A truly fantastic speech and declaration. I encourage you to watch it regardless of your current belief.

Happy Independence Day, America!

“#Trust30 (Self-Reliance) is an online initiative and 30-day writing challenge that encourages you to look within and trust yourself.” Today’s Challenge: Fault and Change

I must be myself. I cannot break myself any longer for you, or you. – Ralph Waldo Emerson

Think of all the things that are not working in your life. That job you don’t like, that relationship that’s not working, those friends that annoy you. Now turn them all on you. Imagine that everything that’s not working in your life, is your fault. How would you approach it? What would you work on to change your life to the state that you want it to be?

I’m not going to be so quiet anymore. Fair warning.

“#Trust30 (Self-Reliance) is an online initiative and 30-day writing challenge that encourages you to look within and trust yourself.” Today’s Challenge: Image

Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood. – Ralph Waldo Emerson

Mess up your hair. If you are wearing makeup – smudge it. If you have a pair of pants that don’t really fit you – put them on. Put on a top that doesn’t go with those pants. Go to your sock drawer. Pull out two socks that don’t match. Different lengths, materials, colors, elasticity.

Now two shoes. You know the drill.

Need to add more? Ties? Hair clips? Stick your gut out? I trust you to go further.

Take a picture.

Get ready to post it online.

Are you feeling dread? Excitement? Is this not the image you have of yourself? Write about the fear or the thrill that this raises in you? Who do you need to look good for and what story does it tell about you? Or why don’t you care?

I understand the purpose of this exercise, but I think it makes our audience seem a bit shallow. I try not to spend time with people/groups that place value on appearance. Yes, it’s sometimes important to ‘look the part’ and conform to the norms, but in general I place a lot more worth on people expressing their authentic selves. Besides, what’s the point of weary funky mismatched socks if you have pants (however ill fitting) covering them up!? ;-)

“#Trust30 (Self-Reliance) is an online initiative and 30-day writing challenge that encourages you to look within and trust yourself.” Today’s Challenge: 10 Year Text

Speak what you think now in hard words, and tomorrow speak what tomorrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said today. – Ralph Waldo Emerson

Imagine your future self, ie, you 10 years from now. If he/she were to send you a tweet or text message, 1) what would it say and 2) how would that transform your life or change something you’re doing, thinking, believing or saying today?

The Text: You’ve got this in the bag, baby!

How it Affects Me: Big affirmation!

“#Trust30 (Self-Reliance) is an online initiative and 30-day writing challenge that encourages you to look within and trust yourself.” Today’s Challenge: Overcoming Uncertainty

Nothing can bring you peace but yourself. Nothing can bring you peace but the triumph of principles. – Ralph Waldo Emerson

Write down a major life goal you have yet to achieve or even begin to take action on. For each goal, write down three uncertainties (read: fears) you have relating to each goal. Break it down further, and write down three reasons for each uncertainty. When you have three reasons for your fear, you’ll be able to start processing the change because you know where the fear stems from. Now you’ll be able to make a smaller changes that push you towards your larger goal. So begins the process of “trusting yourself.”

Being told to write all of this down is making things feel very ‘thoughtful’…I find taking a leap and just doing ‘it’ is far better (especially for someone like me) than lists and reasons and thinking.

“#Trust30 (Self-Reliance) is an online initiative and 30-day writing challenge that encourages you to look within and trust yourself.” Today’s Challenge: Alive-est

Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind. If we follow the truth, it will bring us out safe at last. – Ralph Waldo Emerson

When did you feel most alive recently? Where were you? What did you smell? What sights and sounds did you experience? Capture that moment on paper and recall that feeling. Then, when it’s time to create something, read your own words to reclaim a sense of being to motivate you to complete a task at hand.

This one I can’t answer quickly…I will most definitely come back to it though.

“#Trust30 (Self-Reliance) is an online initiative and 30-day writing challenge that encourages you to look within and trust yourself.” Today’s Challenge: Personal Recipe

I do not wish to expiate, but to live. My life is for itself and not for a spectacle. I much prefer that it should be of a lower strain, so it be genuine and equal, than that it should be glittering and unsteady. I wish it to be sound and sweet, and not to need diet and bleeding. – Ralph Waldo Emerson

Think about the type of person you’d NEVER want to be 5 years from now. Write out your own personal recipe to prevent this from happening and commit to following it. “Thought is the seed of action.”

I never want to be a jerk. So I won’t.

“#Trust30 (Self-Reliance) is an online initiative and 30-day writing challenge that encourages you to look within and trust yourself.” Today’s Challenge: Call to Arms

The secret of fortune is joy in our hands. – Ralph Waldo Emerson

What if today, right now, no jokes at all, you were actually in charge, the boss, the Head Honcho. Write the “call to arms” note you’re sending to everyone (staff, customers, suppliers, board) charting the path ahead for the next 12 months and the next 5 years. Now take this manifesto, print it out somewhere you can see, preferably in big letters you can read from your chair.

You’ve just written your own job description. You know what you have to do. Go!

(Bonus: send it to the CEO with the title “The things we absolutely have to get right – nothing else matters.”)

I just wrote myself a love letter and said a prayer for anyone who feels stuck and unappreciated at their job.

“#Trust30 (Self-Reliance) is an online initiative and 30-day writing challenge that encourages you to look within and trust yourself.” Today’s Challenge: Most Ordinary

Good and bad are but names very readily transferable to that or this; the only right is what is after my constitution, the only wrong what is against it. – Ralph Waldo Emerson

We are our most potent at our most ordinary. And yet most of us discount our “ordinary” because it is, well, ordinary. Or so we believe. But my ordinary is not yours. Three things block us from putting down our clever and picking up our ordinary: false comparisons with others (I’m not as good a writer as _____ ), false expectations of ourselves (I should be on the NYTimes best seller list or not write at all), and false investments in a story (it’s all been written before, I shouldn’t bother). What are your false comparisons? What are your false expectations? What are your false investments in a story? List them. Each keep you from that internal knowing about which Emerson writes. Each keeps you from making your strong offer to the world. Put down your clever, and pick up your ordinary.

The only fallacy that resonates with me is ‘false comparisons’…the others I don’t struggle with. Perhaps because I haven’t truly made it past the first? My comparisons are not to other creators specifically, but to my own ideal. I have an expectation of what my final work should look like, sound like, taste like, smell like, and feel like. If it falls short of those expectations, typically, I throw it out and start over. That is, until now. I’ve been working very hard on accepting my work as it comes through me…not trying to make it just so, but allowing it to be real extension of myself. It’s difficult at times to send things out into the world in less than ‘perfect’ shape, and yet, it seems that when I do, I get the most genuine responses.