“You cannot conquer what you are not committed to.” T.D. Jakes
It’s decision time.
Now more than ever, the world is asking leaders to step up, step in, and do things differently. It asks that we commit to being better than we were; to scale the climb before us. The decisions we make today determine who we are tomorrow, and how we show up each day as leaders in our personal and professional lives.
Make no mistake.
We are all leaders either by design or by default.
If you don’t think of yourself as a leader, then you are limiting your thinking, and the potential you have to make a positive impact at home, work, in our communities, and our society. Executives at Fortune 500 companies making strategic decisions for their organization are leaders. Entrepreneurs creating businesses and jobs in their communities are leaders. So are parents, health care providers, and teachers. The question isn’t whether or not we are leaders, but rather how well we lead.
It isn’t a bold statement to say the state of the world has us questioning the familiar narrative in our heads, the emotions associated with who we believe we are, and how we (in a world that keeps throwing us curves) reach new heights of success in our personal and professional lives. Leaders across the globe are impacted in some way, shape, or form by a perfect storm of global events. And they keep coming. But it is a bold decision to commit to raising our self-awareness, and recognizing the gap between our current state and our leadership potential, and taking that first step toward the climb in front of us.
It means we take responsibility and own our outcome.
It means we affirm our promise to ourselves and those in our lives for whom we bear responsibility, that we can and will do things differently, and that it starts from within. It means we pull our boots on, shoulder the pack, and move forward. It means we embark on a journey that will undoubtedly make us uncertain and uncomfortable at times and will challenge us constantly to be better than we are. But we can overcome, knowing all the while, as Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “Once you make a decision, the universe conspires to make it happen.”
Are you ready to make that decision?
Let’s make it happen.