Can a personal-growth framework honor human choice without assuming everyone defines freedom in the same way?
Because of my work with William Glasser International from 2011 to 2023, I had the honor and privilege of traveling to several countries and interacting deeply with the people there. I was repeatedly struck by how well William Glasser’s Choice Theory® psychology translated across cultures. Although its application didn’t look identical everywhere, people around the world found meaningful ways to use Choice Theory to gain greater influence over their lives.
When I created Mental Freedom, I was very conscious of wanting the same thing. My international experiences taught me to be more culturally aware and, I hope, sensitive to cultural differences. I learned to make room for perspectives that don’t align with my strongly held values and beliefs without judging them as wrong. I wanted to be sure that openness was built into Mental Freedom.
I was particularly concerned because ideas that sound empowering in an individualistic culture may sound unrealistic, selfish, or even disempowering in a collectivist culture. The true test would not be whether people everywhere repeated the same language, but whether the underlying principles remained useful while allowing for cultural adaptation.
What We Share as Human Beings
Choice Theory proposes that human beings share a universal foundation. People everywhere:
- Have five basic needs, Safety & Security, Connection, Freedom, Significance, and Joy.
- Experience expectations, disappointment, fear, relationships, and competing responsibilities.
- Create meaning from what happens to them.
- Retain some capacity to choose how they think about and respond to their circumstances, even though the choices available to them may differ dramatically.
An important nuance is that universality does not mean everyone has the same opportunities, freedoms, resources, or cultural permission.
Where Culture Changes the Application
In Principle 3 of Mental Freedom, we discuss Empowering vs. Disempowering Language. One distinction I emphasize is the difference between “have to” and “want to.”
We often feel disempowered when we tell ourselves we “have to” do something. When we reconnect with the reasons we believe we have to do something, we may be able to shift our language from “have to” to “get to” or “want to.” The reason may be that we value the benefits of doing it or want to avoid the consequences of not doing it. Recognizing that choice can increase our Mental Freedom.
I have also taught that “choose to” can be an intermediary step. It may create more Mental Freedom than “have to,” although I believed it didn’t create quite as much as genuinely being able to say, “I want to.”
However, when one of our Mental Freedom facilitators led a group of Taiwanese women, she and her participants agreed that “choose to” felt more empowering to them. This intrigued me, so I asked her to help me understand their perspective.
She explained that in a patriarchal and collectivist culture, women may want many things they are not free or encouraged to pursue. For them, “want to” did not necessarily convey agency. “Choosing to,” however, spoke directly to their volition and felt more empowering.
Because language carries different emotional and cultural meanings, I didn’t want the Mental Freedom principles to become so rigid that the wording mattered more than the person did.
Understanding another person’s perspective doesn’t require agreeing with it. I explore that distinction further in Why Understanding Doesn’t Mean Agreement.
I strongly believe cultural adaptation can strengthen a framework without diluting its central ideas. Listening to participants, considering their perspectives, and making thoughtful adaptations are all part of ethical teaching.
The Difference Between Adaptation and Compromise
In considering making adaptations, I asked myself, “What must remain consistent for Mental Freedom to remain Mental Freedom, and what can change according to culture, language, circumstances, or audience?
For me, the answer is that the core principles remain consistent, while the language and application of those principles may change.
For example:
- Agency remains central, but agency may be expressed differently.
- Choice remains central, but available choices differ.
- Empowering language remains central, but the most empowering words may differ.
- Personal responsibility remains central, but responsibilities to family and community may be deeply meaningful rather than merely externally imposed.
Another example came from one of our facilitators who works with people returning to their communities after an incarceration experience. When he saw the three pillars of Mental Freedom—Open Your Heart, Free Your Mind, Transform Your Life—he was concerned that asking people coming out of prison to begin by opening their hearts, might feel extremely difficult, if not impossible.
He asked if he could present the pillars in a different order by beginning with Free Your Mind before Open Your Heart. Naturally, I said yes.
The purpose of the language is to help people access the framework. The language should never become a barrier to the very freedom we hope to support.
What Facilitators Must Learn
Facilitators who want to work effectively across cultures must be willing to:
- Avoid assuming their preferred language is universally empowering.
- Lead with curiosity rather than judgment. Influence begins with genuine understanding, not persuasion. That’s a principle I explore further in Influence Begins with Understanding.
- Ask how each person understands freedom, responsibility, family, loyalty, and belonging.
- Notice their own need-strength bias and cultural bias. We all have both.
- Offer information without insisting on one “correct” application.
- Make space for more than one perspective.
- Let cultural humility replace presumed expertise.
- Remain open to learning new things that may influence how you see the world.
Choice Theory® Connection
Choice Theory identifies basic human needs, but people learn culturally shaped ways of satisfying them.
- Glasser proposed that the needs are universal and that the strength of each need is genetically determined. I would add that the ways people understand, express, and satisfy those needs are also culturally shaped.
- The behaviors, values, and socially acceptable choices used to satisfy the needs are influenced by culture.
- Effective Mental Freedom facilitators must understand both our shared humanity and each person’s cultural context.
Continue the Conversation
In this week’s podcast of Life = Choices; Choices = Life, Drs. Marcella Finnerty and Shu-han Huang share what happened when they facilitated Mental Freedom Experiences with women in Ireland, the Middle East, and Taiwan.
Their experiences demonstrate that a framework does not need to produce identical choices to have cross-cultural value. It needs to respect people enough to allow them to determine what freedom, responsibility, and empowerment mean in their own lives.
Reflection
Where might you be assuming that what feels empowering to you must also feel empowering to someone from a different culture?
Experience Mental Freedom
The Mental Freedom Experience offers principles rather than prescriptions, allowing participants to decide what applies to their own lives, relationships, and cultural contexts.
Our next Experience begins September 2. You’re warmly invited to join us.
