Speaker • Author • Coach • Consultant
Writing about gratitude is one of my favorite topics, as I have written blogs, articles, and chapters about the virtues of thankfulness. As we approach Thanksgiving, I cannot help but revisit this topic again. It warms my heart to see the 30-day challenge many people have taken in this month. I see tweets and facebook posts with gratitude expressed each day for someone or something in their lives. Woohoo! 
I would love to see the challenge extend another month, quarter or year commitment to keeping a gratitude journal or gratitude board in your home or office. Challenge yourself to find elements of gratitude in the mundane or laborious tasks we do on a daily basis. How about a super-challenge of finding what you may be grateful for with a challenging individual. In that difficult situation, try to see the spirit in them; or how you might be grateful for the lessons you are learning from that difficult person or situation. Forgiveness is a powerful door to open the flow of gratitude.
You know how much I love the use of acronyms, so here goes one for gratitude:
Giving
Receiving
Abundance
Thankfulness
Intention
Together
Unconditionally
Directed
Everyone
When we are in a state of gratitude, we give and receive love and abundance. We are thankful for the intentional way we choose to live our lives. This awareness brings us together to unconditionally direct our love and gratitude to everyone, all of our brothers and sisters.
With love and gratitude,
Maria
Ask any successful leader or business owner what one of the most critical factors is for success today, and you will hear creativity. Now, more than ever, innovation and creativity are sought-after skills in organizations for their leaders. Old models steeped in scientific management and mechanistic thinking no longer serves our needs in this new era. As Einstein so eloquently reminds us, we must stop the insanity and look toward new models and creative ways of leading people and doing business. 
For decades, our American culture has devoted most curriculum and teaching models to developing the left-hemisphere of the brain. This is the part of the brain for logic, linear and sequential thought processes. This style of learning and development continued into colleges and universities where the mechanistic model of managing business and leading people remained a primary focus. Perhaps a nod to the “soft skills” of leadership appeared in the curriculum, but not until quite recently are we teaching these skills to leaders.
Many organizations now focus on teaching the soft skills in their leadership development programs because they realized a profound need for their leaders to have these skills in this new era. The soft skills to which I am referring are connecting with people, motivating teams, inspiring followers, creative thinking, innovation, quick decision-making and big-picture vision (strategic thinking and planning). Each one of these skill sets requires right-brain thinking.
The right hemisphere controls the left side of the body, is simultaneous, specializes in context, and synthesizes the big picture. Clearly, the ability to think quickly in today’s fast-paced world requires right hemisphere functions. I am not advocating tossing aside the value of the left-brain—our entire brain is a gift from God. I am simply seeking to focus on development of our right-brain functions. At this point, most of us have fairly well developed left hemispheres. After all, we have spent most of our lifetime educated and trained to use our left-brains. What we now need as leaders is to develop and reconnect with the processes of our right brains.
Lateral thinking is perception thinking, looking for creative and innovative ways of viewing the world. This process is not constricted by boundaries and limited beliefs; it challenges us to move into expansiveness, unlimited possibilities, and abundance thinking.
Are you ready for the shift?
With love from both parts of my brain and heart,
Maria
Someone asked me the other day, “How can you develop a thick-skin at work?” My initial response, “Develop a strong heart.”
Growing up, I was often teased because of my over-bite. Called many names at school, I came home frequently collapsing into a pile of tears. My mother would tell me to ignore the bully’s hurtful comments and eventually they would stop. I did experience some truth in this, but what was even more impactful, were her words, “Maria, you are beautiful, they just don’t see it.” Of course, she was referring to my inner beauty. I knew my outer beauty would catch up once I got braces!
Why is it that as adults we still feel the need to toughen up and not let other people’s words hurt us? Could it be that we forgot our inner beauty?
If so, do not worry. Reclaiming our inner beauty and strengthening our heart is easy to do. Developing a strong heart begins with self-love.
Practice these ten steps and in no time, you will not need a thick skin because you will have a strong heart:
What are some additional ways you strengthen your heart?
With love,
Maria
Motivation – discover the motivation in yourself and your mentee. 
