How to Lead Your Best Life: Self-Leadership
“Some people are born with the ability to Self-lead. For the rest of us, Self leadership is a trait we can cultivate”
At some point in life, you might find yourself in a place where you feel stuck.
You are not where you thought you would be. Your life doesn’t look the way that you had imagined. You don’t feel as good as you thought that you would feel about your life. Instead of feeling content and maybe even happy, you feel stuck, frustrated and unsatisfied. It happens to most of us. Its a weird mixture of feeling paralysed, overwhelmed and ultimately being in doubt about the future. We may lose sight of it when we don’t feel like our best selves, but we do always have choices. We have the choice to change things and do something about what’s not working. This is the moment to reconcile with the bad news that no one is coming to rescue us or tell us what to do. We have to do all of the stepping up on our own.
I learned this the hard way. I realised that when it came to my growth, success and happiness, I was the one standing in my own way. I had to get really real with myself in order to start shifting in the direction of what I truly desired for myself. This meant that I had to step up and own my own B.S. (all of it). My excuses, my fears, my inaction, my laziness, my suppressed emotions, my dysfunctional relationships but most of all my lack of belief in myself which translated directly into no action against my goals and desires.
Things started to shift dramatically for me when I started exercising self-leadership. Taking full ownership of your life (both the good and the bad) can be dramatically refreshing. The game changes when you realise that you and only you have the power to change your story. It all comes down to how much you are willing to work for it.
“The big secret in life is that there is no big secret. Whatever your goal, you can get there if you’re willing to work” Oprah
What is Self-Leadership?
Self-leadership is a topic that I’m very passionate about so you’ll see me coming back to this often. The reason why I focus on self-leadership is that I think that it is a transformative and empowering approach to life. If applied consistently we all have the ability to lead ourselves into the direction of happy and self-fulfilled lives.
In essence, self-leadership is about taking fundamental responsibility for ourselves and for how we move in this world, in every aspect of our lives.
We can apply a self-leadership approach to our careers, health, relationships, finances, spirituality, you name it.
Self-leadership is about understanding yourself, understanding what you want and need to thrive and then doing those things. It’s about originating from yourself, from your own true deepest desires. It’s not about doing what everyone else is doing or doing what we think we are supposed to be doing. Self-leadership is about deriving from yourself and leading a self–defined life. A lot of us go through life following somebody else’s blueprint, doing what we’re told or expected to, leading to a lot of anxiety, stress, forgotten dreams and just unhappiness.
Self-leadership is about understanding who you are and what you want out of life and then doing those things. It’s about creating the conditions for the type of life that you want to live. It’s about self-acceptance, being bold enough to understand and accept yourself and creating a vision for your life that feels true and authentic to you.
Ultimately self-leadership comes down to cultivating a mentality of accountability towards ourselves.
Driver or passenger?
When we’re in the passenger seat we’re following someone else’s course, we give away our power and just follow along. When we’re in the driver seat we decide where we are going, we take charge and decide the way forward. We lead.
I don’t know about you, but I’d rather be in the driving seat of my life any day of the week. There is so much more power in being in the driver seat of your life. We feel empowered when we take action against our goals, we feel energised when we level up and boldly assert where we are headed.
Taking charge of your life, your attitude and your mindset creates a foundational power base within you that allows you to create forward momentum. There is an important energy to being in motion, it makes us feel good and empowered when we are actively working towards whatever it is that we want. We feel good when we leave the excuses, obstacles and self-limiting beliefs behind and just put in our best effort.
Self-leadership requires us to change our mindset, to reframe how we look at things and tap into our power within to influence what we make of our lives. It requires us to identify what’s important for us and to go after those things. It also requires us to let go of what we cannot change and accept that, acceptance is powerful self-leadership tool.
“It’s you against you, may the best you win” Unknown
Standing in your own way?
We don’t want to admit it, but we often stand in our own way when it comes to how we progress through life.
We don’t want to put in the work in the gym because it's more comfortable not to. We don’t want to change jobs because it takes a lot of work to dust of our CV’s and start interviewing. We don’t want to change our relationships because we are scared that we might end up alone. We don’t want to put ourselves out there with our goals and dreams because we fear that people might judge us.
When we stand in our own way, we limit our own potential and remain in our comfort zone.
However, meaningful and purposeful lives are not built in our comfort zones. We need to get used to the idea of being uncomfortable, of not knowing, of being a newbie. We need to get comfortable with doing the hard stuff which isn’t always going to feel great, like getting up early to be more productive or quitting our Netflix account so that we can read more or maybe going to that spin class that we know we should go to.
Our comfort zone is not the place where we come alive. We come alive when we are the forefront of creating positive change for ourselves by actually doing, by being in motion, by challenging ourselves, by doing the hard stuff.
Self-awareness & Radical honesty
One thing I realised in my own self-leadership journey is that it takes a lot of honesty to start progressing on this journey. Radical honesty! You need to look at your excuses, frustration, stagnation, anxiety, and negative feelings in the face and admit that you are in one way or another contributing to their existence in your life. Because the truth is that the next decision we make in the direction of where we want to be can challenge and shift our story, immediately.
