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Cubicle-dissenters and freedom-seekers, I present you with this manifesto on the liberation revolution.

This movement happening all around us is, quite literally, the story of mental bondage to freedom. People everywhere are finding liberation through ditching the work-template and living on their own terms.

If this movement interests you, we would like you to be a part of it.

You kick so much ass, it would be a shame to see that squandered by asphyxiation, due to fluorescent lighting and pointless committee meetings.

What you’ll find in this manifesto is 5,000 free words on the characteristics of this uprising. You’ll hear the reasons of others and why they’re committed to the freedom of working for themselves and reclaiming their time and their minds.

DOWNLOAD THE FREE MANIFESTO HERE.

The reason for this:

People have long been ditching the employee model of life, but rarely has there been a collective banding together of individuals to support each other in this movement. This manifesto is an attempt to create a coherent, articulate representation of the reason we are unsatisfied with the work-template and why we are seeking a new paradigm.

What’s under the hood:

• Why we’re tired of choking back vomit because we’re going another day doing a job we hate, with people we don’t connect with, working for someone we don’t respect.
• How we’re transforming our relationship with work, through breaking down social conventions and overly politicized nonsense.
• Why we think entrepreneurship is one of the highest forms of self-actualization and self-improvement.
• How we’re in this together.
• How to cultivate the “Free-man” (or free-woman) mindset and seven things you can do right now.
• The importance of getting to Game Over.

Are you totally down with this revolution? Is this something you’ve been waiting for?

Here’s how you can help:

1. Spread the word. Send this manifesto to your friends, family, or co-worker that’s about to commit suicide (she needs to read this). Tweet about it, send it to your friends, print it out and post it on the telephone polls on your block.
2. Declare your freedom. There is no better way can you help strengthen this revolution than by declaring your own sovereignty. By reclaiming your own freedom, you give others the courage to do the same.

What the hell is this all about man?

This manifesto is something I’ve been working on for the past two weeks as part of Project Mojave, my new lovechild.

I’m a member of the faculty there where my title is Director of Ass Kicking.

No I’m not joking (I couldn’t make this stuff up). It’s basically what I was born to do.

Over the course of the next few days, you’ll get a chance to see what this crazy revolution is all about and how you can become a member. There’s a really awesome video up right now called “The Freedom Business Blueprint,” which basically defines the qualities of a massive freedom-supporting business. I highly recommend you go check it out.

Lots more awesome, free stuff is coming, so I hope you sign up for the list so you can get updates.

Anyway, that’s about it. More details will be coming soon.

Please let me know what you think of the manifesto. I can’t wait to hear your feedback.

For a long time, I’ve held the belief that if something is a good idea, it’s worth doing.

Now, I completely reject that notion.

I just can’t operate that way anymore. I know better and my brain can’t be fooled.

In 2007 Tim Ferriss coined the term “work for work’s sake.” Since then, something worse has emerged: “improving for improvement’s sake.” (Honestly, this conundrum has probably been around for centuries. I just came up with it now because I desperately want to coin a phrase of my own, so I can be cool, too.) In other words: “improving for improvement’s sake” is doing something just because it’s a “good idea.”

Yeah, I’ve been there, and what is neatly packaged as a “good idea” is often OCD and egotism in disguise. Read more

People spend vast amounts of time (and sometimes their whole life) wrestling with their minds, trying to figure out if their dreams are practical or ridiculous. Eventually most people give up, because they simply couldn’t make a decision.

The single biggest reason for unaccomplished goals and unfulfilled dreams, is the lack of ability to make a serious commitment. How many times in your life have you not done what you wanted to do, simply because you couldn’t make up your mind?

Putting yourself on auto-response (which I will explain in a minute) is about finding the means to silence your practical mind’s constant decision weighing and follow your heart, no matter how terrifying it may seem.

Most people know what their ideal life would look like. Most people know what they want and how the life of their dreams would look, feel and taste.

So if everyone knows what they want, what stops people from achieving their dreams? What could possibly stop them from leaving a dead end job and dropping unwanted commitments? It’s not that they don’t know what they want, they just don’t know how to get there.

Read more

photo by mark sebastian

[Note: Creativity is something very personal to me. Without creativity, there is nothing but a vacuum. The adventure of creating something new, the anticipation of discovering what lies around the next corner is something I live for.]

There is a lot of advice out there on how to be more creative and remove the blocks that might hinder your creativity. I think, however, that the greatest way to be more creative is often overlooked; thinking inside the circle and embracing Creative ADD (want to ride bikes?).

It’s a common misconception that being creative means being more focused. That somehow if you were able to just hone in on your task with laser sharp focus, you would find the creative insight you were desperately searching for. While focus is important, trying to force a creative act stifles creativity. Because the whole point of being creative is to have fun, right? If you feel as though must create, you may as well burn Creativity at the stake.

There is a different approach available to cure this potential mishap, that I feel is unfortunately neglected. Adopting this innovative process has had an extraordinary impact on all of my ideas.

Read more

Staying within the social norm and fitting in, to most is more valuable than authenticity. Don’t attract attention to yourself, be liked by others and do what your told seems to be the mainstream mantra. Life is not a uniform organism. The truth is, we will never find personal freedom by trying to please others and conforming our life to a template. If we are all truly different, why do we try to force the unique shapes of our personalities, skills, beliefs and ideas into the square peg of social acceptance?

