The early years of my childhood were, for the most part, riddled with intense emotional pain and crippling fear. I experienced emotional, physical, and psychological abuse perpetrated mainly by schoolteachers and their punitive religious doctrines. As if fearing I would spend eternity in hell for telling a lie or missing church on Sunday wasn't bad enough, the unrelenting bullying in high school only made things worse.

I assumed at that time that this was normal; I had no idea about the effects it would have on me as I entered adulthood . As I got older, my intellectual capacity grew faster than my emotional maturity. Thinking I was too smart for society, I quickly became a defiant rule-breaker with little respect for authority. Then, in my early teens, I was hit by a car, breaking several bones and requiring a visit to the emergency room. The trauma caused me to have frequent panic attacks, and I developed a fear of intersections. From then on, I would suffer from anxiety, depression, and derealization periodically, and I had no idea how to manage it. My first romantic relationship ended horribly due to my emotional instability, leaving me feeling shattered and alone .

It was a very challenging time for me, and I began smoking cigarettes and drinking alcohol heavily. My life continued to get worse, eventually leading to a point where I felt depressed and directionless. I spent much of my late teens and early twenties in and out of detention, suspension, and expulsion, followed by run-ins with the law and hospital visits. Some of my doctors and therapists eventually refused to see me because I wasn't making progress. Finally, my closest friends (understandably) began to distance themselves from me.

I got the message from my peers and elders that I would always be this way. People told me that I could not succeed in life and that I would never amount to anything. After being abandoned by my friends, my drinking binges increased. My unresolved issues plagued me, and most of my endeavors ended in disaster. I became unable to take responsibility for my actions and saw myself as a victim. I knew I wanted to better myself, but I didn't know where to start. Although, in school, I learned quite a bit about solving for X and the detailed anatomy of a frog, mental health-related life skills were simply not taught, at least not in my day.

I eventually managed to pull my life together into what I can only refer to as functioning chaos. I was able to hold down a job working as an emergency medical technician (EMT), and I had a girlfriend and some acquaintances for a short while. At this point, however, I was barely making enough money to survive. I had no direction or purpose, and I didn't know if I could continue living like that forever.

While stationed in my ambulance, outside a local hospital on a hot summer afternoon, I felt motivated to get out and walk, not entirely sure why or where I was going. I took my two-way radio. If an emergency call came through, I wouldn't be far away. It was a scorching hot day, so I wandered into the air-conditioned hospital where the cool air would give me a reprieve . As I walked through the halls, I saw a sign for the multi-faith chapel and felt drawn to it. I entered this room of spiritual refuge, hoping that I could somehow receive a spiritual awakening . I wasn't much of a believer, but I had nothing to lose.

On the chapel altar, I saw about five different holy books. I thought to myself that maybe the answer was in one of those books and began to silently deliberate over which to choose. One of the holy books was the Dhammapada, a Buddhist sacred scripture. Buddhism was typically portrayed as a religion of peace and was becoming more mainstream around that time, which made me curious . I opened the Dhammapada and read the first two lines: "Our life is shaped by our mind;

we become what we think:'

I was astonished. Here was this 2,000-year-old book with a similar message to what contemporary psychology was beginning to validate. If my mind is the source of my suffering, I thought, I must learn how to control it.

I began to meditate daily. Learning to meditate helped me believe in the power of my mind and my will. Though I was smoking two packs a day, with my newfound self-confidence I threw away my cigarettes and never looked back. I also began excitedly experimenting with other challenges I'd told myself I couldn't do in the past, like martial arts, hiking, and backpacking.

Then, one day, while stationed in my ambulance outside of a college in New Jersey, I began to reflect on my life. Up to this point, I was training in martial arts and meditating daily. Though life was noticeably improving, I couldn't help feeling like something was missing. I glanced over at my partner and thought about his life: he was about thirty years older than me and had worked as an EMT for twenty years. He would always complain about how he didn't make enough money to support his family and had to work very long hours to make ends meet. My instructors always taught me that becoming an EMT is just a stepping stone, the first of many upward career advancements . Yet, here I was, with no plan to speak of, looking at my potential future in the driver's seat. I didn't want that for my life. I wanted more, but I had no idea how to get it.

I began to feel trapped, and I was frightened at the prospect of ending up like my partner. I gazed out of the ambulance window and watched as the college students went to and from their classes and dorms. They seemed to be brimming with the light of potential and possibility. I thought about the promising futures they would have that I would not, unless I made a change. However, I knew the only reason I didn't continue with college or further my education was because of fear and self-doubt .

Suddenly , I realized that if the skills I developed through meditation had helped me see past my fears, overcome addiction, and strengthen my mind and body, they could also help me ignore self-doubt. I became determined to go back to college. I would no longer let fear determine my reality.

My philosophical inclination, coupled with my desire to help others, led me to pursue a master's degree and work in mental  health.  After  I graduated,  I was employed  at a psychiatric hospital, where I now work in tandem with an interdisciplinary team to stabilize, treat, and discharge individuals with severe and persistent mental illness. After years of studying the mind and, in a professional context, seeing people's mental health problems affect their behavior, I eventually began to wonder: are we free to determine our own fate?

