Natural Leadership - Your Truth

Are you living in your truth or dying in your fear?

Your truth will set you free. A cliché maybe but only so because it happens also to be true. When you’re free you will have the authentic inner confidence that devours problems, lives life to the full and inspires those around you to support your vision.

Right now you have a choice: do I want to live or do I want to die? Do I want to expand or do I want to contract? There’s no other option. There’s no standing still. Waiting and hoping ‘things’ are going to get better is a fools’ paradise. Playing safe is the riskiest strategy you can adopt. You have problems. So what? We all have problems. I have problems. I don’t care about my problems. So why should I care about yours? I care about me – not my problems. That’s why I can care about you – not your problems.

A great metaphor for goal-setting and problem-solving

So what is your problem? If you were playing golf, your problem is your goal: to hit the ball into the wee hole with the flag in it 400 yards away into the future. Or is it? What really is your goal? To get one under par? To beat your opponent? To play better than before? Better than ever? What really are your success criteria?

But regardless of all that, what do you need to look at and be paying attention to as you hit that ball? Your goal? Your vision? The hole? The flag? The score? The pain in your neck? The prize? Your companion – the competition? No. none of these is the truth of the moment. All of them are metaphors for what keeps us from being in the moment and experiencing our truth.

The fear always is: will I win? will I hit the ball well? will it go straight? Will I get it close enough to the hole to be par? Wouldn’t it be great if I got one under? Or even a hole in one? Nah, that’s impossible – for me anyway. Can I beat my friend at this? Am I better than her. Is he better than me? What will ‘they’ think of me if I muff it? How will I feel about myself if I play a lousy shot? Etc, etc. yada-yada, yamma-yamma, nah-nah nooh-nooh. The mind yatters away at us from inside. Comparing and judging my past, my future and telling me what is or isn’t possible based on – what? Fantasies or past reference points. If this is an accurate metaphor for how leaders set goals, is it any wonder businesses fail?

Imagine how much time and energy is wasted wrestling with these internal issues. Versus how much time it actually takes to hit the ball.

How much time does it take to hit the ball, to play your best shot, to be the best you can be? No time. No time at all. There is an infinitesimal – virtually non-existent – amount of time to give it your best shot. All the time it takes is in preparation, practise, focussing, clearing the mind, calming the emotions coming into the present. Some of this is the positioning, the swing, the follow-through, the angle of the hip, the balance, the speed and strength applied. But 99% of the game is the illusive ability (that our work makes primary) to focus on that ball right here, right now. And as we attempt to do this all our addictions to our distractions and fears come out to play. That’s really the ‘competition’ isn’t it? Our own internal programming, habits and beliefs?

When I play golf I’m just out for a walk in the country, to chew the fat with a friend, get some exercise and to knock a few balls around. I pretend I don’t care about winning or even playing well. (I do, but it really doesn’t matter one way or the other, because golf is not ‘my game’.)

Many people play the ‘organisation game’ with a casual attitude like this. Probably, because they have not taken the time and done the work to find out what the ‘ball’ is in their business, they rarely hit a really good shot. They are discouraged. It all seems futile. All they have to do is look as if they’re in the game long enough to retire, get their payoff and – go and play golf every day till they die.

If that’s how you want to play it, that’s just fine. Society and organisations are set up by people who also want to do this and totally support this type of action. This hopeless, hapless attitude.

But if you are sick and tired of being sick and tired and you want to actually play an exciting, fulfilling rewarding game then we need to talk. Because even if you’ve only hit one good ball in your life, you’ll never forget how damn good it feels. And if you want more of those experiences – that are not just a lucky fluke – then you need, yes, need, to commit to two things:

yourself and your truth, awareness of and letting go the compelling but irrelevant issues that distract you from living in that truth

Your truth will set you free. A cliché maybe. But only so because it happens also to be true.

Do you want to be free to be your dreams and live them? So free others will also want to be the best they can be and do the best they can do, around you? That’s what we call natural leadership.

Want to talk?