Energize your life

Release what is not yours

How are you doing today?

Not the YOU that YOU want others to see but the real you. If you are involved in an intense level of leadership, you will have challenges and obstacles.

The truth is leadership is not a place that you arrive at it is the embodiment of who you are. We are all going to go through battles and obstacles that will cause us to want to give up.

It is important that you make a pre-determination…a promise to yourself, to release what is not yours. Sometimes we think that we are ok…until we encounter pressure or stress that causes us to react…to respond.

Stress is an emotion

It is in that moment that we realize that we react out of a negative emotion or negative space. In fact, you may not realize it but stress is an emotion, there are physical indicators of stress but it is truly an emotion. Stress is understood as a relationship between you and your environment that is evaluated as personally significant or strenuous based on your available resources for coping (1). Your evaluation of the circumstance, your perceived ability to cope with the circumstance will often determine whether your stress level is high or low. If you feel incapable, for whatever reason of dealing with the situation, then you may respond with anger, shame, or even feelings of anxiety (1).

According to a recent APA commissioned report, 48% of Americans consider stress to have a negative impact on their lives. Over 70% of Americans report they regularly experience physical and psychological symptoms of stress (2). In fact, health issues like obesity, insomnia, high blood pressure, depression, or heart disease can be attributed to factors such as unmanaged stress (2).

Energy is an internal emotion

Leaders struggle with momentum and energy….but why? Well first of all you have to realize that running at a higher level requires greater intensity…greater purpose…greater commitment. It requires an emotional resilience to keep going because there are going to be times where no one else will come and motivate you or tell you to get out of the bed and keep going. Having shared that you absolutely should not take this journey alone.

You need a team…a cohort…that you can trust with some of the burdens that you carry unnecessarily. That cohort may consist of your family, friends, or contracted workers who are 1099. Your cohort may even consist of a higher power…God….a supernatural force.

The bottom line is that your cohort cannot and should not just consist of you. It is impossible…

no great accomplishment, business, ministry, or project ever truly been accomplished with one individual. One individual may be at the forefront and receive the accolades but remember, life is a team sport.

It is also important that you identify the players that you need as part of your cohort. You need individuals who will hold you accountable yes, but you also need those who will lift your spirits up when you get weary. You need those individuals who have experienced battles in life…adversity…and have the battle scars to prove it. You need people who are going to let you know that the battle is simply the testing ground to evaluate how BAD you want that vision. Once you identify those mentors in your life then trust those mentors. Share openly and consistently with those mentors so you don’t revert to old habits or get consumed with YOUR thoughts, because YOUR thoughts may be the negative seeds that trap you in complacency, or even worse that cause you to go backwards.

References:

https://www.oatext.com/the-relationship-between-stress-and-negative-emotion-the-mediating-role-of-rumination.php
https://www.psychologytoday.com/au/blog/wise-mind-living/201410/stress-what-s-emotion-got-do-it