Your voice was heard and your thoughts on freedom rang loud and clear. Thank you for all for participating in this first #freedomchallenge!

I am amazed by your words and by how much you opened up to share your thoughts and feelings about freedom.

We had 19 submissions in total

As your thoughts, musings and essays on freedom came in, I quickly realized that this #freedomchallenge idea goes beyond what I had hoped we would accomplish. Your message is clear; we need to talk about this topic. We want to learn from each other and help each other define freedom. Freedom is so important to us.

Therefore it is without a doubt that I choose to continue hosting this challenge as long as it continues to be useful to us. I was thinking about the frequency of the prompts. There was a lot of work and energy that went into these freedom posts! I feel that I need to take time to digest these words and let the messages sink in. But that's just me. Please tell me in the comments how you feel about the frequency of the #freedomchallenge. Is every other week about right? Weekly? Monthly?

So with that said, there was a promise of the payout!

The 1st Freedom Challenge announcement post earned $5.90 in author rewards.

Well I just had the great idea given to me by @pennsif to offer runner up prizes in the next #FreedomChallenge contest. I love this idea! Given the popularity this contest has received and the amount of passion put into it I don't want to wait to extend that concept! Call me sentimental to steemit or a noob... or both ... I'm going to share some of the future payout I will receive for my thoughts on Freedom In My Mind (my own unofficial response to this challenge) for two runner up winners.

I tried to narrow down to my favorite entries and to be honest I couldn't narrow it down very much at all because there is just too much genuine authentic quality here. So in all fairness to you amazing freedom writers I used a random number generator to select the 3 winners:

1st place winner for 5.90 SBD:

@beulinator with post Freedom challenge: What does freedom mean to me

2nd place winner for 2.45 SBD:

@schoonercreek with What Does Freedom Mean to Me? #freedomchallenge

3rd place winner for 1 SBD:

@likedeeler with What Does Freedom Mean To Me?

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Winners please check your wallets for your reward.

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Thank you all for participating. I really enjoyed reading all of your thoughts and learning from your philosophies. I am feeling a lot of gratitude for you all right now.

I've included the contest participants below here in one place, in order of their entry for your reading enjoyment. Included are quotes, but to do them full justice you really must read them in their entirety.

Until the next challenge... peace and may you live free!

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What freedom means to me!

by @bthebest7
"Freedom is being able to do anything you want whenever, wherever, with whomever you want, so long as you are doing no harm. Everyone has the absolute God-given rights to Life, Liberty, and Property. We answer to no one but God, so long as we do no harm. No man has authority over any man on this earth."

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What Is Freedom?

by @senorcoconut
"Freedom means I can live my life the way I want to, without government but with respect for myself, respect for my surroundings, self reliance and living with complete awareness of my consequences."

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What Freedom Means to Me

by @yadah04
"Freedom means a sense of commitment to every deed that I do. However mundane it may be, say, playing with my little one, or studying the Bible with an interested friend, or cooking a dish for my family, or posting a content here at Steemit. I know that when I put my heart and mind into doing it, I feel free because I know the result is what I truly deserve. I am free from the what-ifs and the regrets."

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What Freedom means to me #freedomchallenge

by @warpedweaver
"The ability to free the mind and find peace in your heart and mind, to me is where real freedom exists. Imagine all the confusing thoughts and fears as a backpack. My backpack was stuffed. I had things hanging off the outside even. Nearly paralyzed from the load, I started to sort through the pack, knowing some how there was something better than this" ... "I had to forgive myself, and then throw it out of the backpack. This freedom for me has opened my heart and mind."

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Is Freedom What We Think it is?

by @minismallholding
"Freedom is not a free pass to do what you want, but rather the responsibility to make your own decisions. Freedom is having the ability to self govern, but also the ability to let others govern you if you so choose."

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What does Freedom Mean to Us?

by @mountainjewel
"Being free to help free others, and perhaps offering illumination along the path." ... "Freedom is lifelong work and a continual evolution, there is no static finish line. Freedom is a perspective, attitude and approach that can be achieved through conscious decision making throughout life."

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Freedom challenge

by @dreamon77
"Again, the problem is in the process of choosing, not in 'what we want' or in dedicating it to. 'What we want' is the direct result of captivity; a solid chain around our door - though, as Gibran says, 'his loops glitter in the sun and blind our eyes.' The key question is 'why we want what we want'."

