YOU are SOVEREIGN

 

Chapter 3

YOU are SOVEREIGN

In BOOK the SEVENTH, Chapter Nine (9), the phrases "I Am Sovereign," and "You Are Sovereign" were introduced. These SAL-oriented mantras, which go back to the earliest days of the SAL Life Leadership Textbook (First Edition), are designed to emphasize the power and control that YOU possess as a self-action leader to choose your own thoughts, speech, actions, attitudes, and beliefs.

This control makes YOU responsible for the consequences of your individual choices. 

The I Am / You Are Sovereign mantras are designed to serve as a continual reminder that YOU are ultimately in charge of your own life and career—just as I am ultimately responsible for mine. As such, self-action leaders avoid blaming others for the long-term results they get in their lives and careers. While other people's choices will inevitably affect us for both good and ill—especially in the short-run—it is essential that individual self-action leaders avoid victimization mentalities in a never-ending quest for Existential Growth, freedom, and self-sovereignty.

Accompanying your liberty and power to claim this self-sovereignty is a duty and obligation to live up to your innate nobility as a human being. One of the reasons I employ royalty and its related terminology in striking SAL metaphors throughout this Life Leadership textbook is because at Freedom Focused, we believe that YOU, me, and all other members of the human family were born with a metaphysical essence of nobility that courses through their minds, hearts, and souls.

You and I therefore have the potential to become Kings and Queens—in an Existential Growth sense—if we desire it enough and if are willing to pay the high price that existential royalty demands and exacts of its candidates.  

What exactly does an existential King and/or Queen look like? 

     Great question!

I think the poet, Alice Cary, said it best when she penned the following:

Nobility

Queen Victoria of Great Britain
Lived from 1820-1901
Reigned from 1837-1901

While most of us are not born a King or Queen
in a literal sense, all of us have the potential
to become existential royalty over time. 

TRUE worth is in being, not seeming—

   In doing each day that goes by

Some little good—not in dreaming

   Of great things to do by and by.

For whatever men say in blindness

   And spite of the fancies of youth,

There's nothing so kingly as kindness,

   And nothing so royal as truth.

We get back our mete as we measure—

   We cannot do wrong and feel right,

Nor can we give pain and gain pleasure,

   For justice avenges each slight.

The air for the wing of the sparrow,

   The bush for the robin and wren,

But alway[s] the path that is narrow

   And straight, for the children of men.

'Tis not in the pages of story

   The heart of its ills to beguile,

Though he who makes courtship to glory

   Gives all that he hath for her smile.

For when from her heights he has won her,

   Alas! it is only prove

That nothing's so sacred as honor,

   And nothing so loyal as love!

We cannot make bargains for blisses,

   Nor catch them like fishes in nets;

And sometimes the thing our life misses,

   Helps more than the thing which it gets.

For good lieth not in pursuing,

   Nor gaining of great nor of small,

But just in the doing, and doing

   As we would be done by, is all.

Through envy, through malice, through hating,

   Against the world, early and late,

No jot of our courage abating—

   Our part is to work and to wait.

And slight is the sting of his trouble

   Whose winnings are less than his worth;

For he who is honest is noble,

   Whatever his fortunes or birth. (1)

—Alice Cary

BOTTOM LINE: Existentially speaking, we are ALL potential royalty—Kings & Queens, Princesses & Princes—capable of unlimited Existential Growth.  

Do not ever let anyone dissuade you otherwise.  

SAL Mantra

Remember who YOU are... and Rise to Your Potential.

Author, speaker, and Presidential candidate—Marianne Williamson—once wrote the following about our potential as human beings:

"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, 'Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?' Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small doesn't serve the world. There's nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we're liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others." (2)

In the light of Williamson's inspiring, stirring, and poetic prose, YOU can—and should—continually affirm your self-sovereignty and ever echo this powerful mantra as a never-ending reminder that...

You Are Sovereign

Did you know...

That YOU are the sovereign ruler of your own life and world?

     It's true!

The question is:

How will YOU choose to rule?

What will the legacy of your SAL reign be?

Will it be diabolical and tyrannical?

Or fair, just, kind, and wise?

It is up to YOU to decide

What to do with the enormous liberty and power that 

Life has bestowed upon YOU as a self-action leader

Who, in God's good time, may someday grow to transcend self and ply your hand at creation.  

Along the pathways of your circuitous and rocky journey, 

Never forget that you are both sovereign and free

To make of your life what you'd most like it to be.

Don't be a petty monarch...

The kind that makes excuses and always blames your problems on other people and things.

Don't abdicate your Crown and Throne.

Be the King—

Or Queen—

YOU were born to be:

A leader for the ages—

The kind that history books,

And generations yet unborn 

Will laud

For your wisdom,

Justice,

Mercy,

And above all—

Your GOODNESS.

For while it can be good to be great,

It is far better to be good

Since,

In the end,

The two are really one and the same thing.

So—be good that you might also be great, and

Don't abdicate your crown, scepter, or throne—

In other words: your freedom, integrity, or principles.

And never,

     Ever,

          Ever forget that...

YOU are SOVEREIGN!

