Leadership-The Start

Let’s talk about leadership and being job optional. Leadership is what you need in a group situation, right? How to influence and guide people to get things done. Leaders are people that are respected and admired. Those that attract people and inspire them. But right now, it’s just me with the goal to get out of my job. I don’t have followers or supporters that are looking to me for leadership so don’t bug me about leadership. Just tell me how to get free.

Well, it’s more complicated than that. One reason that you are where you are, dependent on someone else for earning a living is that you deferred from the job of leading yourself. You followed the forty-five year plan of going to school, getting good grades and getting a good, secure job with benefits. This whole life plan is one of dependency, passing on the opportunity to take charge and create your own independent source of income. You (and I) chose the role of follower in life and are now dealing with the consequences. To change our life, requires some decisions and actions. The first of which is to stop being a follower and become a leader, first of yourself and later of others.

So, right now, if you want to become job optional, you need to take charge of your life. You must become a leader that can make the changes in you that will take you from dependency to independence. There are books on leadership and you will want to read them but here at the start of the journey, it is not helpful to be overwhelmed. Leadership, like every other skill is learned bit by bit. If you have begun reading (or rereading) the five basic books recommended earlier, you will be learning some of those skills.

If you have set a goal for yourself, or dreamed a big dream, you are on the way to learning leadership. Make yourself accountable – to yourself if you are just starting off or to a mentor if you have one – and check your progress on a regular basis. Keeping yourself on track and focused on a goal is a first principle of leadership.
Don’t beat yourself up if you don’t meat your schedule.

Maybe you didn’t know enough to allow the rgiht amount of time. Maybe circumstances just went against you. So long as you keep moving forward, the plan is working. Celebrate yourself and yur progress and move the target farther down the road. When you accomplish a goal, set another, bigger and more ambitious than the last and keep moving.

So, if you want to become job optional, become a leader of yourself with a plan, a goal and a time-frame and keep yourself moving.