Path to Emotional Freedom for Leaders and Talented Individuals

Tomasz Mnich

embracing feminine leadership, deeper meaning and respect

发布日期: 2020年2月5日

From the very beginning of my life; 42 years ago, I wanted to be free. I wanted others to accept who I am and let me live my life. Desire for freedom was evident, even though I was not able to name it that way. Unfortunately there was Something that hindered that freedom. Parents, schools, people around always had other things to say, better ways to do. They unwanted influences put more garbage on top of Myself. I grew up into a person who constantly fights agains limitations; rejecting them, going above them or pushing far away from me.

20 years ago, while I was studying a computer science, I took a job. Few months later I became a leader. My unnatural responsibility for everything, internal pressure, and wish to be free, to do what I really want to do, made me a good candidate. I had finally a space to prove myself, to show up, to have an impact and to grow, to do things in my way; so that others will notice.

I knew that I am responsible for results of the work of my team, but I did not realized that when I took a leadership role I took responsibility not only for results, but for peoples' attitudes, their way of working and Something more. People started influencing me, impacting my choices and limiting my freedom without my awareness of it.

To deal with life and all its pressure I had to invest more energy, more time, dedicate myself fully to the job and the role. I had to be an example in driving objectives and visions forward; for my teams. Untill the moment the life said "stop and take care of yourself". It was neither a tiredness, nor an overthinking and anxiety, neither a sickness (alergy, overweight, back pain, picks on my heart scan), not even material or personal losses. None of those triggered a true change in me, although I have faced them all.

Only when I was send by my company to Switzerland for an executive leadership development center, at the exact moment my boss told me I was labeled "a prosecutor" by psychologists and my career is under a question mark, I started considering a shift of my focus. It was like a destruction of Myself, to my understanding; at that moment. Extremely good business results which I achieved with my team have lost their positive impact on my selfesteem under new circumstances. The level of stress, shame, guilt and fear from being judged so harshly was so high, that I asked my boss to have an executive coach. l shifted my focus from external development (studying management) to internal growth (studying myself and seeing how it impacts my leadership). I started looking inside at who I am, why I am here in this world, what I really want to do and why, what happens in me; inside of myself, and how it impacts others.

It was 14 years ago; my internal growth journey started and I am still on the path. I call it a Path to Emotional Freedom and want to share it with you. Although I wrote the text for leaders; the approach can be used by any person who wants to be emotionally free at his or her work, in life; pursuing individual visions, aspirations and dreams. For leaders especially; as the pressure and burden that lands on our shoulders is huge; often unnoticed and misjudged.

Our leadership impact, businness effectiveness, personal influence and our happiness depends strongly on whether we are driven by Something else or we drive our visions, lead our teams and choose our actions freely from the place of being Ourselves. It is our individual choice whether we decide to grow internally and get closer to Ourselves, living our lives joyfully or we stay in a comfort zone chasing external successes and fulfilling "emotional wants".

Choose your actions; living your life and being in leadership role from the place of purpose

Most of us leaders want to have a positive impact in the world, we want to create, deliver things that will be of use for others. We want to do things that matters. We want to make this world a better place to live. A feeling of meaning and a sense of purpose gives a direction to our lives. It is a predicament for the life to flow through us.

If you drive the numbers only, you are not happy, you are waiting for the happiness to come after achieving your objectives. You can gain more things; material things; but they will never make you joyfull for a long time. The truth is that, when you achieve your objectives you happiness ends quickly after you achieve it. You need to set up new objectives to visualize happiness you desire; to come later on.

The more we align people around a shared purpose the more engaged and motivated people will be. When you drive the numbers you have to pay the numbers. When you drive the purpose the pay is still crucial, but the extra work people do is for that purpose. Numbers needs to be a part of the equation, but not the only one. When people contribute to a shared purpose they engage themseves from the place of being themselves, purely motivated to do the right things for the right cause.

You will be able to align your team or the organization around a shared purpose if you personally are living your life purposefully. People will believe you Then. There are two aspects that needs to be considered. One is clarity around what is it you really want to do, create, achieve and why. But the second aspect; even more important; you have to drive your life from that place of purpose. You have to show that your decisions, your actions and your choices are aligned with the purpose. That is exactly when Something gets in your way. The more ambitious purpose in the organization you have, the higher probability that there will be people who will hinder your enthusiasm. You will have moments when everything moves easily, people contribute, you keep the steering wheel. There will be periods of time when you will be pushing and people will be scattering your energy and efforts.

