First Thoughts on Self-Leadership
Self-leadership is something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately.
What started as a complaint a few weeks ago quickly gave way to curiosity, introspection, and now—this.
Working out what it means and why it matters.
“I don’t feel like babysitting adults this week.”
That’s something I journaled in the early hours of a Monday morning before starting a day of training 11 clients and racking up 48 total sessions by week’s end.
My observation was this: these grown-ass people are so capable of leading themselves in certain areas of life—and still act like four-year-olds in others.
They can build multi-million-dollar businesses but can’t manage themselves enough to eat some fucking vegetables, get a little more protein, and go for a walk.
That complaint got me curious.
What frameworks and skill sets do these people lack?
What areas of my life am I still managing like a four-year-old?
What would it look like to change that?
What would I need to do to lead myself better?
And how can I help my clients lead themselves better?
Here are some thoughts that have been bouncing around my head for the last few weeks—in no particular order:
Leadership is influence.
In order to lead, a direction, a destination, or an outcome is needed.
You have everything you need already inside you—you just have to get out of your own way long enough to let it through.
Doing uncomfortable things requires discipline.
Discipline is taking action regardless of how you feel.
Doing uncomfortable things requires courage.
Courage is action in the face of discomfort.
Nothing great is accomplished alone. Surround yourself with the right people.
You can’t make progress without honesty. Get radically honest with yourself.
Control what is controllable—your actions.
Take full ownership of those actions.
Okay, so how do we build this into a logical framework for Self-Leadership and identify the gaps we’re missing?
Direction
To lead yourself, you must know where you’re going. Get clear on what’s important to you.
Principles
These are the foundational beliefs that drive your actions.
If Direction is the North Star that guides you, then Principles are the ship—or the wind—that gets you there.
You have everything you need already inside you; you just have to get out of your own way.
The conditions of your life are 100% your responsibility. Taking full ownership gives you influence over your future—regardless of your present.
Skills
Skill is the application of knowledge and action in the right moment.
Essential skills of Self-Leadership are Awareness, Regulation, and Discipline.
Awareness — the ability to notice and identify your thoughts, feelings, and emotions without attaching to them.
Regulation — the ability to pause in that awareness to make an intentional choice.
Discipline — the ability to turn that intentional choice into consistent action.
Practices
Awareness: Mindfulness, journaling, coaching.
Regulation: Breathwork, RAIN, Store & Explore.
Discipline: Transfer List.
If I were to sum this all up into a single paragraph, it would be this:
Get clear on what you want in life—externally (what you want to do) and internally (how you want to feel).
Then believe that you are 100% responsible and everything you need to get there is already within you—you just have to get out of your own way.
From there, develop the skill to identify your thoughts, emotions, and feelings; pause to see how they’re helping or hindering what you want; and move forward with actions aligned with your values.
That’s Self-Leadership: conscious action in alignment with conscious direction.
Lately, I’ve been asking myself:
How do I organize my life—my environment, systems, and community—to make it as easy as possible to move in my defined direction?
Or, put another way:
How have I created a life that gets in the way of what I really want?
With those questions in mind, a return to Atomic Habits by James Clear is probably in my near future.