I’m a big Brene Brown fan, and I’ve downloaded some of her manifestos from her website. (Grab your copies here!) Then, one of my mentors offered a course in writing manifestos. I patted myself on the back for resisting enrolling in yet another online class, but I caught the bug when several friends and colleagues jumped on the manifesto bandwagon, and I started writing. Last year. Yep, you read that correctly. I started writing last year, and now I’m done polishing my creations.
Here’s the world premiere of my Self-Help Junkies’ Liberation Manifesto.
I’ve also written My Brilliant Intentional Career Manifesto, which is on my Resources page along with a bunch of other free resources. Just add your name to my sadly neglected newsletter list, and you’ll get access.
Here’s what I learned about manifestos from my yearlong adventure with them (okay, I exaggerate, I let my writings go dormant for many, many months, so it didn’t take THAT long):
- The Unibomber no longer owns the term “manifesto.” Terrorists don’t get to usurp words that still serve us all. I’m done with ceding power to people I don’t agree with politically.
- My sense of intimidation in claiming what matters deeply to me about a topic comes more from my internal self-talk (which I can attend to and redirect) than from external forces (which are much harder to redirect!).
- Everything’s a work in progress. My son’s high school art teacher used to quote Leonardo Da Vinci: Art is never finished, only abandoned. Sometimes, it’s just about moving on rather than polishing to perfection.
May you abandon your own creations for the sake of them getting out into the world for others to witness.