Have you ever considered that the most important person that you need to lead in life is yourself? Over the years I have realized that sometimes we look to everything and everyone else to guide us through life when we really should be looking in the mirror first for that guidance. If we rely on others to lead us when things go not according to plan, we have an out of who we think is responsible, but when we put the responsibility on our own shoulders to hold our accountability, that is a game changer.
When my husband passed away over 3 years ago from a brief illness after 36 years of marriage it really hit me hard to realize how important it is to be living each day in the moment because that is all that we have. What I realized after a period of time was that I had to lead myself through each day and that it wasn’t the responsibility of everyone else to do that for me. Don’t get me wrong, I have a wonderful loving family and I would not have been able to walk that journey without them, but I realized during that year that I had to lead myself through that difficult time if I was going to survive. To have that realization that if I am to be a leader to others, like my children, grandchildren, siblings, and father, the initial step was to lead my life first.
It has been over 3 years and what I know for sure is that all of the mentoring and coaching that happened over the earlier years in my life was the reason that I was able to step up to the challenge and realization of how important it was first to be the “Leader of One”, over myself, if I was going to survive. I have a quote that I live by each day now since that journey began “Live in the moment no matter where you are or who you are with”, and that can’t happen unless I lead myself to do that each day. For the first time in my life, I am doing things that I would never have done on my own even though I have been a leader in many roles for over 30 years, I never looked at how important it was to be the leader of myself.
So as you decide whether or not you are a leader or a follower in life, just remember that someday when you least expect it that the most important person you will need to lead is yourself.
Don’t get me wrong, this blog is not a statement about individualism or self-reliance because my rock is “Jesus”, and without that “Guide” I wouldn’t be functioning today. I have a lot of things that I rely on in my tool box to pull from for each day, but what I have realized is that we are the ones who are responsible and accountable to whether we get up each time we fall, and that decision to get up will depend on our leadership of “One”.