I was just in a discussion today about mentoring. What exactly does this mean and why is it important for leadership to have a mentorship mindset? Mentorship is about sharing wisdom, and wisdom is gained from knowledge and experience. One of my favorite books about mentorship is, Mentoring: The TAO of Giving and Receiving Wisdom by Chungliang Al Huang and Jerry Lynch. Any good teacher will tell you that we learn so much from our students. The same is true with mentoring, it is an exchange, a dance of sharing wisdom, knowledge, and experiences with the intention of growth – for both parties. Of course, like most concepts we discuss, mentoring begins with self-reflection, self-awareness, and self-love. As written by Al Huang and Lynch, “It may seem clever to know and accept others; yet accepting oneself is the way to Wisdom. It may feel powerful to overcome others; yet disciplining oneself is true strength. It may be noble to honor others; yet respecting oneself is deep self-esteem.”
To practice mentoring, just remember MENTOR:
What are the elements of mentorship that resonate with you?
Exploration – encourage exploration of different perspectives, options, and opportunities.
Notice the feelings in both parties and explore their presence.
Talk less and listen more. Practice active listening and learn how to dance in the conversation.
Open – be open to learn from your mentee and the experience.
Respect – Always opt for respect without judgment.
Next time, we will explore coaching and how that differs from mentoring.
With love,
Maria
I love the word empowerment, which means a state of being “in power.” According to Merriam-Webster, the word has three definitions: “Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, and fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small doesn't serve the world. There's nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We are born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us, it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.” 
When we self-empower, we are the ones to give authority, enable, and promote the self-actualization of ourselves! We give ourselves permission to be the best we can be, to live the best lives we choose.
Stepping into your power includes the following actions:
One of my favorite quotes from Marianne Williamson describes self-empowerment:
Who are you not to be empowered?
With love and power,
Maria
Hello, hello! I do appreciate those of you who reached out to me to make sure I was okay! I apologize for the two-week absence, which was spent in intense focus, completing my new book, A Course in Leadership: 21 Spiritual Lessons on Leadership, Love, and Life. I do not yet have a release date, but you will be one of the first to know! 
During my two-week hiatus, I flew to Philly to participate in a conference where I met up with my brother-in-law Johnny, a Colonel in the Marine Corp Reserves. We had a great dinner and were greeted warmly by everyone in our path. Johnny was in uniform, having just come from a funeral where he was a pallbearer. Strangers opened the door for him, sent over an appetizer, refused to accept his money for coffee at Starbucks, and thanked him for his service and his many sacrifices.
This got me thinking…Johnny wore his uniform outwardly and consciously. How many of us, as leaders, are aware of the uniforms we wear? We are leaders and touch other people’s lives whether we are conscious of it or not. What messages are we giving to others by the uniforms we wear? Are they uniforms of service and value? Uniforms of greed? Uniforms of arrogance? Uniforms of fear? Uniforms of love?
Is it time to change our uniforms or take them to the dry cleaners? Or, is it time to redesign our uniforms? How would you design your uniform?
Abundant blessings,
Maria
“Grace must find expression in life, otherwise it is not grace”, are words filled with wisdom by Karl Barth. With our divine quiet grace, it shines like an outward beacon. The 3 Cs are outward manifestations of inward grace: care, compassion, confidence. The confidence comes from our surrender, knowing we are guided by the powerful hand of God. Confidence is one of the elements that draw followers to great leaders. Warning – confidence is not arrogance. I love the Merriam-Webster definition of arrogance: an attitude of superiority manifested in an overbearing manner or in presumptuous claims or assumptions. You will notice that I emphasized all of the ego-related words in bold. Yes, arrogance is seeded from ego, whereas confidence is seeded from authenticity, from grace, from God.
Care and compassion are grace manifested in outward behaviors toward others. Sir Francis Bacon reminded us that grace is fulfilled when shared, “If a man be gracious and courteous to strangers, it shows he is a citizen of the world, and that his heart is no island cut off from other lands, but a continent that joins to them.” He spoke of a heart filled with love and grace. Grace, too, is demonstrated through acts of sincere kindness to each other and all living things on earth. Care and compassion are vibrations of love.
Rabbi Heshel described grace under fire when he said, “In every moment something sacred is at stake, and even in that moment being attacked something sacred is at stake. Can I chose, or be awake or aware enough to see that going on and to say I need an imaginative, creative, loving response that keeps my power rather than give it over to that person and just act the way they want me to act.” Living in that state of imaginative, creative, loving response described, is living in grace. Reclaiming and retaining our power is the power of grace. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Mahatma Gandhi lived in grace, retaining their power, while teaching love and peace. Rev. Ed Bacon describes grace manifested as a unifying breath. Grace allows us to break the cycle of violence and turmoil.
