Kay:
Hey there, family. Welcome to the Kay & Shi how. This week, we are talking all about the ships.
Shi:
All kinds of ships in our life. We can’t wait to address four of them this week. We are starting off with the ship of leadership and now you can tell what we’re talking about. We’re not obviously actual sailors or ship enthusiasts in the slightest, but we are big fans of all of the words that end with ships and we wanted to feature four of them this week. There will probably be four more in another week, but starting off with leadership, we think is probably the most important one.
Kay:
Well, leadership is one of our favorite topics in general, but we wanted to start out with leadership today because, in fact, many of us find that the hardest person to lead is ourselves.
Shi:
Right. I was thinking conceptually about our podcast today and just reflecting on how much it’s fun to teach, but it’s also fun for us to come here and be able to just have a conversation about where we are on our voyage and journey through navigating, growing through all kinds of different things, including learning the things that we bring forward. So just, you know, side note, thanks for being an ear for us and we gain as much benefit as we hope value, we’re providing to you. I think that’s kind of the nature of the relationship of that leadership of the self that we really wanted to bring forward when we said what’s the most important thing we know. Most of us know it’s an internal game and so we’ve got to play that internal game and that means self-leadership.
Kay:
Self-leadership can be so difficult because it’s between you and you. The battles don’t happen on the field of life. The battles happen in between your ears, and no one knows you better than yourself. So, you are a master at manipulating yourself.
Shi:
Yeah, and jabbing yourself and beating yourself up and justifying things. We really are masters in there and when we think about the concept of leadership, just so that we’re all talking about it, we’re really thinking of it in terms of being able to influence behavior. Being able to choose the direction and move the energy-momentum and action in that direction, aka having influence over behavior. And so that leadership of the self really, are you influencing yourself to take the behaviors that you want in order to get what you want.
Kay:
What I love about that influence is that your ability to influence yourself and to influence others directly affects the outcomes that you have in your life. So, if you look around at your life and your like, man, I don’t like the way that things are going, might be good to check out the ship of leader.
Shi:
Right. This might be one of the ships that you want to dock for a while and renovate and get into a better place and that does take time and intention. We all have different motivations and ways that we are able to complete things and ultimately influence ourselves to take desired behaviors. But I know for us one of the ways is (a) picking one specific thing and trying to work on that versus having a vague general idea of who that perfect person is. Well, what are those behaviors that that perfect person does? They work out, they drink water, they sleep, they have balance and harmony within their family and their relationships. They’re authentic to who they are. And so, by being able to start to identify those things, now we can say, “Okay, well, what are the behaviors then that demonstrate that character?”
Kay:
As you begin to demonstrate that character as well through your behavior change, you gain the capacity to then go out and lead other people in those arenas and to cause that change in others as well. That’s where the traditional sense of leadership kind of comes into play. It makes me think of and will likely talk about this in the relationship section of the podcast. But you know, you can only love others at the capacity with which you love yourself and leadership works very similarly. You can only lead others at the capacity with which you can lead yourself.
Shi:
Oh gosh, I love that, and when it comes to knowing what motivates yourself and leading yourself, influencing yourself. I love kind of bringing forward that concept of what are some of the things that motivate you? What are some of the things that do make you feel momentum towards taking action? I think it was Zig Ziglar who said motivation is like showering. That’s why we recommend it once a day. Finding something that fires you up, whether it’s exercise or meditation or time in nature, or time on your bike, or rocking out with your instrument. Everybody’s got that thing but what are some of those things that you can do that help fuel that fire every day, not once in a while, but every day so that you have that built in so you can continue to have that influence.
Kay:
Well, lighting that flame for yourself so you can light that flame for others is really the essence of the leadership and we’re excited to be here in ships week. Next up we’re going to talk about partnerships.
