We are ALL leaders, but how do we excel at it?
As a teen and young adult, I approached life from the perspective that I absolutely had to achieve. It was almost like a hobby. I played for the NSW netball team, graduated from high school in the top 1% of the state and became a solicitor at an international law firm.
On face value, few people could see much wrong with this narrative. After all, success is what we all want, don’t we? Don't we all want to be wealthy and accomplished so that we can be happy? But, everything I did was driven by a desire to please others, look good for others, and feel validated. My self-worth was completely tied up in other people’s opinions and approval of me.
So, despite all the achieving, my mindset was very far away from where it needed to be for me to truly be successful and to lead my life from a place of empowerment.
Why does mindset matter?
Your mindset is the perspective or lens that you view the world from. When we aren’t aware of our mindset, we cannot choose the life we want to live and challenges will easily knock us flat. All good leaders have excellent self-awareness and a mindset that is not just built for, but which thrives through life’s challenges.
Consider why some people spend years in relationships they aren’t happy in. Or, why some people never get promoted and yet others are always being offered the top job. Or, why there are people who appear to “have it all” but feel like they have nothing. How a person relates to their life is what distinguishes those who lead powerfully and authentically from those who continue to play small.
To cultivate and nurture the empowered mindset of a leader, you need to first consider how you’re relating to your life and then whether there is growth required from you to step into your power. Here are three distinctions to be aware of on this journey:
1. Don’t be a victim
In my former life as a people pleaser, I often felt overwhelmed, under-appreciated, and really frustrated that things weren’t working out as I expected they would. I mean, I’d done everything right hadn’t I? But, in truth, I felt really out of sync with myself and like I was somehow failing. And, since my self-worth depended upon other people’s opinions, I landed in a life that didn’t serve me - somebody else’s ideal life.
The end result? I became a victim - blaming everyone else for my situation and any perceived bad things that were happening to me. This disempowering mindset also meant that I was incapable of creating anything different. I kept seeing the same results over and over. The same relationships, the same unhelpful behaviour, the same failed goals.
Many of us do get stuck in the victim mentality from time to time and if you do fall into this bucket, there are ways that you can transform your belief system from a disempowered mindset to an empowering one by taking responsibility for everything in your life. This will enable you to move through your life with strength and adaptability, which leads me to my next point…
2. Resilience!!!
Resilience is not that we don’t get knocked down; it’s that we get knocked down and we take the time to ask ourselves what we are committed to. For example, a resilient person gets knocked down and asks, ‘Am I committed to people pleasing and making sure everyone else is happy or am I committed to my purpose and what has meaning for me?’
Shifting from a victim mentality to one of resilience requires taking responsibility for everything in your life. The reason you must take responsibility for all the bad things that have happened (even those things that aren’t your ‘fault’) is because only you have the power to do anything about it. This means you must abandon the blame game, such as blaming parents, partners, jobs, the economy, or the government.
One way to building resilience is to really know and understand that everything is seasonal. The good times and the bad times. In the good times, this mentality will keep you grounded. In the bad times, it builds resilience and creativity.
3. Be an opportunist
The reality is that challenges are a part of life. They’re not going anywhere and they’re designed to make you grow so that you can step into your power and do the things you currently cannot do.
When the going gets tough, use the challenge as an opportunity to ask yourself how you can grow from this experience? Part of this process can also include an enquiry into what the situation, challenging experience or particular thing has gifted you.
For instance, the immense challenge of COVID-19 provided many gifts, including the opportunity for a new model of living and a new way of doing business. It has also seen us grow as a community and given us the space to look at how we take care of and nourish ourselves. Many have also had the opportunity to check in and think about what needs to change in their lives and what needs to be innovated.
It’s going to be really powerful for you if you can shift your perspective and see your life challenges as an opportunity for you to really become more than you are now. This is the mindset of a truly effective and powerful leader. Because success in life requires that we be receptive and adaptable to change. Every single moment of uncertainty and adversity is an invitation to an incredible version of your life. An invitation to get clear on what’s not working and what needs to change.
For me, I shifted my people pleasing mentality by challenging it. I looked at the areas in my life where my self-esteem was especially low and learned to reframe my focus from being externally referenced (where I allowed my self-worth to be linked to other people’s opinions) to becoming internally referenced and by discovering who I truly was. This was how I was able to powerfully step into the leadership mindset and choose what I wanted from my life, find my voice and change what I was experiencing.