LIBERATION
By Rod Patterson, MBA
Guard Your Gates Blog — Season 4, Episode 1 (2026)
“Freedom Hits Different When You’ve Been Bound”
Before we talk about goals, growth, or greatness in 2026, we need to confront something deeper: Are you actually free? Not legally. Not socially. Not professionally. I mean internally — spiritually, mentally, emotionally.
“All prisons are not made of concrete and steel”
AR Bernard
Some people who are are in real prison cells are freer than people who have never seen a barbed‑wire fence. And some professionals in corporate America are more imprisoned than inmates serving time.
Because of their own lack of motivation, discipline, and connection.
We don’t talk about that enough.
Three Questions to Guard Your Gates Today
1. Can you truly appreciate liberation unless you’ve first confronted the places where you’ve been oppressed — externally or internally?
2. What invisible prisons have you built for yourself through fear, procrastination, or comfort?
3. If freedom is a mindset, not a location, then what habits, relationships, or beliefs must you break out of this year?
This is a heavy topic for the new year. They cut through excuses and expose the truth:
You can be promoted and still imprisoned. You can be talented and still trapped. You can be surrounded by people and still isolated.
Have you placed limits on yourself with your own lack of discipline? You dim your own potential with your own inconsistency.
You isolate yourself and then wonder why you feel disconnected.
But here’s the good news:
If you built the prison, you can tear it down.
If you locked the door, you can unlock it.
If you surrendered your freedom, you can reclaim it.
2026 is not the year of “new me.”
It’s the year of free me.
Free from mental clutter, emotional paralysis, and self‑sabotage. Free yourself from the lies that tell you you’re stuck.
This season, Guard Your Gates is going deeper.
We’re not just talking leadership — we’re talking liberation.
We’re not just talking productivity, but discipline.
If you’re ready to break out of the prisons you’ve built…
If you’re ready to reclaim the freedom God already assigned to you…
Then stay locked in.
Season 4, Episode 1 is the beginning of a new chapter where we stop surviving and start living free.
If you feel you are unable to break free, then that’s why I came. Consider this a rescue!
Guard your gates.
Guard your mind.
Guard your freedom.
And let’s step into 2026 unchained.
Guard Your Gates 