You just might be the world's worst boss
Here's what I learned and how it made me a better leader
If you’re like most humans, you’re likely a terrible boss. Not to others, but to yourself.
We seem to all have a remarkable ability to sabotage our own progress, often putting our desires and goals on the back-burner.
We want to lose weight, yet we stuff our face with cookies. We are finally granted the freedom to set our own projects, and we procrastinate.
We also talk to ourselves in ways we’d never accept from anybody else.
Doesn’t have to be this way. Once in a while, we come across the person who seems to be clear on what they want. And who has put in the hours to change their environment to align with that.
They seem remarkably calm, and they just feel… different?
It’s tempting to then think: well, I’m not like that, that’s perhaps easy for them to do, but I have all these constraints (we’re very good at coming up with reasons why we can’t change).
The funny thing is, at one point, they weren’t like that either.
I think we are most at risk at getting lost, when we let our fears and insecurities take the wheel.
It’s like we’re all really ‘comfortable’ chilling in the status quo, even if it is miserable!
To escape this self-imposed prison, we need to first recognise we’re in charge.
But being in charge also means we have a duty. To push ourselves to go where our scared inner child would rather not go. To lead. To make the years we have on this earth count (for us, not for what counts for others!).
Note: we don’t have that many years, here’s a scary chart from WaitButWhy:
It all starts with getting clear on what matters to us, and then seeing where our current life doesn’t match that. Those are the areas where we are being a particularly terrible boss.
If you're curious about this, I highly recommend doing the 'lifeline' exercise (I wrote about it here). It helped me figure out what is truly important and the self-awareness (my strengths/weaknesses, highs-lows, etc) helped me become a better leader.
Thanks for being here,
Daniel
P.S. If you need help with any of these things, we’d love to help out :-)
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