give up some autonomy
Christian Ray Flores here, reflecting on the last few weeks.
I haven’t posted a new Xponential video in three weeks. For someone who coaches others on the power of consistency in content creation — and lives by it — that’s not a small thing. But what filled those three weeks made it worth it.
Last night I was standing at a graduation party, tears running down my face, stopping every few minutes to say thank you to people who have known my family for over a decade. Parents. Friends. People who showed up in the hard moments and the good ones. All three of my daughters are now college graduates. An era ended for Deb and me. That was last night.
Three weeks ago, a friend’s son died. Hundreds of people gathered to grieve together.
In between — a baptism of a friend.
A surgery of my daughter.
Another graduation of my oldest daughter. Five moments.
All of them held by the same thing. I’ve spent fifteen years deliberately giving up some of my autonomy. Not because I had to. I still lean hard toward freedom. I’ve engineered my life for more choices, more presence, maximum agency. But I also realized that true freedom does not mean going it alone.
People are messy. Community is inefficient. It will slow you down, cost you something, and at times break your heart. But we are wired for it — and the research on what happens when we walk away from it is striking.
Investigative journalist and bestselling author David Epstein just released Inside the Box. The research on what happens to people who walk away from community confirmed what I’ve felt and been intentional about for fifteen years.
People with high social engagement — clubs, faith communities, volunteer groups, showing up regularly for something beyond themselves — have a 42% lower risk of death. Forty-two percent.
We left. We left the clubs, the civic organizations, the faith communities. We optimized for personal freedom. And the people chasing maximum personal satisfaction report being less happy than those who accepted the friction of doing life with others.
What makes it worse is that disconnection has become so common it no longer feels like a problem. It just feels like life. We are paying a steep price for it.
Modern doesn’t mean progress. In this case it’s regress.
The answer isn’t giving up freedom or agency. It’s giving up some autonomy for the sake of something that will outlast you — healthy, rooted, committed community.
For my paid subscribers, I’ll lay out my 10 move playbook from the last fifteen years that led me to a life full of love.
And I’ll leave everyone else with this video my daughter Bella found of herself talking about graduation — fast forwarding to the moment she walked as a Summa Cum Laude graduate.