How is grace manifested in your leadership and life?
With love,
Maria
BTW - This is an excerpt from my new book.
Why would grace be a lesson on leadership? How can it not? Grace is the state many wise leaders seek: grace under fire. The state of grace, however, is not just essential under fire; grace serves leaders all of the time. During times of stress, confusion, joy, and peace, grace is always at its best.
Many leadership books talk about policies, procedures, and processes. The extreme challenge in today’s organizations is that we value policies and procedures more than we value and honor people. As the Rev. Dr. King, Jr. said, we need a heart full of grace. Grace is found in love and personifies elegance, politeness, and generosity of spirit. An organization steeped in love, is an organization steeped in grace. 
Grace is a word and concept ripe with different mental models for people. Most definitions and constructs have common elements such as beauty, elegance, dignified manner, generosity of spirit, and a gift from God. The ability to see beauty in anything is a gift of grace. Mother Teresa saw beauty in the poorest of the poor, when she said, “Each one of them is Jesus in disguise.” Grace is seeing with the heart and eyes of God. Victor Frankl described the worst of horrors in his book, Man’s Search for Meaning. He told a story of sitting on the floor in the concentration camp eating soup, exhausted after laboring all day for the Nazis, when a fellow prisoner rushed in to ask them to join him outside to marvel at the wonderful sunset. Even in the midst of the heinous concentration camps, those prisoners understood the beauty of grace.
Grace is elegance personified. Many of my female executive clients work with me to reclaim their femininity in their high-level leadership positions. Through the process of reconnecting with their feminine energy, they discover elegance and grace. Elegance is refined confidence in self. It is a calm, quiet knowledge of self-efficacy that you can handle anything that comes your way with dignity. This comes from knowing you will never run out of resources because you are tapped into your source, the source of all resources, God. Grace through elegance is a powerful leadership example. I’ll never forget when Paula, a colleague 20 years my senior said to me, I never knew that a woman could lead with softness and femininity. I always thought you had to be tough, hard-nosed, and aggressive for others to follow. Thank you for showing me another way, an even more effective way. An authentic way. Paula learned the power of elegance and grace in leadership. She saw it in fact, move mountains.
How do you see grace manifested in your workplace?
I will continue my discussion on grace in my next blog post.
With love,
Maria
BTW - This is an excerpt from my new book!
I love talking about gratitude! As promised, below are three activities to cultivate gratitude in our lives. 
I remember reading an article about gratitude several years ago. The author talked about keeping a gratitude journal. This idea intrigued me and I decided to commit to keeping this journal for a full year. Each day I listed at least five things for which I was grateful, big, or small. Some days the list was a dozen, other days I struggled to come up with five! Then something happened…I soon realized that I was receiving more of whatever it was that I was grateful! Abundance did indeed flow. Blessings surrounded me in my life; work, health, play, and love became much more rewarding than ever before. To this day, I still reflect on gratitude in my journal and continue to be blessed beyond belief. Keeping a gratitude journal has also enhanced the lives of many of my clients.
Cultivate and live in a state of gratitude. A state of gratitude is an attitude manifested in our behavior and thoughts. Be conscious of your thoughts, always shifting from fear to love, scarcity to abundance. Soon enough, gratitude will become your SOP or standard operating procedure! To tap into gratitude and abundance, presence, awareness, and mindfulness are requisites. Think gratitude. Cultivate an abundance cycle with an attitude of gratitude. The gifts already surround you; with presence, you will become aware of their existence. Your resulting joy will only serve to bring more to you of whatever it is you are grateful.
Move your thoughts into action. Tell those employees, family members, and friends that you are grateful for their presence in your life. And make sure to tell them why you are grateful. I recently had the tremendous honor to thank two very influential people in my life. It felt great to thank them, and even better to see the looks on their faces and feel the love in their hearts. What I gave them by expressing my gratitude; I truly received back in my heart tenfold.
What are some of the ways you cultivate gratitude in your life?
With gratitude and love,
Maria
PS - This is an excerpt from my new book! 
I love the phrase, An Attitude of Gratitude. What exactly is an attitude of gratitude? In basic terms, gratitude is thankfulness. We usually remember to give thanks when we feel great. However, living in a state of gratitude is much like living in a state of awareness, it is a way of being. Gratitude may be an activity, but you will live a much fuller life and lead others more effectively, if it becomes your natural state and not just an occasional activity.
