Day 388 - Leadership 199 / Trait 1 of 14: Dependability

Who is it that is in charge of leading you to accomplish your mission to get healthy?

If you answered that question with a name other than your own, PLEASE do comment below. I really want to discuss how it is that someone other than yourself is on the hook for accomplishing your mission.

I am my own leader. While my actions and outcomes may affect others, and while I may depend on others for input and assistance in my tasks; at the end of each decision it is "I" who must lead myself to success, or failure, whichever I choose to deliver.

Are we clear?

I am MY own leader!

You are YOUR own leader!!

Now for the real question: Am I (are you) ready to lead?

Leadership is an innate ability which can be honed into higher degrees of effectiveness with education and experience. Note I said 'and', not 'or'. You want to lead yourself to victory, then you have to 'do' it, not just think about it. For the outcome of what you do to be successful you need to first know the success factors of leadership.

These success factors, or leadership traits as I prefer to refer to them, were taught to me nearly 30 years ago. Learning them, and living them are two different choices. To get myself from here, to my goal of 199, I am going to have to live these traits each day along the way. On any given day where I can reflect and see that I have come up short, you can bet that I can identify one of more of these traits which I did not hold true to.

Let us get busy learning these leadership traits, there are fourteen of them. Yes 14; no moaning or sighs of hot air allowed! Anything worth learning is worth learning in detail. Therefore we are going to learn all 14 of them. To increase the potential of learning and retaining them so that we can put them to practice, we are going to learn them one at a time; one per day over the next fourteen days.

Without further introduction as to my intent here, away we go…

Leadership 199 / Trait 1 of 14: Dependability

Defined: The certainty of proper performance of duty.

Discovered: Duty, a very powerful word as I see it. When we have something to do, the degree of importance which we associate it with goes up if we accept it as our duty. If we associate it as something less, then I would suggest it is a 'want' and not a 'need'. Would you agree that getting healthy and living healthy is something you need to do? Myself, I do. The it is our duty to do just that, get healthy and stay healthy.

Certainty, a word that infers an absolute. This word, I like! Absolutes are empowering, motivating, as they demand accomplishment. "For my duty this day I will certainly exercise by running 2 miles and executing my push up & sit up routine"; if you see this as your duty you would proclaimed it just as I wrote it there. However if you do not see this as your duty, you probably have proclaimed it as follows; "I need to exercise today and will do so as soon as I can."

Da-Point: Your success is dependent upon your ability to perform your duty as required.

Can you depend upon yourself to do your duty?

 
Responsibility 199 - Gotta Do It!!

Day 195 - Depend On Me

Continuing on the fashion show here, today I bring you this marvelous blue checkered short with tan'ish trousers. I have no idea if they are tan, or beige or whatever. Sort of like when you buy paint, it looks tan on on the paint chip card but the real name is Grand Bagel Delight - WTH is with that? Why do I have to be tempted with hunger while shopping for paint?! Oops, sorry, I got off topic. So anyhow, there is another new clothes picture for you.

Yesterday after work my wife & I decided to meet at Target to do some grocery & party shopping for the weekend. I arrived a good 30 minutes before she did so I decided to wander the store for a bit and saw a few items that I haven't purchased in years but brought back memories...

Silly Putty, this stiff was in my Christmas stocking every year. And like most stocking stuffers it was played with for 10 minutes at most before joining the rest of the small toys in the bottom of the large toy box. But for those 10 minutes my favorite thing to do with silly putty was rip off small chunks, pat my sister on the head leaving them in her hair...

Baseball cards, I owned thousands of these. I recall they cost about 25-cents for a pack of 12 or 15 cards. My mom wall papered a wall in my bedroom with several hundred, that was cool! This pack is $2.99 for 4 cards, yikes; not cool!...

Allow me to day how much I really do believe in today's word; Dependability. What does this word mean to you? Performing as required, that is what it means to me. Yes, a bit of Marine is coming though in me in that meaning...

When we think of dependability we usually think of it in the context of others we rely on being dependable. How often do we have those same thoughts focused back on ourselves?

Who is the primary person we have to depend on to get healthy? Simple question, right? It is ourselves. Your success is dependent upon your ability to perform as required.

Believing that as I do, is very comforting to me. I am most at ease when I am in control of myself. When my fate is not in my control, not only am I not at ease but I am not at my best.

Please don't get me wrong, we need help, we need others to stand arm-in-arm with in our mission. But if we can't depend first on ourselves then we ought not expect others to make being-healthy happen for us. It just doesn't work that way in personal health & fitness.

Responsibility 199, Gotta Do It!!