Today is July 4, 2018. Here in the United States, we are celebrating Independence Day, the day we cut the ties that bound us to another people and set off on our own. The Founders liberated us and set us on the new course. At that time, no one knew how long this experiment would last, or if it would succeed at all.
This is my favorite holiday of all holidays. It’s a day of liberation. It is my opinion that true success begins and ends with liberation.
You first must liberate yourself from all of the infections you have acquired as you’ve gone through life. You have to liberate yourself from cynicism, pessimism, and negative thinking. These beliefs systems will enslave you with limited thinking and disempower you.
You have to liberate yourself from the countless ways your mind tries to protect your ego and your identity. For example, the tendency to look at others as to find blame for your circumstances, placing yourself in the role of victim—and giving up your power and your agency. Or things like confirmation bias, which causes you to seek information that confirms the beliefs that your current situation is not of your making while refusing to find credible any information to the contrary. If you feel right now that what you are reading is wrong, that your condition is not of your own making and there is an “other” somewhere to blame, you may recognize some truth here.
You also must liberate yourself from apathy and complacency, failing to use the gifts you have been given to their full effects. Finding meaning and purpose in your life is a form of liberation but doing so is not something someone else gives you; it is a decision you make to pour your whole self into some endeavor of your choosing—and likely on that makes a difference for others.
“Emancipate yourself from mental slavery, none but ourselves can free our minds.” – Bob Marley