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Lead With Love
80 Plays6 years ago
Leading with Love is the greatest form of inner strength and self leadership. What does taking the higher road look like? I believe it looks like leading with love through action. Otherwise it's just more words and noise.
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Transcript
Emergence from Devastation
00:00:00
Speaker
Hello. Okay, so this week's episode was birthed out of a very unfortunate situation that occurred last week.
00:00:20
Speaker
It was a extremely hard and challenging, devastating situation for my wife, for me, for our business and our community. And I'm not going to, I'm not going to retell the story.
00:00:43
Speaker
I'm not gonna do that. I'm gonna focus on something that is far greater than details and our side of a specific story.
00:00:55
Speaker
So, I'm not gonna talk about, you know, what happened, what we did or anything like that. Nor am I gonna talk about the actions of others. I will just say, it was rather disgusting and disturbing and sad.
The Quest for Truth and Love
00:01:13
Speaker
And I think one of the things in looking at it, when we boil it down, what I see is
00:01:23
Speaker
the truth was not being sought after. And that is a dangerous, dangerous environment to operate in. When you don't seek the truth, it's dangerous grounds, man. So anyway, I don't find any value or benefit to you in hearing me
00:01:50
Speaker
defend, justify, rile up emotions, trying to get support. I honestly don't think that there's a ton of value in that, so I'm not even going to go there. I think the bigger point
00:02:05
Speaker
Is is far greater than than just as it relates to a specific Challenge and hardship and and it was very challenging and it was incredibly hard a very hard few days
00:02:22
Speaker
but I don't want to muddy the waters of a greater point. And I want to keep the message as clear as possible and do so in a way that provides the greatest of value for you listening. So that's all I'm going to say really about what happened or why this is the topic I'm speaking about. So
00:02:51
Speaker
You know, I said that I didn't think that the truth was being sought. And removing ourselves from this particular situation, you know, what greater truth is there than love? And that's sort of the basis of where I'm at right now with this whole thing.
00:03:21
Speaker
Think the the path towards truth is the is the path of love and it's something that Kind of piggybacking off of last week where I said you find what you're looking for and
00:03:41
Speaker
Love is the same thing. Love is the same way. Seek and you shall find it. And if you want to look for love, you'll find it regardless of how dark the day might be.
Challenges on the Path to Love
00:03:56
Speaker
I hear a lot about taking the higher road, taking the high ground, rising above.
00:04:06
Speaker
And yeah, I agree. And I think that's a great quip of advice. I think it's a good kind of mantra to believe in, but that's the thing. It has to be believed in and it has to be actioned and executed. Just saying take the high road doesn't mean doing. And so what does that look like?
00:04:32
Speaker
what does taking the high road look like? And I'll say what I believe, I believe that is leading with love. I think that is leading with love. And for leading with love,
00:04:50
Speaker
It requires finding love within your heart, within your soul, within your inner self. And you find love as a result of a deliberate and intentional choice to look for it. You will find what you're looking for, I believe that. And leading with love requires the deliberate attempt to find it, to look for it.
00:05:25
Speaker
the path, the path towards truth, the path towards love.
00:05:32
Speaker
Man, I wish it looked like a clean, well-marked, blazed trail. Easy to navigate, but man, we know that that's just not life. It's anything but that. The path to leading with love is surrounded by hate, by evil, by negativity, and man, it is anything but easy.
00:06:01
Speaker
to navigate that kind of a path. And along the path, there are hazards and obstacles that get in the way, that riddle the path. And these obstacles are designed to push you off course, push you off the path of love and pull you towards a path of hate and evil, anger, contempt, resentment, hatred,
00:06:31
Speaker
Like those are your choices. You can carry on down this path knowing that there's hazards and obstacles and pitfalls and all sorts of things that are going to riddle this path. Or you can step off the path and enter the abyss of negativity.
Persistence and Self-leadership
00:07:02
Speaker
And man, it is really easy sometimes to look for, to find, and to stay in these hazards, these obstacles, this environment of negativity.
00:07:18
Speaker
Anybody that's done any walking through the woods or anything like that, man, you got drawers, you got sticker bushes, you've got cliffs, you've got all sorts of terrain that you have to navigate. And often these obstacles and these hazards make you deviate. They make you have to go around or something.
