If your primary motivation for growth is personal gain, the outcome is typically shallow and lacks fulfillment. And it often happens that you stop growing when you achieve what you wanted.
When personal growth is a natural part of your self-leadership, then if you receive personal gain, it’s a blessing not an expectation, and your heart quickly finds a place of gratitude.
And gratitude is a healthy perspective for self-leadership.
6. Develop Healthy Habits That Guide Your Steps.
Good habits are one of the most powerful tools to strengthen healthy self-leadership.
Good habits are an extension of life values that you truly practice. (You can quickly see the connection between habits in this point and values in the previous point.)
It’s good to give yourself some grace in the connection of values and habits. For example, you might highly value health but be in a temporary exercise slump. Or faith may be a core value, but you’re struggling with your prayer life. That’s part of the human condition.
However, over time, our daily habits begin to reveal or at least shed light on what our true values are.
Typically values inform your habits, but if your habits and values don’t seem to line up, you can reverse the process and work on developing good habits to live your values.
A great book to help you develop good habits is “Atomic Habits” by James Clear.
7. Master Your Emotions so They Don’t Master You.
An emotionally unpredictable leader unintentionally prevents people from getting close and slowly erodes trust.
We know what it’s like to be around a leader that might blow up one day and sulk the next. What is your response? Keep a safe distance? Yup, that how most of us respond.
We all have emotions, ranging from anger to joy, and our humanity is part of the process. Meaning we can handle them well or mishandle them.
- Which emotion seems to get the best of you?
- What are the triggers?
- How do you regain a healthy balance of emotion?
No one wants or expects you to behave like a robot, and seeing your true heart is important, but mastering your emotions before they master you is one of the most important self-leadership practices you can engage.
For more on the emotions of a leader, take a look at this post.
Please don’t let these guideposts overwhelm you. This is a life-long pursuit, not a New Years resolution. Which one or two will you start with? The others can wait a bit. The point is to make progress, and in time, you’ll engage all seven.
This article originally appeared here and is used by permission.
