May 21st, 2010 by maurice

Clarity and Purpose – Anthony Robbins

May 21st, 2010 by maurice

There are a handful of things we can all be certain about in this lifetime such as the obvious ones like, ageing, death, taxes, your wife leaving the toilet seat down, etc. but the one thing that I am absolutely certain about in this lifetime is that results matter. In fact as much as we may prefer to deny it or hate to admit it, in the 21st Century results matter more than at any other time in history. Of course we don’t have to accept such an unpalatable truth. We could simply begin life again by retreating as a recluse to meditate at the top of a mountain somewhere and turn our back on the pressure or joys of 21st century living or simply stay in our own homes and lock the door to the outside world.

The reality is that we each live in a hugely exciting, rapidly evolving, extremely challenging and increasingly demanding world and whilst to some that may sound a little depressing there is always another way to look at it. If you take the ‘glass is half full’ perspective then there really has never been a greater time to be alive on planet earth. With life and the world around us just teeming to the brim with vastly colourful and enriching opportunities we are a very, very privileged generation. Compared to our Victorian, Tudor and Edwardian descendants the human race has never had it so good. Of course we could go back even further and I’m certain the further we went the more grateful we would feel today.

From the moment we take our first breath to the very moment we take our last we are on a constant quest for happiness, success, achievement, connection, and significance. That takes leadership, personal leadership of our own lives. Every single day revolves around the need to achieve some kind of result, even if that result may be to simply survive the day to rush home from work and watch your favourite soap opera whilst sipping a glass of wine.

The fact is though that for most of us life is about far more than survival, it’s about thriving and living life to the full with the very best that life has to offer across every aspect of our existence. Today, we are really no different to our ancestors we are just more aware, more focused and in many cases more pressured to achieve this thing that mankind has been searching for since the beginning of time – success. Success of course is relative and means different things to different people. Many describe it as the progressive realisation of a worthy ideal, and the interesting thing about success is that despite popular belief it is not isolated to our jobs or career.

Each of us are looking for success in our health, wealth, careers, romantic lives, social lives, with our families friends and communities and even with our personal, intellectual and spiritual growth.

This of course is where leadership has a key role to play. Whether we are the CEO or Chairman of a vast corporate empire or have no leadership responsibilities at all we still all have a life to lead and the fact is that however long we get to live life is always still very short. We only get once chance to get it right, as the saying goes ‘ life isn’t a dress rehearsal’ this time around is the real deal and it takes personal leadership to live a great life and get the most that we possibly can from each day.

Interestingly, leadership is one of the few subjects we don’t get taught whilst at school despite the fact that every aspect of our entire lives requires a high degree of personal leadership.

It seems clear to me that the one thing we all need to get good at is Leadership.