Leadership and Mindset

1.     Learning to Lead

No matter how good you are at your work, how ambitious your goals are, and how much

energy and stamina you have, if you’re not a leader, none of it guarantees your success,

since, “The effectiveness of your work will never rise above your ability to lead and

infl uence others.”

A group of people was strolling through a village. When they passed an old man, one of

them asked condescendingly, “Were any great men born in this village?” “Nope,” the old

man answered, “Only babies.” The moral of the story: Although some people seem to be

“born leaders,” most need to learn leadership from experienced role models. You can use

the following 10 principles to become a mature leader:

Leaders need followers, whom they attract because of their infl uence. Everyone has

infl uence with at least a few people. In fact, everyone is a leader at some times and a follower

at others. The difference between the average person and the leader is scope. Leadership

has fi ve successive components; each one depends upon the one that precedes it.

1. “Position: People follow because they have to” – A title gives you authority, but not

necessarily infl uence. Bosses are not automatically leaders. Instead, your infl uence

grows according to the intensity of your commitment.

2. “Permission: People follow because they want to” – Your followers must also make a

commitment; you need their permission to lead. To gain and keep it, you must build

solid relationships with them.

3. “Production: People follow because of what you have done for the organization” –

Once you’ve built relationships, you and your followers achieve results together.

4. “People development: People follow because of what you have done for them” – Good

leaders are mentors. People follow them because somehow, when they do so, they

feel inspired to perform better than usual.

5. “Personhood: People follow because of who you are” – After a lifetime of leadership, you

develop personal charisma, and people follow you because of the values you embody.

2.     Mindset

 As a man thinks, feels and believes, so is the condition of his mind, body and circumstances. Every thought is a cause and every condition is an effect. Change your thoughts change your destiny

If you think good, good will follow; if you think evil, evil will follow. This is the way your mind works. Once the subconscious mind accepts an idea, it begins to execute it. When your habitual thinking is harmonious and constructive, you experience perfect health, success and prosperity. You build a new body every eleven months. Change your body by changing your thoughts and keeping them changed. It is normal to be healthy. It is abnormal to be ill.

A man's mind may be likened to a garden, which may be intelligently cultivated or allowed to run wild; but whether cultivated or neglected, it must, and will, bring forth. If no useful seeds are put into it, then an abundance of useless weed seeds will fall therein, and will continue to produce their kind.

Just as a gardener cultivates his plot, keeping it free from weeds, and growing the flowers and fruits which he requires, so may a man tend the garden of his mind, weeding out all the wrong, useless, and impure thoughts, and cultivating toward perfection the flowers and fruits of right, useful, and pure thoughts, By pursuing this process, a man sooner or later discovers that he is the master gardener of his soul, the director of his life. He also reveals, within himself, the laws of thought, and understands with ever-increasing accuracy, how the thought forces and mind elements operate in the shaping of his character, circumstances, and destiny.

Thought and character are one, and as character can only manifest and discover itself through environment and circumstance, the outer conditions of a person's life will always be found to be harmoniously related to his inner state. This does not mean that a man's circumstances at any given time are an indication of his entire character, but that those circumstances are so intimately connected with some vital thought element within himself that, for the time being, they are indispensable to his development.

Every man is where he is by the law of his being. The thoughts which he has built into his character have brought him there, and in the arrangement of his life there is no element of chance, but all is the result of a law which cannot err. This is just as true of those who feel "out of harmony" with their surroundings as of those who are contented with them.