            —Dr. JJ 

And to the nascent and fledgling self-action leader who struggles with commitment, or resolve, or spine, I direct you to one of the more direct and passionate of poets—who penned rather potently on the subject of your...

Will

THERE is no chance, no destiny, no fate, 
[That] can circumvent or hinder or control
The firm resolve of a determined soul. ...

Each well-born soul must win what it deserves.
Let the fool prate of luck. The fortunate
    Is he whose earnest purpose never swerves,
    Whose slightest action or inaction serves
The one great aim. Why, even Death stands still,
And waits an hour sometimes for such a will. (3)

            —Ella Wheeler Wilcox

What is YOUR Existential Role?

We all have different roles to play in our lives and careers. 

While all human beings are existential princes and princesses, kings and queens in embryo and training, most of us will not play the literal role of governing a country—or a large organization—during our lifetimes. 

However, many—and perhaps most—of us will get to be mothers or fathers, aunts or uncles, brothers or sisters, managers or teachers, mentors or trainers, and any other number of different roles at home, work, and in the community. 

In the end, the most important thing is not what roles we play in our lives, but how we choose to play those roles. In other words, self-action leaders must always be less concerned about titles and positions and more concerned about duty, integrity, kindness, and performance. 

As Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. once suggested:

"If a man is called to be a street sweeper, he should sweep streets even as Michaelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music, or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, here lived a great street sweeper who did his job well." 

—Martin Luther King, Jr. 

I fervently believe that every human being was born on this Earth in a particular place at a particular time for a very specific and singular PURPOSE. While I can't scientifically prove that this—my belief—is true, I can say that holding this belief about my own life has made all the difference in my life's decisions and direction in the most positive and productive of ways.  

As such, I encourage YOU to cultivate this paradigm about your own life as well.

I believe that YOUR and my purpose includes duties, responsibilities, and opportunities that are both general to all human beings and unique to each individual—as suited to our natural abilities, desires, interests, talents, and vision.  

I also believe that there is a divine Playwright, whose greatness and glory makes the Immortal Bard—in all of his literary might and earthly majesty—pale by comparison. 

I believe that this omnipotent and eternal Bard created us spiritually before he created us physically. Such a concept is not new, nor is it exclusive to one religion or philosophy. Such a theory was evidently held by Britain's famous 19th century poet laureate—even the august William Wordsworth—who prominently proclaimed with his pen our mortal tendency to...

        Forget the glories [we have] known
     And that imperial palace whence [we] came. [For...]
     

     Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting: 

     The soul that rises with us, our life’s star,
        Hath had elsewhere its setting, 

           And cometh from afar;
        Not in entire forgetfulness
        And not in utter nakedness,
     But trailing clouds of glory do we come
           From God, who is our home. (4)

I am not asking you to share my beliefs in God or accede the reality of a pre-mortal or post-mortal existence and purpose. There are many different lenses through which you may interpret life's many and varied experiences and realities, and no one will defend your right to choose your own beliefs more ardently and enthusiastically than my Freedom Focused colleagues and me.

However, I do encourage you earnestly to not limit your quest for knowledge to the realm of physical sentience and scientific inquiry alone. Doing so drastically limits your capacity to fully grasp those metaphysical concepts and realities that lie beyond the reach of science to form the existential, spiritual, and religious realms. Doing so also inhibits the otherwise bounteous fruit that flows forth from the cornucopia of metaphysical insights that human beings are capable of harvesting.

After all, what would become of poetry, literature, art, music, theater, human relationships, love, and passion if you were to mask their muse and silence their genius by hemming them in by the finite reaches of quantitative analysis?

To succeed in these vitally important philosophical and other life pursuits, and in order to perpetually grow and succeed, we must be truly alive—and not just in a literal, pulse-activated and blood-flowing sense—but in a vibrant and holistic body/mind/spirit sense.  

The next chapter is dedicated to this idea of not merely living; but, of being truly alive.

In Your Journal

• Freedom Focused turns the traditional notion of nobility on its head. Instead of only a few, select human beings rising to the top level of a "King" or "Queen," we believe that everyone has the potential to become Kings or Queens, Princes or Princesses in an existential sense. How might this paradigm shift influence the results YOU get in your life and career, as well as the daily vision, drive, happiness, and inner peace that you experience?  

—Dr. JJ

Wednesday, February 18, 2026

Palm Beach Gardens, Florida, USA

Author's Note: This is the 506th Blog Post Published by Freedom Focused LLC since November 2013 and the 292nd consecutive weekly blog published since August 31, 2020.   

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Chapter 3 Notes 

1.  Ames, M.C., Ed. (1874). The Last Poems of Alice and Phoebe Cary. New York, NY: Hurd and Houghton. Pages 72-73.

2.  Williamson, M. (1992). A Return to Love: Reflections on the Principles of A COURSE IN MIRACLES. New York, NY: HarperPerennial. Pages 190-191.

3.  Wilcox, E.W. (1913). An Ella Wheeler Wilcox Treasury. Google Books version. London, UK: Siegle, Hill & Co. Page 106.  

4.  Rolfe, W.J. (1889). Selected Poems of William Wordsworth. Google Books version. New York, NY: Harper Brothers Publishers. Page 125.