Why Wellness Is The Foundation Of Modern Leadership
Premise
The idea that wellness is the foundation of leadership isn’t commonplace. But if you can wrap your mind around the concept for the next ten minutes, you will come to see that it is a powerful path for creating the capacity to lead.
The lack of this kind strong foundation can also be traced to most of the problems facing society today. That is how effective it is.
Let’s start by defining what leadership is and isn’t.
To understand why the level of your health is so important to modern leadership we need to create clarity around what leadership actually is. To start you need to understand that it isn’t a position, especially a powerful one in government or a corporation. It isn’t a skill and it definitely isn’t management.
Leadership is the ability to lead. It isn’t to gain a title or certain income. Since these motivations are self serving they immediately exclude one from the leadership club. To lead means to be able to take someone and something from where they are now to some other place in order to enhance a situation or experience. Inherintly this means that the journey is one backed by a strong moral compass of doing the right thing since all of our actions affect humanity and fellow man.
Leadership is an act and a way of being. It is void of any type of self seeking. Which comes naturally when one reaches heightened levels of spiritual and emotional well-being. It is the act of becoming whole and is very uncommon.
This type of wholeness is the foundation of leadership because self-leadership comes before organizational leadership. Without the ability to lead yourself you do not have the abilty to lead others. Although almost everyone tries. But we can do better.
Need A Little Evidence?
MENTAL HEALTH
Better confidence and self esteem - You can’t lead without this.
Enhanced cognitive functioning - You might find that memory, concentration and decision making come in handy.
Supports physical health - Good mental health leads to better lifestyle choices.
Supports emotional wellbeing - A higher level of awareness provides the ability to manage stress and life challenges, enabling us to maintain a positive outlook.
SPIRITUAL HEALTH
Provides a sense of purpose - You can’t lead without this.
Reduces stress and provides equanimity - Enables you to make better decisions.
Improves mental and emotional health - No surprise here.
Improves relationships - The higher the quality of your relationships the more effective your leadership abilities. Spirituality provides a sense of connection.
EMOTIONAL HEALTH
Higher self awareness - Through understanding and accepting one’s own emotions.
Supports mental health - By lowering conditions such as depression and anxiety disorders.
Better relationships - By enhancing communications skills, empathy and the ability to connect at a deeper level.
Resilience to stress - Life never stops and our abilty to accept and manage it enables us to create a sense of balance during challenging times.
PHYSICAL HEALTH
Increased energy level - This is the fuel that provides vitality and lowers the levels of stress in your life.
Promotes better decision making - By creating clarity and confidence.
Promotes cognitive function - Releasing those endorphins promotes happiness and lowers stress and anxiety.
Promotes emotional health - This includes self confidence, quality of life, sense of wellbeing.
When you approach each area of your health with a life philosophy of being better to the point of being exceptional and uncommon quite a few things happen.
You know who you are.
The heightened level of your consciousness creates a world view that is in alignment with what is actually important rather than an unconscious story. This especially applies to politics, corporations and even religious organizations where the truth becomes negotiable and live in some kind of grey zone.
The level of meaning and purpose that your life takes on becomes infectious.
You feel really, really good. Things like confidence, equanimity, and joy come to define who you are.
Your capacity to continually go further physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually continually gains momentum. Making you an example for everyone around you.
Essentially you become a badass.
Do these sound like leadership qualities? Do you see them in people you consider leaders? When answering this question ask if they are leading their vision and purpose or someone elses agenda. What are their drivers? Are they actually doing meaningful or relevant work?
Although this just scratches the surface you have to agree that this is a mountain of evidence and inspiration for why health and wellness is the foundation of self leadership. It can be described as power vs force because it defines the nature of the energy that you use to engage everything in your life.
You are in a relationship with everything in your life. The people, places, events and things. The healthier we are the healthier our relationships are in each of these areas and this is what builds the capacity within us to make anything possible. It makes shit happen and the realithy is that it is a powerful way of living with meaning and purpose. The essential ingredients of leadership. Something everyone is seeking in their life.
This way of being isn’t for everyone. Remember we are talking about an uncommon level. A very uncomfortable way of going about your business. If you find yourself justifying where you are then that is exactly where you will stay until you want to live a life of impact. Which is real leadership.
This is obviously not new information. It has been around forever. Yet the individuals who live this kind of lifestyle are a part of the few rather than the many. They are uncommon. Unfortunately we find that the common are the ones guiding most of society in very important positions in government, business and even religion.
How does your philosophy for living and your lifestyle align with making your health in each of these four areas your number one priority. Is it the most important thing in your life? How do you stack up.
Here is a better question. Does how you live your life align with your intentions and the stories you tell yourself and others in each of these areas? How important do you treat yourself? Do you subscribe to going further or settling. Settling is very justified on the world that seeks comfort.
Self honesty is so easy to hide from. But whatever is important to us is what already exists in our lives. So the truth is that the current reality of your mental, emotional, physical and spiritual wellbeing is the measure of how important it is in your life.
Ask yourself - What exactly does it look like for you to live at an uncommon level in each area of your health and wellness?
Don’t just give this inquiry a driveby glance. Sit with it, meditate on it, use your journal, let it simmer for a while so that it takes root. By giving it a deeper look you will never be able to go back. It will be part of your conscious and subconscious. You will have opened a door you won’t be able to shut.
If you give it quick and cursory attention then it will dissappear as quickly as your read this.
Now look at who you would be if you went to uncommon levels and ask these four questions.
How do you think you would show up for the people in your life?
How would you show up in your professional life and in your community?
How would you show up for humanity?
How would you show up for yourself?
Those are very impactful questions. You will notice that I don’t spend a lot of time talking about goal setting. The reason is that most people fail to achieve their goals because they don’t have the capacity to make them happen. They don’t have the level of self-leadership necessary. The world doesnt need more rhetoric on how to set and achieve goals. I believe it can be a very unhealthy way of approaching life if you are driving yourself to hit goals that maybe shouldn’t be your goals in the first place and especially if you don’t have the capacity if self-leaderhip is not yet part of who you are as a person.
This is like trying to get to a destination in your car and it doesn’t have an engine. You can’t just try harder.
What we need are people who can set the right goals that are authentic and then blow them away becuase they live at a level that most of society is not willing to go to.
The benefit of living at an uncommon level of wellness is that you don’t experience the mental, physical, emotional and spiritual ailments or disorders that most of society experiences on a daily basis. Instead you live with a fire that can’t be put out. So attaining your goals is stress free and life flows naturally. Which is the power of self-leadership.
Why is all this leadership stuff so important? Remember your family and friends need you, your organization and community need you, the world needs you. Most importantly you need you. Not just any version of you but the uncommon version of you that puts out an undeniably powerful ripple effect into the universe for this generation and the generations to come.
Be big even if it just for today.
