Is your life your message?

Your life is your message.

Lead from within.

Are your actions your currency and your currency your actions?

Good leadership comes from people who have penetrated their own inner darkness and found their hidden wholeness. Think Abraham Lincoln, Winston Churchill and Henri Nouwen among the many great leaders. We often talk about the complexity of the outer world. However, the complexity of the outer world pales in comparison with the complexity of our inner world. If you can’t get out of your complexity, get into it and you will get out of it. As Churchill said, if you are going through hell, keep walking. Start by transforming your life and you may just transform the world. The concept is simple but hard to do. Lead from within. Leadership is a concept we often resist. In a true community everyone follows and leads. America started to decay when America started to produce self-serving leaders, as evidenced by the decreased importance of living with ethics, morals, compassion, and above all vision.

1) Listen to your voice of vocation. Vocation is a gift to be received.

2) Dissolve your ego and discover your deep identity. Be the person you were born to be.

3) Self-care is never a selfish act. Others will not care if they see you don’t care for yourself.

4) Be faithful to your true self. Be you, everyone else is already taken.

5) Find roles and relationships where you can be yourself and thrive. Know when to run from the pathological boss or the poisonous corporate culture.

6) Burnout is a state of emptiness that occurs when others want to extract what we don’t possess.

7) Our strongest gifts are those buried deep inside us; gifts we barely know we possess.

Follow and lead, lead and follow   www.follow-to-lead.com

Be blessed, and then be a blessing to others

Carlos Fontana, President of Phalanx