What’s Your Independence Day Story?
When you found freedom, did you go back to liberate others?
On this Independence Day, I thank all of my subscribers, friends, family, colleagues, and many experts I have yet to meet in person, yet feel like I know them through their life’s work and writing. Thank you for the support and encouragement to find my truths and gifts so I can bring them to you through the online communities I’m building in Substack, LinkedIn, Medium, and my website.
Because of you, I enjoy total freedom to find the stories of professionals, communicators, and exceptionally talented adults so that we can liberate each other from the person that others want us to be and find the courage and reasons to live out the rest of our days bringing profound wisdom and gifts to ourselves and those we love.
Because of you, I could gently close (not slam) the door two years ago on a traditional business, built for more than 40 years with in-person meetings, travel, national conferences, and collaborations with other professionals we knew, liked, and trusted. Thanks to you, I have the independence to write what I want, the way I need to tell the stories of extraordinary adults in clear, unpretentious, honest narratives.
What does freedom mean to you? Do you have a story of liberation? Here, I’ll start and you chime in with your story—the one where you found the united states of you. That’s right. You are more than the combination of many traits. Gifted, professional, communicator—all are states of being and how your brain takes in the world through all five senses (sight, sound, touch, taste, and smell), millions of bits of information and sensations every minute, and how you make sense of life and connect with others, with those same senses.
Scientists have identified hundreds of traits of giftedness. Add to that hundreds of traits of professionalism. Add to that thousand of traits of human communication. So who are you? You are a specific combination of some, but not all of those traits. That’s why you are not a label or a list of traits, such as sensitive, curious, overthinking, mysterious, influential, and creative.
You are and I am a united combination of those states. That’s the first truth that blows your mind or delights you. That’s where your liberation starts.
This started more than four years ago when someone liberated me. A few close to me saw that all of the success and networks of networks that defined my work were not enough. I had done everything I knew how to do and kept learning rapidly, innovating, and “getting out there” — living in a prison of hyper-productivity and chasing invoices that I built myself.
All of that came to a halt with the global pandemic and isolation took me into a deep retreat and rethink of business, at the same time going through months of inner work and finding the courage to go deeper to places I have never experienced before.
In those years no income and deep immersion in reading and confiding in 12 people I identified as unselfish, brilliant, and always having my back, one of them gave me the Mary Ellen Jacobsen book that is the classic and cornerstone of so much research and work for 25 years about The Gifted Adult: A Revolutionary Guide for Liberating Everyday Genius. It featured the first practical tool for rating your Evolutionary Intelligence Quotient (EIQ) through an in-depth personality-type profile.
It took months to get through the book and complete the EIQ. It was worth it. I was liberated and saw everyone I ever knew through an extremely clear lens of everyday genius. That’s when I decided it was selfish to be so free and independent by myself. I felt the tug to go back, as a different and more capable person, to liberate anyone else who was ready to escape the confusion and noise in their brains and find a safe place to discover their story, tell their story, and feel the joy of connecting—really understood and really belonging. Free at last, free at last.
In addition to you, here are others who appeared in recent years to walk me further in my journey of serving adults, most of them near or past their 45th birthday, with impressive professional accomplishments, with good communication skills (writers, journalists, teachers, coaches, speakers, artists, musicians, content creators, etc.), and with their own united states of giftedness —helping them rethink and reframe their stories so that they find the few words that are exactly them, without further confusing themselves and everyone else.
Others on this journey with me include Sia Pappageorgiou, Paula Prober, Frans Corten, Deborah Ruf, Mary Henderson, Jennifer Harvey Sallin, Lotte van Lith, Douglas Eby, Nicole A. Tetreault, Amanda Kirby, Susan Cain, Liz Guthridge, Kelly Pryde, and Carrie M. Jones.
Happy Independence Day. May we cherish, and together preserve, our inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness
If you’re curious about how sensitive, creative, intense, multi-potential, professional, ethical, expressive, and clear you are about your intentions, wants, and needs, check your GPC score.
Learn more about Gifted Professionals and Communicators via:
👉 Our Community
👉 Our LinkedIn page
👉 Our blog (GPC Journal)
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Thank you for this post. 🙏 Many of the names you mentioned have been important on my path as well. A major part of why we started the Positive Disintegration podcast was wanting to help liberate others. We openly discuss giftedness in our work so we can help others find this community. Thanks again!