“We all have the extraordinary coded within us, waiting to be released.” – Jean Huston
A couple years ago, when I was facilitating a leadership program for young women at a University in China, it quickly became apparent that I had a lot of work to do to convince the students that they had many of their answers inside of them. They so desperately wanted me to tell them exactly what they were supposed to do. One of the most impactful classes I created and facilitated was sharing articles of strong Chinese women who were successful leaders in different ways; this opened up their minds to think of the people in their own lives who had modeled strong leadership and how they already knew the leadership qualities they wanted to emulate.
A process I often use with my Coaching clients is to ask them to identify two to three people who they admire or look up to as role models. This could be a family member, friend, colleague or famous person (living or deceased). What names pop in your mind? Now, think about their characteristics that you admire. List those on a sheet of paper. This is your specific list of values that are important to you, you’ve now uncovered an important part of your internalGPS.
Think about your daily routine and habits. Are you able to live those values you listed? What actions can you take to shift into actively living them?
Be careful not to judge or criticize if you need to do some realignment; the key is to start from where ever you are and realize that you are uncovering your extraordinary self that was always there, it sometimes just needs to hear the “recalculate.”
photo credit via Flickr creative commons: miguelb