Responsibility and Freedom Are Two Sides Of The Same Coin

by Suresh Velauthan on September 1, 2009

Coin (Courtesy of stock.xchng by yochim)It was interesting reading the earlier article entitled “At Which level of Love Are You Operating? It Could Be Affecting Your Weight Loss Efforts?”. If we take a closer look at them we will realize something interesting:

Level 1 – I love me for my sake (babies) -extremely immature and extremely irresponsible but what can you expect from babies (I mean this from a psychological perspective as some adults also tend to gravitate to this state from time to time)

Level 2 – I love you for my sake – here the individual is passing the responsibility of his/her happiness to the other and as such is still a slave and dependent on the other for his/her happiness

Level 3 – I love you for your sake – although on the surface it looks unselfish and mature, but again the responsibility for the individual’s happiness is passed to the other which leads to dependence and usually unhappiness because the individual still lacks the freedom to determine his/her own destiny.

Level 4 – I love me for your sake – finally maturity is achieved and the individual takes complete responsibility for his/her happiness and has the freedom to becomes the master of his/her own life. Only when you have happiness within can you share it with others because we can only share what we have.

This relationship between Responsibility & Freedom can be applied to all aspects of life.When you take responsibility for your education you do well in your studies and achieve freedom from study worries.When you take responsibility for your finances you do well in managing your money and freedom from money worries(unlike all those people who passed their financial responsibility to so called financial experts).

When you take responsibility for your physical well being, you will achieve it and freedom from health/looks concerns. Seeking guidance is good but passing the responsibility to someone else (doctors, quick fix treatments etc) or doing things without taking the responsibility to understand if it is sustainable will eventually keep you enslaved to the same old health/looks concerns.

The only challenge with taking responsibility is it requires growing up or maturing.As the saying goes growing old is mandatory but growing up is optional. Well actually if you live your life responsibly than your biological age can be significantly lower than your chronological age and even growing biologically old may be optional.

{ 4 trackbacks }

Is it really selfish to put your wellbeing ahead of everything else? « Correct Weight Loss Blog
August 31, 2009 at 2:53 am
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Understanding Leads to Effortless Discipline in Weight Loss « Correct Weight Loss Blog
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Who is to Blame if You are Overweight? « Correct Weight Loss Blog
August 31, 2009 at 11:26 pm

{ 1 comment… read it below or add one }

Bala January 7, 2009 at 5:22 pm

Great thoughts on responsibility.

Taking full responsibility for your circumstances is a significant milestone in journey of reaching maturity.

As Albert Camus says, ‘ Life is A Sum of All Your Choices ‘

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