The exercise to work on your independence:

1. Divide your life in the following 10 categories:
   • Health and fitness
   • Work/Career/Business
   • Hobbies and personal development
   • Love relationship
   • Social life and friendships
   • Parenting
   • Spiritual/Intellectual life
   • Financial life
   • Quality of life
   • Character
2. Look into these categories and rate them from 1 to 10 on how happy you are in each of them
3. Start with the one you scored lowest and create a plan on what will you change to improve your fulfillment in this category.

If you prefer to read, here is the transcription of the video:

Independence is not a mask. It could be. But here I'm talking about independence, not as a mask behind which you're hiding, behind which you don't dare to show your vulnerability or a mask you put on to not show the longing of your heart. It's not the mask behind which you're hiding your fears. Independence is very tightly related to the self-confidence.

It's taking responsibility for who you are. And for how you live your life. This is independence. This is moving away from the victim role and really taking the pilot's seat of your life. This is independence. This is having a life that your adore and having meaningful activities that make you passionate about your day. Independence could be related to the job you love and or the hobbies that appeal to your creativity and to your emotions.

It's about having financial stability. And here I'm not talking about wealth. I'm not talking about certain levels of a lifestyle. I'm more talking about your physical survival is being taken care of. You don't need to think about food or shelter. Everybody has their own lifestyle they are comfortable with or not. But as long as you don't think about your physical survival, you don't have financial issues, debts, and you're not thinking, “how am I going to make this month or stuff like that”, this is the level of financial stability I'm talking about. Financially, you're comfortable. You don't need to be rich. It's just that you're comfortable where you are. And you don't depend on other people to survive.

What else is independence? This is about having good people in your life. People who share similar values as yours. Having interesting friends and spending time with your friends, but also being comfortable spending time by yourself.

Independence is also not relying on one person, whether this is a friend or your partner, your lover or your child to entertain you and to give meaning to your life. Basically you are on the pilot seat of your life. You decide who you are, how you live your life, and you are passionate about this life. This is independence.

Then, if your life is vibrant and interesting, everyone will be flattered to be part of it. You can be much more selective about who you will get to spend time with. Because, again, you don't depend on this one girlfriend to call you and go do shopping together because you are comfortable doing this by yourself and you have other friends, you can do it with.

You have interesting life and yes, you do things you are passionate about. Your social life is interesting, and even if you're a mom and you stay at home a lot, that's okay as well. As long as you get fulfillment out of who you are, what you do, you're passionate about it, then you don't depend on one person or on particular circumstances in your life. You make your choices. You you're comfortable with them, and you take responsibilities for the consequences of those choices.

So how do you become independent?

I have this one exercise for you. Get on the pilot's seat of your life and take responsibility for who you are, what you do, and how you live. My invitation here is the following: take a pen and paper and write down those categories, which I'm going to mention now.

You can put on hold the video or you can also look in the notes under it. I put those categories there. But I would like you to write down these categories. This is the first part will continue after it. So the categories are:

• health and fitness,
• work, career or business (whatever applies to you),
• hobbies and personal development,
• love relationship,
• social life and friendships,
• parenting (if you are another parent yourself, maybe look at the relationship you have with your parents),
• spiritual and or intellectual life (and this has to do with, to a certain extent, your personal development, but also with what you're feeding your mind with, what you are thinking about, what type of books you're reading, how you are staying relevant. So the spiritual and intellectual life is really about your thoughts and about how you are developping your mental capacities),
• financial life (I already talked about the financial life),
• quality of life (basically, it's about your lifestyle, about the type of food you eat, about the type or amount of sleep you have. So all the other categories are part of quality of life.This is like a more generic category),
• character (the character is who you are, what qualities you possess and whether you come from them when you interact with others and with the world).

So those categories are like, let's say a summary of different areas of your life. Maybe the most important areas so you write them down and then the next thing is scored them, look at them and give them a number from one to ten on how happy you are in each of those categories. And the only criteria to them on is how you feel about them. A simple example from the category work/career/business: Maybe you were a cleaning lady and many people might think that all this this is a low-paid job and you can easily score low on it. But if you as a cleaning lady, you're happy with it, you feel fulfillment, then you can score 8 or 9 or 10.

So the score is 1 to 10, where 1 is low and 10 is high and you look into how happy you are in this category.

You score from 1 to 10 on how happy you are, and then you pick up the category you score the lowest score because this means that this is the category you are least happy with, and you start improving it. You start to take action to improve it. I'll give you examples. You scored very low on the health and fitness because you love to eat a lot of sugar and processed foods and junk food and you don't exercise and you scored 3 or 4 on this category. So okay, you start by adding a little bit of movement to your day and by replacing one meal with a more quality meal. You know, you start with small steps and then you do this for a few weeks and then you add something else. Like you change to a second meal with a more quality, high quality meal or better foods, or you remove a little bit of the sodas or cookies you are taking or something.

Then if it's your work, career or business, you are not happy with what would make you happy? What steps do you need to take to find more fulfillment in your work? Is it changes which you need to make yourself in your current environment, or are you going to look for a new job? But basically you take steps on improving this.

Hobby in personal development. Do you have hobbies? If you don't, what would you like to do? Try gardening, creating pots or go dancing, try yoga, origami, something with your hands, learn a language.

Love relationship. Are you happy in your love relationship? If not, what can you do to improve it? Maybe read a book about it or get a coach. Or if you're single, how do you get in a relationship if you want to have that? Start dating!

Parenting. There are amazing books for parenting.

Just start researching the area which you would like to improve.

If it's financial life, learn how to get your financials in order. How do I clear my debt? How do I start building wealth? Or how do I spend less so that I have more to save or to feel comfortable or something like that.

So this is the exercise to build your independence. This is about really getting on the pilot's seat and getting your life together, taking responsibility for each area of your life. Because each of us has a lot of power about how we live our lives. But often we leave it on the table. And this is my invitation for you: How do you want to live your life? And this is the moment to start living this life!