Yesterday was a good day, for me. It started off early where I got up and started the smoker. Our lives are so noisy, that it is sometimes difficult to recognize and therefor enjoy the hour or so of quiet on a Sunday morning. I got the turkey on about seven and cleaned and organized the garage while I was tending the smoker. That was the trend for the whole day, lots of small things got completed, like finally getting my plants in the ground. I think that I am going to have twenty tomato plants and ten cabbages from the looks of the starts.

It very well might be unpopular in today’s society to consider the father the ‘leader’ of the family. But we all know that traditionally that was the case. I suppose that it is pretty fair to say that not all leaders are cut from the same cloth. Many happen to get the title because they were there, not necessarily on qualification. Unfortunately, that is true across many aspects of life, both business and fatherhood included.

I am pretty sure that if you are reading this, than you are at least aware enough for self-reflection and interested in personal development. Evaluating the trend of today’s relativistic and hedonistic culture, I am concerned for the future. I am the last person that is going to preach or tell someone what to do. I am a libertarian anarchist after all.

So, knowing my opinions and thoughts you might be able to anticipate how I would approach the issues, lead by example first. I have said it before, freedom requires free will and choice. To me that also means some people are unfortunately not going to make the cut. They will willingly make the wrong choices. I am at peace with that, what I need to work on a more is acceptance through continued interaction (to lead by example).

This week’s questions are as follows

  • Where do you find protection, support and leadership in your life?
  • What is one thing that you can do to develop leadership this week?

If you are following along, you can tell that these weeks are all sort of intermingling. I believe that is by design. I have know this for some time now, but as I shared in our group yesterday that my healthiest levels of leadership were when I also had some sort of mentorship at the same time.

I believe that it is part of why I got to the point of leaving my job. I felt a tremendous amount of stress, I was unable to forgive perceived (or real) transgressions of the past and I had no level of mentorship or advocacy within my company. My team loved me and half left within three months of me, but everyone needs support and I didn’t have it.

Looking at the questions, the person that is in that role for me is my wife. That seems proportionately correct. However, when it came to things like my last job we had strong disagreements about whether I should quit my job without having a replacement. In the end, she was right that everything was OK and I am glad that I did at this point. That being said, one person cannot be all things.

For me, it seems like I need to increase the size of my social circle and seek mentorship as part of my self improvement journey. Those two may not be mutually exclusive but may come in the same package. I don’t know if I can realistically do all that in one week, but I have taken the time to identify that problem and will keep an eye out.