I invite, urge, encourage, and implore you to ignore cultural stigma or messaging around taking good care of your mind. Your mind-body-brain connection is 100% worth your time with a therapist, coach or counsellor.
One hour a week, or a bi-weekly priority with a professional (who is not personally attached to your agenda, but is trained to hold your values and be a co-equal strategic partner with you) can literally make the difference in your presence, peace and meaningful contributions and purpose.
Lead yourself well in ways that will make a difference in you and through you on measurable levels of impact, influence and inspiration.
Lead yourself well.
You are here. And that is everything.
Here. Now. It's all we have.
Inspirational goals.
Fantastic strategies.
Outstanding carefully crafted OKRs.
Impressive intentions.
A mix of awesome and non-awesome past experiences.
A bunch of less-than-ideal experiences stuffed away, hoping they don't surface.
A hurried life of grief, loss and painful experiences that still inform the possibilities of a not-so-great future.
A pile of medals that promise success in every future endeavour. (I mean, what could possibly go wrong?)
Being misunderstood.
Not seen. Not heard. Not valued for your values.
All the things....that take us to the past and project us to the future.
What if... you chose to work on the habit of being present most of the time (maybe 85% of the time is too lofty and unreachable)? What if....?
What might you notice?
(I notice the difficulty of this habit!)
How might that influence the capacity to lead yourself wisely and well even in the most complex, difficult situations?
Lead yourself well.
Ruminating on what has already happened?
Projecting what will (may) happen in the future?
Hamster wheel thinking. Round and round. Hour after hour. Day after day.
Your body and brain believe they are in the present of whatever time travel your mind is currently activating.
Come back to present. Feel your feet on the ground. Breathe in the air right now. Drop your shoulders. Soften your facial muscles. Because it's hard to lead yourself well in the present if you are not often here.
Bonus: your colleagues, your family and your friends will appreciate you being right here, right now.
Lead yourself well.
Confession: every leadership position I have experienced has had seasons of exhaustion.
At times, I consciously chose to run a sprint to the point of exhaustion and then settled back into the beautiful routine of non-urgent leadership.
At times, I consciously chose to run a marathon to the point of exhaustion and then wired in the marathon achievements and the exhilaration of success that I neglected to notice that the worthy cause had now shifted to become my worthiness of human capacity.
Leadership of self and others WILL bring exhaustion. Worthy causes and worthy efforts exist in our humanness from careers to parenting, from acting, interacting and reacting to 'all the things'.
Perhaps leadership is wisely executed when we notice what, how and why we say 'yes' to exhaustion.
Lead yourself well.
