people expected me to live in a big house, drive a luxury car, own a yacht, and vacation in exclusive resorts. I tried that for a while, and here is what I learned.
Big houses require a lot of time and money to maintain.
Luxury automobiles don’t go on the alpine trails I love.
Sailing offers freedom under sail but ties you down by owning a yacht.
Exclusive resorts get boring. I’d rather stay where the locals live.
Defying these expectations has improved my life. I’m not saying my choices are suitable for everyone. I am saying that you need to make your own choices to live a life that is right for you.
To live a fulfilling life, you must stop going along with the crowd.
To Live Apart from Society, You Must First Recognize;
- Not everything you want is what you want.
2. Society’s formulas will not lead to a meaningful life.
3. Worrying about what other people think puts you in a cage.
4. Fear of failure limits your opportunity for success.
What to Do
Step 1 — Identify your False Beliefs
Write down all the rules you have internalized. I recommend using both of the following methods.
Set aside time to make a list. Write down all the rules you live by, the formulas you think will bring you success, and the expectations of others you try to live up to.
I’ll warn you; this will take more than twenty minutes. The danger is that you list a few obvious things and assume you’re finished. However, the real meat of the exercise starts when you go deeper and unearth the rules that are not so obvious.
Those more profound rules are the ones that exert the most control over you. The things we are unaware of have the most control over us. When we bring those subconscious rules to awareness, then we control them.
So take the time to do the exercise properly and dig deep. To get the most value, you must uncover those hidden motivations that subconsciously control you.
What we don’t understand controls us. What we understand, we control.
Keep notes throughout your day. Because these expectations are unconscious, it isn’t easy to think of them when making a list. But they have a way of signaling their existence in your day.
When you have internalized a rule rather than arrived at it on your own, it has a strong emotion attached to it. Because it’s the emotion that keeps your behavior in line with the rule.
If your rule is challenged, you will likely experience an emotional response. You may even lash out at anyone who questions it and assume they are morally bankrupt.
You know you’ve uncovered an internalized rule when you experience a strong reaction. Write that down on a piece of paper or make a note on your phone. You have just learned something valuable, don’t let it slip away.
Strong emotional reactions signal external rules.
Step 2 — Question the Rules
The way to dispel false beliefs is to question them. In the intense light of honest inquiry, falsities dissipate like the illusions they are.
Question those rules. For each rule, expectation, formula, or belief you have unearthed, ask;
Does it serve me? In the past, has following this rule produced the results it promised?
Where did it come from? Is this a belief you arrived at on your own, or was it handed down to you from somewhere else?
How likely is this to work for me in the future? Too often, we stick with losing strategies rather than question our assumptions, don’t make this mistake.
Is there a better rule you can put in its place? Is it likely you will get better results with a new strategy? Then start one today.
When you examine your assumptions about life, you will better understand why you do what you do. More importantly, you can consciously choose to do better in the future. Living your life by the conscious decisions you make, rather than the subconscious rules you have internalized, is what it means to live apart.
Wrap it up
To live apart does not mean to leave society physically. It means to separate your thoughts from the formulas, rules, opinions of others, desire for success, and fear of failure that hold you back. Those social controls may serve society, but they hinder you.
When you recognize how the internalized expectations of others hold you down, you can make independent decisions in the future. When you do that, you will be free.
Read More:
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The Road Not Traveled
I was the fool always getting ready to live but never living — until now.
