Before I give the 5 secrets, some might be wondering; “How do I know if I am on the margins of my company, corporation or community? Let’s consider three simple indicators of being on the margins:
1. Does your voice have influence with the most influential people in your company, corporation or community?
2. When the most influential people or authority figures call a meeting to discuss important issues and make decisions – are you at the table?
3. Are you amongst the first people to know about important decisions and facts that affect your life?
If you answered “no” to any or all of these three questions – YOU ARE ON THE MARGINS OF YOUR SITUATION. This is not a matter of bad or good, it is a matter of leadership and where you want to lead from – the margins or the mainstream.
Now let’s consider some indicators of how you know when you have moved from the margins to the mainstream?
1. Your voice has influence with authority figures
2. You are a leader of leaders, not just the crowd
3. You are recognized as “one of a kind” amongst many peers
4. You are now in “the know” and your circle of influence has grown
If you are an experienced leader who wants to increase your influence, or an emerging leader that desires to be a cut above the crowd, then the following 5 secrets of personal growth and development will get you there – Guaranteed!
What I have found over the years about these so called “secrets” is that the reason they are called secrets is not because nobody else knows them – but because few and far between use them. Some might even say they are “Common sense” – but as Dr. Stephen Covey likes to say, “common sense is not common practice”. And as I like to say, great leaders are not those who possess special knowledge, but those who practice and master the common knowledge they possess. Thus, I say; “guaranteed” because these 5 principles are those things I have researched from the best, learned from the best and things I and countless others have practiced, in one way or another, to get to where we are at today. And now you too can practice these principles and watch how your circle of influence will grow as you grow! Its like dropping a rock in a pond and the circles or waves it causes to flow out from that spot. The bigger the rock, the larger the waves go out from the original spot where you dropped it. Likewise, the more you grow personally, the more influence you will have. It all a mater of how deep you are willing to go. The deeper you go in your soul, the more you will grow and the wider your circle of influence will become – Guaranteed!
Secret # 1: Discover the real you One of the things I did when I was younger was work in Hollywood as an “extra”. For those not familiar with this term, “extras” are the people who get paid to be in the background of a scene in a movie, TV program or commercial. They have no speaking part, but just play the role of background scenery to give context to the main scene you are watching. Through this experience, I learned how in Hollywood everything is planned, staged, and fake. Nothing is real; all is scripted and under the control of the set Director. I used to think that the things and people in the background of movies and TV were real, but not so. Everything the actors do is also scripted (with occasional improvising). All their words, emotions and actions are simply following a script. Of course, today we have a lot of what are called “Reality shows” where the people and places are supposed to be “real” life on live TV and not professional actors, etc.
I don’t know how real reality TV is, but the real question you and I have to answer is this: “Whose script are we acting out in our daily lives?” In other words, are we being true to ourselves? Or are we simply “playing to the camera”, caught up in a personality and lifestyle that is really not us, just like in the movies. Are we acting out the “script” God intended and designed for our unique personality, or are we acting out a script that others have given us, written for us so to speak, from the thoughts and images planted in our minds as children when we were growing up?
If you were lucky enough to have the healthy influence of parents and adults that helped you discover who you really are, that is great and more power to you! Unfortunately, many people do not grow up with a positive influence, do not think right about themselves, and consequently do not discover who they are until later in life or sometimes never at all. This is why so many of our youth get off track into so many destructive lifestyles as they take their “Q’s” of who they are from movies, magazines, and the media images they are bombarded with daily. I am convinced that a lot of talent has been wasted and gone undiscovered, and in far too many cases, buried in the cemetery, simply because many of us were conditioned to look out the window for images to copy, rather than looking within our own hearts and minds for the character and passion that we were born with. Some call it our “natural talent”; others refer to it as our “gifts and talents”. Whatever one calls it, this is the first secret, or principle of success that all great people of influence and mainstream leadership follow; they have discovered who they really are and stick to it allowing no distractions or discouragements to get them off track.
Remember, this is not a matter of “inventing” yourself. It is a matter of discovery of the treasure hidden within you. It is like the archeologist hunting for lost treasure or ancient tombs or cities of the past. They don’t create what they find, it has been there all the time, waiting to be uncovered, and discovered for the entire world to see and benefit from.
Perhaps you have heard or read the famous story, “Acres of Diamonds”? – Told over five thousand times by its founder, Russell H. Conwell. Mr. Conwell, who later credited the story with inspiring over 1,600 young men to finish college, would go into towns where he was to deliver his speech and talk with the common people to find out what it was the community felt they were missing or needed or something they had failed to do. After interviewing the town folk and empathizing with their concerns, he would then deliver his same speech, but always applying it to each particular community. The story, “Acres of Diamonds”, is about a wealthy old Arab who sells his land to go off to search for diamonds after a priest tells him how much more wealthy he could be if he could discover a whole mine full of diamonds. The point of the whole story is that we often look everywhere else for the answers, or “diamonds” as it were, when the answers and all that we need to solve the problems or create the desired opportunities; i.e., “acres of diamonds”, have been in us all the time. We just haven’t discovered them yet because we have been looking everywhere else but within where the true treasure is buried. And just like the old wealthy Arab in the story, who never found diamonds and died a poor man, many of us go through many years of searching in all the wrong places. However, the man who bought the old Arabs land discovered acres of diamonds in his own back yard! If only the old wealthy Arab had looked their first. And the same is true about you! All that you need to prosper and be successful is not “out there” somewhere, but it lies in you and simply needs to be discovered by you.
So how do you discover the real you? Its not that complicated really – and will be thew topic of my next Blog entry.
