Are You the Pilot or the Passenger in Your Life?
Why self-leadership is vital for everyone, not just business leaders.
Hi there. I’m Caroline – mindset trainer, therapist and storyteller. If, like me, you’ve lived most of your life with a nagging feeling that you were born for something more, you may find food for thought here, along with tips and suggestions on how to build a healthy, flexible and resilient state of mind. Every couple of weeks I publish an article that’s free to everyone. If you’d like to dive deeper, you can access extra mindset training posts and join our monthly group coaching calls from just less than £7 a month.
I did some mindset training for a company last week.
This involved recording a Q & A as part of their self-leadership training programme for employees. Things were going fairly smoothly until Sid leapt onto my laptop and decided to investigate the webcam from three centimetres away. For a few seconds her sweet, furry face took up the entire screen – a lot bigger than this:
Serendipitously we were talking about how to let off steam safely when Sid performed her party trick. She reminded us that laughter is a pretty effective way to do that.
Isn’t it cool that companies now run mindset sessions for employees?
Personal development coaching wasn’t really a thing in my early years of employment. It started to gain ground in the nineties but was pretty much reserved for the C-suite. Now it’s relatively common for mindset and self-leadership training to be available to a wider range of employees – so much so that it’s a key reason why candidates might choose one employer over another. It shows the organisation is willing to invest in their people’s personal as well as professional development.
How I became obsessed with the concept of personal leadership.
About five years ago one of my mindset training clients, an incredibly smart person who’d gone through my entire curriculum, asked me, “Where are you taking me next?”
Where to indeed?
This was something I’d also been pondering. At the time I was teaching my clients how to overcome self-sabotage, build self-awareness and think in a healthy, flexible and resilient way. But what lay beyond that? What if I could show people not just how to get out of their own way, but also how to:
Explore their potential more fully?
Set and achieve intrepid goals that would make a noticeable difference to them and the world?
Become effective leaders of themselves?
OK, that got my attention. “I have an idea,” I said to my client, “but first I have to build it and then I have to test it on myself. Give me six months.”
Luckily, they agreed.
Honestly, I was a little scared but I was also excited. A few days later I took some time off in the far north of Scotland. There, on a remote beach on a moody day, I wrote in the sand: It starts here. At the top of this post is the picture I took on the day.
That was the start of a personal leadership adventure I know I’ll be on for the rest of life. The difference it’s made to me has been immeasurable – how I’m living today is a direct result of the decision I took to investigate and embrace it. It’s not an exaggeration to say it’s been life-changing.
What the heck is self-leadership, anyway?
I did a fair amount of work looking into what self-leadership is before I started breaking it down into a trainable process.
To start with, I Googled “What is self-leadership?” Among the results, the definition that made most sense to me came from Bryant’s and Kazan’s 2012 book, “Self Leadership – How to Become a More Effective, and Efficient Leader from the Inside Out”.
In their view: “Self-leadership is the practice of intentionally influencing your thinking, feeling and actions towards your objective/s”.
I loved that word “intentionally”. So self-leadership = a conscious, deliberate process.
They also said that it’s about: “…having a developed sense of who you are, what you can do, where you are going coupled with the ability to influence your communication, emotions and behaviour on the way to getting there.” Wow. That adds a turbo-charger to my opinion that self-awareness is the most important life skill we can develop.
The Bryant & Kazan definition rang big bells but I found my favourite self-leadership reference a few days later when I was looking for a piece to read at a friend’s funeral. Here’s the last verse of the poem ‘Invictus’ by William Ernest Henley:
It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate,
I am the captain of my soul.
Those last two lines still make the hairs on my arms stand on end – to me they sum up the true essence of self-leadership.
The final piece in my definitions puzzle came when I was prepping for a corporate talk and this question came into my head:
“In your life, are you the pilot or the passenger?”
That hit the nail squarely on the head. Are we the ones who are choosing our destination and our route, and taking the steps needed to get there? Or are we just going along for the ride, letting circumstances determine the outcome and our experience?
Now I had a good understanding of what self-leadership was and felt ready to start breaking it down into a process I could first learn, then practise and ultimately teach.
After sorting out a definition, I deliberately avoided reading any material relating to the topic of self-leadership. I wanted to create a framework of my own that wasn’t directly influenced by the detail of anyone else’s work. My argument in support of this stance was that once I had a basic model in place, I could always enrich it with other people’s wisdom (attributing them of course).
In the end, though, what came up made so much sense to me, and fitted so well alongside the mindset training I was already delivering, that I never did do any further research. Does that limit it? From some people’s perspective it possibly might. Have a look below and let me know your thoughts – though bear in mind there’s a lot more to it than the basic framework shows.
What I do know is that within six months of putting this model into practice for myself, I’d redrawn my life in a way that fully reflected my values and empowered me to inhabit the “something more” I knew I was meant to be. The changes brought with them a wonderful sense of rightness, ease and freedom.
It wasn’t just me, either. All of my clients who’ve been through the programme with me in the last few years, as a follow up to the core mindset training, have learned so much about themselves and are enjoying greater personal mastery.
Here’s my basic self-leadership framework:
There are four essential pillars that, together, enable us to deliver a greater positive impact on ourselves and others:
The dynamic part combines a deep understanding of our MOTIVATION (our “why”) with the MOMENTUM that comes from having a plan and taking consistent, sustainable action.
Wrapped around that central dynamic are the essential pillars of MINDSET (our beliefs plus our attitude) and MAINTENANCE (radical self care), that together provide our support structure.
Investigating and actioning these four pillars in a conscious and consistent way equips us to lead ourselves through life on purpose, achieve our desires, ramp up our impact and satisfaction, and change whatever’s not working.
I can only repeat that it’s life-changing. It’s not possible to teach the whole process through these articles as the work demands a one-to-one approach, but those who attend my monthly group coaching sessions will certainly benefit from some of the learning.
January’s group coaching session for paying subscribers is on Wednesday 31st at 8pm UK time (3pm EST, 12pm PST).
In this session we’ll be looking at the second of our PACES – the five main ways in which we humans get in our own way. This time it’s about approval addiction, something that used to be an issue for me as I felt compelled to prioritise other people’s needs over my own.
Make sure you put 31st January in your calendar and look out for joining details in next Monday’s post. If you’re currently a free subscriber and would like to attend, you can sign up for only £7.
Finally, news on the recent goal-setting workshop.
On 10th January I ran a free Zoom workshop to help you choose the right objectives for 2024, along with a process to make it easier to achieve your aims. We had a great session – here’s some of the feedback:
“Caroline’s workshop really opened my eyes to looking at goals in another way, a different way. Homing in on what really matters to your heart, as opposed to what society thinks, or what we think society wants our goals to look like. My goals will now be more personal and more achievable because they’re coming from my heart so thank you very much Caroline.”
“This was soooo good! It was very helpful... I was thinking of your MASTERY just the other day, so this was most synchronous, and a welcome reminder.”
“Thank you Caroline, I had a light bulb moment.”
“Thank you Caroline for helping me to get ready to set off on what promises to become a wonderful journey. I’m very excited to embark on this. Brilliant event, amazing evening.”
I’ve had several requests to run the workshop again from people who couldn’t make it on the day. Is this something that would be of interest? Let me know via this poll and if there’s enough interest I’ll schedule another workshop soon.
That’s all for this week. I’d love it if you could give some thought to what self-leadership means to you, and also what, if anything, you do to practise self-leadership intentionally. Please share your experience with us in the comments.
Until next time, take care and be the pilot!