Self understanding ourselves is something we try to do throughout our lifetime and sometimes we might not even understand our behaviour because like you said it is determinant on a lot of things. from this post and from my personal experience I have been able to understand that freedom is the key to attaining most of what we want, need and crave. and then I have come to understand that due to the external factor that involves we humans, total freedom to be decisive in everything we want is not what we can totally achieve.
In reality 100% freedom isn't even obtainable because this can be abused, people's behavior towards freedom can sometimes be over expressive, sometimes having the freedom to unlimited fund sometimes can make us ostentatiously spent because nothing is actually stopping us.
This has been a very beautiful and thoughtfully read, its good to see you publish, freedom based economics