When I was younger, I liked staying up late on weekend nights until 1am, rather than just falling asleep like a normal person.

I didn’t even have a reasonable excuse for my behaviour.

I was on my bed, playing games on my phone and scrolling towards the end of a never-ending TikTok feed. I would wake up and start finishing the night’s work. Back to video games. Back to scrolling. All of this happened before I even got out of bed.

Those nights felt like freedom at the time, like a quiet rebellion I was staging against my parents who had no clue what I was doing. It felt thrilling doing something I shouldn’t have been doing, and trying to avoid getting caught.

Looking back, I realise that my definition of fun has changed. It doesn’t feel so great anymore to destroy my health and betray my parents, just to indulge in some cheap pleasures. It certainly doesn’t feel like freedom anymore.

I’ve realised something powerful:

Freedom isn’t being able to do whatever you want. A life without rules is a prison, the exact opposite of freedom.

That may sound counterintuitive but looking at my story, it does make some sense. If I went to bed earlier and protected my sleep, I would’ve been a lot freer. I would’ve been energised. My health would’ve been better. I wouldn’t have been overwhelmed with guilt from doing the wrong thing.

Here are three ideas to think about, to help you live a more free life:

Rewrite Society’s Rules

Do you even have your own definition of freedom?

Often when you think you’re chasing “freedom”, you’re actually chasing the definition of it that society’s prepared for you. You’re fulfiling other people’s visions of how you should live your life, how much money is enough, and where the best place to live is.

If you want to start creating your own rules for freedom, you first have to get rid of the ones society’s made for you.

They’re too general. You’re too unique. That’s the problem.

First, understand that freedom happens through your own choices, which either build you up or break you down. Nobody can tell you exactly how to be free. Only you know what’s best for you so you have to figure it out yourself.

You probably don’t realise how much you conform to other people’s standards as well.

If you spend some time in a quiet room by yourself (an impressive feat in today’s age), you know you’re really a completely different person compared to the persona you put on while around others.

Your mind in that room feels oddly relaxed. You feel free. You don’t have to suppress your true thoughts and meet the expectations of others. You can behave however you want. Nobody’s watching.

That person there is your true self, who doesn’t conform to anyone. It’s a shame that the world doesn’t see more of it, because that true self is far more valuable and easier to maintain.

Don’t leave society altogether of course. Being with others is certainly freeing. Going outside with them helps you escape the box of your room. If you’re completely changing yourself around others though, they’re probably the wrong people who shouldn’t be controlling how you live.

Living in your own way is far freer than being drowned amongst the masses. Nobody remembers you for being normal. They remember your uniqueness, so let it shine.

I said that freedom needs rules, but in the case of society’s rules, no rules rules.

Avoid Cheap Pleasure

Being able to do anything you want feels absolutely amazing.

Imagine lying down on a couch sipping an incredibly sugary can of Coke, scrolling through a feed of videos engineered for maximum entertainment, or drowning out the noise of real life with the artificial noise of a video game.

However, the great feeling you get from these sorts of activities only lasts in the moment. After that comes great pain.

There’s the immediate pain of regret, and then the distant pain that comes back to haunt you. Does being admitted to a hospital with high blood pressure sound fun to you? Does that sound relaxing? You never can know the future consequences of your actions.

I wasn’t free on those late nights. I was ruining my health for no reason, making myself less free as a result. I was saying that I couldn’t have cared less about myself since I was going to such extreme lengths just to avoid going to sleep.

Most things that make you feel instant pleasure without any effort lead to pain in the long run.

Don’t stop having any fun at all. You just need to redefine your definition of fun so you can be more free.

What’s fun is feeling a sense of purpose, making progress on your goals, and being happy, not being bound to a chair and flooding your brain with too much dopamine for it to handle.

When you do those really pleasurable things, you have to question whether you really care about yourself.

They might feel freeing in the moment, and yes, the moment is always what matters. You also have to think about the next moment and the next one because each next moment becomes the new present you’ll have to endure.

Create a Routine

A few months ago, I left my home of England to visit Spain for a week.

It was a nice break from the usual madness of normal, everyday life but one aspect of the break went horribly wrong: my evenings.

They had no structure. When I was in England, I had a consistent sleep routine. I woke up and went to bed at the same time each day. I dropped my phone some minutes before bed so my mind could wind down after the day’s activities.

In Spain, the opposite happened. I got obsessed with the idea that the break was meant to be relaxing and I didn’t want to impose rules.

Things went horribly wrong. My sleep routine was inconsistent. I felt horrible each morning after getting poor nights of sleep. I didn’t establish a clear sleep/wake time.

The way I thought about the whole situation ended up doing more harm to me than good. Allowing myself to be too free made me less free.

This horrible experience taught me about the great power of routines. Deciding where, when and how you’re going to do things makes your life far easier.

Instead of having to think about every single decision, you can free up more mental space for the things that matter.

You can make a routine for anything:

• Your mornings
• Your evenings
• Work
• Meals

Not having a routine usually results in your days being messy. You might think that your future self will just be able to figure it out when the time comes, but they’ll be left drowning in despair because of you.

Deciding what you’ll do beforehand prevents that.

Conclusion – Some More Ideas About Freedom

• Freedom is being able to decide what’s truly best for you and then being able to do that.
• Freedom happens when you stop trying to be free, when you escape the game the world plays of trying to obtain it.
• Freedom happens anywhere you want it to. It’s made in your mind.