Change Your Leadership Future - Challenge Your Perspective

Perceptions are the stories we tell ourselves regarding what we see and how we interpret the world around us.

Les Brown, one of the great 21st century storytellers said, “How people live their lives is as a result of the stories that they believe about themselves.”

What are your stories?

Do they serve you as your aspire to reach your highest potential?

Do your stories lift you up or do they bring you down?

Do your stories represent who you really are, your true essence?

Let’s look at a possible story: If you greeted someone in the morning at work and he or she did not return your greeting, what would you think? Are they mad at you? Do you wonder all morning what you may have said to tick them off? Do you toss and turn that night because you’re afraid that when you laughed too loudly at something they said two weeks ago that you thought was a joke, but it turned out it wasn’t?

Or what if the answer is simply that they didn’t return your greeting because they didn’t hear you? Or perhaps, they were distracted replaying a discussion they had with their teenager the night before.

What are the stories that you tell yourself?

These skewed perceptions can sabotage our relationships with others and our relationship with our self. If your stories no longer resonate with who you are, it’s probably time to create a new story.

Change your perception and you change your world.

The uncomplicated beauty in this lesson is that by standing in awareness and looking at our beliefs and thoughts, we can simply make a choice to keep them or release them.

When we release those beliefs and thoughts that no longer serve us, we take back our power from fear to love, from negativity to positivity, from ego to Spirit. We see and understand perceptions and stand in our power to change those beliefs to experience miraculous shifts in our reality, lives, and work.

As always, I love to hear from you. What story are you proud to tell?

With Love,

Maria

Working with Uncertainty

We expect leaders, including ourselves, to have the answers. If we don’t have the answer to a leadership challenge, we may feel inadequate.

These feelings, like inadequacy, may also include feelings of uncertainty and vulnerability. None of these feelings feel good to us, nor are allowed in the workplace, or so we’ve been taught.

Really?

Are we really supposed to never experience uncertainty as a leader?

We are human beings, “hard-wired for struggle” as researcher, Brene‘ Brown states. We are not the Hollywood version of leaders —we are human. And with our humanness, we are sometimes—make that many times, uncertain.

What do we do with this uncertainty?

Well, we bury it of course.

This strategy may work for us for a while, that is until it shows up again as illness, ulcers, or worse. Why do you think we are so stressed, obese, and addicted? It is because we bury and numb our feelings.

The interesting thing about numbing is that when we numb our “bad” feelings such as uncertainty, vulnerability, doubt, and fear, we are also numbing our “good” feelings of joy, peace, and gratitude.

  1. Another important aspect to know about uncertainty and vulnerability is that this state is where creativity, joy, and beauty are found. Walking through the door of uncertainty and vulnerability is full of endless possibilities because this is the location of our true, authentic self.How do we work with uncertainty and vulnerability without going crazy? Follow these five steps to support you during these times:

  2. Embrace uncertainty and vulnerability. Reach into it and pull up and out all of the fear, anxiety, and doubt. Burying and numbing will only allow it to surface again, so lean in, feel those feelings, and then release.

  3. Stay present. Don’t worry about the future or live in the past. The only moment you have is the present one, so why waste it?

  4. Stay in your own lane. When we start to compare ourselves to others, we set ourselves up for failure, not because we cannot be as successful as someone else can, but because we cannot be anyone else. What I can be is the best version of me, and what you can be is the best, highest self you can be.

  5. Practice gratitude. Nothing else will bring you into the present faster than gratitude.

  6. Be loving and truthful with yourself and with others.

Remember that uncertainty and vulnerability is the birthplace of truth, authenticity, creativity, and beauty.

What is your most celebrated example of this concept? As always, I love to hear your thoughts.

With love (and vulnerability),

Maria