Independence Day

One of the books I like to recommend to my You Pivot™ clients is Necessary Endings by Henry Cloud. 

In this book, Cloud uses a metaphor of rose bushes and compares them to our businesses, careers, and lives. He explains that a rose bush cannot support all the buds it creates. The beautiful ones only become so because of pruning. 

Cloud describes three types of pruning: pruning the good but not great branches, pruning the sick branches, and finally, pruning the deadwood. Perhaps the last two types are obvious, albeit sometimes hard to do. The first made me pause; really, I need to cut off some good branches for my rose bushes to flourish?

As I think about Independence Day, I notice the parallel between necessary endings and independence. For some of our forefathers, my guess is the relationship with Great Britain was good but not great. It certainly had benefits to go with the taxes and other challenges. And yet, despite the benefits, the founders of our country had the courage to recognize that an ending was necessary, declare their independence, and fight for it.

So, for each of us, the question becomes…

Who or what do we need to declare our independence from (and perhaps fight to summon the courage to do it) so that we can flourish like a well-pruned rose bush?

P.S. Another favorite you might like in the same genre is a book actually titled Independence Day by Steve Lopez.