Being a Courageous Leader

On a day to day, or minute to minute basis in our lives, we don’t often think about utilizing the virtue of courage.  We are not even really conscious about needing it or using it.  We’ve been conditioned to think that courage is reserved for the heroes on life, the firefighters, the soldiers, or for the moments when our lives or lives of our loved ones may be in danger.  No doubt, these situations require courage but utilizing the courage that we have inside on a daily basis is what creates a full and exciting life for each of us.  It’s what creates a life worth living, vs. surviving it. 

Were you taught in life to not be bold?  Were you taught to be nice, not make waves, not stand out, and certainly not go against the current?  Does your family have a certain way of living that you never really considered going against?  Maybe you don’t even know why you do certain things a certain way, you just do.  It’s all you know.  It’s your personal paradigm.

Security has become the way to live these days.  People will give up their own passion, integrity, and zest for life in order to be secure.  We will stay in an unfulfilling relationship, tolerate a difficult employee’s behavior, and settle for the status quo, because it’s comfortable.  It’s our comfort zone.

Even if you’ve established a high level of success, you still have a comfort zone.  It may be different than someone else’s but it’s there.  Each of us can become complacent in what we know we do well.

However, the cost for staying too long in our comfort zone is tremendous.  A comfort zone gives us an arena to master.  It’s where we feel proficient and confident.  It’s not a bad thing.  But when we rarely venture out of it we can eventually feel depressed, frustrated, held back, numb, anxious, and unfulfilled.  Often times we think it’s because of our circumstances, or because of another person that we feel this way.  But that couldn’t be further from the truth.  It’s all because of our choice to not get outside our own comfort zone, to avoid risks, to stay safe in what we think is SECURE.

True security comes from being willing to live a courageous life.  What I mean by that is on a daily basis deciding to take risks.  Have that conversation that you’ve been putting off with that employee, address that difficult issue with your spouse, go speak in front of that group that you know you could contribute to, start that new business you have been dreaming about.

We often avoid emotional risks because we don’t think we could handle what might happen if we did.  We tend to get attached to a particular outcome. Great confidence comes from trusting yourself that you can handle anything that might happen as a result of your risking, knowing that even if it didn’t turn out great, you’d be OK.  And that you’ll do whatever you need to in order to get back up and keep going.

What is it for you?  What would have you outside your comfort zone?  Living a passionate, full life is a choice.  It’s not something that one day gets bestowed upon us.  The longer we wait, the harder it is to tackle those challenges.  What awaits you on the other side of your comfort zone is YOUR LIFE!  Go and get it.

Leadership Theory: The Law of Cause and Effect

In the last two posts, I asserted that you are meant to have an amazing life. And if you are in business, you are meant to have an amazing business. All of the things that you have ever thought you would like to be, do and have, you are meant to be, do and have.

I then asked: why isn’t it that way for everyone, and for you? One answer is that no one ever told us that we have the power to create anything and what you have right now is exactly what you’re creating.

Last week I concluded that you spend most of your time feeling unhappy, disappointed, frustrated, angry, resentful and so on and that since you always get more of what you focus on, that’s why your life and your business aren’t amazing.

I can explain why this is so in a number of ways, although the way I’m choosing will surely bring out all the skeptics. Consider that the world we live in operates under a whole series of basic laws or principles. Gravity is a perfect example. It makes no difference whatsoever how you feel about gravity. Regardless, it is a law that operates universally and for everyone.

The most fundamental law of all is the law of cause and effect. What it says is that for every effect, there’s a cause, for everything that exists and for everything that happens, there’s a cause. Since you and your company exist, what is the cause of those? Here’s my assertion: there is a power or force in the universe that is the cause of all that exists.

You did not arrive by accident. In fact, nothing that exists occurred by accident. There is a central cause, there is a power or force in the universe that is at the heart of all things. Some call this power or force God, but you can call it whatever you want. People of science, philosophy and theology debate this all the time. But whatever it is and whatever you call it, it exists.

