This Weeks Challenge: Hold the mirror up to your leadership in life. Be honest. Make change.
Always do your best…..that means holding the mirror up from time to time. Looking straight ahead and acknowledging what you see. Being willing to reflect and think about what it feels like to be in a room with you. What is your vocabulary like? Does ego shine brightly or is humility present? Do you build people up, or tear them down with your words? For there is nothing sadder than the coach who cannot be coached. Than the leader who cannot look in the mirror with honesty and see what others see. We cannot be present for someone else and offer them love and compassion if we cannot first offer those things to ourselves. Moreover ancient wisdom has taught us that you cannot change what you do not acknowledge.
So today, hold that mirror up. Think long and hard about the person who goes out into the world each day. Replay some of your more recent conversations and imagine that you are sitting with yourself. Does your approach show empathy and compassion for how people may have felt in those conversations? People are negative when they encounter attitudes that judge and blame. They are negative when they don’t trust. When their values are being tested each day. So if the people that we are with most of the time seem negative…then we have to check our own attitude. We have to ensure that what we put out into the universe each day is attracting the very best and when it’s not, we need to make adjustments to our approach. Ultimately, the better leader you are, the better leaders you will attract. You get what you give….always.
Pema Chodron said “In cultivating compassion we draw from the wholeness of our experience, our suffering, our empathy, as well as our cruelty and terror. It has to be this way. Compassion is not a relationship between the healer and the wounded. It’s a relationship between equals. Only when we know our own darkness well can we be present with the darkness of others. Compassion becomes real when we share our humanity.”
By Lisa Scott Executive/Life Coach