PERSONAL GROWTH
What is Inner Leadership?
Our Inner Worlds: Getting to Know
It's marked by experiencing or being
During our education, we learned about the outer world but very little or nothing about the inner world.
To change oneself, one learns to manipulate something in the outside world. The skills, competencies, and mastery they learn to do their jobs are learned. By doing things well, we achieve success and happiness.
It is also said that we spend a great deal of time in our heads on automatic pilots. Nearly 80% of the time, our minds wander, leaving us mentally exhausted. In fact, we do things in our minds that not only don’t bring happiness but also contribute to stress, anxiety, and depression and may even contribute to physical illness and pain.
Use of the mind for the wrong purposes
What are these patterns of thought? Since this isn’t an academic or therapeutic resource, we could use something like ‘ Thinking’ or simply “misuse of our minds and imaginations.”
Distortions are specific errors we make that bend and twist the truth without us realizing it. CBT (cognitive behavioural therapy – a type of psychotherapy) teaches people to identify cognitive distortions. ACT (acceptance and commitment therapy) helps people to identify Cognitive Fusion. Fusion is when we are so tightly stuck with our thoughts, including distressing ones, but we can’t seem to stop or change our thinking.
In short, we use certain thinking styles and think certain kinds of thoughts, and we end up feeling distressed, anxious, in pain and suffering. As a result of this inner distress, we begin avoiding things that may trigger those thoughts and reactions, as well as actions we could be taking in life, and we end up in a painful mess.
Ancient Greece
Ancient Greece used a term called Arete – it meant excellence and was held above all other virtues. Basically, it meant expressing the best version of yourself moment to moment!
Instead of trying to change how we feel from the outside by performing or achieving, or influencing others, let’s look inside and learn how to lead ourselves effectively from within. It’s a seriously neglected area but critical for well-being and flourishing.
What is Inner Leadership?
This term’s been used in different contexts, but at HeartRich, we consider inner Leadership akin to developing self-mastery and working towards self-actualization, even self-transcendence.
Inner Leadership is how we lead ourselves in our inner worlds – our thoughts, emotions, physiology, energy, and will. Working a combination of ongoing, dynamic processes of leading oneself towards the heights of one’s potential so we self-actualize and be who we indeed are, nurture wellbeing, and live our values while doing so in positive, healthy, sustainable ways that also recognize the needs and desires of others to do the same.
Inner Leadership is about self-awareness, self-knowledge, self-management, and self improvement.
Our state of being or state of consciousness means being aware of what goes on inside our minds and bodies, our inner landscape, which includes our energy and vibe, our emotions, our impulses, our thoughts and desires, and enabling us to optimize, in real-time, how we are living this moment, the meaning we are making of it, the values and ideals we are embracing, the actions we will take, and how we will present ourselves.
When things are going well, when all your needs are met, when the sun is shining, and the world around you seems to be at peace, it’s easier to lead yourself well (though it is still hard for many). Still, it’s tough to get the best out of yourself when things aren’t going well, when your needs aren’t being met, and you continue to be threatened when someone is triggering you, and you feel fear, anger, or pain of any kind.
When this happens, our brain and nervous system go into alarm, and we usually do what we did before to survive: fight, flee, or even freeze. We run and reinforce our old adaptive protective programs or patterns.
Our limbic system – our emotional brain – takes over and our brilliant and intellectual selves get drowned out or temporarily demoted. Our true selves get eclipsed. We get hijacked and flooded emotionally until we find safety, calm ourselves down, and ideally get some atonement and support from others. Then our social engagement system and rational brain come back to the forefront.
We don’t even need an external trigger to send us into alarm and automatic defence – even a thought can trigger us, and we can perpetually reinforce a cycle of thought-alarm-defence – keeping our nervous systems on high alert, which doesn’t give our brains and bodies a chance to rest, digest and renew ourselves.
Claiming Response-Ability
1. Inner leadership
With Inner Leadership, we are claiming responsibility to be more aware of what’s going on inside, how we’re perceiving and living this moment, connecting to our hearts and embracing our values, shifting our state and vibe to a more coherent, balanced and positive one, so we can maintain a connection to our higher brains and choose how we wish to respond – we’re practicing response-ability. We can’t do that unless we claim the position of leader within.
When you invest the time and energy to take care of your inner world, you also have a greater awareness, respect and appreciation for others’ inner worlds. You realize that everything you do affects others – we are all interdependent. So, the better you lead yourself, the better your energy and vibe, the better your influence and effect on others, and the better their response to you.
We can realize this in our homes and foster a more positive and nurturing environment so we can be more aware, heart-centred, calm, open, attuned and flexible. This isn’t possible if we’re too stressed, not taking care of ourselves, living with a storm inside that can erupt into a category 5 hurricane – everyone can sense that and is affected by that.
We can realize this at work, whether or not we have a leader’s title, and not only improve our sense of contentment, engagement and fulfillment, we will make a positive contribution and have a richer effect on others we work with.
Ultimately, we should be learning this from a young age. I can only imagine its positive effect and the incredible changes we could see unfold in the world if we raise the next generation to prioritize their personal well-being.
Inner work is what we do to develop internal Leadership
The pillars of ‘inner work’ involve self-discovery & development, awareness and mindfulness training, self-regulation practices, nurturing positive emotion, cultivating courage and will, and developing emotional intelligence and psychological flexibility. You can learn more here:
What kind of leaders will we be if we lead ourselves from within? How can we lead ourselves well? Let us borrow from the leadership literature.
What are the qualities of the best leaders? Here are 10 qualities we see come up again and again:
- Integrity
- Accountability
- Empathy
- Humility
- Vision
- Positivity
- Communication
- Influence
- Competence
- Evolving/improving/growth
That’s very much how we should be within ourselves, but often we aren’t any of those. To be honest, are you sometimes worse to yourself than any manager or leader you’ve ever worked for? These are standard traits of poor Leadership:
- Abusive
- Domineering
- Apathetic
- Negative, critical, cynical, pessimistic
- Unappreciative
- Cowardly
- Absent
- Irresponsible and Unaccountable
So, to sum up, without effectively leading ourselves and managing thought, emotion and behaviour in healthy, positive ways, we can succumb to pain and suffering and sabotage or squander our respective potentials to lead rich, meaningful and fulfilling lives.
It’s up to each one of us to claim the responsibility of inner Leadership and do our parts to lead ourselves well so we can experience greater inner peace, well-being, and energy and make a more significant contribution to us being our best selves.
When you begin to work on inner Leadership, you’re going to wonder, who is the inner leader? Is there one? Is it you?
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