If you are not aware of what is that Something that resonates between you and your people while driving your vision, finally you will reach a point when the more energy you add to your endeavour the more resistance you will meet. Instead of Choosing your actions you will React. Typical reactions of mine in the past were: escaping, ignoring or pushing more. Whenever I met a team member who was blocking, complaining, saying that things are not possible I was getting irritated; To not show my irritation I was ignoring him or her. I used to drive my visions by focusing on people who wanted to contribute; that was not a bad approach at all; but limited. I was not using all the potential in the room. Years later I realized that people who used to block my effort resonated with me and triggered Something in me that I did not wanted to acknowledge.

You can either put more and more effort into your endeavours till the moment you have enough or you can stop for a while to get wider Understanding, to see what is really going on; in the team dynamics, in organization, in your endavour, and most importantly inside of Yourself. Something that is triggered by people in you, if unnoticed and unadressed can lead you to the moment you personally give up. You start treating your job as a work for pay. People will feel it immediately. You will drag Them and Yourself down to a very miserable place. It is not what it meant to be. You have not chosen you leadership role to be an employee who fills your duties and go back home. You want to have a meaningful role in the world, in your organization and in your team. You wish to express yourself freely, be truelly yourself more often and create something valuable in your life; for yourself and for others.

Be with yourself, your team and the environment around in alignment with true needs

Most of disagreements with others and within ourselves comes from lack of understanding what we really need and what are the true needs of the environment we get in touch with (whether it is another person, our team, our organization or the market we contribute to). We know what we want and we push to get what we want. Often, when time passes we realize that what we wanted was in reality not what we needed. Our "wants" comes not from Ourselves, but from Something else.

In discovering; more precisely uncovering; our true desires we need to get in touch with Something that blocks a true understanding and pass it through. When you want to understand markets' or organizational needs, and create out of those needs a clear and ambitious vision; you team will chase; you shall to go beyond what you and others want. You should rather uncover what needs have to be addressed by you together. Something in you and Something in others falls into uncoscious interaction that hinders a true understanding. Skipping true understanding results in lots of setbacks, disappointments and lost efforts later on; on the path. The more clarity you have around needs the more clear your purpose will be. Energy and motivation will flow to fullfill it. Right choices and right actions will follow.

If you can understand yourself; get deeper and uncover your true personal needs; you will be capable and motivated to do them same with your environment. Have you seen people's reactions when you truelly uncover their needs during the meeting, how their faces started shining, how the relationship between you and them shifted in the moment? Have you observed yourself when finally you got it, you understood why something happened, what was the hidden purpose under what just happened? Touching yourself through you deepest desires changes the dynamics inside of you and changes the dynamics in you environment. You stop doubting, your overthinking lowers in tone, you mind gets more peaceful and your body more relaxed.

When you drive your vision forward from the place of purpose; and that purpose is created from a good understanding of true needs of your environment and yourself; all actions flow with ease. Even when you face a challenge, you know that there is a hidden reason under it. Instead of fighting or complaining about barriers you transform them. You treat issues as hints for a need to realign your actions back to what is really needed. There are needs that are permanent, that you want to realize chasing your long term vision and there are needs that emerge in the moment. Addressing emerging needs will accelerate your progress even further than when you stick to the plan. A plan is just a plan, managers use them to keep operations running. Leaders drives the vision forward adapting their plants to reality that changes every moment.

With the ability to understand; with the ability to uncover true needs; you become somebody who reads the environment easily and adapts to it. You are the one who drives things forward easily transforming obstacles on the way. People will follow you, as they will see a wisdom in your actions. They will recognize your ability to stop and deepen understanding. They will appreciate working with you, because they know they are doing right things and they are personally growing to better versions of themselves.

Get into a flow of true openness; while interacting with yourself and people around

Openness is a prerequisite for understanding. Without it there will be no enough space in you and others to get to the true understanding. Naturally we tend to protect ourselves from external influences, from opinions of others, from potential changes in the way we perceive reality. We are afraid that a change of our opinion about ourselves or opinion about the topic we strongly identify with; the change of our beliefs; will shake our core to the undesirable extend. Our mind likes to keep everything under control. When we know something we feel peaceful. When we don't we start feeling anxious. The life is dangerous; for limited mind; when we open up to new possibilities.

