What does freedom mean to you?
To have freedom, you need agency.
To have agency, you need competence.
To have competence, you need to practice skills and get better.
Sometimes even skills you don’t like to use or find boring. You know, the ones that keep you stuck because they’re that important.
“My people perish for lack of knowledge.” Hosea 4:6
It’s what you can do without having to rely on someone else to do it for you.
Why is that important? Because someone will offer to do it for you and they may not have your best interest in mind.
Or worse, you get comfortable coercing them into it.
Get practical
What’s a good example? Math.
People say how they don’t need the algebra they learned in school. Or even calculus.
Maybe you can just get by with some elementary stats to give you some vague notion of where other people succeed and how you can if you try to follow their path.
It’s mostly true. You can get through a lot in life with a four function calculator.
Mostly.
Because you don’t want to be stuck behind endless spreadsheets agonizing over whether you should buy an ice cream cone.
You also don’t want fantastical promises to lead you to an empty wallet.
But there’s a narrow way between worrying about and modeling out the future to the point where you’re not functional and going through life one transaction at a time without concern for what if means for your future self.
Real choices
Instead it comes down to a false dichotomy: either you’re good at math, or you aren’t.
But folks, false dichotomies have one of two purposes: marketing tool to create the impression of scarcity, or a limiting belief. And neither of those serve your interest, so it must not be true.
False dichotomies obscure the optionality of what’s available to you. There’s more than two paths available. You just need the skills to walk them.
You need to be able to do math.
You need to be able to communicate and persuade.
You need to understand contracts and negotiation.
You need to know how those skills work together to run a business. Because that’s what generates revenue for a business, whether you run your own or work for someone else.
These are all things that will affect you whether you understand them or not.
If you can do all those and add value to someone else’s life, you’ll probably do well for yourself.
Start learning
You don’t need a doctorate in every subject. Just enough understanding to not be taken advantage of.
That’s agency.
So think about something in your life that’s annoying you. Something you have control over, not a vague thing that happens somewhere outside of your neighborhood.
It could be nutrition.
It could be physical fitness.
It could be getting pregnant.
It could be unmedicated childbirth.
It could be raising a family.
It could even be socializing enough so you’re not completely alone.
Something you can do something about in a single action on your own. Without having to band together with thousands or millions of others to get it done.
That’s freedom.
Affiliate Corner
That was a lot of skills. An especially large group to learn on your own.
But what if you could learn from a group with members already working on 1-2 of those?
Join me at Tom Woods’ School of Life and find an accountability group to learn how you can build agency one week at a time.
What skills do you want to hear more about? Leave a comment below so I know what to write next.
There’s more on skills and agency in these related posts. Check them out before you go:
Liberty Begins At Home 
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