True Leaders Fall in Love

Success is hard. Therefore, find something you love.
~ Steve Jobs

In the last blog we began discussing The 6 Ground Rules of Grit. 

We also postulated that true Leaders indeed have grit; and grit is much more than just perseverance and other qualities typically associated with it and to it.

The first ground rule covered today is going to prove this true for many if not most.

Fall in love.

While it may seem a bit far fetched to some, true leadership is about love.

Not the love most often associated with romance. For that’s nothing more than infatuation, romantic idealism, and lust.

True love, like leadership, is an obsession, an adoration, dare I even say a worship of the object of your desire.

Love is the willingness to sacrifice your own personal needs, comforts and desires for something that you believe to be much greater. 

In the East they call this Bhakti Yoga; and while this is not something you probably expect to read about in a leadership blog, that expectation is exactly why we have many of the problems we have in our world today.

For there are these three things that endure:
Faith, Hope and Love, but the greatest of these is Love.
~ I. Corinthians 13:13

Lack of love; and the clarity to know what real love means, has caused us to live lackluster lives of quiet desperation.

Our most wicked problems in today’s world
provide us our most amazing opportunities
if we’ll only wake up and seize them.

puzzle pieces being brought together

We definitely have some wicked problems in our world; and I submit it has very little if anything to do with what we tend to think our problems are.

Problem Solving Is the Problem

Suicide rate is at an all time high with one person committing suicide every 16 minutes in the United States. Suicide is the 3rd leading cause of death for 15 to 24-year-olds and 2nd for 24 to 35-year-olds.

According to World Health Organization, approximately one million people commit suicide every year worldwide. 

That’s about one death every 40 seconds or 3,000 per day. 

For every individual who takes his/her own life, at least 20 attempt and fail.

More people die each year by suicide than by war, crime and terrorism combined.
When are we going to wake up and deal with our real issues?

man holding a paper with HELP written on it

Why is it that we don’t hear any news reports or concerns about this issue?

Answer: Lack of Leadership.

Deeper Answer: Lack of Love.

I’m not referring to love for the people who are taking their lives, yes that’s vital too. 

But even more importantly the lack of helping them find their love!

This lack of love and leadership is affecting even those who don’t end up taking their lives.

Gallup tells us that 72% of the people surveyed are disengaged, unhappy, and basically miserable in their daily work. Which means they’re miserable in their lives. 

Even an “employee minded” individual spends at least 33% of his life at work. Entrepreneur minded individuals are probably at least double that.

And these are only the individuals who are being honest with themselves and the Gallup pollsters. 

True leaders fall in love.
If there ever was a labor of love,
true leadership shows the way.

hearts shapes being hang

It cannot be overemphasized that you must be completely in love with your Prime Objective. You must be obsessed. It must be all-consuming. This is the Bhakti (adoration or worship) Yoga (union) previously mentioned. 

The union of complete obsession. Where you and the object of your affection become one.

Love trumps all;
and it’s the most powerful force in the universe.

For only when you really love, are you willing to make the sacrifices necessary for the object of your desire.

True leaders are committed to something far beyond their own personal comforts and needs.

A true hero is someone who has given his or her life
to something bigger than oneself.
~ Joseph Campbell

Joseph Campbell

Leaders are willing to sacrifice sleep, time off, vacations, willing to keep going when they don’t feel like it, invest time, energy, money; and make the object of their obsession THE most important thing in the entire world.

And yes, they’ll even give their life for it and to it.

Let me promise you, no ordinary business, house, car, vacation or amount of money is worthy of that type of love; and it will never garner it.

When you find this love, the object of your adoration BECOMES you; and YOU become it; and there is no separation. 

This is the leadership we explore and find in Leadership for the Future.

It’s rare.

But so very much needed.

Be a Leader. Live Your Purpose; and Take Your Power Back!

James