I’m not just talking kittens, rainbows, and rose-colored glasses. It is smart for you to practice gratitude; think of it as a best practice. Several studies conducted by Dr. Robert Emmons and Dr. Michael McCollough1 , extol the benefits of a grateful mind and heart. One of the studies concluded that regular daily practice of gratitude increased happiness by 25%. Emmons also found in a separate study that patients with debilitating health conditions slept better and were optimistic about their life when they focused on gratitude. These studies reflect the fact that grateful people report higher levels of alertness, enthusiasm, determination, optimism, energy, health, wellness, and love. 
In addition to the health benefits of gratitude, it is also an abundance magnet. The power of attraction applies; abundance creates more abundance. The challenge with abundance thinking is in the scarcity cycle many of us have found ourselves to be. Let’s face it, we have been taught scarcity since childhood. Scarcity thinking is focusing on lacking such things as finances, health, relationships, opportunities, and so on. The very important fact of this matter is remembering that on whatever we focus our thoughts and attention, it becomes our intention, and the universe conspires to manifest that energy into reality; you become what you think about, stated Earl Nightingale. It does not matter if you are thinking scarcity or abundance; it will become your reality.
Sometimes scarcity thinking shows up in the form of accumulation and greed. I have to get, get, get, and keep, keep, keep. People who hoard, are deeply immersed in this mental model. Fear of letting go and fear of surrender, block love, abundance, and joy from flowing. If we hold on to something, anything, too tightly, our hands cannot be open to what may be coming. We focus on doing instead of being, on getting instead of giving, and on differences instead of commonalities. Sometimes we fear a perception of vulnerability attached to gratitude giving. We fear that if we are free-flowing with our appreciation to someone that we may be taken advantage of or give too much and not get anything in return. The downside of this scarcity mental model is by withholding the flow of gratitude, appreciation, and love, that is exactly what he person will receive more of – a withholding of gratitude, appreciation, and love. See how this works? What does practicing gratitude mean to you?
Next time I'll share with you some thoughts on cultivating an attitude of gratitude.
With love and gratitude,
Maria
This is an excerpt from my new book.
1 Emmons, R. A. & McCullough, M. E. (2003). Counting blessings versus burdens: An experimental investigation of gratitude and subjective well-being in daily life. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 84(2), 377-389.
How do you discover, nurture, and live in your passion? It’s not as hard as you may think! Below are 12 exercises to discover and re-connect with your passion and purpose. 
Let me know how these strategies work for you! Can you add to the lists?
With love and excitement,
Maria
BTW - This is an excerpt from my new book!
We cannot talk about passion without including heart in the discussion. When we are passionate about something, we often proclaim, I put my heart into it. When we want to place emphasis on something, we touch our heart saying we speak from the heart. This implies a deep core connection, a heart connection. The heart center, the core of our being is where passion resides. When we tap into our passion and lead from that space, passion ultimately oozes out of every pore in our body. People know it when they see it. 
Passion is an attraction magnet. We are drawn to people who enthuse passionate energy. Because passion is so appealing, it is a great energizing force for leaders. Leveraging passion motivates teams, as has passion motivated the masses throughout history. Passion fueled the migration of Europeans to the new world, independence from oppression, voting rights for women, the civil rights movement, and environmental safety. Passion has taken organizations to unimaginable success like Southwest Airlines, Microsoft, and Apple. We see passion demonstrated in great art. Passion is a differentiator. Passion is not complacency or conformity; it is a call to action.
When we think about passion from an individual level, we know we cannot not do whatever it is we are passionate about. Our minds, hearts, and bodies must fulfill the burning desire of passionate. To our passion, we are driven to say, YES! We may be able to put it off for a while, but it burns like a continuous flame inside of us until we extinguish it. The only way to extinguish our passion is to fulfill the destiny inside of us or die. Passion must be lived if we are to realize our authentic self. Passion drives and motivates us to come into fullness of presence and defies time and space through the lasting effects of legacy.
On Thursday, I will outline 12 steps to discover and re-connect with your passion.
With love and passion,
Maria
BTW - This is an excerpt from my new book!
Are you ready to experience one of the most powerful leadership tools? Perception shifting opens up your leadership understanding and builds leadership prowess. When we add tools to our toolbox of skill sets, well let's just say that perception shifting is plugging in and using a turbo charged tool. As promised, here are some activities to help exercise your perception-shifting muscle:
Remember that perspective shifting requires awareness, choice, and the willingness to be open to other possibilities.
