7 Lessons to Help You Lead and Succeed in 2017

Well Hello there and Happy New Year to you! Rather than write another wonderful goal setting blog or create a webinar or workshop among the thousands for our first blog of the year, after seeing Burnt with Bradley Cooper, by chance twice in the last few days, and waying it up against a few of the Leader Life Lessons i'd uncovered in my work in recent years, I thought i'd firstly, if you're still on holidays, suggest you add it to your watch list. Not just because, I'm happy to admit, a have a bit of a soft spot for Bradley Cooper. But also because there's so many themes and lessons about leadership in this movie that one can really learn from Adam Jones' ups and downs in business and life, particularly if you're in Wellness and have aspirations of building a team and a tribe. So, with a little more clarity after watching that movie, here's 7 lessons that had been evolving in my consciousness to share with you when i came back for the year, to help you lead and succeed and be better supported in what you do best in 2017.

1- How our desire and drive towards a certain goal motivates us and others

We often think we need to become someone else to be an inspiring leader. But in truth the most inspiring leaders are often very human and no more or less wounded or flawed than anyone else. We can get so caught up in thinking we lost people because of this character flaw or that one. But it's worth remembering, as Simon Sinek puts it in his TED Talk "Start with Why- How Great Leaders Inspire Action", it's not you alone that is what is motivating the people around you, so much as what you believe/stand for that they need to believe in within themselves and that hey need to believe is possible for them.
You can be entirely likable, charming and good with people and still fail to get a new program or offering off the ground if you don't understand the WHY of why people really believe in your cause and what you stand for achieving through their eyes.

​So it's one important thing for you to understand why you do what you do (that bit gets you out of bed every day) for your success this year, then for your website, understand THEIR WHY, so that they can get up every day believing in what's possible for them on their journey.

2-A little more on motivation. Time to get emotionally invested in your goals and yours and your clients' WHY's

​Yes, we can do it alone, part of our growth requires learning to leap out of the nest and see and hence believe that we can in fact fly on our own. And when some of the other things we deeply crave in life are temporarily absent, this kind of surrender to our desires and throwing ourselves fully into our own life's work or the work of others who's missions are our visions for ourselves realised, can be a god send when life happens, or mental health happens, to give you a focus and a sense of purpose. When you discover your own WHY and YOUR BIGGER PICTURE WHY (the one REALLY inspiring your target market) and REALLY let the desire for these in, surrendering and allowing ourselves to become emotionally invested in our visions and every action we take towards them is crucial to our success in realising our dreams, not just having them become another New Years SMART goal that's already been abandoned by the 16th Jan because it seems to big, too hard and unachievable.

3-See Your Fear of Failure and Inadequacy, Surrender them to Self-Love 

​​Our fears of not being enough and letting down the people we love, of being too much for the people we love, feeling not loveable or enough for people because of our past mistakes, and feeling unworthy of receiving and ongoingly holding both our dream and the beautiful people who really love and want what's best for us in our lives, can tear us apart. These thoughts and the stories beliefs they evolve into can become the basis for sabotage patterns that not only keep us out of the ring of success, of connection with material abundance, but also keep us out of the ring of meaningful human connection of all kinds too. A timely lesson and a good one for a week with full moon in Cancer, despite whatever challenges life brings you, it's time to love and back yourself fully in 2017. Yes, you you are enough, yes you can do it, yes there will be support. Connect and align and you will find you will flow in it. And there are a whole bunch of people who will love you warts and all exactly as you are along the way. Plus they will believe in and support you fully in your mission and vision, that is really theirs too.

4- The importance of family and team to get where you want to go.

Ok yes, for many Leader types, like Adam, and also Meg, played by Lesley Mann the Sexy Obstetrician in How to Be Single, there comes a time when we realise we may not strictly NEED others and can definitely succeed without others. But there also comes a time when we WANT others around because life is just that bit more beautiful and easy in a whole other way WITH others. It's OK to want others. More than that, it's really good for your health NOT to go it alone and let others love and support you. Literally, the Heart Foundation say it prevents the development of Heart Disease. 
Sometimes it's not truly connecting with others that is the problem, so much as what we're telling ourselves in our heads about how scary it is and why (or some past trauma on auto pilot is telling us it is) that causes the massive degree of distress . Hence the thing to ask is, first, how do we deal with that in healthy ways to reduce the potential discomfort of connecting and ultimately embrace intimacy, minus the fearing being annihilated within it?