That is why people in your team have so much trouble getting in a real and deep discussion; the discussion that will produce new brave ideas, new breakthrough thoughts, innovative initiatives. It is safer to manage business in a way we used to. Every change in your organization creates a resistance, as every change of beliefs that you or others collect in your minds meet with a push back. Even though the external change is reasonable and expected results desired by everybody, some people will resist, because it will force them to personnal change. With every change, feelings are coming to the surface and with feelings Something gets triggered. Something causes you to resist even though it is much better and healthier to open up. When you open up, your mind shakes, and that it is a good sign, when you learn to understand that it is ok for the mind to shake for a while. When you fight with it you will immediately close down.

People will open up to the extend they will see openness in you. When your team members will see you: changing your beliefs, acknowledging your mistakes, appreciating new ways of doing things, they will be more able to take a risk of a personall change. There is one additional condition. They need to see that your openness is real, in your actions not in your declarations. In addition you need to realize that negativity does not help with openness. We tend as leaders to push things forward, find mistakes or issues and correct others. All those natural inclinations for seeing negativity; seeing failures; comes from Something and when it is triggered in us it is difficult to stop it. Do you remember meetings when all the flow of productive and creative discussion was killed by one strong negative statement and from that statement on people started seeing only risk, failures and barriers?

Openness is developed in you and others; during your team interactions; by appreciation not negation. Negation, critique, correction of yourself or others triggers Something in people that forces them to protect, shield and freeze they way of thinking. Praising yourself will open you up, praising others will open them up. Unfortunatelly it is easy to say, more difficult to be practiced. Not because we tend to forget about a need to appreciate, not because we have no idea how to praise ourselves or others, just because appreciation and positive approach triggers in us a strange feeling, something that some of us are not used to. That feeling triggers our barriers, internal tenssions and we want to push all of that back to normal. The normal for us is control, overthinking and negativity. We are accustomed to that. Some of us even tend to feel more relaxed while being criticized then when somebody praises us.

If you are a leader there is a high probability you were born and raised for a long time in rather critical environment (childhood, school, university, first years of work). If it was not so bad at least it was the environment with more correction than appreciation. The question is whether you want to stay in that environment, continue the pattern and let the Something else; that triggers negativity in you; become even stronger? Just notice that now it is not an external environment that criticizes you but the internal one.

Let yourself experience feelings without fear and start trusting them

Our barriers to let positivity come to us, or to give the positivity to others comes from resistance to our feelings. We are not accustomed to experience them fully. To be precise; from Something that blocks our feelings from flowing. We become anxious whenever unfamiliar internal experience emerges in us, inside of us. We do not trust others when they do not engage their feelings into their actions. We only trust people when they are fully with their hearts (feelings), their minds (beliefs) and their bodies (actions). So how to build trust if we have difficulty in acknowledging feelings?

Being raised as a male I had one simple message from my family: do not be so touchy, do not feel, be quiet, boys are boys, boys don't cry. So I have hidden my feelings totally for 40 years. Various life experiences, sometimes very difficult ones, were pushing me to hide feelings even more. Every time I have hidden them, Something else was accumulated; covering up Myself more and more. On top of that my mind created lots of thoughts and beliefs that helped me survive and not to feel. So the internal shield become really huge. I was easily getting bored when the challenge was low. In consequence in order to feel anything, any enthusiasm, I had to be with larger and larger teams. Only a company of large grop of enthusiastic people, ambitious vision or an intensive and risky physical activity were letting me feel excited.

When I meet managers; both male and female; at my work, I see a lot of similarities (to some extend) in their way of experiencing life and approaching themselves. Feelings paralyze them even though they want to be able to feel. When they experience high ethusiasm in the group not related directly to the objective, they try immediately to take control of the situation by talking, overtaking and getting the discussion back on track. It is universal to men and women in leadership roles, even though female leaders have more access to their feelings then male leaders. Being in the leadership role; working in the environment with other rational, controlling people; we are forced to mentally adapt. Something forces us to shut down our feelings and focus on rational thinking.

When feelings pops up; start flowing in relationship, or within the group; there already will be somebody, who has issue with them, whose natural automatic response will be to resist them. One way of resisting is to escape and withdraw from contact; trying to limit the flow of your own feelings. The other way is to attack directly or indirectly the person who brings his/her feelings to the room, so that the person shuts down. The reason for that dynamics is that when feelings flow in one person they trigger feelings in other people in the room. Feelings are contagious. When you are touched by the other person, and you are afraid of your feelings, or not accustomed to them, your mind will tighten your body or/and will jump into thinking. It is a strategy of the mind to stop the flow and to make you feel emotionally safe again.

