How to Play the Lead Role in Your Life
By: Denis Murphy
Tags: Self Improvement, Pesonal Development, Responsibility, Leadership, Self-awareness

Art by Davey Villalobos

When was the last time you made a rash decision? Or the last time you acted in an insecure way around another person? This week I was speaking with, leadership coach and author, Paul Rosenberg about leadership, how we can become more conscious in the corporate world and how we can learn to innovate our way out of chaos.

What came up in this episode was the importance of taking time out for reflection instead of reacting mindlessly to the events in our lives. This time out can come in the form of a walk, an hour break, just anything that can act as a ‘circuit breaker’ from this moment. This time for reflection helps you to respond better to life and increases your chances of make sounder decisions.

Leadership is a topic that interests me because it’s a topic that I didn’t think much about when I was growing up. I kind of always assumed that there were a few leaders in any group and they were the people who commanded others attention and respect.

By default, I drifted more towards embodying the follower role. There appeared to be less conflict in this role and less confrontation, of course I turned out to be wrong on both counts. The follower role lead me to living an overall ambivalent existence, where I gradually lost my sense of who I was until I was eventually confronted by myself and the meaningless path my life was going down.

Today I can see that true leadership begins at home and your capability to lead yourself. Kind of like what Jordan Peterson says when he talks about having your own room in order first. Leading yourself might sound easy in theory but in practice learning to lead yourself is where the real work begins. Anybody can be promoted to a manager overnight but it takes time and effort to become the leader of your life.

Among other things, to become a self-leader requires self-confidence, adaptability, psychological flexibility and strong critical thinking and creative skills. However, you don’t need to possess all these attributes before you start. Self-leadership isn’t some Darwinian natural selection process. I certainly didn’t have many or any of these qualities in my character before I began. What I have been discovering over the years is that you develop these attributes in your character as a result of your decision to take responsibility for your life.

In saying this, developing self awareness is the domino that will knock all the others. It will be the grand saboteur in your life if you don’t respect it. You won’t get very far in your self-leadership journey if you aren’t open to seeing the walls you are currently rubbing up against and there are always wall, that’s one of the few things in life that I am sure of.

Practices I have developed and experimented with over the years, aimed at helping me cultivate a self-awareness in myself, include meditation, writing, yoga, running and focus/concentration/healing music.

The main thing is to get started somewhere and make the thing you do as easy for you to do as possible. You can do this by choosing something that genuinely resonates with you and experiment and change things up over time if things start to feel stuck and stale.

I believe that anyone can genuinely become a leader in their life because leadership is not about other people. Leadership is all about your ability to lead yourself through this world.

You can listen to the full episode here.