This Sunday we’ll be celebrating Independence Day in the USA, and regardless of where you live, I have a suggestion for you. Use this day as an opportunity to declare your own, personal independence.

Choosing to Live a Soul-Based Life
As a spiritual teacher, my work with students goes beyond helping them develop their intuition and spirit connection. Of course, that’s a big part of what we do at the JVP School of Mystical Arts – but I’m also dedicated to helping anyone who desires to live life in harmony with their soul.

What does it mean to live in harmony with your soul? As I see it, it comes down to making basic choices. Will you trust your own intuition, or the opinions of others? Will you seek inner peace, or approval from the outside world? Will you make decisions based on love, or fear?

Actually, these choices are not so basic – and here’s why. If you’re like most people, you’ve been conditioned to try to please others from the time you were a child. “Give Aunt Edna a kiss (even if you don’t like her); hit a home run and make Daddy proud; color inside the lines; don’t make a fuss!” It’s funny how those well-intentioned instructions stick with you into adulthood. The messages you absorbed as a child can make it hard to make choices based on what YOU want, rather than what others might think or say.

Declaring Your Personal Freedom
What would it be like to live life on your own terms – knowing you’re totally free, in every sense of the word? Free of fear, judgement, and limits! Why not take Independence Day to heart, and from this point on, make a promise to yourself to be who you are truly meant to be.

Take the first step now, by recognizing the behaviors that hold you back. Check and see if any of these limiting behaviors sound familiar:

• Making decisions based on what other people think.
• Not being able to say no when you really want to.
• Always finding a reason (or excuse) to put off your own dreams.
• Putting everyone else’s needs first – all the time.
• Feeling that you must look and be perfect.
• Making your happiness dependent on other people.
• Staying in a relationship that doesn’t serve you, out of fear, guilt, or insecurity.
• Feeling that you’re “not enough.”
• Not taking the time to figure out what you want.
• Worrying about ”keeping up with the Jones’s”
• Working too hard to “fit in.”
• Judging your success by the number of likes you get on social media.
• Comparing yourself to other people (did I mention social media?).
• Being afraid to try for fear that you’ll fail.
• Letting the fear of abandonment prevent you from speaking your mind.
• Asking others for advice instead of tuning into your own wisdom.
• Apologizing for not living up to someone’s expectations.

Did any of these behaviors catch your eye? It’s normal to care about other people and what they think, but declaring your personal independence means that you check in with yourself first – and give your own feelings top priority.

Your True Colors Make a Beautiful Tapestry
I often say that we’re all connected, and that’s 100% true. But as a soul having a human experience on Earth, that doesn’t mean you have to look like everyone else.

Think of it this way. Imagine you’re a single thread on a giant tapestry that is the universe. Yes, you’re part of something larger, but your own unique colors blend with all the others to create something beautiful.

This weekend as you watch the fireworks burst overhead or look up at the stars, let them be a reminder to let go of fear, doubt, and insecurity and let your own beauty and uniqueness shine.