If you want to build more trust within the team and engage true feelings into your vision you need to be more aware of your internal environment; your internal dynamics. You need to realize how your feelings are blocked and when, what is the role of the Something in the process, and what is causing you to react in a way you do not want. It took me years to learn to feel and let my feelings flow. The more I let myself feel passion, joy, love, enthusiasm, the more space in me has been created for deeper and deeper experiences. It is not always easy, but worth the effort. You will be more successful as a leader if you get in touch with your feelings.

You ability to create true relationships and true engagement will increase. You will become more happy and joyfull as a human.

Learn to freely choose your actions and stop unproductive reactions taking control over you

People react, often without conscience, automatically, because they were brought up that way. They minds have created various survival strategies during the life span. They resist agains everything they do not want. They resist when their beliefs are threatened; pushed for change. They resist when unfamiliar feelings pops up. They push back whenever a phisical change in the environment is getting closer.

Some of us use sarcasm and irony to protect ourselves from being touched. Others use open forms of aggression, like attack or critique. There are people who are good at ignoring and withdrawing from a situation; showing no interest. Some people constantly complain; no mather what, and blame others for their own failures. There are people who do not respond to emails, come late to meetings. Different strategies the same objective. Survive internal emotional pressure that is often hidden deeply inside.

I was good in asking questions and proving others are wrong; that is why I was labbeled "a prosecutor" after an assessment center. I was specializing in loud outbursts of anger when things were not getting in my way. I was quite profficient in withdrawing myself and staying in the thinking sphere; analyzing, criticizing, worrying and finding faults in me. All of my toxic reactions towards myself and others were triggered by Something I was not aware of. The more stress I felt the more unproductive my reactions were. I was disconnecting from people, making them feel disrespected. I was shutting them down while still honestly believing that what I do is right. I though that thanks to my reactions thighs move forward and objectives are met.

If there is no respect; and unproductive or toxic reactions are visible during meetings; there is no chance for feelings to flow. Feelings need a safe space to emerge. Without feelings there will be a limmited engagement; just work for pay. Trust will be lowered. People will pretend that they trust each other, being afraid of raising a trust issue. Openness will be hindered. People will be scattering their energies to prove their points. The common understanding will be missed. You will have to put a lot of effort and energy personally to control all activities, fix issues, correct mistakes and deal with escalations; to meet your objectives and deliver results. Wouldn't you like the situation to be different?

Your job as a leader is to create borders, set rules and guard those rules. Whenever you see unproductive reactions you should act. You should stop them and let the team know that you see and you do not accept it. Noticing and naming difficult reactions will show your team that you are in charge. Your authority will rise and your team productivity wil grow.

You should take for granted that your sensitivity to those unproductive reactions has to be higher then sensitivity of any other person in the room. People watch you. If you do not act, they think it is normal, they start adapting and playing their part in the game. Do you remember when you met large group of your employees, when you expected people to ask questions, engage into discussion and share openly. Unfortunatelly there was a quiet space and you had to talk for most of the time. Why it happened? Have your people felt safe opening up and sharing? Do not think that their are afraid to talk only because of you. Their are afraid of showing up in front of their peers. They are afraid of the reaction of peers after the meeting is done. Your sensitivity and persistency in being a role model of respect and guardian of rules is crucial.

Leaders I have met in my life have the ability to notice what is going on. They can even feel unpleasantness when unproductive or toxic reactions occur. But they do not act. The first reason is: limited understanding of the role they have in guarding rules and respect. The second reason is: they believe that teams work in that way, always were and it is normal. So they are not interested in fixing it.

The third reason is the most important. They are unconsciously afraid to act. On the surface level they are afraid of the emotional reaction from the group, including being ignored. On the deepest level they are afraid of their own reaction, when facing resistance or ignorance from the team. They are afraid that Something they have hidden deeply inside, they have no control over; will cause them to overreact. Overreaction will make them feel asheamed or regretfull. To not take a risk of losing our face, we leaders tend to take a passive strategy: let's see, wait till it gets fixed; by itself.

Let go of Something that gets in the way to live your life fully and lead your teams with passion.

