You Are the Leader You’ve Been Waiting For

Love it.

So, there are two ingredients to authentic leadership: high performance + high fulfillment.

→ High performance comes via pursuing excellence in what we do.

→ High fulfillment comes as we create with meaning, joy and integrity.

Got it.

Now, let’s take a quick look at what life is like when we’re at varying levels of performance and fulfillment!

It’s time for a handy-dandy little chart:

So, we can be high performance but low fulfillment and we’ll BURNOUT. We can have low performance and low fulfillment and we’ll be a VICTIM. Put low performance and high fulfillment together and we have a LOTUS EATER. Put high performance and high fulfillment together and (*queue the band*) we have an AUTHENTIC LEADER.

I love it. Reminds me of Tal Ben-Shahar’s model in his great book Happier (see Notes). Here’s how he puts it: “The rat racer’s illusion is that reaching some future destination will bring him lasting happiness; he does not recognize the significance of the journey. The hedonist’s illusion is that only the journey is important. The nihilist, having given up on both the destination and the journey, is disillusioned with life. The rat racer becomes a slave to the future; the hedonist, a slave to the moment; the nihilist, a slave to the past.

Attaining lasting happiness requires that we enjoy the journey on our way toward a destination we deem valuable. Happiness is not about making it to the peak of the mountain nor is it about climbing aimlessly around the mountain; happiness is the experience of climbing toward the peak.”

Where are YOU in those quadrants and how can you move toward authentic leadership/happiness?

That’s beautiful.

As we discuss all the time, you have a unique set of gifts and experiences that you’re here to give to the world.

All the great teachers remind us of this truth.

Rumi puts it this way: “There is one thing in this world you must never forget to do. Human beings come into this world to do particular work. That work is their purpose, and each is specific to the person. If you forget everything else and not this, there’s nothing to worry about. If you remember everything else and forget your true work, then you will have done nothing with your life.”

Paulo Coelho (see Notes) puts it this way: “I learned the most important lesson of my life: that the extraordinary is not the birthright of a chosen and privileged few, but of all people, even the humblest. That is my one certainty: we are all the manifestation of the divinity of God.”

Here’s how Deepak puts it in The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success (see Notes): “Everyone has a purpose in life… a unique gift or special talent to give to others. And when we blend this unique talent with service to others, we experience the ecstasy and exultation of our own spirit, which is the ultimate goal of goals.”

Positive psychologists echo this wisdom as well—telling us that we each have “signature strengths” and that we discover happiness and meaning when we use them often in service to others.

In Flourish (see Notes), Martin Seligman puts it this way: “In authentic happiness theory, the strengths and virtues—kindness, social intelligence, humor, courage, integrity, and the like (there are twenty-four of them)—are the supports for engagement. You go into flow when your highest strengths are deployed to meet the highest challenges that come your way. In well-being theory, these twenty-four strengths underpin all five elements, not just engagement: deploying your highest strengths leads to more positive emotion, to more meaning, to more accomplishment, and to better relationships.”

If you haven’t joined the 1 million + peeps who have already taken the Signature Strengths survey to help identify their top 5 strengths, what are you waiting for?

Cruise on over here and get on that.

The book is packed with some great exercises and wisdom to help us discover our values and unique gifts in the process of identifying our calling.

Here’s to discovering and expressing our unique gifts and giving them to the world!

P.S. Let’s remember Leo Buscaglia’s wisdom: “Your talent is God’s gift to you. What you do with it is your gift back to God.”

So much goodness in there.

First, notice we’re talking about meditation again. :)

The first chapter of the book is called “Shift Your Focus.” The fact is, we won’t be able to create a life with deeper meaning and fulfillment without consciously shifting our focus.

The best way to do that? Meditation.

As Eric tells us, the key is regular practice. We need to take time EVERY. SINGLE. DAY. to allow meditative stillness into our lives. Even if it’s just for a few moments, this regular practice strengthens our capacity to release our mind from the bustle of the day and connect to something higher within ourselves.

