What’s Driving Your Self-Leadership?
Breah is known as a strong, selfless, compassionate woman. She is admired for knowing what she wants and using self-leadership to drive her toward her goals.
However, sometimes Breah comes across as overly confident and pushed by her stubbornness and even rigidness, with tunnel vision. She tends to spend too much time helping others without thinking about her own life.
Consequently, Breah spends most of her after-work hours caring for her family and helping friends, practically and emotionally.
Sadly she is unaware of how the imbalance is depleting her internal resources. Breah comes from a family of double-burdened women with quiet strength who selflessly just keep taking care of others no matter what.
Might it be a predisposition in Breah, a learned behavior from her mother and grandmother, stubbornness, and the inclination to just push through?
The hamster wheel of unexpected changes.
It’s been a couple of years now, living in much more difficult times than usual, dealing with one situation after another. Breah has yet to pause to reflect on how it affects her and how she burdens herself by creating negative stress for herself daily.
Under these circumstances, Breah allows her way of living and the tumultuous times to exhaust her. It slowly but surely depletes her because of her lack of self-management. Hence, she risks losing herself as she is overly focused on what she is doing and disregards her own needs.
When her partner Will signals his concern about her burning the candle at both ends, Breah gets irritable and defensive, signaling that she has reached her limit. Will feels helpless when she accuses him of not understanding the responsibilities she feels.
Too many of us are in the same boat as Breah, stretching ourselves thin because we are “sucking it up” and pushing through. We ignore the importance of pausing to consider what’s really driving us. When our closest allies signal a concern, we prefer not to listen.
If this sounds like you, this might be a good time to pause and do a reality check.
- What is driving your self-leadership?
- Who are you competing with?
- What and whose criteria are you using to evaluate your contributions?
- Might it be that you come from a tribe of women who selflessly contributed too much, and predisposition is pushing you?
Time to Repower
It is obviously time to repower for Breah, as it is for many of us. First, however, we need to know what and how to do so. Next, we must select a device with a suitable connector and voltage. When choosing a charging cable for your phone, step one is knowing what kind of connector is required. With an incorrect socket, the charger will simply not fit. For example, the connector that worked for an iPhone 4 does not work with an iPhone 14.
We, humans, are much the same. What worked ten years or even two years ago no longer works; our lives and the world are changing.
Buying a charger, you also want to be sure to get one that matches the voltage of the phone. If the voltage is too low, the phone will charge too slowly and not even fully.
On the other hand, if the voltage is too high, it could ruin the battery and possibly the device itself.
The exact same goes for you and me. We have different connectors and variable voltage: our compilation of strengths is unique.
Each of us is just as unique as each day is different.
Exercise gives some people energy, but total relaxation does it for others. Some people like spa days, while others don’t want to be touched or talked to. For this reason, we must make sure that we use a compatible way of repowering ourselves to maintain optimal well-being.
Manage your Self-Leadership
Consider what drives your self-leadership and why.
- Is stubbornness what keep you going, or is enthusiasm pulling you?
- Are you a perfectionist, and if so, reflect on why?
- Do you risk ruining your rechargeable power bank using somebody else’s repowering device? (aka Do you live life by your own standards?)
- How would your life change if you stopped biting the bullet and softened up?
- What will you do when you notice that you are, in fact, self-sabotaging your natural power source?
- Who do you need to be to better manage your resources and repower as much as required?