Recently, I have been having a lot of interesting conversations with people about their lives and the moments that defined their chosen path.
“It’s in your moments of decisions that your destiny is shaped, so choose wisely”.
Tony Robbins.
Though we all have our defining moments, I believe that passions change and that everyone moves at their own pace in life. However, when it concerns leadership, the aim is essentially to get individuals out of their comfort zone. To motivate and compel people to make choices they would have never made for themselves if you were not involved in the process.
Before anything could happen, everyone needs to be empowered.
Everyone has their own model of the world. Our eyes are the lens in which we view the world around us. In between the lens, the mind filters information three ways that will allow us to interpret what is happening to us. The mind automatically distorts, deletes and generalizes. Through this process, we start to develop belief systems, values and a sense of identity about what we can and cannot be, do, have and contribute. Before we dig deeper into these, we must all acknowledge and hold each other accountable for the way we choose to play in the game of life. In this post, I would like to offer a formula that will help us gain a better understanding of what it means to be accountable.
This formula comes from Dr. Robert Resnick, a psychotherapist who did most of his work in California.
( Event+ Response =Outcomes)
E+R=O
The idea behind the formula is every outcome you experience in life is the result of how you have responded to an earlier event or events in your life. If you detest the outcomes you are currently getting; there are two basic choices we could make.
The first is that you could blame the event (E) for the lack of results (O). In other words, we could blame the economy, the weather, politics, lack of money, racism, gender bias, your wife or husband, your lack of support, education, your system or lack thereof and so on.
There’s no doubt that all these factors do exist, but for most people, these were the deciding factors that shaped the destiny of so many extraordinary men and women.
For every reason why it’s not possible, there are hundreds of people who have faced the same circumstances and succeeded. Lots of people have overcome these so-called limiting factors, so it can’t be the limiting factors that limit you.
It’s not the lack of resources that stop you, it’s the lack of being resourceful. We may have limiting thoughts that could be rooted in some fears that allow us to engage in self-defeating behaviors that perpetuate failure. The second choice you could make is to change your responses (R) to the events (E) the way things are until you get the results or outcomes (O) you desire. We could make a choice to improve and get better. We could change our way of thinking, gain a better perspective, improve our communication with others, improve the pictures we have in our heads (your self-image and the way you see the world) and you could improve your behaviors. In reality, this is all we really have control over.
The difficult part is that our responses to people and certain events have been deeply ingrained in our psyche.
We have conditioned response creatures of habits.
These responses are habitual and very hard to break, especially if we are not aware of it.
As leaders, we need to take a personal inventory of our lives and evaluate what are our responses to those we choose to lead. As individuals, we need to take back control of our thought process, our dreams, the way we talk to ourselves and the way we behave. Everything you think, say and do must be intentional and aligned with your core values, purpose and mission.
Jot it down on paper or on your word doc. Put on the music that jolts you and out loud start firmly declaring how you choose to live, lead, feel and behave.
Do it for at least 5 mins:
Motto: I choose to……………., I choose to…………… I choose to…………
Even though we can’t get deeper into this conversation, we could start doing something about it now. Make a choice today about how you want to feel, lead, and live.