What is the Something I am referring to throughout the text? There are not just emotions as you may think. All emotions that you experience, that are relevant to the situation, are important and very useful. The Acumulated Emotions that are triggered; emotions that you suppressed, rejected and cumulated during your life, are the ones that blocks the flow of life; on all five levels: sense of purpose, understanding, openness, trust and respect.

They block your free choices, your desires, your new beliefs, your feelings and your right actions. They cause you and others to react in a inappropriate way, from the place of Accumulated Emotions, not from Yourself. They make you shut down your feelings and the feelings of others, limiting the trust. They hinder your openness by freezing beliefs you already have; keeping you away from new ways of thinking. They stop you from getting to a true understanding of your needs and the needs of you environment, by refocusing you towards your "emotional wants". Finally they hinder your passion in pursuing your visions and in living with a purpose.

All natural emotions that are relevant to the situation are crucial for you to live. Anger is first of them. Thanks to healthy anger you can show people; in a constructive and productive way; where are your borders and when your rules are broken. When you feel the anger, it is a sign, that somebody or something is entering your space. Accumulated anger, when triggered, will only push you to ineffective reactions. The healthy anger that you feel, when somebody crosses your space, will be flooded by accumulated anger from the past. You will either attack others or you will use passive aggression towards them. Ability to get in touch, feel and stay with your healthy anger, will give you courage and confidence in any leadership or life situation.

Fear is important in your life. Thanks to fear you know how much you can cross you limits in a moment. When you experience too much fear it means you should not challenge yourself farther right now. Your growth is a process; step by step process. When you try to pretend you are fearless, you automatically reppress your fear. Acumulated fear causes you to either show up and prove yourself in a battlefield or to escape and hide. Neither of those two strategies is healthy. When you have an ability to be with your fear you are able to lead others during a transformation process. People will resist any transformation or change naturally. They resistance comes from fear. When you are able to notice their fear, be with it and stay peaceful, you will make people willing to engage and take more personnal risk.

Worry is good, as it makes you think before you act. But acumulated worry makes you think too much. It is called overthinking or an anxiety issue. You stop living you life and you start thinking about living your life. Instead of being happy and open for experiencing, you spend energy on thinking and analizing. Depression, isolation, apathy, issues with sleeping and other mental health problems gets from accumulated worry. When you learn to be with emotion of worry and you do not escape from it by overthinking, you are able to be with people who are complaining and blaming; without being impacted. You leadership actions will be more direct, honest and strong, as they will come from respect, not from automatic emotional reaction.

Grief is very important. Everything has an end. Endings causes us to grief. When you finish a project or a collaboration with a company you liked working for, you will feel grief. When you ideas are rejected you can feel grief and it is normal. When your relationship with somebody ends you will feel grief. The grief, if not ignored, will transform to a nice feeling of warmth, quietness and finally joy. It will help you in building real bonds, true relationship with your team and people in your life. The acumulated grief that you did not let yourself experience throughout your life will limit your natural happiness. You will tend to worry too much when grief is burried in you.

The joy is what we desire. It has two states. It is an emotion and it is a feeling. When covered by acumulated, not expressed joy from the past, it become sometimes too strong and toxic. We feel accumulated joy when we are over enthusiastic, passionate to the extend we loose our objective perspective, we push the vision too much, and we got tired. Strong joy can trigger other accumulated emotions like: grief, fear, anxiety and anger. That is why at the moments we experience to much emotions, including joy, our mind takes over, we jump into thinking and analyzing. Joy in it's pure nature is a feeling. When it flows naturally we are happy, soft, relaxed and calm. Our life flows with ease. People gets happy and open in our presence. Being a leader with access to pure joy makes you able to celebrate successes, appreciate your talents and your teams achievements authenticly.

All emotions that you have resisted and accumulated are like a magnet. One person with a strong emotion of any kind triggers the same emotion in others, even though the situation does no require it; often without the awareness. Physical reactions and interactions between people depend on strategies they minds has developed to deal with those emotions. Some people will use anger to escape from fear; people who cover their feer by being aggresive or very noisy. Other people will use fear to escape from their grief. They will control you, noticing your faults, provoking you, or using a subtle passive aggressive way. Some people will use grief to trigger guilt in others to cover their internal pain and apathy. They will make you feel guilty by showing that they suffer because of what you have done. Some people will escape from anxiety or worry, by showing positive face, artificially smiling and talking a lot; without being interested in others.

