The start of Personal Leadership

So, coming back to the question of why? If you are on this page, or in general looking at development programs, you are probably searching for something. You want to develop your career for challenge or a higher salary or you want to be able to understand your partner better or have more friends, for example. Sometimes we are just searching for something but don’t really understand what. These are all cool reasons why, and it lets us know we are searching. Personal Leadership will help us to understand who we are as a person and to understand what we want, eventually leading to understanding why we behave in a certain manner or why we think the way we do. If we can take charge of this, our development needs will become much clearer. We can set goals for ourselves that will make us happier, and we can do what we want and not what society expects of us. Take it from somebody who has switched career paths a couple of times, switches his thought pattern even quicker, and went in all kinds of directions: It’s much easier to start living your own life and have some fun while doing it :)

[1] .Unhappy in this sentence means a temporary unhappiness about a certain situation or event that happened to you. If you have a feeling of constant unhappiness or sadness, personal development is not the answer. Try to find professional help in that case with a psychologist.

The first article of the website has to start with the beginning of a journey. Self-development – and therefore personal leadership – is a journey. The journey of your life where you are the main character of the book or movie. Working on ourselves includes becoming better neighbours, co-workers, partners, and helps us to connect and integrate better with the rest of the world. The key of looking at it like you are the main character, is that you will learn to reason everything from yourself and your own actions. Your level of control is the highest over your own actions (if not the only thing you can actually control) and from a personal leadership perspective, we will always look towards ourselves and what we can do. And most of all, we are looking to get some fun out of life while doing important things. Or as a friend of mine likes to put it: It's not worth doing if it's not F*cking Awesome! 

Let’s start (as we properly should) with a definition:

Personal Leadership does not include learning skills like becoming a better welder or writer or project manager, but it can certainly be the start of it. Through personal leadership we will try to find out what we really want and enjoy and set an improvement path for ourselves so that we can start and achieve that. This can be on a relational level but also a professional level. Any aspect of your life can be enhanced to ensure that you live a fulfilling life. It all sounds nice, but why would you consciously start with the process rather than "just do it on the fly"?

These days YouTube, TikTok, and all other kinds of social media are filled with messages that you need to develop yourself to become the most optimized human being. Usually, it revolves around a perfect body, becoming a millionaire or billionaire entrepreneur, or having the strongest willpower on earth. In some cases, this will be the thing that will lead you to a perfect happy life. Some people are “born” to become entrepreneurs or fitness models and enjoy the creative art that is necessary to create business models or a perfect physique. The energy that this gives them and the presence that this creates is what attracts us to them. But, again except for a very few people, copying them will not help us to get this same satisfaction.

Living our own life means we have to start taking responsibility for our own actions. Sentences like: “But my friends told me to” or “My boss doesn’t understand me” do not really fit in our life anymore if they are of a complaining nature rather than an analyzing one. This means taking ownership of our own lives, the first step. Everything that we do, think, or feel is influenced by our thoughts and actions. If we learn to understand these thoughts and actions and become more aware of them, we can do it differently next time if we are unhappy[i] with the outcome. In other words, we become more conscious of ourselves, the second step. Becoming conscious of our actions does not happen overnight, the same as taking full ownership of ourselves, but look at it like an onion: you will need to peel layers off to get closer to the core.

When we become more conscious of our actions, we will have the opportunity to change our behaviour if we want to. Or perhaps show a kind of behaviour more because we like it and want to keep it. We can do this through reflection, our third step. Through reflecting on our own actions, we can develop new and more efficient behaviors that are a better fit for our own personality and motives in life. Therefore, it will lead to a happier and more fulfilled life. And yes, this can still mean becoming a successful entrepreneur, but it can also mean a happier relationship with your partner or co-workers.

When we do this successfully in line with who we are, we will grow as a person in an authentic manner fitting to us: Authentic growth. This is the only form of growth that is sustainable. If we learn behaviors or thoughts that do not match with who we are, they will break us later in life or we will live our lives unhappy. Authentic growth will mean that we grow in line with who we are and through that, we will get the most out of life. This is the difference between “growing to your utmost potential” and “growing to who others want you to be”. It sounds simple, but I think it is one of the most difficult things you can do in this modern age. Having the courage to step out and be who you are and follow your desires/motives is not always appreciated in a society that revolves around “show and tell” a little bit too much at times. But I also think it is the path where we will achieve the most, love the most, and have the most fun while doing it!

Now we have a general idea about what personal leadership entails. In part 2 we will go over a step-by-step approach that can help you on your way.

"Personal Leadership is a process in which we take charge of and enrich our own behaviour and thoughts to reach our fullest potential while enjoying what we are doing".