How To Lead Yourself Effectively

So over the past few years, I've been talking about this idea of self leadership and talking about how important it is for us as men to be able to lead ourselves effectively in our own lives before we look at leading within the context of a relationship or a work environment, that those things are offshoots, those things are reflections of how you lead yourself within your own personal life, within your own psychology, within your own morals and ethics, within the way in which you give your word and keep it. And so today, because I've been talking about what it means to lead in a relationship, I'm going to talk about one of the, arguably the most valuable and important aspects, which is how do you lead you most effectively? So the first thing that I want to talk about is just reiterating the definition of leadership. It's a process of social influence where you influence one or many people towards a common goal or task. And so self leadership is really about how you influence yourself towards something, right? Ideally something positive, ideally something generative, but it's really about how you influence yourself. The decisions that you make, the direction that you take your life, the vision that you have for yourself, the goals that you set for yourself, the things that you commit to and the attributes and the aspects of your life that you're trying to build some semblance of.

Really not only responsibility, but your capacity to develop real competence within the various aspects of what is meaningful. So self leadership is essentially, how do you influence you? Now when we just ask that question, there's probably a myriad of things that come up, right? You probably think, well, I sometimes I don't influence myself in a very good way. You, you know, or sometimes I'm allowing everybody else in my life to influence my decisions. You know, I see guys do this all the time where, you know, they're dating a woman or they've been given a job offer and they sort of scout around and they ask everybody in their life, what do you think? You know, do you like her? Do you think she's a good fit for me? Do you think that we're going to work out? Or do you think that this job is a good idea? Do you think I should leave this job? And they start to outsource their personal responsibility of knowing what's important to them, knowing what is really meaningful, knowing what their values are. And so one of the first aspects that I want you to look at when it comes to how you lead yourself most effectively is what are you influencing yourself towards? What are you influencing yourself towards? Are you influencing yourself towards Sabotage towards rock bottom, towards breakdown, towards divorce. Are you influencing yourself towards poor health, you know, by eating shitty foods right before bed, or, you know, not going to the gym at all, or not prioritizing, you know, good sleeping habits? Or are you influencing yourself towards the aims, the goals, the capacities that you actually want to develop in your life? And so that's a good journaling prompt. What am I influencing myself towards? So that's number one. The second thing is you need to be able to have some form of a vision for yourself and your life. If you want to be able to lead yourself, there needs to be a direction, right? Because otherwise you're just running in multiple directions. And I see a lot of guys doing this where they're going very quickly nowhere or everywhere, right? And so you see a lot of guys that are, you talk to them and what they describe is that they're super, super busy, but you can't really pinpoint whether or not they give a shit about what they're doing, whether or not they are enjoying what they're doing, and whether or not what they're doing has a direction. You know, I've talked to a number of men over the last couple of weeks where when they tell me what's going on in their life, it's like they have 50 different projects. And all of these different projects are completely different directions. Career wise, purpose wise, and there's no continuity. And immediately within me, within my own thoughts, within my own body, I'm like, oh, you're, you're lost. Like you're just going in every single direction. It's like, you know that age old saying of like, throw some shit on the wall and hope that something sticks. Like the shotgun approach. Now, the shotgun approach might work for a little while, but as a general way of being in life, it's going to cause havoc. And so really get clear. Are you using the shotgun approach in your relationship, in your career and your finances and your health? And if so, can you create a very clear vision? What direction do you want to move in your finances, in your health, you know, a year from now? What's the vision that you have for your body, for your health? What's the vision that you have for your relationship in a year? What's the vision that you have for your career? You know, do you want to be working abroad and traveling with your wife or with your girlfriend or with your kids? So start to create that vision. The next thing is how you lead yourself effectively is by paying very close attention to what you give your word. To so only give your word to the things that matter and then follow through on them to the best of your capacity, right? This isn't going to be an absolute right. It's not something that you're going to perfect. And it's like you only give your word to certain things and you follow through on it absolutely and perfectly. But to hone that part of you. You know, for me growing up, and I mean in my early 20s, I would give my word to everything. I would say yes to everything. I would try and help