I believe we are all born leaders, but most of us get our leadership muted along the way.
We all have the capacity to lead, but we’ve been disconnected from our ability to do so. Somehow, somewhere along the line, we’ve dropped out of our natural leadership, and we have learned to compromise, play by the book, and play smaller, canceling the impact we are meant to create. Regardless of how long, it’s been locked in, the great news is that we can unlock it because it’s always there. It’s never too late to activate your leadership and create a life worthy of who you are!
This is a journey I know all too well. For over 30 years, as a ValueCreator® Strategist, my passion has been to create powerful visions that transform. I had the privilege of advising some of the largest companies in the world and collaborating on crafting and developing innovations meant to change the world. I was uncompromising in the vision I was holding for my clients and for myself. I knew that if I could see it, I could do it…and that mindset moved many mountains.
Up until I fell for a fairytale, and the promise of a happy family. And my whole world started to shift, one compromise at a time. I put my baby first, my husband’s ambition before mine. Supposedly for the greatest good. Yet, slowly but surely, I lost track of me.
On the other side of my divorce, I realized how much I had drifted from the person I was. I had lost my legendary vision and the sense of purpose that had made me unstoppable. My ability to create impact had shrunk. Everything in my life felt off. I knew there was so much more in me. But, I could not unlock it. I could not see what was next for me.
I was beating myself up so much for feeling so stuck that I got sick. It took a forced grounding and a humbling experience to make me see what led me there: I had not lived my life in a very long time. I had stopped being me. I had stopped doing what makes me feel alive, and my whole system was screaming at me. I felt stuck in a dead-end for too long, but eventually, I found myself back into a life that I now absolutely love, a life I lead again by my own design, every day more intentionally, a life that has my name on it. And so now, I lead others through the same system of transformation that supported my rebirth as a woman, a mom, a leader, and a businesswoman.
This is what I know now and live by.
Each of us is born unique. We came with a unique Life code, our DNA. We all know that - but most of us are missing the significance of it. We are unique by nature, and it is by design!
So, we stop living by someone else’s design, rules, or playbook, and we start owning our lives. And, as we remove the ‘kinks in the hose’, life starts flowing freely through us, and we feel more alive and vibrant. Life gets easier and smoother as we align our energy with our authentic design.
As we start realizing that our only responsibility is to contribute through our unique set of gifts, we stop trying to fix ourselves and we start loving ourselves for who we are. We become the leaders of our lives, and in turn role models for others, from our unique place of integrity and brilliance.
Imagine a world where each of us puts more effort into becoming the greatest expression of who we are designed to be, rather than competing against each other.
We are all born a genius. We come fully equipped with larger-than-life mental faculties that allow us to apprehend the world through many more modalities than just
our five senses: we are given the imagination to create, the intuition to lead us, the will to focus (not willpower), a memory that works forward and helps us create a future we would love, the ability to adjust our perception to what’s real and to reason correctly given all this information. By age 5, only 20% of us are still able to operate at our innate genius level, and by age 20, only 2%. Very quickly, we got disconnected from our incredible power to create. What happened to us? We let all the rules in and learned to judge ourselves and doubt our own capacity to create our own results. So, our most amazing faculties got atrophied by lack of use, or most often used in a way that creates more of what we don’t want. We let our imagination torture us by focusing on the worst that can happen. We disregard our inner voice. We force ourselves into inhuman burnout modes. We use our memory to hang on to the past…We look at our current results to decide what’s possible for us as if the past could predict our future. This backward thinking is causing us to shrink. Only the thoughts we are thinking determine our future. If you want to uplevel your leadership, you’ve got to repattern your thinking to think like a value creator, a person who increases every and all interactions, a person who creates value through herself, unconditionally, regardless of the current circumstances, situations, or conditions.
Your life is in your hands. The truth is we never know how much time we have, so let’s make sure that our life has our name on it. All it takes is a decision. De-cide means to cut away from. We cut the old way and embrace a new way. Are you willing?