I started to think about the ingredients that create a life of disfunction . Why do some people, like me and those I treat, experience emotional challenges in the aftermath of adversity, while others under similar or near-exact conditions don't? Why do some fail where others triumph? I became curious as to why some of us repeat the same mistakes without ever learning from them, such as in the case of criminal behavior, conduct disorders, and addiction. Throughout my studies, I saw that many clinicians, philosophers, and other thinkers took a deterministic view of human behavior (i.e., psychic determinism) and believed that the answers to those questions had to do with circumstances wholly outside our control (i.e., genetics, upbringing, etc.) I later learned the neuroscience and psychology of impulse disinhibition and poor judgment and realized that we all struggle with our impulses in different ways. This understanding helped me let go of my troublesome past. However, it also dramatically influenced how I think and feel about the concept of free will. As we will see, what we believe about free will has significant implications for how we live our lives.

I found myself in a puzzling position. While determinism made sense, it did not account for the situations where I witnessed empowerment , personal change, and the exertion of will and control over one's life circumstances . Moreover, in light of my journey out of despair, I knew that, if I believed, as many do, that free will is an illusion, I would not have recovered . Ultimately, I felt it was a false dilemma and that determinism and free will were not opposed. I knew deeply that change was possible for anyone, and I wanted to explain that to those yearning for it. But, to see how we can change, we must first believe that we can: we must know that, regardless of what the mainstream opinion suggests, change IS possible.

The Importance of Free Will and Autonomy

There is something remarkable and undeniable about human nature; we yearn to be free and exercise our will.  The erection of a 125-ton monument in the New York City harbor symbolizing freedom is evidence enough of this fact. Still, you only need to think about times you've felt the agony of the absence of choice to realize this universal truth. In my life and work, I have noticed that the feeling of free will has more bearing on our well-being than whether we are confined in a literal sense. That is, you can feel psychologically confined when you are physically free, and you can feel psychologically free when physically confined. In the former case, for example, it's easy to see that you don't need to be bound by shackles to feel paralyzed by a tough decision that can profoundly affect your life, or, for instance, constrained by an employer with an authoritarian style of leadership. In the latter case, there are many stories of people who have found meaning, purpose, and psychological freedom while imprisoned or in an otherwise restrictive situation or setting. What's more, our beliefs regarding free will have significant implications for our lives as individuals and as a society; it also affects how we behave.

Typically, debates regarding free will have centered around moral responsibility and questions of faith. However, the issue of free will extends further than the supposed impracti­cality of philosophical quandaries. Moreover, the mainstream ethos of rational thought reveals a gradual emergence of the belief that free will doesn't exist. 1  Many people believe in a sort of "behavioral fatalism" and do not think that people can self-direct their fate. Especially in my line of work, I've observed people dismiss the notion of helping others recover from mental illness. They subscribe to the idea that no one ever really changes; that "a tiger can't change its stripes."

Even Freud believed that , like the physical world, human behavior is deterministic. He thought that our actions are outside of our conscious control; that we are essentially slaves to unconscious processes.2 Formally, this is known as the freedom versus determinism dilemma, and it has been hotly debated for thousands of years - a topic to be explored later in the book.

In my frustration, brought about by constantly hearing people I admired and respected say that free will was an illusion, I began to explore the concept of freedom more deeply. I refused to believe it was a fantasy as it was the one thing that felt more real to me than anything else. I started to realize that the architecture of human free will is far more nuanced than most people think and is exponentially more relevant to our lives than we realize.

Nothing seems more certain than the fact of our free will, and indeed, there is no feeling more familiar than the loss of it. For most of us, freedom is a visceral certitude, the absence of which is overtly noticeable and which I believe lies at the core of human suffering. Thus, I've written this book in an attempt to change the prevailing zeitgeist: the denial of free will.

Part One discusses the historical and contemporary phi­losophy of free will, order and chaos, the phenomenon of polarization, and the middle path. Through research and clinical and personal experience, I illustrate the importance of free will (which I define as autonomy) and explain its underpinnings . I discuss some of the everyday habits that cause us to lose our freedom and show how to achieve more of it in our lives. I explain how "order" and "chaos" take innumerable forms that we tend to polarize, often at the expense of our inner freedom. I describe how they unfold in the personal struggles of the modern age, and I attempt to make sense of the confusing messages we sometimes hear from our society's gatekeepers. Using my experience as a student under spiritual teachers , clinicians, and even my patients, I examine the issues which arise when we go too far in either direction on the spectrum of order and chaos.

Parts Two, Three, and Four analyze the concepts of ac­ceptance, change, and understanding through the lens of current science, psychology, and spiritual practices. I discuss how they relate to the notions of free will, autonomy, and self-determination. The last chapters of Parts Two, Three, and Four include a methods section. The methods section provides tools and techniques for achieving greater freedom through acceptance and change and understanding how to traverse the middle way between them. The methods I list have been extracted from ancient and contemporary wisdom and include techniques that I've observed benefit people in clinical settings.

When I reflect on my life, it seems almost impossible to believe that I could have come this far, given where I started. In the beginning, the relentless suffering I experienced kept me locked into a negative cycle. I wasn't ever able to learn from my mistakes, and the painful consequences of my behavior reinforced my negative outlook. Eventually, however, I began to use the pain to motivate myself to improve my life. Over time, I transformed into someone unrecognizable to those who knew me, especially those who doubted me. Now, working in the service of people who deal with such great suffering allows me to give back and pass on what I've learned. Indeed, I believe that we do have free will. Perhaps a tiger can't change its stripes but a person can.