Tis the season for declaring independence

As July comes to a close, I wanted to write about declaring independence because it has been on my mind this month. I noticed a lot of people taking vacations around July 4th, this country’s independence day. Myself included. And that got me to start thinking about declaring independence – what am I feeling compelled to declare independence from in my life?

For my company, Wisegate, here is what our declaration of independence looks like:

Wisegate is declaring independence from:
• Ivory towers everywhere
• Limitations imposed by old ways of doing important things
• Bad company cultures
• Meetings with no purpose
• Metrics & Reports with no purpose
• Working with jerks

I wrote my own declaration of independence, too. First a backstory: at my house we have a tradition that when my husband is playing a gig (he’s a musician) and I go to bed before he gets home (which is almost every time) I leave him a love/welcome home note so he feels warmly welcomed home even though I am sound asleep. On July 3rd he had a gig and my note to him was my declaration of independence. Here it is:

The more I read it, the more I smile – it is right on! I didn’t ponder this unduly – it flew out of my pen. As to the “fear” on the list (twice) – that is about declaring independence from being halted by fear. Fear itself is a normal human emotion. It seems to me that if I am not feeling fear on a regular basis, I am likely not reaching toward my potential, my next version of Sara. So to feel fear is fine, that’s just part of being alive. To be halted by fear because I feel uncomfortable or am trying something I have never done before (which is often) is not what I want in my life. OK, that’s the only one that requires some explaining. Everything else stands on it’s own.

So what about you? What do you need to declare independence from in your life? How about at your company or in your work? Write it down, have some fun with it, and then live it.