Leadership: Stepping into the Role

Leadership is stepping in front of others to deliver the message needed to direct others toward growth and success. This week, our acting classes are performing a play that they have rehearsed these past few weeks.  These people have worked hard to step into the roles that they are playing.  I visited one of their final rehearsals yesterday to offer some support.

After leaving the rehearsal, I felt that I had not fully stepped into the leadership role that I had wished to embody.  I had said a few supportive things, but not really allowed my body to feel full of love and support.  I realize that while I had wanted to fulfill a leadership role, I had not actually decided to do so.  It was a Saturday and I had just shown up and gone through the motions.  I had had the desire to inspire them, but not the decision or the commitment.

Desire is the yearning, but decision is the moment when choice draws a line in the sand between what has been and what is to be.  Commitment is choosing the same thing at every moment from that point on.

Here is what I know we must do in order to go to the next level of leadership or any other achievement.  We must create an image WITHIN ourselves, seeing ourselves filled with the energy of the qualities we wish to become.  We must talk to ourselves, affirming that we are the thing we want to be.  And we must let our body be filled with the feeling of the qualities.  This is the secret that actors know and use – the ability to step into the role, to fill the shoes, and even more, to fill the whole body and being with the desired energy.  When we embody the energy, we become the role.

The lovely thing about life is that there is always a tomorrow for more experiencing.  The next time I have the opportunity, I will show up with more than desire, I will choose to embody the role of leader.