people, I would overextend myself. And what this did was eroded the sense of self leadership that I had because I felt like I wasn't leading myself effectively because I was saying yes to too many things. I was trying to help way too many people, I was trying to support way too many people. I was in too many causes and I was spread thin. And then because of that, I couldn't fulfill on everything that I'd given my word to. And what this did was it undercut my confidence in my ability to lead myself in my ability to say yes to things or no to things and then follow through on them. The last couple things are the sort of like daily practices, right? So number one, in order to lead yourself very effectively, if you look at some of the most impeccable human beings that you're like that guy is leading himself. You know, if you look at like a David Goggins, right, Maybe he's extremely. Maybe he feels like out there for you. Or a Wim Hof. Again, it can seem extreme or out there, or you look at an entrepreneur, right? I mean, there's a number of them that would be good examples. But you look at their routines and their rituals and they're pretty dialed in. Now this is something that requires discipline. And in order to lead yourself, you have to rectify and work on your relationship to discipline. Because for me, I hated discipline. I didn't like discipline. You know, I thought discipline was a punishment. And so I steered clear of it. I rejected it, I avoided it. I tried to implement discipline in my life. But then when I wasn't holding myself accountable, I was really beating myself up because I'd grown up in this narrative, in this version, that discipline equaled punishment. And that's not an effective way to lead yourself, right? Because you have to use shame, you have to use anger, you have to be pissed off at yourself all the time. Anytime that you do something wrong, immediately you're beating yourself up or, you know, you're trying to let yourself off the hook so you don't feel so bad. None of those are effective forms of discipline, and it won't allow you to maintain your rituals and routines. So the best thing that you can do is to start to see discipline as a practice. Discipline as a practice. Okay, I'm going to practice discipline. It's something that I'm going to practice every single day. And how I do that, how I practice elevating and honing and sculpting, my relationship with discipline is by practicing some of these rituals and routines. So that might be meditation in the morning. You know, for me, I get up every single morning, I make myself some green tea, I do some breath work, I do some meditation, I do some stretching. And my rituals have changed over the years, but I have a ritual every single morning. Most evenings I have a ritual as well where I'll start to wind down and I'll do stretching at night, because usually throughout the day, my body started to take on tension throughout the stress of managing a business and having a family and all those things. And so I found that at night, having a ritual to start to wind down is really important as well. So leading yourself effectively is about maintaining these rituals, not being so beholden to them, where it's like extreme. And if you don't get it in one night and you don't do it, or, you know, you miss your morning routine one morning because of whatever circumstances, that you're not having a meltdown because of it. Right? Rituals are not things to be used against you. Right? They are not things to be used against you in a negative way. They are things that are in place to generate positivity, to generate balance, to generate grounding and presence within your life. That's what they're there for. Lastly, the thing that I want to say is there's merit in developing skills within your life that are rewarding. And the more that you can work on the skills that add value for you as a man within your business or your career, within your relationship or your social network, the more that you're going to feel a sense of contribution to the people, the community, the groups around you, and the more that you're going to have the experience of. Of having to have led yourself through some hard stuff. You know, the reason why a lot of guys don't start things, don't start a new skill set, right? Don't take up learning archery or firearms or survival skills or cooking or whatever it is, right? Like, whatever the skill set is, is that we don't like as human beings. But I think, especially as men, we don't like being shitty at something. You know, it's like we don't like starting at the bottom. We like proficiency. You know, at least for me. I can only speak for myself, but I love feeling very good at something and knowing that I'm good at something, that there's a certain level of craft and mastery and talent that I have procured over time. But the beginning is hard, you know, to learn a new language and to be cumbersome with it and to really suck and try and fumble your way around it, that's challenging. That pushes an edge for most of us. And so that will develop your leadership skills. You know, how you lead yourself through being terrible at something at first is going to support you in being a great parent, in being a good partner, in being a good employee, a good boss, a good leader, a good business owner. I mean, it's just going to support you in all areas of your life. So look at a skill that you've been wanting to develop and really focus in on that for a few months and notice the leadership skills that it teaches you along the way. All right, friends, thank you so much for tuning in. And next week, we'll be talking about why she won't let you lead in the relationship, so stay tuned for that.