Shift your way of thinking about emotions; three steps in transforming them during every day experience

Food that is eaten needs to be processed. Part that is healthy is absorbed. What is not healthy gets transformed and expelled from your body. The same is true about your emotions. Only through experiencing (processing) them fully, pure energy is absorbed from emotions and the rest is transformed and expelled. We were taught throughout our lives that emotions are bad and we need to escape them. That is the biggest mistake in human evolution. It is like taking the food in and keeping it in your belly forever, believing that you will stay healthy. Not experienced emotions are repressed and accumulated in body tissues; causing muscle tension, pain and various forms of sicknesses, including mentall health issues. In order to be really free you need to shift your thinking about emotions and learn to be with them.

All emotion that emerges in you, no matter how intensive they are, have the beginning and the end. You job is to learn to be with them and feel them. Do not reject your emotions when they pops up. Just stop yourself, sit for a moment and observe them. Like if you were observing a hot water in a pot, waiting till it gets cooler. At the beginning you will be able to observe your emotions for few second only. It is normal. Do not discourage yourself. Next time you try, there will be a space in you for 15 seconds, 30 seconds or few minutes. Finally when you practice often enough, you will find yourself able to be with any emotion and emotions of most people in the room; staying peaceful, joyfull and happy for long, long time. That is a meaning of true emotional freedom. It is not lack of emotions. It is an ability to be in their presence; not letting them take control over your choices.

1) Notice your Reaction and Stop yourself. When you meet with your team you can practice not to react automatically. Stop when you catch yoursel commenting or correcting others. Never too late to stop preaching. Observe the emotion that triggers your reaction. Act only at the moment you feel more peaceful. When you ask question and your team sits quiet; waiting for your reaction or answer, wait as well, till somebody else opens up and takes initiative. You will build more engagement that way. If you see that there is a conflict between two people, stop yourself from fixing it imediatelly. Try to observe the conflict. Feel your emotions and wait few minutes, till the moment people realize it is their conflict and they need to bear with the burder. If it is not solved by them within a reasonable time you can still help the situation.

2) Learn not to react. Learn to let your team members feel the pressure of their own emotions. If somebody reacts disrespectfully, unproductivelly, name the reaction in one sentence and wait. Observe emotions and give that person an opportunity to take the burden on his/her shoulders. Emotions when processed by the owner gives him/her a chance to learn and grow. When people do not deliver what is expected, name your disapointment in two sentences at most, and let them feel tension. Do not talk too much. When you talk people relax. When you got quiet the tension in the room triggers people to think and take ownership.

When somebody makes you irritated on the street, try to not react as well. Observe yourself and notice emotions. You will see that with time, less and less people will be able to impact your peacefulness and your freedom. The most difficult training is with people you know very well; in particular with your family. The level of accumulated emotions in close relationships is huge and difficult to bear. So start practicing with strangers. When you get more proficiency you can approach your family members; in exactly the same way.

3) Do not escape into thinking. One important step in reaching a freedom is not to react, the other one is not to escape into thinking. Whenever you feel strong emotion breathe and try not to think. Focus on the emotion or feelings inside. Ask yourself a question: "what do I feel in my body right now?". Asking that question will help you refocus your attention from your mind, to your body sensations, emotions or feelings. With every practice, small part of accumulated emotions will be transformed. The space for Yourself will be bigger. The garbage of accumulated emotions smaller.

As a result of using those three steps often, you will have more energy to live and work. There will be no question if what you do is right or wrong, as your actions will be coming from Yourself not from your accumulated emotions. You will feel what is right imediatelly. The level of respect and trust towards yourself will be bigger. You will become more open for new opportunities; having better understanding of yourself and your purpose. Your leadership interventions will be more "to the point", more effective and more transformative.

What is your choice? Are you willing to invest time to your personal growth, letting Yourself flourish as a leader and as a human? Or you prefer to continue you life as it is, because you are happy, you have read the text, it is a kind of inspiration for you?

Neither of those two choices is good or bad. Start investing into yourself only when you will truelly feel motivation from inside. Do not let others push you in any direction; including me. That is my final recommendation for You; the most important one: Trust Yourself and always choose Yourself.

Start from the bottom to reach the top; 5 levels of questions that matters while uncovering Yourself and leading others

Level 1 - Respect. Notice and name what is going on in you, your team and your environment; to build a good fundament of respect.

Reflective questions, you can ask yourself:

What is happening with me right now? What reactions do I observe in me?
How much I respect myself right now? To what extend my own ractions show respect to others?
What is going on here in that relationship? What reactions and interactions do I see?