Living Well Through Self-Leadership

Craig 00:12 

Welcome to Live Well and Flourish, where I help you understand what it means to live a flourishing life. I'm your host Craig Van Slyke. If you're ready to think beyond material and external success, if you're ready to take control of who you are and the kind of life you live, if you're ready to flourish, this is the podcast for you. 

Craig 00:32 

Well, it's a new year and a new year often brings resolutions to do better. To lose weight, to spend more time with family, get more sleep, examples abound. But while the idea of improving is great, the execution is often not so great. In fact, one study found that only 8% of the folks studied actually achieved their resolutions, which is a depressingly low figure. One problem with resolutions is that they're often kind of random, they don't have guiding principles or some overall structure to them. Also, they're usually just goals and often kind of vague goals. Goals are great, but you need some way to achieve them. In this episode of Live Well and Flourish I discuss four principles that underlie a system of self-leadership that can be used to not only achieve goals, but to guide the goals you set and more importantly, to help you become who you want to be.

Craig 01:23 

Remember, you are in control of whether you live an excellent life, not your boss, not your spouse, your partner, not your preacher, priest, or spiritual guide. You and you alone control your flourishing. Sure, others can make flourishing easier or harder, but ultimately living an excellent life is up to you. Much of what I talk about in Live Well and Flourish is about taking control of your life. In this episode I'll help you take control through self-leadership. Then in the next few episodes, I'll discuss four important elements of leading yourself towards the life you want to live. I call these the pillars of self-leadership. 

Craig 01:59 

At work, many of us have a leader who sets goals and tries to influence workers to act in ways that help the organization achieve those goals. In your personal life you are your own leader, you lead yourself. Just as organizational leadership is about influencing others, self-leadership is about influencing yourself. Good thing about self leadership is that you are in control, not some boss. Why is taking control of your life so important while having a sense of control as an essential psychological need? Have you ever experienced stress or depression because things felt out of control? I know I certainly have. 

Craig 02:34 

One of the most influential theories in psychology is Deci and Ryan's self-determination theory. According to self-determination theory, three basic human psychological needs drive our wellbeing: feelings of autonomy, competence and relatedness, or strong relationships. Autonomy is related to the kind of control I talk about on Live Well and Flourish. Autonomy is your ability to choose your own behaviors and make your own choices. Control, in the sense I use it, is making use of your autonomy to live an excellent life. My goal in bringing these messages to you is to help you flourish by using your autonomy to make the right choices, the choices that help you flourish. 

Craig 03:13 

Just as a good business leader doesn't make random decisions, if you want to flourish, you need to make purposeful choices. That's the point of self-leadership, to help you make choices that lead you towards living the life you desire. So let's define self-leadership more formally. According to Chris Neck and Jeff Houghton, self-leadership is a process through which individuals control their own behavior. Pretty simple, it's just about taking control. Of course, as you probably thought, there's a lot to this. In fact, there are multiple books devoted to self-leadership. Doctors Neck and Houghton have written such a book along with Charles Manz, who formalized the concept of self-leadership. I'll add a link to the book in the show notes. 

Craig 03:54 

There are a lot of daily practices that can help with self leadership, the books and the show notes can help you with those, and I may mention some from time to time. But what I want to talk with you about today are four high level ideas and practices that can help you take control of your life. In the next four episodes I'll go into more detail on each one of these individually. Remember the point of this is to exercise your autonomy to live the life you want to live, to flourish. Although it sometimes doesn't feel like it, most of us have significant control over our own lives. The goal of self-leadership is to exercise that control in a purposeful, effective way. Learning how to lead yourself leads to numerous benefits in your personal and professional life. Some of these such as better health, increased optimism, a sense of empowerment and lower stress stem from the increased sense of control that self-leadership can provide. Effective self-leadership can also result in greater career success and satisfaction. 

Craig 04:51 

The ability to lead yourself rests on a foundation of four core practices: purposefulness, mindfulness, reflection and practice. Yeah, I know it sounds kind of funny to call practice a practice, stay with me and you'll see what I mean. I like the pillar metaphor because the four elements, purposefulness, mindfulness, reflection and practice are each independent. Maybe practice isn't, but no metaphor is perfect. But to be effective, each must act in concert with the others to support flourishing. Purposefulness is the “Mac Daddy”, as the cool kids used to say, of the pillars. Purposefulness drives the rest. Your purpose is the why of your life, it's what brings your life meaning. It's the big, "What was I put on earth to do?" sort of question. My purpose is to help others lead successful meaningful lives. I can't honestly say it drives everything I do and every waking moment, but it drives the big things. It's the reason for this podcast and for the podcast focusing on flourishing, which is the ultimate human success. Your purpose provides the proverbial North Star that can guide your choices. If choice A moves me towards my purpose and choice B moves me away, choice A is clearly the right decision.

Craig 06:00 

Mindfulness has become a bit of a cliché lately. In fact, one of the things that I don't like about my new Apple watch is that it bugs me to take mindfulness breaks, which just seems odd to me. But regardless, becoming mindful is an important part of flourishing, but the kind of mindfulness I'm talking about here isn't the mindfulness of meditation, it's simpler than that. Here, mindfulness just means paying conscious attention. It means getting out of autopilot mode and not going through life half-awake. Being mindful involves awareness and attention. To be mindful you have to be aware of what's going on in your life, but you focus your attention on the aspects of life that are truly important. Of course, I'll have more to say about this in a later episode. 

Craig 06:41 

Reflection involves serious introspection about your thoughts, emotions, motives, actions, and character. The Jesuits have a good way of expressing the importance of reflection. It's the way we discover and compose the meaning of our experience. It's the way we make sense of the world and our place in it. Reflection is critical to self-regulation and learning. In the last episode I discussed Ben Franklin's method of self-improvement. As you may remember, reflection was an important part of his method. We learn when we reflect, we grow when we reflect. Both of these are critical to self-leadership. 

Craig 07:17 

Practice is what brings all of this home. As John Stuart Mill put it, the moral, like the mental and muscular powers must be exercised to be improved. So it's not enough to just think about all of this, you need to actually put the ideas into practice. As long time listeners know, I'm a big fan of Aristotle's instruction, practice, habit, being progression towards excellence. To be kind, you have to practice kindness. To be honest, you have to practice honesty. All of the rest of the pillars don't matter if you don't practice practice, if you don't put your thoughts into action. So that gives you an overview of the next four episodes, but what can you do today? As you might imagine, I have some ideas. First, take 10 minutes and think about how your life would improve if you could take more control over yourself and your behaviors. Remember, this is about you, not external events. Second, pick one thing, just one that you want to take control of this week. It might be having less screen time or skipping the bedtime junk food, whatever it is. Keep this simple, just pick one thing and then control it. Consciously practice exercising your autonomy over this one behavior. Try to do it for the entire week. And then third, at the end of the week think back on how taking control made you feel. If you fail occasionally, don't be hard on yourself, humans are imperfect beings. Just think about how you can do better. Really savor the fact that you exercised your autonomy and made a positive change in your life. Remember that feeling. 

Craig 08:48 

I'll leave you with a quote from Max Ehrmann, "...and whatever your labors and aspirations, in the noisy confusion of life, keep peace with your soul. With all its sham, drudgery and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world." Be well, my friends. Until next time.

Craig 09:07 

I produced Live Well and Flourish because of my dedication to helping others live excellent lives. I don't accept sponsorships and I don't want your money. The only thing I want is to help you and others flourish. If you've received some value from this episode, please share it with someone that might also benefit from listening. Until next time.