Leading from the Inside-Out
By Kathleen Black, Founder & CEO KBCC
Until you start showing up, you will be amongst people where showing up at all is considered exceptional.
Until you start trying your best, you will be amongst people where trying your best is considered exceptional.
Until you start trying to master your craft, you will be amongst people where doing any better than the average is considered exceptional.
Until you set your sights on something that terrifies you, elevates you, demands changes in you, risks public failure, demands steadfast devotion, a higher purpose, to walk in your truth, and tests your abilities on all levels, you will find yourself among those walking asleep, having lost the fire and passion that building a life of wonder and purpose allows in us.
They will no longer find you exceptional. They will find you audacious in all the wrong ways. Too confident, too daring, to think you could choose a dream over all the fears holding so many back. Your image will reflect the lost dreams others left behind. Suddenly your eyes become a reflection of defeat, or of concern to protect you.
Until you walk out, onto the path, into the unknown, heart awake and free, you will confuse the advice to play it safe for being exceptional.
This IS the TEST…
Will you be someone who builds their way forward?
Where you will meet others, who also left safety to go out on the path alone.
You see, no one else will come with you. They can't, this path is yours alone, and yet connected to every other path of everyone who is awake to listen to their dreams, and honour their truth.
They all went on their own. Just like you must do.
The Journey
When you are willing to leave everything that was, for everything that calls you to be, you will find a place where the path feels good, the journey is exceptional, in and of itself.
A journey where you no longer have competition, scarcity, or fear.
A place of peace and surrender. A place of healing back to your truth with every step in your awakened direction.
We will always find ourselves among the most exceptional or disappointing of our action class. There is a radius above, and a radius below. The only way to move weight classes is to believe new things, and dare to do something different.
The only way to break free is to set your sights on the top class, your unique journey. To test the limits of becoming until you reveal the maximum extent of what you were built to be.
To walk the line, risking failure at every moment. To keep your heart open, despite every blow. To perform in your hardest moments, and face your darkest truths.
This is what it means to be free. It is not for the faint at heart. I understand why some choose not to test the limits of what they can be. Why some choose not to face their journey, and criticize those who forge ahead instead.
Set out on Your Own Path
I have learned more than ever, that those who set out on the path are different. We believe different things. We hear different things. We see, think, feel, and decide from our own internal truth.
We believe the world to be good and true. We believe pain can be healed, and injustice can be transformed. We believe leaders should be good, true, honest, and make every decision with the understanding that their credibility is rightly on the line.
I believe these people will sway our world to remind us that to our own self be true. Not to my neighbour, ally, or friends, instead to our soul, wisdom, guiding our personal work on this planet.
Sometimes it takes many adventures to realize exactly why you went out on the path, and exactly why we are precisely where we are meant to be. Our gifts are no accident, not mine, or yours, and we need them all.
I work with people who believe this world is good, that we can change, improve, do better, that our leadership matters, behind closed doors, just as much as on stages, and in speeches.
If you believe in worthwhile work, life changing quests, and world changing leadership, you have to build your gifts to the place where you have influence collectively, where you can stand in your power. Things are shifting.
We need good hearted leaders like you.
Let's be frank, the critics, the fearmongers, and the skeptics ridiculed this from line one. To them saying the safe thing, garnering external approval, saving face IS exceptional, and for them it truly is, that's their weight class.
Leading from the Inside-Out is a whole other journey. No awards, very little external praise, often thankless, definitely not for the weak at heart, and yet thoroughly fulfilling.
Remember, fulfillment from the inside feels better.
Stay on your path.