When that power of force created you, you inherited all of its power. It’s very much analogous to what happens when a woman, or any animal in nature, gives birth to a child. The child arrives with all of the inherent power and ability to do whatever the parent did and maybe even more. So just like the power at the core of everything had the infinite power to create all that we see and experience, you arrived with that same power to create. And the bottom line is that you create with your thoughts and your feelings.

As I explained last week, when you think about the things you want and feel happy and hopeful – joyous, enthusiastic and appreciative would be even better – you create events and circumstances that contribute to those feelings. But when you focus on the things you don’t want and feel unhappy, disappointed, frustrated, angry, resentful and so on, you create events and circumstances that contribute to those feelings. In next week’s final chapter, we’ll talk about how to change all of this and create the life and company of your dreams. In the meantime, start noticing what your dominant thoughts and feelings are. Using the terminology introduced last week, all you really need to do is to shift them to be positive at least 51% of the time and you will see remarkable results begin to appear.

Motivational Leadership: Embracing the Paradigm

Last week we examined the concept of a paradigm. This week we will consider what the value of shifting our paradigm is.

We learned a paradigm acts as an information filter that determines what we perceive as reality. What may be perfectly obvious to people with one paradigm may be completely invisible to people with a different paradigm.

Finally, and most important, our paradigm determines what we can and cannot accomplish. For example, if you take a piece of land measuring one hundred yards, mark off lines every ten yards, put goal posts at opposite ends, and then give everyone baseball gloves and bats, they will find it difficult to play baseball because the field isn’t set up for that game.

So it is in life. It’s important to understand that we live in a particular paradigm. It’s neither good nor bad, neither right nor wrong. It is what it is. Yet the paradigm you and I live in today has as much impact on us as the 1400s paradigm had on the people who lived then. The current paradigm makes us be and act in a particular way. Like water to a fish, we can’t even see it!

Let me ask you a question: Are you clear that you have many beliefs? By the way, a belief is a thought you repeat to yourself over and over because you think it’s the truth. Have you ever asked yourself: how come I believe what I believe? Probably not. To drive home the point, you didn’t even decide to believe almost everything you believe!

You were born into a paradigm that had an already existing set of beliefs and you bought into virtually every one of them without any thought as to their validity or usefulness. If that’s not bad enough, the vast majority of what society trained you to believe either isn’t the truth or isn’t very useful, which is why for so many leaders, life is like looking for downtown Chicago with a street map of Detroit. It is why ninety percent of all businesses that start each year fail within the first ten years. It is why leaders often feel like they have shackles on as they attempt to lead their organizations into the future.

So neither you nor I are responsible for our world being the way it is. It was that way when we arrived and, just like everyone else, we were trained to operate in it. As we will discuss more fully as we proceed, the existing paradigm, the one we live in here and now, is not set up to create enthusiastic, confident, optimistic, appreciative and happy people working together on behalf of a future they have all committed themselves to. On the contrary, it’s designed to create pettiness, gossip, competition, conflict, arguments and righteousness. How do I know that? Because that’s precisely what we all too frequently have!

If we keep operating in the existing paradigm as we have in the past, we’ll keep getting more of what we already have. Albert Einstein defined insanity as doing the same thing over and over again while thinking we’ll get a different result.

Consider this story. A man was walking down a dark street late one evening. As he approached a lamppost, he saw a second man frantically searching for something on the ground. Not seeing anything, the first man said to the second, “Excuse me sir, did you lose something?” The second man replied, “Yes, I lost my keys.” The first man joined the search. After a time he said, “I don’t see anything. Are you sure you lost them here?” The second man replied, “Actually, no. I think I lost them down the street.” Bewildered, the first man asked, “Well then, why are you looking here?” The second man answered, “Because this is where the light is!”

The same thing happens in life. Even though we don’t find the joy, aliveness, fun and team spirit we want at work, we keep looking for it in the same place we’ve always looked.

What you need to do as you lead your organization into the future: Initiate a great change in the fundamental constitution of your thinking. Anything less is like putting a bandage on a broken arm. It might look good but it won’t get the job done. Forget the bandage solutions! It’s time to understand that if we stay as we are, we’ll only get more of what we’ve got

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Leadership Tip: Enjoy a Happy Holiday Season

Now that December is about to be here and the “holiday season” is upon us, I offer the following thoughts so you can make it safely and healthily to the new year.



