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 263 - We Should Earn This

Losing weight is not easy, is it? Oh the behaviors required to lose weight and be healthy are easy to conceptualize and understand, but executing them often are anything but easy for us mentally.

If you agree with that, or even if you do not I suppose, the question I'd like you to consider is this; If you believe that being/staying healthy is really important, do you also believe being/staying healthy is worth earning?

Oh I certainly do believe it must be earned. Healthy is not anything we are given, gifted, or get unless we earn it. Many if not most things in life are this way too; e.g. money, property, trust, love, etc... and let us be honest, we put a good deal of effort into earning and maintaining many of those things don't we? I know I do!

Hmmm, before you can answer the earlier question above perhaps it would help if you first pondered this one; Why? Why is being healthy important & worthy of being earned?

Well, I could go into a long list of reasons why and validate each point with why being healthy is needed; but let me keep this to a simple-straight-forward answer, "I WANT IT"

Come on now... think again to our examples of money, property, trust, love... why do we endeavor so in attaining these? Because we WANT them. Money, I want it so I have positioned myself to be able to earn a good living so I go after it hard... Property, e.g. toys, gadgets, stuff of all sorts are what I want around me so I go after them when the want for them strikes... Trust & Love, big time wants of mine as when these have been absent in my life I have felt miserable, utterly miserable!

Being healthy, yes; I want it. But I won't come to attain it if I do not get busy earning it. But, BUT, coming to realize that getting healthy has to be earned is not the main point I waish to make here. Rather it is this, I feel GREAT when I have something I know that I have earned.

I treasure that which I have accomplished via earning it. The things I am most proud of in life are those I have earned; e.g. when I earned my bachelors in 2007 (see pic above). That which I have earned I put the greatest continuing effort into in order to preserve and keep.

We Should Earn being/staying healthy because we WANT all the GREATNESS that comes from doing so!

That is my opinion, what is yours?

Responsibility 199 - Gotta Do It!!