Smart Leadership Insights to Scale Your Impact

Just finished reading Smart Leadership by Mark Miller and here are some insights I learned:

Identify your personal quicksand and make smart choices to escape from it.?Quicksand is anything that's stopping you from being impactful, such as unproductive meetings, distractions, or life complexities. Viktor Frankl said that there is always a space between a stimulus and your response. In that space you have the power to choose how you respond. Therein lies your path to growth and freedom.

Confront reality regularly and plan for your future reality.?Define your universe, which comprises of these aspects: Professional, Personal, Relationships, Health, and Finance. Ask yourself: Are you performing to your full potential? Are you getting expected results from your plans and strategies? Are you living sustainably? Do you have the freedom to decide on what you want to do, whenever you want to do it, and with whomever you want to do it? Are your relationships healthy? Are you living within your means? Are you supporting your health by getting enough sleep, exercise, and maintaining a balanced diet? Are you participating at work, at home, and in the community to the levels you want to? Keep confronting your reality and checking where it currently lies. Think about what you want your future reality to be, identify gaps in your current reality, and work towards your future reality.

Grow your capacity and create time for reflection.?Step back and look at yourself. Start with your calendar and eliminate anything that's a low or no value-added activity. Chunk activities together by clubbing similar activities and work on them together. Track your time to see how exactly you're spending your precious time. Reflect, assess, think, and plan. This is how you get those insights that otherwise you'd have no time for.

Fuel your curiosity to create new opportunities.?To achieve maximum impact, learn to flex your curiosity muscles. Ask questions, learn from the people around you. Curiosity sparks creativity that leads to new opportunities. As you fuel your own curiosity, it'll become contagious as others find their interest piqued. Get out and talk to new people with fresh ideas. Spend time reading, listening to a wide variety of information.

Create change for a better future.?You must learn to use the force within you: your insight, strengths, and abilities. Channel them as a force for creating good in the world. Remember that your thoughts affect your actions, and your actions shape the outcome. When you select your next project, large or small, focus on what's under your control and apply your energy to those areas. Think about what actions you can take and do to make significant progress. Document your mistakes, make notes on why things went wrong, and learn from them. Repeat this from one project to the next to create a habit and make it second nature. Develop a growth mindset, commit to learning and growing throughout your life.

CTA: Don't wait until tomorrow to start making the changes you want to see. Begin today!