Friday 27 November 2020

Become the wise leader you want to be

Listen to the podcast version of this post

The sub title for my Heart-Leadership book is 'Become the wise leader you want to be'. The book is an assertion, a guide, and a  toolkit to help you in your own best way.

What does being wise mean to you?

Many years ago I read a wonderful little book by Robert Fulghum called All I  Really Need To Know I Learned In Kindergarten. In the book he shares his credo I quote:

ALL I REALLY NEED TO KNOW about how to live and what to do and how to be I learned in kindergarten. Wisdom was not at the top of the graduate-school mountain, but there in the sandpile at Sunday School. These are the things I learned:

Share everything.

Play fair.

Don’t hit people.

Put things back where you found them.

Clean up your own mess.

Don’t take things that aren’t yours.

Say you’re sorry when you hurt somebody.

Wash your hands before you eat.

Flush.

Warm cookies and cold milk are good for you.

Live a balanced life—learn some and think some and draw and paint and sing and dance and play and work every day some.

Take a nap every afternoon.

When you go out into the world, watch out for traffic, hold hands, and stick together.

Wonder. Remember the little seed in the Styrofoam cup: The roots go down and the plant goes up and nobody really knows how or why, but we are all like that.

Goldfish and hamsters and white mice and even the little seed in the Styrofoam cup—they all die. So do we.

And then remember the Dick-and-Jane books and the first word you learned—the biggest word of all—LOOK.

Everything you need to know is in there somewhere. The Golden Rule and love and basic sanitation. Ecology and politics and equality and sane living.

Take any one of those items and extrapolate it into sophisticated adult terms and apply it to your family life or your work or your government or your world and it holds true and clear and firm. Think what a better world it would be if we all—the whole world—had cookies and milk about three o’clock every afternoon and then lay down with our blankies for a nap. Or if all governments had as a basic policy to always put things back where they found them and to clean up their own mess.

And it is still true, no matter how old you are—when you go out into the world, it is best to hold hands and stick together.

End of quote.

What does being wise mean to you?

For me it’s about being the best version of me. Just like you I’m a one-of-a-kind human being. I believe that each of us has an obligation to be the best one-of-a-kind human being that we can be.

For me being wise is about taking responsibility for my intentions, feelings, thoughts, behaviours and actions. Being wise is appreciating you and supporting you in being accountable for intentions, feelings, thoughts, behaviours and actions.

Over 500 years ago William Shakespeare got it right I believe when he wrote “This above all - to thine own self be true” Polonius in Hamlet,1. iii 

What does being wise mean to you? 

Do Your Work.

More podcasts, videos, self-directed online courses to help you here.

Be the difference you want to see in the world.

Ian

"The feeling of progress is one of the best feelings of all. This is true even when progress is small.”
James Clear

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