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Every Moment is a Moment of Truth - Leadership Within The Circle of Influence


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We are but a social animal. In addition to managing oneself better; barring the rare exceptions, happiness, productivity and living up to one’s promise will greatly depend upon how to we align ourselves to the eco-system. How we behave with respect to our circle of influence and  how we continually expand our circle of positive influence. It is impossible to be happy/productivity by withdrawing from, rebelling against, or forcing ourselves upon our environment. Which fundamentally implies – playing a conscious and pro-active role in leading other co-stakeholders to correct decisions both at strategic direction setting and at micro level optimization. Investing in stake-holder education and persuasion by using empathetic and receptive verbal and non-verbal languages is a sine-qua-non. Equally importantly giving the co-stakeholders the confidence that we are eager to get a good nudge and enthusiastic to change our perspectives and behavior. In short proactively and receptively and persevering to lead the co-stakeholders to a positive change and allowing self to be led to a positive change. As opposed to being nice in the short term and moving towards sub-optimal longer terms states collectively; we have to be committed to confront sub-optimal states proactively and with fairness; so as to ensure happy outcomes on an on-going basis in the longer run.
Managing both self-outcomes and team outcomes are sine qua non for success. Managing self-outcomes and withdrawing from team outcomes is equally bad [and sometimes worse] as leading team outcomes but being magnanimous to one’s own faults.
I repeat, that this is only old wine. The new nuance, for some, for which I wanted to write is that. The solution lies in the state of mind. A restless, eager to conquer mind, arrogant mind will invariably consume lot more energy any point and will get tired. Long stretches, if at all, will be more from great will power [sometimes from fear of failure] than from the joy of working. Calm, humble, inwardly assured state of mind is a necessary mental make-up for being successful – that is both healthy and prosperous. The other crucial element of the success is being perennially positive. All spiritual guru says, bad times will go – don’t brood over them. They also say give goodness and love to get it. Get what we give. Rhonda says, brooding will more likely give us a cause to brood. The actionable thing being [courtesy Rhonda] we need to think more of what we love and want, and not what we don’t want. Enthusiasm, enjoyment, eagerness effortlessness are manifestations of love. Pessimism, perfunctory movements, laborious, irritation, skepticism are not. It is about having an optimistic disposition vis-à-vis a pessimistic one; and not about not acknowledging a possible downside. It is about not letting the downside to spoil our feelings and inner vibrations; but continuing to emanate healthy vibrations - come what may. 
It is about playing in our minds the frames we want to happen not the ones we want to avoid. It will be wonderful if I get a raise. The joy of getting our order delivered on time. The ecstasy of a sublime holiday or relationships. For the same situation in a unhealthy state – we can fear a poor hike, or delayed delivery by Dominos or missed flights and regular fights. The choice is ours. The fear of a bad work outcome is the cause of the subsequent poor outcome. Not the premonition. We must be good to others and behave politically correctly because it is good to behave well. In addition we must make sure, we are intrinsically positive. We behave well out of inner harmony; not because of a rote learning. It is about traversing that extra mile effortlessly, rather than subjecting oneself to the aggression of laborious volition. [Continued..]

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