Tag Archives: Self Leadership

The “Secret” of Life

12 Monday Dec 2011

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Life is not just happening to us. Life is not a series of luck, chances or coincidences. Life is not about circumstances and events that control us or come and go and make our lives great or bad.

Life is a series of decisions that we take every single moment and we pay the consequences either in rewards or in pain accordingly. Life is about our thoughts, our feelings, our words, our deeds, our habits and our character and all those are under our own responsibilities even if we decide to resign from them and leave it for the “Pavlovian” reflex to take care of this responsibility. They are simply decisions which we either take consciously or unconsciously:  unconsciously by leaving it for the social conditioning to decide on our behalf or consciously by deciding that we are the one in charge whatever the price we will pay to do so.

Needless to say, this is a very challenging path. It requires guts; it requires power; it requires persistence, commitment and patience and yes it is tough and painful. But we need to decide which pain we want to take as Jim Rohn says: “….the pain of discipline or the pain of regret. The difference is discipline weighs ounces while regret weighs tons.” The choice is ours.

“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will control your life and you will call it fate.” Carl Jung

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One of the Most Important Lessons in Leadership

07 Wednesday Dec 2011

Posted by in Organizational Leadership, Self Leadership

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Most of us can tell stories how our life is bad or how we didn’t achieve what we want because of something or someone except ourselves.  We didn’t pass the exam because the teacher was not fair or the questions were too difficult, we are not happy because the weather is not good today, we did not get that job because the requirements are too tough, we are always moody because that it is something in our genes. As a matter of fact, social conditioning has made us not only believe these stories but also create them every day to hide our own lack of initiatives and pro-activeness to address the challenges we face in our life.

It is very easy to put the responsibility on someone or something outside our own control because it makes us able to justify not being, having or doing what we want.  Because it takes much courage to admit that it is our own fault that we didn’t change our response to these circumstances or factors outside us until we get the results we were aiming for.

But why do we have to take responsibility of the results we are getting in our own life for being who we are or having what we have or doing what we do? Because very simply by doing so we change from being an object to a subject. Because it empowers us to take control; to take action; to change; to do something different; to be the one in charge; to move once and for good from  victimhood to leadership.

Our Leaders Are The Result of Who We Are

02 Friday Dec 2011

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Whether leaders of countries or organizations; we always get the leaders we deserve because our leaders are nothing more than a reflection or a mirror of who and what we are. They represent the sum or the result of our collective consciousness.

Therefore, if we are not happy with the leaders we have, we need to start to change ourselves. If our leaders are weak, we need to become strong. If our leaders are unethical, we need to become more ethical. If our leaders are not good, we need to move to greatness ourselves first. Otherwise, if we keep on blaming and complaining about our leaders, we will continue to empower them and dis-empower ourselves for changing and getting better leadership. We always get the leaders we deserve, because they represent the result of who and what we are. So the only way to have better leadership is by becoming better ourselves.

“This City is what it is because our citizens are what they are.” Plato

What They Don’t (and Won’t) Teach You in School and University

25 Friday Nov 2011

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We go to school and then university to learn about everything to have successful career and make a living but what they really miss to teach us is the very basics and fundamentals in our lives, the basics and fundamentals to lead our life in a balanced way in all dimensions; physically, emotionally, mentally and spiritually. They teach us how to design skyscrapers but not to design our life, how to lead corporations but not our destinies, how to heal others but not ourselves. They don’t teach us how to be proactive and responsible, how to take care of our bodies, how to manage our emotions, how to improve our relationships, how to manage effectively our finances and our time; all the very basic elements of our everyday’s life. So while a CEO builds successfully a huge organization, the mess starts to build up in his life too. It could be his family, his friends or his health. A musician or an artist who is extremely talented whose arts inspire and make millions of people happier lives in deep depression and is addicted to drugs to survive. People who work nights and days but never succeed to save or become financially independent.

So what is the solution?

There is of course an urgent need to reform the systems of education from school to university and luckily this is already starting to change in this direction in few places in the world. But what every one of us really needs to do is to expand our references and listen to new voices. We need to invest in building the basic knowledge which we missed in our years of education. We need to learn more about how to get better in our relationships, our finances, our health and energy, our emotions, our time management; the very fundamentals of our lives.

We need to read great and inspiring books and materials on how we can grow and expand in every dimensions of our life. We need to read the autobiography of great people, of inspiring leaders, of people who left a legacy in this world.

We need to listen and watch good materials from audiobooks to videos which can teach us or make us improve in gaining a new skill or expertise or to become happier or healthier. But not listening the news which keep on telling us the same old stories everyday how everything is going bad, how the economies are collapsing and that there is no hope. Not the soap operas that teach us nothing about becoming better; at least not “Desperate Housewives”,  “How I Met Your Mother” , “Diary of a Call Girl” or “Gossip Girl”!

We need to get around new voices, new references, new role models not the same negative complainers and naysayers at work, at university or at school. We need to seek for, spend time with and learn from the people who are positive, happy, healthy, successful and financially independent. We need to be around people who can tell us “You Can Do It” not all the reasons why we can’t. We need to be around the people who inspire us not de-motivate us.

Nothing can summarize this better than this quote by Charles Tremendous” Jones: “You will be exactly the same person you are today in five years time – Except for two things: The people you meet and the books you read” .  What are you reading, listening to, and watching; and whom are you spending time with; most of the time?

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Give up the Excuses. Be a Leader.

23 Wednesday Nov 2011

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To transform our lives and make a real lasting change, we need to move from mediocrity to greatness; from aiming at good to not accepting less than excellence; from making a living to not settling for less than what we can be, have or do and this is all about Leadership. Many of us, however, associate mistakenly leadership with being the president or CEO of a company, organization, group or a country. So what is leadership really?!

Leadership is an attitude. Leadership is responsibility. Leadership is influence. Leadership is inspiration. Leadership thus is  about everyone: you, me, a mother, a father, a teacher, a student, an employee, a manager, a driver, even a child. Leadership is realizing that we are influencing people around us every single moment, whether we like it or not. The key question though is: are we a good influence or a bad influence? Are we inspiring everyone around us to be and do their best or do we drag them down? Are we setting the example by being a role model or illustrating how someone can play at best the role of the victim?

Leadership is not about positions, neither stars on shoulders nor titles. It is not about being the head, the president, or the CEO. It is not about dragging people behind like “sheep”, because true leaders don’t see anyone as sheep. They only see every human being at their best, even when the latter don’t and can’t realize this. They see every human being as great and extraordinary, with unlimited potential. Leadership is not about being authoritarian, not about the carrot and the stick.

Leadership is about not expecting someone to come and save us from whatever we are challenged with in life, but to be responsible, to take action and make the change ourselves, whether by changing our attitude or our action. Leadership is about not complaining or blaming your parents, your teachers, your bosses, your company or the economy and the political system. Leadership is about standing up and taking ownership by saying I AM responsible for what I have or haven’t done. Leadership is about waking up from the “it is not my fault” old story. It is about getting rid of all these excuses that harm no one, but us, because they can imprison us forever and they are truly our only limitation.

Leadership is in every one of us, even when we are just walking on the street, eating at home or playing a game with friends. And yes, everyone IS and CAN BE a leader. So whatever you are; an adult or a child, a mother or a father, a brother or a sister, a teacher or student, a manager or a labourer; be the shining example of what an excellent human being can be. BE A LEADER.