So, shift your focus via regular meditative practice. Got it.

Now, as you sit in meditation, your mind will wander. Then what?

I just love the way Eric describes how to bring our attention back to the object of our meditation: “With a sense of graciousness and ease as though you were placing a rose carefully in a beautiful vase or escorting an honored guest to her seat at the head of the table.”

Beautiful.

Reminds me of how Jon Kabat-Zinn tells us we should *sit* during our meditation (see Notes on Wherever You Go, There You Are): “When we describe the sitting posture, the word that feels the most appropriate is “dignity.” Sitting down to meditate, our posture talks to us. It makes its own statement. You might say the posture itself is the meditation. If we slump, it reflects low energy, passivity, a lack of clarity. If we sit ramrod-straight, we are tense, making too much of an effort, trying too hard. When I use the word “dignity” in teaching situations, as in “Sit in a way that embodies dignity,” everybody immediately adjusts their posture to sit up straighter. But they don’t stiffen. Faces relax, shoulders drop, head, neck, and back come into easy alignment. The spine rises out of the pelvis with energy. Sometimes people tend to sit forward, away from the backs of their chairs, more autonomously. Everybody seems to instantly know that inner feeling of dignity and how to embody it.”

Finally, I love that William James wisdom nugget: “The faculty of voluntarily bringing back a wandering attention over and over again is the very root of judgment, character, and will. An education, which should improve this faculty, would be education par excellence.”

As Eric tells us, meditation is an incredibly powerful way to “tame your wandering attention and to enhance those qualities of character — clarity, compassion, and courage — that support high performance and high fulfilment.”

And, I just can’t resist dropping in a little more wisdom on the scientific proof of the power of meditation. Here’s Kelly McGonigal from The Willpower Instinct (see Notes): “One study found that just three hours of meditation practice led to improved attention and self-control. After eleven hours, researchers could see those changes in the brain. The new meditators had increased neural connections between regions of the brain important for staying focused, ignoring distractions, and controlling impulses. Another study found that eight weeks of daily meditation practice led to increased self-awareness in everyday life, as well as increased gray matter in corresponding areas of the brain. It may seem incredible that our brains can reshape themselves so quickly, but meditation increases blood flow to the prefrontal cortex, in much the same way that lifting weights increases blood flow to your muscles. The brain appears to adapt to exercise in the same way that muscles do, getting both bigger and faster in order to get better at what you ask of it.”

Ambition vs. Calling. Powerful stuff.

Throughout these Notes, we’ve touched on the idea of intrinsic vs. extrinsic motivation.

Recap: When we are intrinsically motivated, we focus on things like personal growth, deeper relationships, and making a contribution. These are the elements inherent to living in integrity with our calling.

When we’re predominantly extrinsically motivated, on the other hand, we find ourselves chasing things like fame, wealth and power as we’re caught in the grip of our ambition—the shadow side of calling.

Classic wisdom and modern scientific research tells us that, EVEN IF WE THINK WE WILL SUCCEED as we chase the extrinsic goals, we will be significantly less happy than if we focused on the intrinsic goodies.

Unfortunately, our culture is obsessed with the extrinsic signs of “success” of fame, wealth and power and it requires a tremendous amount of self-awareness and courage to stay focused on the things that lead to true happiness.

Here’s to having that courage and tenacity as we live our calling!

Maslow tells us that one of our most fundamental needs is our need to self-actualize—that what one can be, one must be.

Sounds like a “holy longing” to me.

How’s yours?

This is the core of the book: Helping us develop our inner guidance system. Very cool stuff.

Check out the book for more goodness. For now, know that: “Values provide the ground of inner congruence and integrity. Gifts are the ways that you most powerfully and naturally interact with the world. Calling focuses you in the direction of your soul’s longing and purpose.”

I want… vs. I choose…

Feel the difference! And choose wisely. :)

The end result of all this goodness?

As Eric so beautifully says, we commit to living authentically and our lives become an offering as we give our greatest gifts in the greatest service to the world!