Three Steps to Becoming a Freesponsible Citizen

No matter who you wanted to become the next President of the United States, no matter where you're from, and no matter what your station in life may be, your voice is more important today than perhaps ever before. Too much is at stake for any of us, regardless of political orientation, to remain silent, uninformed or uninvolved.

The United States has become as ideologically divided, politically dysfunctional, and economically distressed as it has become because of the massive extent to which citizens and leaders alike have sacrificed their integrity in the name of freedom, prosperity, and ideological convictions.

Everyone I have come into contact with through my speaking, training and consulting, regardless of where they fall on the political spectrum, is aware of this. In fact, as I have written about in previous posts, this awareness is causing a “New Silent Majority” to emerge.

People from all walks for life, cultural backgrounds, ideologies and political orientations are reconnecting with the crucial importance of restoring integrity in our society. The New Silent Majority is weary of our culture of spin (deception) and our politics of polarization (hatred).

The key to doing your part to help end our current Age of Spin & Polarization is to become a Freesponsible Citizen: someone who lives their daily life at the intersection of individual freedom and societal responsibility.

This article describes three powerful steps every one of us can take toward having more impact – and feeling more fulfilled – as a Freesponsible Citizen. (If you live in a country other than the United States that is also democracy-based, this applies to you too: simply replace your country's name whenever the United States is mentioned below.)

Step 1: Embrace America’s Mission Statement

Did you know that America, like all republics that are democracy-based, has a Mission Statement? It’s a single sentence – the Constitution’s preamble. It calls for a servant government (of the people, by the people, and for the people, to quote Lincoln's Gettysburg Address) that functions at the intersection of individual freedom and the common good. In other words, the Constitution mandates a trickle-up form of government.

True patriotism therefore begins with constitutional literacy and constitutional integrity. Freesponsible Citizens...

Put the constitution before selfishness. This is the antidote to the three forms of narcissism that have been ripping our country apart... culturally, politically and financially: entitlement (non-self-responsibility), financial greed, and ideological fanaticism. (For more about these three forms of narcissism, go to www.TheNewIQ.com/narcissism)
Demand that government officials represent their interests in ways that preserve, protect and defend the constitution rather than allow special interests -- including their own -- to be more important than the constitution.

Step 2. Be a Savvy Citizen

In today’s world, what you think is fact is usually spin. Most citizens are on a political junk food diet that is served up by self-serving special interests dedicated to manipulating citizens into believing what serves those interests. Most citizens spend far too much time consuming this steady diet of self-serving lies, half-truths and lies-by-omission. This is because far too much of the media, and far too many politicians and special interests from across the political and economic spectrum, foist political junk food on the American people... and they hope that we the people don't recognize what's being perpetrated upon us.

Citizens continue to spend far too little time consuming political health food, even though excellent nonpartisan fact-checking websites now exist in the United States, such as www.FactCheck.org and www.Politifact.com.

Freesponsible Citizens...

Form their opinions and make voting decisions by spending less time consuming political junk food and more time consuming political health food.
Demand of leaders, especially those from their own political party, that they educate about all sides of an issue rather than feed citizens spin about one side of it.
Demand of the media that they utilize far fewer spin-based pundits and far more fact checking-based reporting.

The more Freesponsible Citizens who do all this, the more rapidly the Age of Spin and Greed will finally come to an end.

You can learn more about separating fact from spin by going to www.TheNewIQ.com/spin-busting-secrets

Step 3. Practice Synergy

Compromise and coercion prevent truly sustainable root cause solutions from emerging. Coercion creates resentment that leads to rebellion, rage, and ultimately terrorism. The best outcome a “compromise” strategy can create is that all parties walk away from the negotiation table feeing equally ripped off. (The reason that most bipartisan solutions tend to fall far short of what is needed is because they are arrived at through “compromise” rather than synergy.)

Synergy says that sustainable root cause solutions cannot emerge until the big picture is seen.
Synergy says that no one person or group can grasp the big picture alone.
Synergy says that only by combining the wisdom of multiple perspectives can the big picture emerge.

Only synergy can end political polarization and create the solutions we need to the vast problems we have. Freesponsible Citizens...

Don’t tolerate coercion, including ideological coercion, nor do they settle for compromise.
Refuse to engage in “I’m right so you must be wrong” arm-wrestling matches that lead to polarization rather than problem-solving.
Assume that each individual and group grasps pieces of the larger picture that others don’t.
Understand that only by combining perspectives can the bigger picture be co-discovered.
Demand that their government officials place Transpartisanism above party loyalty by engaging in synergy rather than partisan politics.

You can learn the fundamentals of synergy creation through this free e-Course:
www.TheNewIQ.com/boundaries-intelligence-essentials

You Have More Impact Than You Think

In all republics that are democracy-based, leaders are citizens first. No citizen should be supported in becoming a leader who does not first embody the three key ingredients of Freesponsible Citizenship. This is the key to the trickle-up leadership that people are hungry for today.

You truly have far more impact than you think. You have negative impact by remaining a Narcissistic Citizen. You have positive impact by choosing to become a Freesponsible Citizen. You can either help to end the Age of Polarization and usher in an Age of Integrity, or you can help to prevent this transformation from occurring.

It's up to you, but if you truly value your long-term wellbeing and the wellbeing of the generations that follow you, becoming a Freesponsible Citizen is the way to go. The benefit to you is that this shift will enable you to attain a depth of life fulfillment that you may not have thought possible. The benefit to society is... well... priceless beyond measure.

This shift in how we approach our growth as human beings marks the dawn of a new era in personal, relationship and leadership development: “individual development that serves us all™.”

Today's massive integrity problems are the direct result of massively distorted ideas about what creates life fulfillment. Integrity is not simply a high ideal. Life fulfillment is not merely a desirable goal. Both require a specific set of skills that most of us don't have but all of us can learn. During today's troubled times, nothing could be more important than developing them.

A complete blueprint is now available to help you succeed at attaining integrity-centered life fulfillment. “The New IQ: How Integrity Intelligence Serves You, Your Relationships and Our World” is a three-award-winning book that has achieved something quite rare: winning book awards in BOTH personal development and social change categories. This makes this book, along with its accompanying self-guiding companion, “The New IQ Integrity Makeover Workbook,” the premier resource for our time. No Freesponsible Citizen (including leaders) should be without it.

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