00:07:49
Speaker
Once you get stuck in something like that, you can get lost. But you have to find the path that picks back up and vectors towards love. And anybody that's been in a hazard like that knows there's sometimes that feeling of a loss of hope where you wonder, am I ever going to get out of this immediate situation?
00:08:22
Speaker
And I know the answer is you can. You absolutely can. Remembering that these obstacles present themselves to test you, to test your resolve, to find love, to find that path and get back on it.
00:08:46
Speaker
knowing that just because you're back on it doesn't mean you're, you're in the clear. It doesn't mean you're, you know, going to just cruise on to whatever, whatever awaits at the end. Yeah, man, it is really easy to just stay in that negativity, to stay in that. If you want to look for the anger, the hatred, you're going to find it and it's not going to serve you. Likewise,
00:09:17
Speaker
If you want to look for the love, you'll find it, but you have to look for it. You know, one of the things about it is I don't, I don't think just because when you're on the path that, you know, everything's going to be okay. No, frankly, some of that, a lot of it, not up to you.
00:09:45
Speaker
not up to you at all. You don't you don't get to control what path others choose to pursue. You can only control your pursuit. And your pursuit requires blazing a trail through these hazards through these obstacles to position yourself and others around you in your life to clear the way for others
00:10:11
Speaker
to follow and continue with you on this path. That's the leadership part.
00:10:26
Speaker
it doesn't always go well for others. And often I think it means, or in my experience rather, it shows that people react with even more hatred and launch even more complex attacks to keep you from finding and leading with love.
00:10:56
Speaker
those obstacles, those tests that are there to do their best to push you off course. And when you start blazing that trail, sometimes it seems like it just gets worse. But man, it's within you to continue on.
00:11:21
Speaker
Unfortunately, I don't think that leading with love is the norm. I don't think it's a status quo and honestly, I don't think it's looked for on a general level. You know, people call for others to be destroyed and burned at the stake and
00:11:45
Speaker
They, they look towards that retaliation and they don't look for, for the love and where to lead with love. And, you know, in my mind right now, okay. So leading with love is kind of like holding up this giant mirror, a mirror for others to see a reflection.
00:12:14
Speaker
And in that reflection is themselves. And whether people know it or not, I think depends largely on their degree of awareness or self-awareness. Yeah, it's a window as well for others to see what leading with love looks like. But that window
00:12:43
Speaker
is incredibly opaque if self-awareness and compassion is absent. And so that window can look more like a mirror. And man, that can be really daunting for people. And it can instill
00:13:13
Speaker
catalyst of emotions, which unfortunately further bolster these actions of hate. The thing is, is that we all have the capacity and the ability
00:13:38
Speaker
to love and to be united. And I do think that we are all connected. And I know that that might sound crunchy and granola, but I believe it. I absolutely believe it. So this reflection, it's something that you need to be aware of.
00:14:08
Speaker
So having the capacity to love is an amazing power. But there's also the capacity to destroy equally as much as there's the capacity to love.
00:14:38
Speaker
And doing the righteous or virtuous thing does not mean that you are exempt from the capacity to do evil. And I want to be very clear about that. And never really forget that either. Just because I do something good today doesn't mean that it's not within me to do something awful tomorrow.
00:15:05
Speaker
You are not immune to evil nor are you free from the ability or the potential to display it. And, and that is of critical
00:15:21
Speaker
of crucial and vital importance to your own inner self, your own soul, and those around you. And those around you by either choice or circumstance, whether you invited that those in or not. Those seeds rest within you. And so
00:15:51
Speaker
Dismissing the presence of that seed of evil My opinion is ignorant The seed of love and the seed of hate are within you and they are way closer than you might think Which one you choose to water through actions is entirely on you and
00:16:21
Speaker
For me, for my wife, in the context of the situation that occurred last week, we will, we will water that seed of love, even though it's hard.
00:16:41
Speaker
But like, even though it's hard, so what? So what? Okay, it's hard. Yeah, and... You know, and that's the thing,
The Strength in Leading with Love
00:16:52
Speaker
like... Love, it's not conditional. It's not. In my mind, I think... Leading with love is the greatest form of inner strength.
