Celebrate your independence

.  . . you can celebrate your independence and let today be the first day of a new you.

Every year on July 4, America celebrates the anniversary of its birth marked by the signing of the Declaration of Independence.  Feeling excessively abused by their British overlords and wanting to avoid further abuse, the Founding Fathers broke apart from the mother country.  In Jefferson’s words, “with a firm reliance on Divine Providence,” 56 men signed the document, “mutually pledging to each other [their] lives, [their] fortunes, and [their] sacred honor.”

Yet the mother country felt these men were committing treason.  And the British proceeded after them accordingly.  That insistence on teaching the colonists a lesson waned with each year of war, and after seven years the British tired of fighting the more stubborn Americans and relented. A new nation had been born, and that nation had been defended and championed.

Many LDS singles find themselves similarly situated.  They can feel themselves abused by the vicissitudes of life, be they setbacks in society or disappointments in dating or disillusionment in the death of a loved one or the lingering loneliness of living alone or the ever present responsibility of raising children alone.  Many yearn to break free and live independent of their challenges.

If you feel this way, know that you can break free.  You’ll have to work through a war of your own just as the Founding Fathers had to work through theirs, but in the end you can stand tall having given birth to a new you you’ve defended and championed.  With Independence Day approaching, you can celebrate your independence and let today be the first day of a new you.

Envision your new you

Believe it or not, there’s a new you inside of you waiting to be set free.  That new you can help you feel more joyful and alive than ever before.  But it won’t ever happen if you don’t believe it’s there.

That’s the first thing tripping up most LDS singles wanting to change their lives.  They refuse to believe.  They persist in holding faulty assumptions that hold them back.  They insist the future can’t be different than their past, or they just aren’t good enough, or all the good ones are gone, or whatever else their brain can use to convince them to maintain the status quo.

In short, they don’t change how they think.  They continue whatever habits they presently have that deliver their present reality.  Even when they learn how their biological hardwiring is designed to maintain their status quo, they don’t translate that knowledge into action.  They don’t change how they think.

That doesn’t have to be you.  There is a new you inside of you, but you’ll never birth that new you into your real life until you change your way of thinking.

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Defend your new you

When you change how you think, it’s easier to change your actions and with them the results you get in life.  But that’s just the first step.  Like the Founding Fathers who didn’t get a new nation simply by declaring it, you must fight to defend your new you.

Your first and most formidable enemy will be yourself.  Your brain is naturally hardwired to maintain a status quo.  And your brain does this by operating out of habit.  The current habits are consistent with your current results, so unless you embrace different habits, you’ll never get different results.

Your second and not quite as formidable but still threatening enemy is other people.  We’re all biologically hardwired to get our sense of normal from those around us.  And we all want to be normal.  So when you embrace a new you, you threaten other people’s sense of normal.  They intuitively feel the need to change themselves just to be normal, and most don’t want to do the work that involves.  They find it easier to bring you down so they can feel normal just as they are.

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Champion your new you

Defending your new you is no small task.  It’s a constant daily fight.  And it’s a fight that you’ll eventually lose unless you champion the new you.

You must celebrate your victories, no matter how small.  You must surround yourself with people who are acting in accordance with the changes you want to see in yourself, people who’ll celebrate your victories with you and encourage you to achieve and become even more.  You must cheer the self-improvement lifestyle that will maintain your new you.

This Independence Day, celebrate your independence.  Let today be the first day of a new you.  Envision and believe in that new you.  Defend that new you, and champion it.  You’ll find resistance along that path, but you’ll also find the satisfaction that comes from progressing towards the fulness of your potential.  And that will bring you more joy in your journey.

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