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1. A great leader is dispensable when it comes to their tasks and actions.
They are indispensable when it comes to their thought and vision.

2. Every word you speak will be analysed.
Every action of yours will be reproduced.
Every standard you allow will set a new standard.

Think of how you speak, how you act, and the standards you accept.

3. Your emotional and mental state as a leader has a direct impact on your team.
People see when you are anxious or happy. They know when you are depressed or ecstatic.

4. Be human. No one was born knowing how to be a leader.

5. As a leader, you will most likely suffer from what I call “the curse of intelligence” – the desire to solve every problem thrown at you.
Great leaders don’t solve problems.
They ask the right questions.

Every day, I remind myself that leadership is a privilege.

Through this role, someone’s definition of a leader can be shaped up.

When I started working out 11 years back, my instructor told me 2 things:

Never close your eyes, even if in intense pain.
Always look in front. Never down.

It was later that I realised he wasn’t talking about working out.

He was talking about life!

Imagine your best friend is going through a tough time.
They aren’t able to succeed or are really sad.
Would you start telling them that they’re no good?
That they can’t ever do any good?
That they should already give up?

No. Right?

We hate going around people who bring us down yet go about doing the same thing to ourselves.

What if we became our best friend, our most loyal supporter, our cheerleader?
How would that change the journey you have with this one person?
How smoother would it be to hang around an encouraging human 24*7?

Treating yourself like your own best friend will make your life fun and positive, just as a best friend does.

If you invest in a stock with the information that everyone has, you will get the returns everyone else gets.
If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking.

Same choices, same results.
Yet each day, we go about following the rest of the world while making our life choices.

What if we made different choices?
What if we made an attempt to get different results?
What if we made an obvious choice, to resist the obvious?

“To get the results only few have, do only what a few do.” – Robin Sharma

We know we shouldn’t do multiple things at a time.
But how to accomplish the huge list of tasks we have?

One task at a time.
Then moving on to the next.

We’ll be more focussed.
And get things done in less time, which will allow to move to the next task

Our brain craves novelty and works in focus.
When you give it both, it’s productivity quadruples.

The secret isn’t multitasking. It’s doing a single task at a time, multiple times a day.

We are procrastinating.
On that project that is important to us.
On that gig that will get us closer to our dream.
On writing that email that might help us land our dream job.

Not because we can’t.
But because we are afraid.

Afraid of doing it wrong.
Afraid of criticism of people.
Afraid of not being able to do it fully.

The task for you to do it isn’t to do the task you’re procrastinating on.
The task for you is to tackle this fear.

Solve for the fear of the future.
Procrastination will be taken care of, as a consequence.

“It’s raining today. Let me not work today and enjoy instead.”
“It’s a festival today. Let’s skip the workout.”
“It’s too cold today. I’d rather not get to the desk and write.”

These are words of an amateur.

However, a professional shows up to work daily.
Consistently.
Relentlessly.
Even when they don’t feel like it.
They don’t do it for the accolades, they do it for who they become in the process of showing up daily.

The differences between an amateur and a pro aren’t on the basis of their skills or talents.
The pro is the amateur that simply showed up every day.

How often do we find ourselves saying that or thinking to ourselves, “I am rambling”.

Thoughts are coming, but they are unstructured, they are fast and don’t do justice to what I know about the subject.

The solution is to write.
To speak in a manner that is coherent, writing is the solution.
Because writing is the slowest form of thought consumption.
When we write, we filter them. Pace them well.
And over time, our thoughts slow down too. At that point, there is a fine balance between what we are thinking and how we are communicating that.

Write your thoughts.
They’ll get slower.
Your words will find their meaning. One word at a time.

I wrote my first blog post in May 2005.
I posted my first LinkedIn content in 2013.
I posted my first YouTube video in Aug 2017.
I sent my first newsletter in July 2020.
I posted my first IG reel in Jan 2021.
I recorded my first podcast in March 2021.

And guess what was common in all of them?
I think they were all TERRIBLE!

I was an amateur.
I was nervous.
I was rambling.
I was not precise.

And whenever I look at my earlier work, I am always left embarrassed.

So how is it that I have never cared to delete any of my previous work?

Because:
My first work reminds me that I started.
My first work reminds me that I took the plunge.
My first work reminds me of how far along I have come.
My first work reminds me of this beautiful quote:

Here is something you already know of:

Your first work will not be your best.
Your first work will leave you embarrassed.
Your first work will make people laugh, cringe, judge or mock you.

And yet, until there is no first work, there is going to be no other work!

Don’t ask yourself, “Am I ready to start?”
Ask yourself, “Am I ready to improve?”

Don’t dismiss yourself before anybody else does.
Give yourself that chance.

Free yourself.