You Can Be The Change...
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By Guy Sengstock
Guy Sengstock is the co-founder of the Arete Center for Excellence, an organization that offers accelerated personal growth courses. Guy is also a personal development coach, writer, poet, sculptor, and painter. The Arete Experience is a 3-day workshop offered in San Francisco that provides a remarkable opportunity to discover the unconscious ways in which you hold yourself back. Experience immense and lasting freedom to be yourself in all areas of your life!
"Be the change you want to see in the world."
—Gandhi
This quote from Gandhi rests at the heart of what I would call genuine leadership. It reveals the secret to that magical 'something' that when present in an individual will inspire others to think, feel, and act in a new way. It is that spark which Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jesus, the Buddha, and Mother Theresa all had. It is that essential quality that when embodied by a person inspires, challenges and opens those around them.
So what is this secret that Gandhi revealed in his statement that speaks to the heart of true leadership? He gives it away with the first word "BE." When considered in this light, leadership is a generative way of BEING that is not a seeking, hoping or wanting, but rather it is a bringing and a giving. He urges us to BE those deep values so completely that every way we are is an expression of the love, freedom, and peace we are seeking in the world.
This way of being that I am calling genuine leadership cannot be taught for who could possibly teach 'being'? No, it can only be a remembering of who you truly are. Embodying this generative way of being means relaxing into the fact that you are already those things you are seeking in the world.
The moment when your actions become an expression of your values rather than a seeking after them is the moment when you begin to abide in genuine leadership. This happens when your thinking, speaking, and actions are given by, consistent with, and transparent to (allow the seeing of) your deepest values. So becoming a leader in your life, in the deepest sense, is a cleaning and polishing of the window of your 'living' so that those deeply held values shine through the living of your life.
What is it that you most need and want from the world, more than anything else? Your response to this question is quite possibly the very thing that you are here on earth to BE and to give. Is the way you are living your life consistent with who you are at this deepest level? Are your relationships, finances, career, etc. consistent with and contributing to the change you most want to see in the world?
If you spent just one year of your life actively engaged in this kind of "cleaning and polishing" of your world and your being, what then would be different from how you are living now? What could be possible through this 'small' change? I invite you to consider playing at this level, and to also consider the effect that even a small change in your BEING would have on your friends, family, co-workers, the children in your world, your community, even your city or town, and beyond. "Be the change you want to see in the world." This is the path to genuine leadership.
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