DSS Leadership – Assignment 2
Book – “Leadership from the Inside Out”.

What do you believe about yourself?

I believe I am a good person. I believe I create ripples which have larger effects than I’ll ever be able to know or understand. I believe I am living the life and having the experiences I was meant to have. I believe that I will be ok even when it feels like I won’t be.

I believe my mom would be, and is, proud of me and the choices I have made before, during, and after her death. Even the choices she may not have agreed with or had hoped I would avoid making I think made her proud because they were learning experiences which helped turn me into the me I am today.

I believe I am here to help people through their own dark times because the only reason I have made it through my own dark times was because of the support of others. No man is an island and I cannot deny nor discredit the help I have had in making it to where I am in life.

I believe I function better when I am able to have solitude and time away from the chaos and noise of life to reflect on my emotions, reactions, situations and to self-analyze so I understand myself and others more clearly. I believe that introversion and extroversion should not be categorized in terms of strengths or weaknesses. I believe there is a difference between being alone and being lonely and that my need for solitude is not unhealthy and does not require intervention.

I believe I still have a lot of work to do within my inner and outer worlds, but I can and will recognize that I have come a long way throughout my life. I will not deny how far I have come in the three years since mom’s death even if acknowledging that progress is painful to certain areas of my consciousness.

I am, and will continue to live a life I can be proud of; one with honor, intention, and empathy. I will continue to try to understand my grief. I will continue to not let my sadness win. I will continue to tell my evil voice of self-doubt to sit down and shut up while I go off and prove to myself that I can and will do amazing things.

I believe that I will continue to grow as a person, learning, experiencing, adjusting, and evolving. I believe I will continue to be a force of awesome within the universe for the brief moment of time I am here to do so.

What do you believe about other people?

I believe most people have good intentions. I believe people are driven first and foremost by self-preservation. I believe that everyone has a story with dark sections they do not want to talk about or share or experience a second time. I believe that everyone is human and that when I am hurt by someone in order to truly understand why I hurt I must step outside of myself and strive to understand the other person’s motivation and the backstory leading up to the situation we find ourselves in.

I believe most people will not understand me or my inner world. I believe most people will continue to be intimidated or dismissive of me and my beliefs because of the intensity in which I feel my truths, values, and commitments. I believe I will always feel like an outsider in regards to my place within society and that a large part of this “outsider-ish” feeling has to do with identifying as an INFJ and my personality type making up less than 1% of the world’s population. Much like life, I feel regardless of what others believe, say, or feel, my being an INFJ is a fact and that I am in control of how I view this fact in regards to it being good or bad; positive or negative.

I believe other people will always have their own thoughts and feelings. I believe everyone is entitled to their own opinions, but that does not mean I have to agree with those opinions or accept them as my own truths.

I believe relationships, trust, and openness with others will continue to be the areas of my life requiring the most conscious attention due to my past experiences.

I believe that all people will, at some point, die, because we are all mortal and that is the natural order of things.

What do you believe about your teams?

I believe my team works well together. I believe we will be ok once the clinic opens to six days a week again. I believe I will make sacrifices in future moments without thinking them through fully which will lead to, in some degree, regret and that this is something I should be aware of and consciously work to avoid for the betterment of the team.

I believe my FA works hard and does her best for our team and our patients. I believe my FA makes personal sacrifices for her team. I believe she genuinely cares about me as a person as well as a worker. I wish I were able to provide more support than what I am currently able and this inability to help more leads to feelings of inadequacy when I begin struggling with feelings of grief or depression; fuel for a self-destructive fire. Being aware of this as a Shadow Belief within myself, that I am inadequate, allows me to combat this and other false beliefs, thus allowing me to stay a strong, healthy, and balanced member of our team. It also allows me to help other members understand and cope with their own Shadow Beliefs which may be similar to my own.

I believe I am the most consistent member my team has had so far since the clinic opened. I believe I will continue to provide a sense of consistency, dependability, and organization to my team and I am ok with those being the unspoken roles I fill.

What do you believe about life?

