How to Lead
Taking charge of life is an affliction most of us feel at least once a day. It’s hard to imagine a day where I don’t have the primitive urge to take control of whatever is happening in a room and be the absolute voice and commander-in-chief. This kind of feeling is driven by an emotion that has grown from experiences where I think my way is best, but I am not the leader of the room so my way isn’t the way. This is a true example of the struggle. A simple phase, the struggle, is terminology that overlaps in both euphemism and practical definition.
Taking charge of life can be a struggle and most days we might not be satisfied with how far our efforts have taken us. Have you ever questioned why you are in the work environment you’re in? Have you wondered how your life has got to the point it’s at, then loosely traced the steps taken to get there? The fact that we retrace our steps in order to add up our current situation is proofing we are not heading for anything more than what is currently happening. The alternative to this would to look at a goal we set ourselves, something we place in our minds that has yet to happen and create the steps in how to get there in our mind’s eye. This is how we become a leader in our life.
The struggle aforementioned is a phase I have heard many times during conversations with customers from work, in exchanging words with friends and even said by myself when I reply about a feeling that isn’t ultimately me living my dream. Realizing the struggle can be a sobering, defining moment in our lives’, outlining what our current character is going through and heading for, for others it can be damaging, depressing and cloud what our dream truly is because what we truly want to become is so far away from our current self. The moment we remember the struggle can become a moment we characterize in ourselves for better or worse. In order to use the feeling this understanding creates the individual needs to have an iron will, but getting there is ridiculously difficult when we feel like we haven’t taken the first steps towards our ideal self. So we must create milestones, a.k.a goals, that we can look back upon to say, “this is how far I have come from this accomplishment in my life.”
It’s an insane talent of humans to look into ourselves and realize what we are made of: the accumulation of experiences we have gone whether self imposed or subjected to by life. This talent is truly insane because we go through it almost daily and yet, go through no change nor change the direction our life is heading towards. For some people, putting themselves under the lens is empowering. These kinds of people are discharging the first step in leadership. Instead of letting themselves continue on the path they have always known or continue a path they have been handed to them, these people take a look at the history that their current character is building. Examining themselves isn’t leadership itself, rather it’s the primer, the warm-up, in changing the direction their life is going. Without some self evaluation we are bound to continue down the path we currently walk rather than decide we want more and better for ourselves.
Leadership; that means, ahead of history. True leaders are ahead of the times, ahead of our time. If we want to discharge the power of leadership then we must have foresight in where we want our lives or where we want our group to be. If the president of the united states is to be a true leader, he or she must be capable of placing the USA in a better position than it currently is by making decisions in the now that put us as a nation on a track heading towards milestones. Without these milestones, we are bound to repeat history and worse, regress. Developing foresight is a superpower most people never develop, especially here in America. Previous generations were built by an education system with the goal of creating efficient workers, not critical thinkers.
To be ahead of history we must have a plan to reach our milestones. If milestone isn’t normal vernacular for you or the group you lead, a word just as powerful is dreams. The reason a leader is effective is because they can plot their way or their group’s path is by realizing their dream and making it the group’s vision by creating milestones to achieve. Without something to work towards there comes a distinctive difference of getting anywhere in life and getting somewhere in life. Without plotting out our dreams we are not bounding ourselves to any particular path and although some individuals may achieve their goals and reach their dreams, they would get there a whole lot sooner if they knew that the steps they were taking were consequential to the history they want.
Consequential; that means, significantly necessary. For most people during most days of our lives we do necessary things. Things like; go to work, feed ourselves, clean our houses, but none of these things express a meaning. To live significantly, our actions need to have or express meaning. None of the aforementioned actions have or express consequential meaning. Rather they are common necessities of life that, gone without completing, would make life difficult, if not impossible to continue. If we want to live consequentially we have to make actions that bare fruits of history. What I mean by that is our action is so powerful it creates a recognizable moment (a.k.a recorded event), that we can look back at or look forwards to as a necessary step in achieving a milestone towards accomplishing our dream.
Being ahead of history sounds like a lot of effort, and without mincing words it is truly the struggle. However, what is worth struggling for more: working for a conglomerate, typical 9–5 shift for a paycheck that ultimately gets you to a retirement or working for your dream that will set you aside as your own person and/by improving the lives of the people you care about? Most people have had this thought but don’t know how to live for the latter of these ideals. The first step is to choose what we struggle for.
End of Chapter 1
