How To Be The Leader In Your Life

Hi everyone, and welcome back to our next blog. Today we’re going to talk about how to be a leader in your life. The reason why I want to talk about this concept today is because, unfortunately, I see a lot of people around me who feel like they are victims to their circumstances and give their power away. They blame others or different circumstances for why they are not where they want to be in their lives.

In order to make any change for the better, we must empower ourselves to choose for ourselves to take new actions, and we completely have the power of choice to do that. Do not give your power away to others by feeling like a victim because by doing so you put the key of your happiness in other people’s pockets. You are left at the emotional mercy of others, waiting for them to change their actions so you can feel good about yourself. This is a recipe for an emotional rollercoaster and suffering for you.

I would like to break down this concept because I feel like this is an important issue that needs more awareness from all of us. First, let’s explain this phenomenon. The single most important reason why we victimize ourselves is because we become addicted to our problems. One of the needs that we all meet in different ways is the need to feel important or significant. Focusing on our problems makes us feel significant. We feel that if we have a big enough problem, people will gather around and give us the attention that we might not get in other healthy ways. Tony Robbins talks about this when he explains the “6 Human Needs” that we all have. These needs are (not in any particular order):

1. Love/Connection
2. Significance
3. Certainty
4. Variety
5. Growth
6. Contribution

Being addicted to our problems meets our need to feel significant. Most people take this route since it’s much easier to focus on problems rather than focus on the solutions, which takes a lot more effort and work to put into action so we can solve them. Most people take this shortcut which seems to meet their needs and helps them in the short run but sets them up for a life of emotional suffering and unhappiness in the long run.

So, the next question becomes, how do we take charge and be the creators of our lives? How do we put our energy on designing the life that we want rather than letting the circumstances that surround us dictate our choices and ultimately our lives? How can we shape our environments and be the creators of our own lives? 

Here are some steps that I came up with that will help further illustrate this point:

1. For every circumstance that you are presented with, a good practice is to ask the following question: What can I do to improve the situation at this time?

For example, if you have a co-worker who you don’t get along with, know that their actions have nothing to do with you personally but everything to do with their own experiences and perceptions. Once you become aware and able to see this person separately from their actions without emotionally attaching yourself to the situation, you will be more accepting and have compassion for them rather than resenting or getting angry at them. I know it’s hard, but the best use of your focus and energy is to put it on what makes you happy now, especially if you choose to continue to operate in that environment. If you cannot change your environment or circumstances, you must change your perception about it that serves you and empowers you. Just know that ultimately, the choice of what story you are telling yourself about the circumstance is always yours and only you can choose if you want to believe an empowering or disempowering story that serves you in the long run.

2. The thoughts that you choose to believe about any circumstance will create your feelings which will drive your actions which will ultimately drive your results.

Getting your mindset right when going into any work or life circumstance is the first step in you becoming the leader rather than the follower in that situation. Ask yourself: What do I want to get out of this situation? Being aware of the intentional result is the key to reframing your experience. When you are aware of what you intend to get out of a situation, it helps you intentionally choose how to think about the situation or person in a different way that serves you and your happiness. Asking the what helps you focus your brain on the outcome rather than the unrelated details of the situation and puts you in a better position of actually getting the result you are after. This will increase your confidence in your ability to produce the desired results in any situation without having the natural urge to control the situation or other people.

As we all know, when we attempt to control others, we never win and end up giving off valuable energy that could be used more productively by focusing on our actions instead. As a leader in your business, this is also a very good practice to apply when speaking with your employees and always practicing in asking them what results are important to them to increase their drive. Rather than focusing on other uncontrollable circumstances, what is it that they can control and act on that will get them closer to what they want or want to achieve?

3. Instill rituals in your life such as journaling, yoga, or meditation and create the space for stillness where you learn to listen to inner wisdom.

This is another way to get clear on what the next steps need to be taken in all areas of your life. The clearer the answers you get from your own wisdom, the less influenced you will be from other people that might be giving you advice. What I have learned about taking advice from other people is that even though they might mean well, their advice is biased in the sense that it comes from their own perceptions, experiences, and fear limitations. So, watch out on taking the advice to heart. The best practice that I constantly use in my life everyday is to extract the lessons from other people’s experience and then apply them to my own life by extracting the positive and leaving the negative that does not serve me behind. This process will also increase your own wisdom and awareness through learning from other people’s experiences. This will be very valuable to your own inner wisdom which you can use in your own life by saving time and energy as you won’t have to go through the testing and the trial and errors that those people had to go through.

This is ultimately what coaching is all about. By working with a coach who is further along in their life’s journey, you save so much time and valuable energy by picking their brain and getting their guidance. They have gone through it before you and have already figured out the trial and errors that come with the path that you also want to take. By working with them, you are condensing years of experience in a month or two which otherwise would have taken you years on your own.

Setting proper healthy boundaries in your relationships with others is another way to create that self-leadership in your life that will ultimately lead you to have a healthy relationship with yourself.

Once you apply some of the above steps we talked about, you will find a new sense of self value and awareness that will help you in setting limits around others, ultimately teaching them how to treat you. We teach others how we want to be treated. We do this by lovingly connecting and communicating with people in our lives: kids, partners, siblings, co-workers, bosses, etc. You express to them how you feel and what you need from them clearly.

I know that this can be challenging when we don’t always know what we need or want. This is why it’s important to be aware of your feelings and your own needs in order for you to be able to clearly communicate them to others around you. It comes from you quietly sitting with yourself and your own feelings so that you can understand what is emotionally going on with you first before going to others. This comes with practice as we are not used to doing this and a lot of us are even fearful to sit with ourselves. However, this process becomes easier and more comfortable the more we do it and is essential to our emotional well-being. The more you do this, the more other people will respond to your confident energy in line with that you communicate and radiate. This way, you will be the one shaping the environment around you, and not the other way around. 

I hope that this blog was valuable to you in the pursuit of designing the environment and ultimately the life you desire and will sustain your happiness and the life that you want to ultimately create around you. 

Stay tuned for more great topics and tips that you can use in your life and business right away. Next week, we will discuss this topic further. If you found this post helpful today, be sure to subscribe because it will only get better from here. I cannot wait to connect with you here again next week!

For more, I have a FREE “Guide to Top 10 Mental Blocks for Entrepreneurs” when you visit my website elonaloparicoaching.com where you can take these concepts further so they can help you right away.