00:17:13
Speaker
And here's the thing about strength. Strength is expressed and displayed and validated in the presence of load, in the presence of hardship, in the presence of adversity and challenge, not in its absence.
00:17:35
Speaker
strength cannot be expressed absent of anything to express it upon absent of any load. And without demonstration without expression without action without purposeful intentional watering the seed of love, then love is just a word. Then that then it's just a word. So
00:18:06
Speaker
Can you find the capacity within yourself to lead with love right now? What does leading with love look like right now in your life? Look at whatever tumultuous situation that you might be in.
00:18:32
Speaker
and ask yourself where where's where's the love to be found. And yeah, it might it might really be hard to find it. But what's the alternative? Are you willing to accept the venom and the poison and the toxicity that comes as a result of not looking for it? And I can say personally personal experience man, that
00:19:04
Speaker
That'll kill you. That'll eat you and rot you away from the inside. If you cannot look for love, but remember that strength is expressed in the presence of, of load. And so the harder it is to find it, the more you have to look for it. It's as simple as that.
00:19:34
Speaker
You know, I don't, I don't think that you just stumble upon it. You don't, you don't just haphazardly find love in a situation that is challenging you to the very core of your being. And that's where you have to lead. Lead yourself. And I don't, I don't, I don't think that leading is a destination.
00:20:05
Speaker
I don't think it's the end result or the outcome of, of something, um, the end result or the outcome may be maybe positive. It might not go as you wanted for sure, but, but I don't, but leadership is not, is not a destination. It's an origin. It's the beginning of.
00:20:31
Speaker
It's the beginning of the thing that you want to find. It's the beginning of looking for that seed within yourself and watering it through action. That's what I think leadership is, especially self leadership. I think leading with love,
00:21:02
Speaker
or leading is a launching off point. It's a it's a launching off point. It is sort of the Alpha and the Omega here. So it is a launching off point from the very attribute, the very virtue value that you want to exhibit, find and display. There's a duality in there and a paradox in there.
00:21:34
Speaker
I think it's the origin of your character and the way you want to live your life. That's self-leadership to me. And what greater truth, what greater path, what greater pursuit is there?
00:22:06
Speaker
to lead and find love. Now, one of the hardest things that I've found has been
00:22:32
Speaker
seeing that, believing that message, that ethos in the real time. Because if you're doing an AAR or you're looking at a situation armed with the lens of retrospect, things are way easier to find. In the moment, in the present moment, real time,
00:23:04
Speaker
having the awareness and the intention to find love. That's your hedge against regret, resentment, anger, disappointment. Now, of course, you're going to be disappointed in life and that's a part of it too, and that's okay.
00:23:35
Speaker
The key in my mind is taking this with you and applying it and exercising it and demonstrating it real time. And it takes awareness and it takes practice and above all, it takes belief.
00:23:57
Speaker
It has to come from within and it has to come from an authentic place within. And that path, that pursuit inward towards the truth, towards love is not easy. It's not. It's so easy to say.
00:24:26
Speaker
it really is, to do, to express it, that's the tricky part. That's the tough part.
Reflections on Choosing Love
00:24:43
Speaker
So, that's where we're at.
00:24:55
Speaker
That's where we're at. Knowing we have the ability and the capacity to express love or to express hatred and evil. Everybody has that. What are your actions going to be? And what seeds are you going to choose to water?
00:25:27
Speaker
The responsibility is on you, it's on me, it's on all of us. And man, I think it's something that we could all personally benefit from as well as collectively benefit from. And hey, it starts with you and me. It starts with you and me believing this, finding it, looking for it.
00:25:57
Speaker
and watering it through our actions every day, every single day, in the presence of adversity, in the presence of trial and hardship, in the presence of darkness, in all of that.
00:26:20
Speaker
All right, well, that's pretty much all I wanted to say. I hope it's something that we can all take with us. I am going to do my best every day to make sure that it's deeds, not just words. And I hope we can all do the same and
00:26:49
Speaker
And I guess that's the hope. Hope is that we can all do that. So, that's it for this one.
00:27:02
Speaker
Hopefully next week is a little bit more fun. I don't know I'm working on trying to be a little bit more fun So either way we'll see but yeah, thanks for listening and and you know Where can you find the capacity to lead with love in your life? All right, I'll talk to you next week