streets as Beethoven composed music or as Shakespeare wrote poetry.” This approach is a fundamental part of being present and fully putting your love, light, and humanity into whatever situation you encounter. There is a real beauty in this approach to life.
The second approach is to go out and create your own life. This involves an inward journey to begin finding more than just where you have wound up on this planet. This means finding where you want to be. From here, you can actively step out and find a pathway to a destination that only you have imagined.
Ideally, a leadership journey would involve a combination of the two. You would decide the destination and path, then fully engage every moment along the way with full passion and commitment to experience the joy of the journey.
In the last chapter, I spoke of leaders who found their inspiration and, through that, inspired others to places of greatness. This is one point of paradox in this model. Those people who are most connected with their source of power and inspiration are often the least concerned with directing or controlling what others do. They are, in their deepest and most sincere places, driven to direct their own actions. This deep and innate personal commitment is what creates the sense of tribal unity that causes others to work their hardest to move in the same direction as their leader.
These leaders usually want particular outcomes in the world, and they want for other people to share in particular sensibilities. In a business setting, the global leader definitely wants for people in the organization to pay attention to particular areas and details but usually only to the degree that these areas produce certain results. This leader will hope that the people in the organization actually want the same things and that their desires guide constructive action.
There is a very simple path to accomplishing this basic and essential first step of leadership. Here’s the formula:
1. Find your passion—that is the thing that you most love and want to have happen in the world.
2. Connect with your passion on a deep and personal level. Become an expert. Make it an integral part of the fabric of your life and the essence of your being.
3. Launch your passion into the world in a big, big way. Imagine the greatest possible contribution that you can make; double that, then double it again, then figure out how you can live it into being every day of your life.
Simple, right? Well, actually, it is. We begin early in life with this, learning things that interest us, excelling in sports, learning music, becoming artists, engineers, architects, and engaging in other creative pursuits. We initiate this process in small ways, but as we become more conscious and aware, our interests start to shift to larger and more socially connected issues. As we grow beyond the point of being able to do it all ourselves, we enter the realm of influence, where we must begin to rely on others for our dreams to be fully realized. We expand our passions from areas of interest to hobbies to life purposes. Along the way, those areas of interest will probably change. What will remain constant is the skill that you have acquired in learning to engage an idea and hold it in a deeply important place.
While it may seem formulaic and perhaps daunting, it is an absolute requirement. If you cannot be inspired, how can you ever hope to inspire others? If you cannot find your own way, why would anyone ever choose to follow you?
Each of us comes to this life with something to accomplish. We have our core lessons to learn, and our core contribution to make. Every aspect of our lives weaves together to form a tapestry that is unique in every sense, with its own beauty and sense of purpose. Humans are creative and generative beings. During the time we walk this planet, some of us will find that place and will live life to its fullest, contributing to the society and the evolution of humanity. Others will not, regardless of the opportunities or the deep desires they may have.
This first step of leadership is of great importance. It is not necessarily about finding the one thing that is our deepest and truest purpose for all of time, although we may aspire to do that. More often it tends to be learning to search, find, move, and learn. Many people’s purpose shifts throughout life, as we try out different ways of being and as we experiment with different paths. Mine certainly has. At times, my sense of mission seemed to turn sharply. Other times, it just seemed to course correct. The trend has been mostly one of sharpening, with the mission gradually becoming clearer. It has also become far simpler than in the early stages. More recently, I have found how all of the seemingly disparate parts that I lived earlier in life integrate into a more robust ability to deliver on a very simple mission.
It is perfectly acceptable to refine a sense of mission. Ideally, the process of refining will have us actually move through the redefined mission, not away from it. From there, we will adjust to our next sense of mission. Often we will transition into an endeavor, and while there, discover some aspect that is even more important or deeply satisfying. If that is the case, then move with it. That is ultimately being true to ourselves. If we give up on a mission because it seems too big or scary, then we are just giving up on ourselves.
To find true passion, we simply have to look inside at what really matters. Just tapping into our awareness can usually create enough guidance to tell us what is important and what is not. As we will discuss later, we must evaluate and question our mission through reflection on the actions we take. We will know if a mission feels right only when we try to live it.
MANAGING YOURSELF
In order to lead others, you must first lead yourself. More than anything else, this should become a practice throughout your life. A nice way to look at this is through the idea that you already have a leadership practice. We all do. The question is whether or not you know it and whether you put conscious energy toward how you engage that practice.
I use the word practice here to connote something that you regularly do and how you approach the world. Every thought and every action constitutes the whole of how you are defined as a leader. Deeply imbedded in this practice are the words you use, your self-talk, and your habitual responses to the world. The basic difference between a habit and a practice is mindfulness. Once you become mindful of how you talk to yourself, you can understand that those words and emotions are a rehearsal for how you will talk to others. Once you become mindful of the habitual stories you tell yourself about the world (your personal mythology), you become mindful of how those stories become a guide for your interactions and the explanations you place on the world.
You can lead by claiming the inherent power of these natural dynamics and using them for positive purpose. It simply requires noticing what is going through your mind and deciding whether that is the most appropriate view of the world at the time. You decide whether your behaviors match the current situation. You determine the energy that you want to put into the world. In every given moment, you have the option of seeing the world through a loving and trusting lens or through one of fear and doubt. In every action you take, you have the choice of creating positive and creative situations or negative and destructive ones.
In order to frame this, there are certain areas where you can focus your attention to begin this practice. Each has a particular purpose in creating a solid and dynamic leader, and each affords a particular area of personal power. We will take these separately.
THE POWER OF INTENTION
Intention is defined as “an anticipated outcome that guides your planned actions.” This breaks down into two distinct parts. First, understanding your “anticipated outcome” and second, “guiding your planned actions.” Many people don’t realize how much this plays out on a daily basis. For instance, how often have you seen a person (maybe yourself) walk into a situation expecting
