So far in these posts I’ve talked about evolving yourself into a leader in every area of your life. We’ve been setting the stage to step out from the ordinary world where mediocre levels of commitment are the norm so that you can answer the true call of leadership — self-leadership. Because that’s all there ever is. It’s truly all it’s ever about.
For most of my career, I listened more to myself than to others, and in those times, we saw great success. Having a clear plan and executing without excuses made things fun. But the times when the going got tough, I somehow forgot how to operate in accordance with my wiser self. I became lax and fell into bad habits, which caused a lot of stress, and then I desperately searched everywhere for help besides within.
Some years ago, I made the strongest commitment to myself and my career that I had made to date. The commitment to drown out all of the external noise and focus on the guidance I was receiving from my own creative thoughts, and then to listen closely to the nagging tug of my inner voice. I wrote it out, visualized it, felt it, and took leaps of faith following its direction. Shortly after that, literal magic started happening, everywhere I turned.
The synchronicities were wild.
Sound deep? It was.
Maybe you’ve had a time like this? Perhaps when you were first starting out, or the first decade or two of your business when you sacrificed it all because the voices in your head kept you up at night? Or in those times when you just HAD TO go for it. Maybe, it wasn’t so long ago but you’ve since slipped back into some unhelpful patterns.
Ask yourself: have those voices gone away?
If they have, then, truthfully, I’m not sure why you’re still reading this — you’ve already received the magic elixir! You’ve accomplished your mission and this journey is complete. But if you haven’t yet made those voices go away completely — the ones that tell you to climb a little higher — you’re likely still on this journey with me to answer the call of true leadership.
Those voices are your internal guidance system. In other words, your mentor.
You just need to calm yourself long enough to turn the volume down on all the outside noise so you can listen closely enough to what they’re telling you.
You must listen. The messages don’t go away until you hear them and take action.
The action steps I’ve shared so far are those of the process I use to regularly channel my inner mentor. This is my navigation system. The practice of writing myself as a heroic character in my own movie makes me feel in control of the script. Doing it as often as needed reminds me that I am the creator of my own world. I am the owner of my own story, and my story lives within me. It lives within each of us.
Now, it’s time to meet your mentor.
Your mentor is YOU.
You are the hero of your story, and you are becoming the leader you want to see in your organization.
In the last post, I asked you to take action to write some drama into your future life movie script and to list all the reasons why getting to your ultimate success seems impossible for this character.
Now, it’s time to take all of those obstacles and ask your mentor what to do about them. In doing this, you will start evolving into the hero archetype that can take anything negative and see only possibilities.
To take directed action, you need to know who you are becoming, have clarity on the destination, and then just take the very next step. If the voices are still whispering or roaring at you, take action!
Take action: So far, you’ve written about your future five years from now. You wrote about the main character, the hero of your story, and what type of person they are. You recently reflected on the reasons why this character might not be successful in completing their mission, and you listed out all the reasons they could fail. Now, I ask you to think through the lens of the character you developed. How would that person overcome those obstacles? Go back to your script and develop an even richer story of triumph where your hero does all the right things. Here are a few examples, building on those from the previous post: If your character doesn’t have enough money, instead of closing her business she calls everyone in her phone book she’s ever worked with and checks in on them. A few people ask about her business and say they are interested in buying from her. Her business starts to grow again, and she’s able to pay her bills. She serves those clients well and remembers that she knows what to do when things are slow. If she can’t find the right person who sees her vision, she starts to make a list of all the things she needs in a teammate and everything she wants to delegate. She envisions the person who embodies all of the skills to take that work off her plate and writes it out. She tells every person she interacts with who she is looking for. A few days later someone she struck up conversation with at the coffee shop makes an introduction to the perfect right-hand person. She trusted that since this process worked once, she’ll never have to worry again as long as she is focused and committed to taking action that leads to finding the solution. If her husband wants to limit how much she works and her kids want her to be home more, she defines the exact hours of work she’s able to commit to and puts 110% focused effort into those hours so that everything on her to-do list gets done.