The 4th of July is a celebration of the writing and signing of the Declaration of Independence in Philadelphia to separate the 13 colonial states from the British Empire.
I am making my own “Declaration of Freedom” today.
Today I declare my freedom because of the rights that the Founding Fathers and so many after them fought for gives me the right to be who I want to be, to do what I want to do, and to create the life the way I want to create it.
We place ourselves in imaginary bonds that hold us back from becoming all that we can be out of a false sense of what we believe other people think of us. We hide behind the mask of the roles we play and continue to play them because that is the way we have fit into the world up till now.
I have established my entire persona from the career that I loved and was proud of for almost half of my life. I don’t even know who I am without that persona. But for whatever reason that ship has sailed and will never come back to me. I left that world, it didn’t leave me and I have paid the price for the foolishness of decisions that steered me away from that career.
Ironically, I have yet to be able to embrace a new persona, a new mission, a new career, and build a new life for myself.
All of this because I have been unwilling to declare myself before the world in the new path that I want so very bad to follow.
I’m really tired of hiding. I’m tired of confusing myself about what I am doing. It is time to start living and doing the things which will take me down a successful path into the future.
Life heading into your 60s when you are considering a new career is much like life in the 20s. The only difference is you don’t have a lifetime ahead of you to build with, you only have a good 20 years if you are lucky, then everything after that is either gravy or garbage.
I made a small impact in my first career but it won’t have a lasting effect on the world I leave behind. Moving forward I want to work on leaving behind a world that is better than the one I lived in.
So, how do I start?
When I look back at my former career, I see that I started by staying up long hours at night working on my art not because of any plans of making a career really, but more because of the way it made me feel and because it was fun. Then as I joined some groups and get some coaching I was standing up in front of people and performing for anyone who would listen.
These performances become more and more often until I got to the point where people started seeing me as that person. This is who he is. Before that, I didn’t know what I was doing and neither did anyone else.
Now that career is gone. That persona is gone. That option has been taken off the table. Now I want to move forward in a new life. Not throwing away everything I know, but adding to it.
I have practiced in the closet long enough. I have listened and watched and practiced long enough. Now it is time to perform more and more often and create a new persona so that people know who I am, what I am doing and why I am doing it.
To accomplish that I must break out of the bonds I place on myself and defend my desire from the limitations of my fears. The defense is a bold Declaration of Freedom stating that I have the right and the duty to do everything I can to become whatever I want to become and do whatever I want to do and that nothing is either above me or below me to do.
My life going forward is not going to be limited by social pressures in doing whatever I need to do to be successful.
I state that I am free to be who I want to be and do what I want to do without fear of ridicule or rejection. When I have pushback from the outside about what I am doing I will repeatedly defend my right to pursue the course I have chosen. I will not allow attacks on my course to stand, but will defend it by stating my Declaration of Freedom.
I have to have the courage to break through the fear of what I believe others may think of me in the process of becoming a success in my chosen profession of being an entrepreneur.
I declare that I must become a master of financial knowledge and wisdom and that my diligence in record keeping become the most powerful part of my practice.
I must be courageous to take action when opportunities present themselves and are based in an accurate evaluation of the factors surrounding them.
I have to take on the responsibility to lead and cooperate with others and to be dependable in my daily actions in order to build a great reputation in my field.
Nothing in life can be accomplished alone. I will need other people to invest themselves into my mission as I invest myself into theirs.
My success in the past was based in being part of something bigger than myself. I was able to establish myself through these institutions and grow within that framework. So I must become a part of groups, institutions and organizations in order to become successful in what I want to do.
The American Dream is really all about entrepreneurship. It is all about creating something from nothing. It is about becoming the master of your own life, no matter what that is. It is the right of every human being to be who they are, who they want to be and to pursue any course they wish to pursue. (Of course this is all imbedded in legality, morality, and a sense that “All people have the same rights under the law and in society.”)
The Declaration of Freedom
As a citizen of the United States of America I have the right and the duty to build a life doing what I choose. I am free to pursue that life and have the right to defend it.
Mostly, I have to defend my course of action from my own insecurity about what it is I want to do. Then I have to perform in that course of action.
Lastly, I have to love what I am doing. I have to have fun doing what I am doing. I have to profit from what I am doing.
In order to move forward, I have to break away from the past and walk in a new light. It is past time to do that.