With love,
Maria
BTW - this is an excerpt from my new book!
I love the story of Plato’s cave! The shadows of the people outside the cave, distorted images from the fire flames, created a dark reality in the recesses of the cave. What dark reality exists within the confines of the caves of our mind?
Thoughts are powerful; they are the seeds to ideas, beliefs, creativity, attitudes, knowledge, wisdom, and reality. Thoughts can be our best friends or our worst enemies. Not by happenstance do thoughts come to us, these powerful seeds come to us through choice. Choice and thoughts are action movements directed by us whether we are conscious of these activities or not. The key lies in awareness of these two incredible gifts.
Negative self-talk are weeds that have grown in our minds. You know these voices, since many of us have cultivated these over years and decades: 
Sound familiar? We could probably add to the list with little effort! Often these voices are steeped in fear, anxiety, doubt, guilt, and shame. Our behaviors are a reflection of our beliefs. If we believe the negative self talk, how it that manifested in our behavior with ourselves and with others? Do we find that we become stuck, unable to accomplish that goal or unable to overcome our fear of something or someone?
Perception shifting is one of the most powerful lessons for leaders. Perception responses are deeply ingrained in our realities and are foundational to the way we think, see, believe, understand, and behave in our lives. In Thursday’s blog post I will share with you some activities to help exercise your perception-shifting muscle.
With love,
Maria
Living with two bulging, herniated discs can be a pain (no pun intended), especially in our rainy season, when my back seems extra sore. During a family barbecue, my sister, a RN, asked if I was experiencing pain. When I asked why she inquired, she said that I looked like I was guarding. This is a medical term indicating when a person has pain somewhere in their body they become rigid as though to protect the area from further pain or injury. We do the same in our lives with our minds and hearts. We protect ourselves from perceived pain, we guard. What other ways can we practice being open?
To be open, for many of us, means to be vulnerable. We’ve been open and been hurt; at least that explains some of the our experiences. Ego loves it when we stay closed and works over-time to ensure we do not enter openness. “Remember when you did that before and…” is one of the many voices of ego.
When we are open, the gates of Divine guidance, to intention, to the flow of Holy Spirit happen. Closing the gates of our minds and hearts is insanity. Why do the barriers to openness show up, guarding our sacred spaces? Ego, again is the answer. Blocks to openness manifest in the forms of negative voices cemented in our dialogue and culture. Evidence of this insanity in our workplaces includes statements like, Nice guys finish last, or when considering doing something nice for someone (a favor), If you do that for one, you’ll have to do it for everyone, or No good deed goes unpunished.
Opening our perceptions and inviting in the Holy Spirit through surrender, allows healing of the mind and heart to take place. Through healing, the ego no longer has hold on the barriers and blocks to the gates of openness. Just as a clenched fist cannot receive a gift, a closed mind cannot grow and a closed heart cannot receive love.
Steps to openness:
With an open heart,
Maria
For many, intention is defined as a motivation, a drive, or an ambition to succeed. It can be a demonstration of force, determination, or your immutable will to attain or accomplish something indicates that you have a firm intention. These are examples of our Western mental model of intention. A deeper understanding of the power of intention, described by Carlos Castaneda, suggests, “In the universe there is an immeasurable, indescribable force which shamans call intent, and absolutely everything that exists in the entire cosmos is attached to intent by a connecting link”. This is not a model of perseverance or a mindset where only the fit (determined) survive, but a realization, again, of the connection to each other and to our Source, God. What this model of intention describes for us, as leaders, is that we are not alone in this organization, community, country, or even universe: but we are together, linked to the energetic force of intention.
Why is intention crucial to our leadership? It is the purpose, the why we are here, our belief in something greater than we are. Intention is how we derive meaning. In order to create a vision for our companies, or even our lives, we must first ask, why? Tapping into the power of intention requires clearing space in our minds and allowing and trusting our intuitive insights to flow.
Here are some exercises you can do to lead with intention:
Knowing your values helps bring clarity to what is meaningful to you. Identify ten important values. Narrow the list down to your top five and write a sentence or two explaining what the values mean to you and why they are important.
Look at your calendar and review how you spend your time. Do the activities on your calendar align with your values? If not, why?