First, do you know why this has become the “flu season?” We have an immune system that is designed to protect us and keep us healthy and as long as we take care of that system, it will do just that. But the number one factor that compromises our immune system is stress. Number two is diet and life style. So what happens at this time of year is that all of the pressures of the season cause us lots of stress and, to make matters worse, we eat too much of too many unhealthy things. While I’m not going to lecture you on the later issue, here’s what you can do to minimize the stress.

First, you have to understand what stress is and where it comes from. Like most things in life as we see it, the answer is simple. All stress, 100% of it, comes from resisting what is. What does that mean? We all seem to have a picture of how everything and everyone should be. If you look, I’m sure you’ll see how true this is. Then, we compare how it is and how people are to this picture and invariably they don’t match. If we just noticed that and let it go, there would be no stress. But we don’t. We either try to figure out how to get how it is to be how we want it to be or we suffer because we can’t. That’s what I mean by resisting what is.

The solution is simple, not so easy. If you want to have a stress free holiday season, just allow things and people to be exactly the way it and they are. Let go of your pictures, things are the way they are. Nobody told you when you arrived that you would get to have everything be the way you want it to be. Stop complaining that life isn’t fair. It isn’t and was never intended to be.

Instead of trying to figure out how to get them and it to be the way you want them and it to be, which all goes on in your head, stay in your heart and focus on what you appreciate about everything and everybody. While nothing is perfect, there are always things about everything and everybody that is wonderful and worthy of your appreciation. Now more than ever, learn to cultivate an attitude of gratitude. Focusing on what you have to be grateful for is the perfect antidote to stress. And if you do that, you might just eat in a healthy way and continue to exercise because you won’t have to try and pacify yourself to deal with the stress.

During the Holiday Season more than ever, our thoughts turn gratefully to those who have made our progress possible. And in that spirit we say, simply but sincerely, Thank You and Best Wishes for the Holiday Season and a Happy New Year!

Leadership Tip: Life is like a catalog

Do you realize that for each and every one of you, life is like having available to you an endless assortment of catalogs, all of which contain every imaginable thing a human being could want? Sound too good to be true? I’ll bet it does. But here’s the reality: it’s the truth.



As always, you can choose to debate with me or just ignore me, which I suspect many of you do, or you could open your mind to a new possibility and start to improve the quality of your experience. If you’re open to that, read on.

So how do you select what you want and what you get from the endless list of imaginable things available to you in the endless assortment of catalogs available to you? The answer is in the question: it’s all what you imagine. You see, you always get what your dominant thoughts are focusing on and the dominant feelings you have. Unfortunately, for most human beings, their thoughts and feelings are in response to their circumstances. And, since for most human beings, they do NOT have the things they want, their thoughts and feelings are negative: frustration, disappointment, complaints, criticism, excuses, gossip, etc.

What people don’t realize is that all of those negative feelings are bringing to them exactly those experiences from the catalogs of life. This is why the rich keep getting richer and the poor keep getting poorer and why over 95% of the people on this planet are broke, unhappy and feeling powerless. Today, these very same people are acting out their victim game by occupying parks around the world. Have you noticed?

If you don’t want to be one of them, here’s what to do. Speak only of what you love, focus only on what you love, talk about the good news of the day, what’s working, how blessed you are. Choose to feel good, be happy, grateful, excited, joyful. Generate your feelings independently of the circumstances of life.

Imagine what you want in life. Feel love for what you imagine. Imagine you already have what you want. Always feel happy when you see something you desire or you see someone else have something you desire. Know that if it exists or someone else has it, you can have it too. Do these things and watch all of the things you want come to you.

Turn away from things you don’t love without judgment. Stop complaining, blaming, criticizing, gossiping and making excuses. You get what you give. Life is a perfect feedback mechanism. If you don’t have what you want, it’s only because you are not imagining having it and generating the feelings associated with already having it. As I say at the end of every chapter of Unshackled Leadership, life is always about 2 choices, A or B. This article is another example of exactly how this works.