r/selfconcept

People who don’t know how to communicate think everything is an argument. People who don’t know how to listen think everything is criticism. People who don’t regulate their emotions think feeling something justifies any way of acting. People who have never worked on themselves think everyone else is the problem. People who don’t know how to be alone think any companionship is love. People who don’t face their problems think ignoring them will make them disappear. Healing also means no longer making others responsible for what you need to work on yourself. The problem isn’t feeling too much. It’s not knowing what to do with what you feel.

I have always equated freedom with having options.
More careers, more people to date, more places to live, things to buy, lifestyles to explore.
Growing up, this sounded like THE DREAM!

I mean my parents didn't have many of these options, so surely I should feel more free, more privileged no?

But then reality hit. This should-ness doesn't really seem to land or translate into a feeling of freedom. Presence of too many options sometimes feels crippling instead. I have been trying to understand why.

This video made something that was already there within me surface.
Not that having options is bad. Ofc, having choices that the previous generations didn't have can be freeing. But there's this a gap I'm trying to make sense of: why doesn't the presence of more choices necessarily translate into the experience of greater freedom?

Why does almost every decision remain provisional because there might alwayss be something better? Another job, another relationship, city, lifestyle, another version of ourselves.
Am I ever completely here then with the choice I've made?
Or am I already comparing it with the possibility of something else?

If every option is an opportunity, but nothing ever feels sufficient, am I actually experiencing freedom?

Some anchor seems to be missing, a certain center / a north star within that knows. And hence is not pulled in so many directions, even in the presence of options. Thoughts?

Watch full video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5bRKiifwwKY&t=198s

They told you that you talk too much, care too much, feel too much. And for a long time you believed them. But the overthinker became the strategist. The sensitive one became the artist. The dreamer became the storyteller. What they called too much was always just enough of exactly the right thing. No one can be you. And that was never a flaw.