I believe that life has a purpose even if I feel lost and purposeless sometimes. I believe that I am on the path I am supposed to be on. I believe I have met the people I have and gone through the experiences I have survived for a reason. I believe that unfairness and fairness are subjective and in regards to life, hold no bearing. Life is. Life exists. Much like a fact, life is neither good nor bad. It is neither fair nor unfair. It is our own perceptions and judgments which color our world in the hues we choose to feel and see and accept as true.

Life has been a journey and while there have been moments of sadness and loss, I try extremely hard not to regret the choices I have made or the experiences I have gone through. I try to be content and accepting with where I am at in my journey because being sad or angry or wishing something had gone differently is a waste of energy. Nothing in the past can be changed. Harboring regret dishonors and diminishes the importance of all the good, positive, and beneficial things which were born out of those darker moments.

Since mom’s death, I view happiness as a fickle, fleeting thing, much like a candle flame which can, and will, be disturbed by the slightest of changes in the air. I strive to feel the calmer, more stoic, more foundational feeling of contentment. Happiness, in my opinion, is external; contentment is internal. I would rather my inner world be at peace and content rather than worrying about external displays of joy and happiness. I live life for myself, not for the outward approval of others.

What do you believe is your impact or influence on others?

I believe I have a positive impact on those around me. I believe I am able to genuinely touch people through sharing my story. I believe I inspire people to realize themselves and to become more self-aware individuals. I believe I help them confront and fight their own evil voices because I have been able to confront and battle my own internal voice. I guess that’s what I really believe when it comes down to it. It’s not so much about being a positive influence. I help people be more aware of themselves.

What do you believe about leadership?

I believe I have a very different view of leadership than most people.

I believe I have a dislike for the term leadership because it puts an unseen barrier between individuals. It creates a platform from which someone looks down from and others look up to. The term leadership, to me, creates distance and that distance feels like sandpaper beneath my skin.

Leadership isn’t about distance and levels and climbing a hierarchical ladder of BS.

Leadership, to me, is about being a role model. It’s about showing others how to be a decent, intentional, and aware human being. It’s about having made more mistakes than others and sharing how to overcome those mistakes or not make them again.

It’s about having people want to follow you because they believe in your cause just as much as you believe in it, not because you told or forced or paid them into following you. Being a leader means people trust you to not be a self-absorbed jerk and to not throw them under the bus just to save your own skin.

Leadership is about caring about others more than yourself. You care about others more than personal gain. More than personal image. More than personal security. More than a personal paycheck.

As a leader, you care about your co-workers, your team, your family, your community and society more than yourself as an individual or your own personal truths and beliefs. You care about basic human rights. You care about people not feeling used or taken advantage of. You care about people feeling like they matter and that there is a point, a reason, for waking up in the morning.

As a leader, you understand that others do matter. Others do make a difference and they do have the potential to be amazing even if they do not see it or understand it themselves.

As a leader, you are taking on the responsibility to care. As a leader, you see and acknowledge the effort others put in. As a leader, you help someone when you see them struggling. You guide and mentor and support others through their challenges, both internal and external. As a leader, you work just as hard as you ask those around you to, if not harder.

As a leader, as a role model of human decency, you compromise. You listen. You learn. You admit when you’re wrong. You don’t gloat when you’re right. You treat others with kindness and remain humble because no matter how high you climb, no matter how far reaching your influence, no matter how impressive your title becomes, we all will die. You. Me. Kings all the way down to the lowest of serfs. We will all return to dust and the titles and labels and invisible barriers we convince ourselves are there will be nothing once more. In the end, we’re all human. We’re all mortal.

Life is unfair. There’s no reason for us to make it harder on each other and as a leader, we are stepping forward on the battlefield of life and saying to all those around us, “I am here to help you not lose. I am here when your fight gets hard. I am here to battle your foe with you, shoulder to shoulder because I care about your struggles. I care about your life and your goals and your dreams and I’m going to help you reach them because you can reach them; the only person we have to convince of that truth is you.”

To me, that is leadership.