For the longest time, I told myself that I couldn’t be successful in the gym, that I was not the type of person that could stick to eating healthy and going to the gym regularly. I held on to my self-defeating belief that I couldn’t be as strong, fit and healthy as I deeply desired. I used to observe people that we’re living this type of life and really admire their discipline and consistency. BUT, I was still very much so invested in my comfort level. Changing required that I break out of my patterns, that I do something that would disrupt my comfortable setup. It took a lot of ups and downs, successful weight loss journeys and a lot of dips where I gained the weight and stopped going to the gym until I decided that I wanted to make a permanent change. I got fed up with my own inconsistency.
I still remember the day that I decided to make a permanent change regarding my health. I was standing on a beautiful beach in Durban, South Africa and instead of enjoying the company, the sun and the captivating beaches I was busy with feeling so uncomfortable about myself in a bathing suit. I was flooded with so many negative emotions and feelings of discomfort. I decided then and there that I didn’t want or need to feel this way anymore. I knew that despite my fear of failure that the only way to my goals was to apply myself completely to improving my health. I knew that I needed to start doing the hard stuff that I really struggled with; being consistent.
I got back home and basically started putting in work, creating habits for life this time. It’s been almost 3 years since that moment on the beach and I’m now stronger than ever, healthier, and happier and have lost weight sustainably. I have a new way of life that is centred on movement and healthy eating, guilt-free. I was only able to shift when I realised that I was the one that was standing in my own way. The moment that I challenged my comfort levels is when everything started to shift.
“It doesn’t matter who you are, where you came from. The ability to triumph begins with you. Always.” Oprah
Progress = Action
One of the key ways that we can measure progress in our lives is through our actions. Our actions move us in the direction of where we want to go, our actions give us a fighting chance to take a shot at living self-defined lives.
If we want a fulfilling job we need to get out there and look for that job, if we want to get fitter we need to get up early before work and hit the gym, if we want to become a creative we need to set time aside to create and if we want to feel happier and more fulfilled in life we need to prioritise understanding what some of those things are and then do them.
Regardless of how small our actions may be, they can have a cumulative effect of moving us in the direction of where we want to go. Don’t underestimate the power of small consistent actions, over time they build up into positive habits that have the potential to create significant change and positive outcome for your life.
Action is a language in itself that we need to master if we want to achieve a fulfilling life.
Action shows the utmost undeniable commitment towards those things that we say that we want. Period.
How to Lead your best life - Quick Exercise
Here’s a quick exercise that you can do right now that will set you off in the right direction. Grab a pen and paper and write down the answers to these questions as honestly as you can:
What is one area of your life that you feel stuck in?
Describe how feeling stuck in this one area of your life feels. Don’t hold back, pour out how you truly feel about it, unleash, be raw.
Identify 3 actions that you can take that will move you closer to the direction of where you want to go (within the context of the next 30 days, what is possible to within the next 30 days, be bold but also realistic)
Identify 1 action that you can do tomorrow that will get you closer to your goal.
Schedule in the 1 thing that you identified in step 4 in your calendar, even better tell a loved one what you’re going to do (e.g cook a meal, spend 1 hour on updating a CV, go for a walk, meditate, go to the gym for 15 minutes…)
Make sure that you take the action that you identified in step 4 and notice afterwards how you feel after you kept your promise to yourself.
Write down how you felt after taking the action, how did you feel in your body? What do you notice about your mood? Did you notice any new feelings or sensations?
Repeat this exercise as many times as you need.
Consistency over Perfection
Starting the journey of self-leadership can be very empowering but it can also be overwhelming for some. A lot of things can come up along this journey and it’s important to give space to those feelings that come up without getting stuck in them. The best way to process some of those negative emotions is by acknowledging them, processing them, while making space for the new direction that you are taking. Seeking support is important, therapy, loved ones, coaches, personal trainers can all be very helpful avenues to explore on your journey to self-leadership.
The key thing that I want to highlight for anyone that is embarking on this journey is to value consistency, action and motion over perfection. Be more invested in the process than the results. Enjoy all the steps and daily actions towards your goals. Get up and do your best every day. Make sure you enjoy making your daily deposits towards your best life because those days are a part of the bigger picture of transformation.
It’s really easy to be self-critical when we look at how far we have to go. It’s a much better strategy to look at the next right step in the context of the day in front of us and only focus on what that moment requires from you. In the wise words of Aunty O :
“Doing the best at this moment puts you in the best place for the next moment.”Oprah
Decide where you want to go and then take it one day at a time. Self-compassion is critical, we cannot succeed without it. We all have off days and setbacks; we won't feel like doing the work every day. But as long as we maintain momentum in the greater scheme of things we are making progress and that’s all that matters. We’re in motion in the direction of where we want to go with our lives, the cumulative effect of consistency beats perfection.
Conclusion
Self-leadership is about taking complete responsibility for where we are at and for where we want to go in life.
It’s about practising radical honesty with ourselves, it’s about facing our fears and it’s about taking action and creating a self-defined and fulfilling life. Self- leadership is an essential and inextricable part of adulthood that can be applied to every area of our lives.
Self-leadership is about lighting our own path through taking charge of our direction in life, of our thoughts, our feelings and our actions.
Self-leadership is essentially about empowering ourselves, it’s about taking a leadership role in our lives and understanding and embracing the power that we all hold to create what we want for ourselves, and the power that we have to accept what we can’t change.
What action will you take today to move you in the direction of where you want to go? Let me know in the comments or send me an email, I’d love to hear from you.
XO
Ruthie