The Desert of Arizona
Cloudy 55 Degrees
I was raised in a pretty religious little spot of the world. I grew up with the girls in school not being “allowed” to wear pants. Too immodest or something. Dresses or skirts were it until we got to about junior high school. We didn’t play football. That was far too violent. Smoking a cigarette? Scandalous!
And we were taught we were going to hell to burn for all eternity unless we acted a certain way and believed certain things. How nice.
At the time, I wasn’t really awake enough to give all of these ideas a thorough analysis. I just accepted them all.
And to be fair, there were a lot of wonderful ones.
I was taught to share. I was taught to give first. I was taught to think of other people. I was taught a whole lot of nice things. And they have all combined to make me who I am today.
One thing I was taught NOT to do, however, was to TAKE. And I mean this literally and figuratively. Stealing wasn’t exactly applauded.
But life is hardly black and white. And the wiser you get, the more you realize it’s just all gray. Black and white is the easy way out.
But there IS one way to succeed in this world by actually “taking.” You just have to be strategic about what you take.
It took me far too long to realize that I would never be anointed a leader. “If I just work hard enough, maybe it will happen!” That’s total B.S. If I wanted to lead, I would have to stop being a wimp, actually stand up, risk something and take that position.
There are leadership positions available all over your industry as well. Your future clients are waiting to hire a leader. But no one will anoint you either. You simply must take that role and run with it.
You basically steal it and you keep it. You take what was not given to you, you care for it, and maybe you never give it back.
Kind of funny when you think about it.
But if you want to make an impact, stand for something important and achieve great things, I don’t know of a better way than to LEAD. So stop waiting and just do it already.
If it scares the hell out of you, you’re probably going in the right direction.