The quality of the questions we ask determines the quality of the answers we receive. Albert Einstein said: ‘If I had an hour to solve a problem that my life depended on the solution, I’d spend the first 55 minutes determining the proper question to ask. For, once I had the proper question, I could solve the problem in less than 5 minutes.’ We often ask dead-end questions, questions that are disempowering: “Why did he do that? Why did it happen”...the answer lies in the past. Or, “How am I going to do that? “...the answer lies in the future. Our only point of power is in the here and now. We learn to ask powerful clarity-questions and they usually start with ‘what’.
4 clarity questions to unlock your leadership and start living a life worthy of you.
1..We start with “Who am I now?” because it is the perception that we have of ourselves that drives our results. In other words, the results we create are a direct reflection of who we perceive we are. We cannot outperform our identity but we can upgrade it. Success has a sequence and it starts with clarity of Identity.
We update. We often operate from an older perception of our Self, an outdated version, the who we were in a distant past. To be able to create from our most current identity, we have to update our awareness of it. The new part of us that wants to move forward must not be held back by the other part of us that didn’t get the memo…we are moving forward!
We correct. Most of the time the perception we have of ourselves is vastly distorted. It got shaped by an old event, something happened or someone said something, and we made it mean something that is now locked in me. And, reinforced over time, it became a truth that I am not even questioning. That truth is ruling my life right now.
We release. We are our harshest critics. We hold grudges over ourselves, our mistakes, failures, opportunities we missed... It can be scary to let go of a story that has defined us for decades, but it’s necessary. We all have a lot of script-flipping to do to unveil the truth about us. Remember, we can only get what we believe we are worthy of. So, we give ourselves the gift of releasing the dead weight we’ve been carrying around so we can choose new more empowering beliefs about ourselves.
We look for our Distinctive Natural Assets® and identify what’s unique about us, that is authentic and holds value (either it is already valuable or it has the potential to be). It feels so good to give ourselves the acknowledgment of the value of our own existence.
Ultimately, through this discovery process, we get to unlock our leadership: our point of power within and unique source of value.
Viktor Frankl, the renowned Psychiatrist who survived the nazi camps, wrote about what makes people achieve extraordinary things in their lives and it is meaning. He found that having meaning in our lives is what makes us accomplish anything, especially the things we would have never thought we were capable of.
Lots of people are in circling mode, living by default of having something truly meaningful to look forward to, to experience, or to create. They might live up to 90 years but when you look at their results, it looks like they have been living the same year 90 times. This can’t be us.
2..The 2nd most powerful question we ask is: “What do I want?” What is it that it would mean the world to me to be or have? It can be tangible things of course, but behind these things, there is always a feeling that we would love to experience in our lives. And right now it is missing.
Actually, there is an even more powerful question to ask, inviting a higher level of answer, and it is “What would I love?” We feel the difference in our cells. This question is energetically calibrated to talk to my heart, not my head. It is an invitation set at the highest level of vibration, the vibration of love, and so what we receive will be at that level.
We are not setting goals. We are setting Dreams, the Highest Level of Vision we can create from. All we have to do is be willing to lean in and receive these images and feelings that are the echo of who I am here to be. These images are for me only. No one else has that dream.
Many of us, don’t even dare to dream anymore. But, every one of us has a dream inside waiting for us to believe we can have it. Harriet Tubman said; “Every great dream begins with a dreamer”, so we allow ourselves to dream.
It is the dreamers indeed who have moved Society forward. Steve Jobs, Thomas Edison, Nelson Mandela, Gandhi, Michael Jordan, Oprah, Walt Disney,...
All they had was a vision for what they wanted to create, but they didn't have a path. Thomas Edison said; “I have not failed, I have just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” Steve Jobs was fired from the board of the company he created. Chicken Soup for the Soul’s proposal was rejected 144 times. Michael Jordan claimed: “I have missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I have lost almost 300 games….I have failed over and over in my life and that’s why I succeeded.”
There was no straight line. There was no guaranteed line. There was no magic formula other than they had a vision that felt so vividly real that they leaned in again and again, and pulled by it, they took a step every day, and every day another step.
