Leadership

I’ve been reflecting on life lately.  I’ve been thinking about where I am in life and where I wish I was and as luck would have it the two are mutually exclusive.  I enjoy where my life is and where it seems to be headed but it’s certainly not where I saw myself as a child.  I could blame all my past mistakes or all the lessons not learned.  I could blame it on listening to the wrong people but the truth is that I have never been where I thought I was and would wager I’m not today either.  Okay, geographically I know exactly where I am but metaphorically speaking I probably am nowhere near where I think I am.  As I look back on my life and think about where I was at different phases in it I realize that I never had a clue about where I actually was.  I always saw myself as a leader, I was cool, I was funny, I was popular.  None of those things make a leader, they are more conducive to a follower.  Don’t get me wrong, leaders can possess all of those qualities but people who focus on those qualities are not leaders.  People who want to be cool and popular tend to make their decisions based on what others will think of them.  Those are the people who choose their clothing, activities, what they say, their jobs, basically everything based on what others will think about it.  Those people are followers, slaves to public opinion and popularity.  A true leader will make their choices based on what they actually enjoy doing.  A true leader will make decisions based on what’s right not what’s cool or easy.  The funny thing is that a lot of people who weren’t cool or popular in high school become very much so in college and beyond.  Being a part of the herd is not always cool, sometimes you have to make choices that are not popular because they are the right choices.  When I look back in 20 years I’m positive that I will laugh at myself for ever having worried about where I am now.  I don’t know where I’ll be in 20 years but I’m sure it’s where I’m supposed to be and hopefully I can remember from now on that I’m not really cool or popular, I’m just a guy trying to make the right choices.