Are You a Leader or a Follower?
There’s no right or wrong to being a leader or a follower, if everybody was a leader, everybody would be running around trying to lead other people towards their own individualistic ideal and never get anywhere. We are all a little bit of both. We all lead, and we all follow, but where do you live on a daily basis? What is your “home base”?
Leader = Servant
You are a servant as a leader. If your model of the world is to live everything on the highest level, to be the best, to share the best, to create the best, to create the best. So All of us at some level want to be a hero – hero means servo, servant in its latin root and its literal translation means slave. The reason a hero is a hero is because they’ve become the ultimate servant to something larger than themselves. If you can find a way to take any group of people and help them to meet their needs on a richer, deeper level than anyone else, then together, you guys can get anything done. Anything. Now it may not work perfectly the first time you set out to do it, but you’ll eventually get it done.
What we’re after isn’t a vehicle. We’re not after a job, we’re not after money, we’re not after a relationship. We convince ourselves we are, which is what puts us in this trap. And that’s the trap of a follower. And we’re all a leader and a follower to a certain extent, but where do you live? Where do you live at your core? Are you chasing things for the short term gain? Are you convincing yourself that you’re doing the right thing? That you’re on the right path? More importantly, are you growing and contributing beyond yourself in the highest form possible?
You can only feel so good filling up by yourself – in that job, for the money, in that relationship to get what you want out of it. But I have a core belief that if I give beyond myself I will get double. So the more I give my gift, the more I get. And the more I give and the more I serve, the more I can lead.
The Life and Growth Cycle
Tony Robbins told me this story about the web of connection in life. A bumblebee has its selfish goal of going around from flower to flower to get nectar, but in the process, pollen sticks to its legs and it pollinates other flowers so they can grow and reproduce. He has the belief that everything in the universe is guided by a higher power to grow and give beyond itself, humans included.
So whether you’re here to serve yourself, you’re here to serve yourself and your kids, or your community, or all of humanity, you’re going to get different results. Long term, you can’t hide what your real motive is. I believe we’re all here to give a unique, profound gift, even if you don’t believe it yet, I believe that to be the case for each and every one of us on the planet. The problem is that so many of us follow models of the world that are instilled in us from our parents, our peer groups, our teachers, our friends that don’t serve us in giving our true gift to our greatest capacity and we get set in those ways and most never get out. So our gift dies when we die.
I believe that we are all leaders in our hearts, and a true leader is the ultimate hero, the ultimate servant.
John Whiting
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