Now, how does any leader accomplish anything that looks at first impossible? Quantum Physics tells us that all the possible results exist at any point in time, and so your dream already exists. But you have to become a vibrational match to it.
The new results you want exist but at a different level of vibration than the one from which you are currently creating. That’s why despite using our willpower to achieve our goals, we keep getting the same results. It is because we keep trying to get to it from our current Identity. And so, we get discouraged and often give up on our dreams thinking that they are not meant for us, while this is not accurate, we are just using the wrong approach.
Just like when we want to watch TV, we take our remote to switch to the channel on which frequency the program I want to watch is playing, I learn to do that with myself. I adjust the frequency from which I operate. Whatever frequency we are on is the level at which we will create.
So the great news is that there is a path that is not about working harder, pushing, or applying more pressure on ourselves. Getting our dream doesn’t have to mean we are signing up for a life burnout.
There is another way: we have got to come from the dream. It triggers an inside-out transformational momentum, a journey of becoming, where we lean into our Dream and let ourselves be pulled by “our future self’.
We lean into the part of us who already knows how the person living the dream thinks, and how she makes decisions, and we let this part take the lead of our lives, each day more and more. As we anchor this new identity in time and space through consistent action, coming from the vision, we upgrade our identity and recalibrate our energy.
Each obstacle is an opportunity to cross an ‘invisible boundary’ as we get to the edge of what we know and grow to our next level of mastery of living a life by design. This is our very own hero’s journey, where challenges reveal themselves to be stepping stones, and how we become the hero of our lives. We know we are ‘home’ when we can see that the content of our lives has been the necessary curriculum of our evolution, that everything we have lived through has made us who we are now, and that we feel grateful for it.
3..As we pass each threshold, and embrace our next-level identity, the answer to the 3rd most important question reveals itself: “Who am I here to be?”
This is our vocation. Our real one. Our Spiritual DNA. Our true calling.
As we bridge the gap, between ‘who I am now’ and ‘who I am here to be’, we keep recalibrating and upleveling through the dynamic game of Life: Upgrade. Update. Upgrade….And from that new elevated place, we can create a new level of results.
4..The next and last question is: Now that you know who you are designed to be, what are you going to do with your unique and gifted life? “What am I here to do?”
We are not just dreamers, we are dreamers who build. We are valueCreators.
Our opportunity is to create the unique vehicle for our unique expression and contribution. It can be a business we feel pulled to build, a new leadership position that is calling us, a community we must start, a collaboration that must work through us, or the gift of time and expertise invested in volunteering, …The key here is that it is Vision-led, and powered by the pull of the dream.
We ask ourselves: what is the impact we want to create? What is the difference that only we are designed to make? And we create the economic engine so we are free to be and do what is in our hearts and minds.
This is how we get to create the most value from our Distinctive Natural Assets® and build our Distinctive Natural influence. Through a simple prism, called a Brand, through which we filter everything: What we do. What we say. How we say it.
In conclusion: Clarity is Power. Not just in Business. In life. It always starts within. With 4 powerful questions: Who am I now? What would I love? Who am I here to be? What am I here to do?
When we are in a place where we are able to embrace a crystal-clear Identity, a Vision for a life we would love, and a Vocation that makes us come alive, we have unlocked our leadership potential and unique capacity to create unprecedented levels of success.
Regardless of where you stand now, regardless of your circumstances and results, there is a next level of leadership waiting for you to step in. There are people waiting for you to step up. Imagine that your stepping up is the beginning of a virtuous ripple effect that will inspire them to step up for who they are because they will want to lead the way you lead everything in your life with ease and grace.
While I can’t predict a comfortable journey, I can promise that it will be life-giving. There is nothing more magical than when all the dots in your life finally connect and it all makes sense. When who you are and what you do are one and the same, and when being who you are is exactly how you make the biggest difference in the world. What are you waiting for?
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Meet the expert:
Veronique is a sought-after inspirational Vision-driven Leader, Certified Transformational Life Mastery Consultant, ValueCreator Strategist & Coach, Brave Thinker and Brand Builder, on a mission to help Women own who they are in the world.
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