Create a mind map on a clean sheet of paper, in the center of the paper write, “My purpose for living this life is…” and circle it. Now draw lines out from this circle with as many ideas that flow into your head and heart and draw circles around each one of those words or statements, always connecting the circles with lines to the center circle of your purpose for living.
Using the above information you have developed, write a purpose statement, including the activities involved in achieving that purpose, people necessary to support you, and the value you provide to others.
Enjoy the process and see what you discover!
Let me know what you unearth.
With love,
Maria
In an LBL zone, love of Self, Source, and Others are present. We live the words so the words may live. People want to go to work, meaningful work in an LBL zone. A paradigm shift occurs in an LBL zone, where we discover a new way to do business based in part on ancient and traditional wisdom. In The Prophet, Kahlil Gibran described work in what could be an LBL zone:
It is to weave the cloth with threads from your heart, even as if your beloved were to wear that cloth.
It is to build a house with affection, even as if your beloved were to dwell in that house.
It is to sow seeds with tenderness and reap the harvest with joy, even as if your beloved were to eat the fruit.
It is to charge all things you fashion with a breath of your own spirit,
And to know that all the blessed dead are standing about you and watching.
Work is love made visible.
And if you cannot work with love but only with distaste, it is better that you should leave your work and sit at the gate of the temple and take alms of those who work with joy. 
When LBL is practiced in organizations, several characteristics are present. The organization is fertile ground for knowledge creation, a learning organization. Power is shared, as is ownership of the work. Significance and celebration of others is ever-present in an LBL organization, adding to a meaningful work experience. A holistic approach to life, work, and spirituality is a way of life for those leaders practicing LBL, because LBL leaders honor themselves, their Source, and those with whom they work.
How would you describe a Love-Based Leadership organization?
With love,
Maria
We recognize there is only a limited amount of (money, people, projects, resources) and we will do anything to make sure we got most, if not all of it (money, people, etc). We tell our people they are important and they believe us because they are incapable of making any decisions on their own. We are the best because we said so. 
I was exploring the devastating effects of fear with a client recently and thought it may be appropriate to share an excerpt from my book, Love-Based Leadership: Transform Your Life with Meaning and Abundance. This piece describes what fear in an organization looks like…
“Increasingly, fear dominates our societies and most of our organizations. But you cannot fight fear directly. It is only possible to gradually supplant fear as the dominant emotion in our system of management by building respect, appreciation, and legitimacy.”1 LBL doesn’t look like fear, doesn’t smell like fear, and doesn’t walk like fear. “Perfect love drives out all fear.”2 LBL doesn’t just proclaim that people are important because it says so on the mission statement posted on the wall. LBL leaders do not say one thing and do another. An organization where LBL is not practiced is secretive: a fertile ground for non-truth. An organization without LBL is steeped in office politics and scarcity thinking. Information is not shared, it is hoarded. There is no sign of spirit. The focus and vision of organizations where LBL is not practiced could read:
“Too often managers and their organizations lose touch with their essence. This is true despite the growing evidence that companies with core beliefs and values that transcend the bottom line are, paradoxically, more profitable over time than companies that focus only on making money.”3
What are some other ways you have seen fear demonstrated?
In fearlessness,
Maria
Sources
1. Peter M. Senge, “Commentary.” Reflections, 2005, 6(2), p. 17.
2. 1 John 4:18 Holy Bible, King James Version
3. Jim Collins and Jerry I. Porras, quoted in Lee G. Bolman and Terrence E. Deal, Leading with Soul, p. 41.
As I started preparing for the day, I read this statement:
I let go of anything and everything that could delay my good in any way.
Hmmm…
Of course, as I so often do, I contemplated how this might apply to leadership.
Leadership is the action that motivates people toward a vision. Therefore, if the vision is the “good” in the above statement, we need to ask ourselves, “What gets in the way that could cause delay of achieving your vision?” In other words, what no longer serves you?
We discuss this topic a lot with our clients. It is a great exercise to stop and check-in with yourself regularly, asking, what no longer serves me?
Some possible delays to our good or vision may include:
Once you’ve identified what gets in your way of achieving your good or your vision, it is time to let it or them go. Time to move into action, ridding yourself of anything and everything that gets in your way. This is the time to start exercising your backbone instead of your wishbone. You are the architect of your life, the author of your book. This is not a dress rehearsal. If you don’t like what you see…change it!
What gets in your way, delaying your good, or your vision?
In love, and without delay,
Maria