Leadership And Self Esteem

The Definition of Leadership Leadership has been called "The ability to get followers." One of the deepest cravings of human nature is the need to feel important, to have a sense of meaning and purpose in life and work. Leaders are invariably those who can tap into the deeper emotions of others and get them to rise above and beyond anything they may have accomplished in the past.

Inspiring Words Lead to Victory

Winston Churchill was able to arouse and inspire an entire nation with words like these: "Let us so carry ourselves that if the British Empire should endure a thousand years, men will still say, this was their

finest hour."

Spearhead A Turnaround

Lee Iacocca stepped into Chrysler Corporation when the company was almost bankrupt. Through the

sheer force of his personality, his unshakable determination, his appeals to Congress, to Chrysler workers and to Chrysler customers on television, he spearheaded a turn-around that will go down in

the history books as one of the greatest achievements in American business.

Build Self-Confidence and Self-Esteem

Values clarification is the beginning exercise in building self-confidence, self-esteem and personal character. When you take the time to think through your fundamental values, and then commit yourself

to living your life consistent with them, you feel a surge of mental strength and well-being. You feel stronger and more capable. You feel more centered in the universe and more competent of

accomplishing the goals you set for yourself.

Determine Your Values

Personal strategic planning begins with your determining what it is you believe in and stand for-your

values like Lee Iacocca. Your values lie at the very core of everything you are as a human being. Your values are the unifying principles and core beliefs of your personality and your character. The virtues and qualities that you stand for are what constitute the person you have become from the beginning of your life to this moment.

Your values, virtues and inner beliefs are the axle around which the wheel of your life turns. All

improvement in your life begins with you clarifying your true values and then committing yourself to

live consistent with them.

Fuzzy or Clear?

Successful people are successful because they are very clear about their values. Unsuccessful people

are fuzzy or unsure. Complete failures have no real values at all, great achievement begins with a dream

Every great achievement begins with a vision, a dream of something exciting or different, a feeling that inspires and motivates you to aim higher and beyond anything that you have ever achieved before.

Imagine for a moment that you have no limitations on what you can be or do. Imagine that you have all the time and all the money, all the knowledge and experience, all the skills and resources, all the friends and contacts.

Project forward five years and imagine that your life is now perfect in every way. What does it look like? What are you doing? Who is there with you? Who is no longer there?

Describe your ideal future as if it was perfect in every respect.

Once I met a wise and wealthy man who sat me down and told me the key to success. He also explained the reasons for failure and under-achievement in life. As he spoke, I immediately recognized the truth in what he said. And his discovery about success was quite simple, as all great truths seem to be.

He said that “The key to success is for you to set one big, challenging goal and then to pay any price, to

overcome any obstacle, and persist through any difficulty until you finally achieve it.”

By achieving one important goal, you create a pattern, a template for success in your subconscious

mind. Forever after you will be automatically directed and driven toward repeating that success in

other things that you attempt.

By overcoming adversity and achieving one great goal in any area, you will program yourself for

success in other areas as well.

In other words, you learn to succeed by succeeding. The more you achieve, the more you can achieve. Each success, especially the first one, builds your confidence and belief that you will be successful next time. The fact is that you can accomplish almost any goal that you set for yourself if you persist long enough and work hard enough.

The only one who can stop you is yourself.

And you learn to persist by persisting in the face of great adversity when everyone around you is quitting and every fiber of your being screams at you to quit as well.

For example...

When you subject certain chemicals to intense heat, the chemicals will crystallize and form a

completely new substance, a new composition in which the crystallization process is irreversible.

A lump of coal, for example, becomes a diamond under intense prolonged heat and pressure.

In the same way, you become a person of great strength by persevering in the crucible of intense

difficulty until you finally succeed.

Each time you force yourself to persevere, rather than giving up, your character “crystallizes”

at a new, higher level. Eventually, you reach the point where you become unstoppable...... but no one starts out as a diamond. It's the early process of motivating yourself to set and achieve that FIRST goal that moves you one step closer to becoming a diamond and one step further from a lump of coal.