Then, If you don't have a close connection with your biological family or partner in your world, and even if you do, how can you create a family that brings out the best in you and mutually supports you to be your best selves? Take a look around at the Leaders you admire who you view as successful. They're all either partnered, have close ties to their family, or have created their own family who are there for them and love them in the kind of moments where Adam hit the deck.

As separate to the dynamics you might have with a business support team, to whom the support may go as far as they've paid you for training or you've paid them for service. It's important to have clear boundaries around where the friendship in these starts though and the business ends and what your needs are around both. So that everyone has realistic expectations of what's really going on and can fulfill their roles and obligations to each other, plus build their support networks accordingly in ways that honour all involved as much as humanly possible. The teams and tribe with clear boundaries around such things stay together and grow together over the long term.

5- Choose Clever Communication

​And then, finally, that growing and staying together requires having the courage to be honest and willing to communicate what support you really want and need and when so that you can reach your full potential. Plus being open to hearing about where others are at and what support they need and when so that they can keep bringing their best selves to the table too. Not to mention keep you both in connection with each other's visions for your lives and leadership, which is again essentially if people are to grow with you within your business or tribe.

6- Gratitude

​Burnt so beautifully illustrated how we can get stuck in the past trying to make amends for our mistakes and then our whole languages shifts to I miss you and I'm sorry I wasn't enough, which OK at times, may be needed in itself if we played out a bit of crap in the grown ups world. But then what also really helps build and ground what we desire to be and experience in the present, is gratitude. There is the most beautiful moment in that movie where a very hung over Adam peels himself off the kitchen floor to ask his former colleague/now "rival" Reece why he helped him the previous night when a very drunk Adam came and disrupted the kitchen and pulled a sous-vide bag off Adam's head and cradles Adam while Adam has his break down.  To which he basically replies, "because you're better than me and we need you. We need you to be you and be incredible at what you do to challenge us to be our best too." So much healing and bonding happens in that moment of honesty and acknowledgement when Reece chooses the high road and gratitude.

To thrive in 2017, might i suggest trying a little more gratitude for literally everything around you and hence acknowledgement of what wonderful gifts are really showing up for you in any given moment. In place of the other  g's and j's....guilt, grief, jealousy or judgement. Not every thought or emotion that ever crosses our mind and experience need be shared to our mutual benefit, but before you consider sharing one, is there a way you can re-phrase it as a gratitude? What you feed with gratitude grows, what we hammer continuously with the other g's and j's sometimes goes.

7- Have a plan, but be willing to change it up to go with the flow

If there's one thing women excel at in business that men can learn from, it's knowing when to intuitively go with the flow, when to push and when to rest during the process of creating one' vision. Only sometimes all that going with the creative, feminine flow and the depths of experience gets a bit chaotic and needs a container. This is where continuing to utilise some basic good old fashioned masculine clever calendar and planning tools, like the one the lucky women doing my group and one on one coaching programs get to use, to create some structure and a safe container for your inspired creations and the inspired actions your taking towards them is STILL important, regardless of how awesomely intuitive and good at going with the flow i know you are. But, for the sake of your leadership and entrepreneurial endeavors, might i suggest always be willing to surrender despite them to a "better" way to get it done.  Maybe you thought you'd start on that book in April...now an opportunity to start shows up in Feb. It's Gold! Do you say no, just because it wasn't in the plan? Uh uh. You say yes and then see about the HOW. Likewise, 10 clients come to you that aren't strictly in your target market, but you love them and think it's a great opportunity that's shown up. Plus you have capacity to take them on and need the income. Do you say no because it's not in the plan? Hell no! You say yes. Because the most successful entrepreneurs are the ones that have the capacity to let go of how they thought it should look and let life in when its right in front of them. Did that make the planning a waste of time? Hell no. Once you put it and how you could get there on paper, your brain doubly believed it is now achievable. And that my friend, is a shift we all need to take to walk up the mountain of achievement, by creating some manageable short legs on the way, with a few rest breaks thrown in for good measure.

So there you have it, as it turns out, lessons from x2 Leadership Professionals and 2 brilliant movies to help you lead and succeed in 2017. I could go on and on and on further, but i think that goes you plenty to contemplate for now, plus two great movies to watch if you haven't already before the end of the holidays. It's a win win. If we haven't already checked in for the year, i'd love to hear from you, what is inspiring you and what will you be creating in your leadership and life in 2017?

Super grateful for you there reading this and looking forward to our shared journey and helping you make that vision happen in 2017.

Until next time, have fun, take care.

Nat xx