“Becoming a leader is synonymous with becoming yourself. It is precisely that simple and it is also that difficult.” -Warren Bennis
Step 7 of the 10 steps to create a life you love is about creating a deeper understanding of how to continue to lead yourself through the change process at a steady, manageable pace. This step offers opportunities to evaluate and adjust your plan as needed, to continue to forge through any residual resistance and personalize your change process. Witnessing the transition from planning and following action steps into internalized habits is a primary focus of this step. Understanding leadership skills and becoming a strong leader for yourself is emphasized—so that you can maintain the progress you’ve made and feel the impact of the new habits you’re creating. We are often used to either being led or leading others, however, leading yourself is where your true internal power lies.
With the earlier steps all about reflection, awareness, creation and action, this step is more about witnessing and making choices. Here you will witness your progress, the new action steps that are turning into behaviors and transforming into habits. The integration of these new habits sparks a need to witness these changes and continue to look inward at your change process in order to feel as though you are leading yourself. When an action step was first created as a part of the goal that supported your vision, you had to really plan, work at it, convince yourself, deal with resistance and build resilience. Once all of that hard work is done, the action step turns into a behavior and then into a habit. Once this new habit is formed, it becomes automatic.
When you no longer have to work at it or try really hard or force yourself to do this action step, you know that you’ve integrated this behavior as a habit. When you keep your pace steady, it is more likely to deeply integrate and you can experience how automatic it feels. When working in my practice, one of the first areas that many people struggle with when it comes to emotional eating is fear that they won’t be able to eat what they want to eat. They fear that they will have to give up the foods that brings them pleasure. They recognize the struggle, but fear the change. If the vision is having a healthy relationship with food, we break it down and start with goals.
One example of goal, would be to get adequate nourishment. No matter what else they choose to put in their mouths, start with increasing vegetable intake, preferably leafy greens by one serving per day. This change is often met with resistance, they bought it but it went bad, they don’t know how to prepare it, they don’t like it… Once we work through the resistance and find tasty recipes and the vegetables that they find satisfying, they have to work at it. They have to create plans for when they are going to eat their leafy greens. They have to do some preparation to ensure they eat it and keep a log to ensure this happens. Then they notice changes they are experiencing within their bodies such as improved digestion, more energy, or feeling inspired to make other healthy choices. Through this evaluation they feel empowered and also notice certain general food cravings diminishing. Then one day it happens, they just do it. It becomes part of the routine, part of meal prepping, part of what they purchase at the store. Eating a leafy green every day has become a habit.
Once increased nourishment has integrated in this automatic way, we celebrate! The steady pace, practice and ultimate change happens and then they are leading themselves. They are making the choices, doing the inner focus and making decisions based on what they know their body needs to feel nourished and healthy and this translates to feeling strong, empowered and hopeful. While this small change does not heal emotional eating, it does create a shift, it is a step towards self-leadership and healthy habit forming that they desire, yet initially feared. When you break down change into doable, actionable steps, the change happens over time and it feels really good.
Here are some primary leadership skills and how to apply them to self-leadership as you continue to assess your progress and move forward:
Communication: how you talk to yourself is important, it is essential to be kind in your self-talk and focus on your strengths.
Motivation: giving yourself a reason to do the work and finding what inspires you to do is vital.
Be positive: giving yourself reasons to move forward with a positive and healthy mindset.
Being creative: finding solutions to tricky problems, (like charring broccoli and using a delicious sauce and making it taste AMAZING rather than mushy steamed broccoli) is extremely useful.
Giving feedback: doing this in a diplomatic way is essential as a leader, so being able to get real with yourself, or access the support person who will!
Responsibility: this is where you close the gap between knowing what to do and actually doing it.
When you lead yourself to the next place to begin and how to get there, you open yourself to these powerful shifts and new automatic habits that are healthy and desirable. When you rush, force or use punishment and deprivation as a strategy for change, you most likely won’t get very far. When you lead yourself with focus, determination and access any helpful support, you open yourself to living a life that you love.