Inspiration | Personal Development

One Thing Everyone Needs

The secret to living your best life

Most people overlook the one thing crucial to making the most of their lives. But knowing it makes a huge difference in everything you do and helps you live at your best!

One thing that helps you live at your best

If there were one thing you could learn that would put you on a different and better course, you would want to know about it, wouldn’t you? This one thing is often overlooked in personal and business leadership training, even though it is crucial to the outcome of your life.

In a nutshell, it helps you take charge and lead yourself. In simple terms, it is an ongoing quest to answer a three-part question:

“Who am I, who am I becoming, and where am I going?”

Yes, you guessed it, this one thing is called personal leadership.

“All human beings are self-leaders; however, not all self-leaders are effective at self-leading” Felix Manz (1498–1527)

Personal leadership

To lead is to create. To create more value for yourself and others. To do this, you must continue to grow and change. How? By learning who you are, who you are becoming, where you are headed, and taking full responsibility for yourself.

You are ready to begin when you truly understand it’s up to you and no one else to move your life forward. If you do not take responsibility for yourself, you can quickly get stuck or, heaven forbid, fall back!

To get on the path of personal leadership, begin with the end in mind. Choose a destination. You can always change it later, but knowing where you want to go helps you start on a better path.

Use your imagination and dream about where you want to wind up. Give it some serious thought, and if you are married, dream with your spouse. Aim for a better place than you expect now. Aim high, not low!

Once you have a destination in mind and can clearly articulate what it looks like, how it will be, and how it makes you feel, you are ready to move on to the next step.

Move from the past into the future

By taking lessons from your past, you can start nurturing those things that add to your future growth. During this process, you can eliminate anything that no longer serves you.

Getting rid of the things that drag you down or back, knock you off course, or take you in the wrong direction will free you! How? By giving you more time, space, and energy to plan your future and accomplish more than most can even dream of. What’s not to like about that?

Developing this new and different perspective about moving into the future will change who you are, who you are becoming, and where you are heading.

Becoming the leader in your life

Letting the past be the past, taking lessons, and moving forward with renewed excitement changes everything. You position yourself to take the leadership reigns away from anything and anyone else who has control over you.

Leading yourself requires clarity about what you wish to create in yourself. How do you gain this clarity? By articulating what you want. By seeing it (your vision). The better you can see what you want to create in yourself, the more intentional you become and the more decisive your actions. These actions move you toward becoming more of who you want to be and obtaining something different, something new, something you not just want but need.

“Rule your mind or it will rule you” Horace (65–8 BC)

Work on yourself

There is no better advice for you to become the best possible leader of yourself and others than to work on yourself. Move into the ongoing state of becoming more than you are.

As you consciously decide to work on yourself, take charge of creating your own future. How do you accomplish this? Expand and deepen your thinking, clarify what you want, and take action. Read books and blogs, listen to podcasts, watch YouTube and TED videos, and search online about self-leadership.

“Mastering others is strength; mastering oneself is true power” Lao Tsu (6th-5th century BC)

Never in history has it been easier to learn about anything you desire. Virtually unlimited knowledge and resources are available to help you grow and develop. You need only one thing to take advantage of these resources. Become curious, interested, excited, and develop a craving to learn more about becoming all you can be.

Set aside a few minutes each day to begin investing in yourself as a human being and a leader. Easy to say, but challenging to do if you do not prioritize your growth and let life get in the way. And why do we do that? As the old saying goes, “If you fail to plan, you plan to fail.”

Start putting your self-development first by placing an appointment on your calendar daily to invest in yourself. You are worth it, aren’t you? It only takes a few minutes. Make it the same time each day. Set a goal to learn at least one new thing daily.

Imagine the effect of learning something new each day over a year! Three hundred sixty-five things you didn’t know before. Or, if it’s easier, try to learn one new actionable thing each week. That’s still 52 actions that will change the trajectory of your life.

What do you think the average person learns each year? It’s doubtful they learn anywhere near what you will if you follow the above advice. You can guarantee your outcome will be better by planning and doing what is needed.

Many confuse leadership with obtaining a title or position, such as becoming a manager or officer in a company. Yet a true leader knows leading others begins with leading themselves first. By developing the ability to lead yourself, you can lead your family, friends, peers, employees, and bosses anywhere and everywhere, regardless of your job.

The responsibility to become more than you are today rests squarely on your shoulders. It is your responsibility and no one else’s.

Final thoughts

Are you ready to change your life?

Are you ready to grow and become more than you are today?

One small step each day can accumulate into enormous progress in a year, two, five, or ten.

Why not start now? Take one small step in the right direction. Keep your expectations real and develop the intention to become the leader in your life and a lifelong student of self-leadership. You and everyone you know

BillAbbate| LinkedIn |Twitter| Medium| Facebook| AmazonAuthorPage | NewsBreak | Truth

Bill Abbate Leadership Writer and Editor in ILLUMINATION

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