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Thoughts of an Eco-anarchist; prompt Freedomchallenge

by @cardoprimo
"Freedom and Anarchy are almost synonymous, both meaning that nobody is telling you what to do, and nobody forcing you to do it. Anarchy is free human interaction without coercion. Without anarchy, there is no freedom, and without freedom, there is no anarchy. Anarchy is freedom to have whatever actions, thoughts, feelings and experiences you desire so long as you are not limiting the freedoms of another in the process. It is the understanding that nobody else can tell me what I should experience, nor can I tell others what they have experienced or must experience."

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Freedom Challenge: What Does Freedom Mean To Myself and My Husband

by @thehoneys
"Reminding ourselves that we have the freedom to choose different actions, or different thoughts is really true freedom. If we want more of what makes us happy, we are free to go after them. I'm grateful that I live in a country where I have the opportunity to even think this way, where a lot of people in other countries, survival is their first thought. Yet, they too experience freedom because it's a state of mind, not an imposed condition."

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What Does Freedom Mean To Me?

by @likedeeler
"Freedom is a state of mind. The absence of chains does not mean you are free. So there is objective and subjective freedom. And both come in varying degrees. If you got chains all over you, but you are too blind to see them, you might feel free, but any outsider able to see the chains would tell you that you are not. The body might be in jail, but the mind can be free."

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Freedom Challenge Entry

by @yogajill
"Peace of mind and Spirit for the well being of life on our planet and elsewhere. To know that life is thriving now and onward into the future. There is no ill agenda to fight, no human violence towards life. No worry of what the future will be like. We would speak a language of abundance rather than enslavement."

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What Freedom Means to Me

by @firststeps
"There are times when I can rise above it all boundless and completely free. But before too long I am dragged down and have to search for the new truth that will set me free again. Each of us have our own path with our own lies to uncover and our own truths to discover. Sometimes our paths join and we have an opportunity to be a stumbling block or a light in the darkness."

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Freedom Challenge #1: What Does Freedom Mean to You?

by @cecicastor
"[Freedom] is independence and self-sufficiency to live the life I choose without restraints and encumberments. Living on a homestead gives me this autonomy. I don’t need to leave the homestead for food or water as it is here.
I will be producing power (working towards totally off grid), so I won’t need the power company. I am debt free. No mortgage as the homestead was built out of pocket."

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What Does Freedom Mean to Me? #freedomchallenge

by @schoonercreek
"Knowledge and the flow of information is no longer controlled by a few. This sort of freedom also requires one to use their minds and their intuition to sort and sift through the information. But the ability to educate ourselves and to learn is the ultimate freedom- the freedom to make our own observations and come to our own objective conclusions. The freedom to learn the skills we need to live a life with more freedom. The freedom to be inspired."

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You Can't Buy Freedom, But You Can Grow It!

by @canadianrenegade
"We want to be free to choose what we eat and how we eat it. We want to be free from the constraints of an employer. We want to be free to focus on what we are passionate about in life, unlocking our shackle of bills. We want our children to be free to to form their own thoughts unbound by a rigid education system."

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Freedom challenge: What does freedom mean to me

by @beulinator
"The freedom of not being enslaved or imprisoned, most would say they posses. However from my experience I have only in my last few years felt such freedom to some extent (as I believe no one has true freedom as we are told and controlled by higher forces, such as government)." ... "I strongly believe that freedom does not come freely but with sometimes mild but most frequently with great consequences. Freedom is messy."

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WHAT DOES FREEDOM MEAN TO YOU?: FREEDOM CHALLENGE #1

by @trucklife-family
"Freedom for me means many things, one if them is being able to celebrate all the diversity in our lives, from the people to the places. Too often our differences are highlighted in a negative manner, but we all carry so much wisdom and skills that when celebrated can create something wonderful. Having the freedom to come together and share that wisdom, to learn from one another and to grow is something that is important to me."

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Freedom Challenge - What is Freedom?

by @johndickinson
"Humans are conscious, sentient beings and we are all so different. My hopes and fears and opinions are as different from yours as are our talents and our flaws. It is impossible to create uniformity of either thought or action. When governments try to do so, they fail. But that failure has many consequences, almost all of which are bad. An attempt to remove or restrict freedom removes everything that makes human beings special and life worth living."

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What does freedom mean to me?

by @varignon
"Only a man can give up his own freedom. They can take away your time, your body, but you will always have your thoughts. They can try priming your mind, but if you stay vigilant and persistent you will carry on. You have freedom in some way. In my opinion, the most important part of freedom. Everyone individual was put on earth with freedom, freedom of mind. This is a type of independence that is most crucial to protect. It is the control center of your existence and you must have defenses."