Here’s the basic template for life:

• Learn to walk/speak, be a good boy/good girl
• Go to school, get good grades
• Go to college, graduate. Try to find something you love, but eventually sacrifice your passion and settle for a career choice that’s practical.
• Get a job (find security)
• Get married (security)
• Have kids (security)
• Die
• Repeat

This is the most common life pattern. Most of us think that this is just normal; it’s just the way it is damnit. Living for security alone though, is a meaningless existence. If our only motive to live, is to survive, to keep the hamster wheel spinning, then I’m done. I just can’t imagine a life where security is the highest value. That’s like saying blue is the most important color, or the stomach is more important than the brain. Obviously all the other colors are just as important in making up the field of vision, and the all of the organs are necessary for a healthy organism.

Security is definitely an important part of life, our survival depends on it. But excitement, adventure, pain, turbulence, drama, passion, mystery and pleasure are equally important. I think we forget this because security is the basis for us being able to experience all those other wonderful things. Yet security is a means, it’s not the reason for living itself. Just as we don’t live to eat, we eat to live; we don’t find happiness to seek security, we seek security to facilitate happiness.

When you think about what you truly live for, your answer probably won’t be security. At least mine’s not. I think it’s important that we re-evaluate how much our feelings are really aligned with our actions. Do we really value comfort more than freedom?

Not only do we have templates that we’re expected to follow, but we also have roles we’re expected to fill.

If you’re a man you’re expected to behave a certain way. Anger and jealousy are the only acceptable emotions. You want to cry? Suck it up. Be a man, damnit. You have a feeling about something? Right…

If you’re a woman you’re expected to be feminine and nurturing. Have a strong opinion? You’re a bitch. You want to lead? You’re joking right?

These social roles may have worked for cave dwellers (woman not behave, hit with club). They also worked for primitive societies based on hunting and territorial rivalry. Men had to be tough. If they broke down and cried, it might have meant a spear to the head. But despite how much social revolution and civil rights movements we’ve had, we haven’t had much of an internal empowerment movement.

The Anti-Role Collateral

The truth is, most of us know what we want. We know what makes us feel alive and what makes us feel dead. The answer then isn’t looking for yourself, but having the courage to live unabashedly, to do what truly brings you bliss. The collateral of claiming your personal freedom and rejecting the cubicle mind mentality, might mean getting some strange looks and being completely rejected once in a while. People might question your choice to not go for so-called security. People might think you’re a total nut-case. But that’s okay. You’d probably look at the same people living fearlessly and wonder what the hell they’re doing. That’s the beauty of diversity. Homogeneity is the bane of life.

The Anti-Role collateral is:

• It’s the stares you might get for being a man and not being afraid to cry in a movie.
• It’s being a woman and not being afraid to take charge, even if the same people that saw a man do that and applaud them, think you’re a bitch.
• It’s the shock from voicing your opinion to the vice president of your company even though you have no degree and started two weeks ago.
• It’s the whispers of people on the street that see man in a suit having a real conversation with a homeless person.

The price we pay for consciously living our lives and forging our own path is the anti-role collateral. Sometimes that means embarrassment, humiliation and flat out rejection. But I can’t think of any bigger embarrassment to me than not being true to myself. A sovereign mind to me is more valuable than any fictional social approval.

Free-Styling Life

Just over a hundred years ago, everyone thought it was impossible to fly. A very small group of people chose not to believe that. They chose to believe that it was possible and decided they were going to prove it. No one would doubt it now, seeing a plane or a helicopter is an everyday experience.

Living a life that’s not based on a template and being true to yourself may not mean paving a road in the sky like the Wright Brothers. However, if you tell everyone you want to start your own business, you will be doubted. They’ll tell you everything that’s wrong with your idea and why it won’t work: You have no experience. You’ve never run a business before, what do you know about sales? It takes money to make money. The truth is:

• Almost no one starting their first business had any idea what they were doing.
• Those that broke barriers in civil rights, oppression, policy reform and questioning authority were scared as hell, but they knew what was right in their heart. They couldn’t live with themselves if they didn’t do something.
• Not only is it impossible to plan everything out in advance, it’s extremely boring that way.
• Most successful people became that way by embracing their unique talents and capitalizing on them, not by overcoming weaknesses.
• Integrity and authenticity are vastly more important than productivity and fictional social acceptance.

The domestication of humans places a lot of shoulds and shouldn’ts on us, but we also have a lot of arbitrary self-imposed rules we place on ourselves:

• I’m not good enough because I don’t have enough experience.
• I made a mistake so it’s necessary to punish myself over and over again and not let go at any cost.
• I’m not worthy or not good enough because I don’t have x amount of money or x title.
• I’ll never understand the mysteries of life because I just don’t have a philosophical mind.
• I don’t have time for creative or passionate pursuits, I have to be practical.

I’ve realized that just as much as social restraints and pressures are real, they are only real within you. Our deepest beliefs about reality and ourselves are not true in themselves, but our thinking makes them true in our experience.

So maybe you’re already on the anti-role, free-style side of the street. You just haven’t bought a house there yet. What price are your willing to pay for your sovereignty?

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