Soren Kierkegaard was a philosopher born in Copenhagen in 1813 and lived in, what became known as the Danish Golden Age of Culture. He studied Theology at university and during his time there he became very interested in Philosophy. He believed that anxiety is the dizziness of freedom.
Life Is Determined By Our Actions
Kierkegaard believed that our lives are determined by our actions, which are themselves, determined by our choices. As a result, how we make those choices is critical to our lives.
Kierkegaard saw moral decisions as a choice between the self-gratifying and the ethical and he believed that those moral choices are absolutely free, moreover, they are subjective. He stated that it is our will alone that determines our judgement.
Free Will Is A Choice To Feel
In fact, Kierkegaard believed that this freedom of choice, rather than creating feelings of happiness, actually creates feelings of dread and anxiety. He gives an example in his book ‘The Concept of Anxiety’.
Furthermore, Kierkegaard asks us to consider a man standing on a cliff or tall building. If this man looks over the edge, he experiences two different types of fear: the fear of falling and the fear brought on by the impulse to jump. The fear created by the impulse to jump arises from the awareness that he has absolute freedom to choose whether to jump or not. He believed the feeling was as dizzying as vertigo.
Kierkegaard suggested that we experience the same anxiety in all our moral choices when we realise we have the freedom to make even the most terrifying of decisions. He called it the ‘dizziness of freedom’. Moreover, he explains that although it induces despair, it can also shake us from our unthinking responses. How? By showing us the power of freedom we have to make our own choices. It leads to increased self-awareness and a sense of personal responsibility.
Ownership Is Empowering
I like this concept of anxiety as the dizziness of freedom. It leads me to have a greater insight into the concept of secondary gain and resistance to personal responsibility, which we all experience. That is to say, sometimes it’s easier to hold onto the problem, Sometimes, we get more out of it.
Actually, this is one of the first things we address in NLP Coaching. We ask the question “what do you have to stop doing that you might find comforting, to let this behaviour or issue go?” In fact, when we identify behaviours that don’t serve us, we can all delve deeper by asking the same question.
