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Happy Year 2020

Since we are embarking on a new year and the genesis of a new decade, I thought it would be only fitting to start the new year off with the concept of self-love. For January, we will explore the idea of self-love, barriers to self-love, and how to utilize it in all aspects of our life. Let's GO!

Truth About SELF-LOVE

Self-love is not about feeling "mushy," but it is about the confidence, resilience, and willingness never to count yourself out. How we feel about ourselves consistently is critical to our personal and professional success. You can take all the leadership courses, achieve a terminal degree, have the perfect family, and the respect of your peers and colleagues. Still, if you don't authentically love the person in the mirror, doing the work, you will always be unfilled. You see, your professional title, community recognition, or accolades, won't help you achieve self-love. Self-love comes from the internal, not the external. Once you love and empathize with your inner self, it is much easier to understand and appreciate others' hard work and effort.

SELF-LOVE & LEADERSHIP

When we consider the qualities of a leader, one of the first attributes we think about is confidence, and I would not disagree. From all the organizational leaders I have had the honor of working with, I would agree with confidence being a primary quality of collaborative leadership and great teamwork. But without self-love, that confidence turns to arrogance. Without self-love, your title is more important than the people. Without self-love, your leadership becomes bullying. Why?

When you genuinely love yourself, you are comfortable with stating, "I need help." You are willing to empower others and not try to over-power others. Self-love helps you to see other people as people and not objects, problems, or widgets. You realize that you are not perfect, and with your best effort, you are going to make mistakes. Self-love allows you to have compassion, empathy, and grace for yourself, which you will have the capacity to demonstrate those same qualities toward your co-workers and family members.

Start Today!

Here are three small tips you can do to increase your self-love.

1. Don't Be Overly Critical - Beating yourself up after every mistake does not help you cultivate yourself or anyone else. Since you are not perfect and always learning, mistakes are simply pathways to support your growth and development. Learn to forgive yourself. Learn to forgive yourself! Learn to forgive yourself! If you want to love you authentically, then get out your head and connect with your heart.

2. Embrace Your Strengths- Do you know your strengths? Can you write down ten strengths you bring to your profession, family, and community? What about your weaknesses? Unfortunately, I have found that people can identify their weaknesses before their strengths. Let's change that, write down ten strengths you offer to the world (career, family, and community). Don't minimize yourself, but instead maximize your strengths by acknowledging them daily.

3. Leave You Alone- The biggest bully you will experience in life is yourself. Stop picking on yourself! Think about it, the people that we truly love, we don't pick on them or bully them. Instead, we help them, support them, and encourage them. We are compassionate toward them. Take the same process towards yourself. Instead of telling yourself the same unencouraging story about yourself, just leave yourself alone and give yourself a break. Your perfection is wrapped up in your imperfection.

Happy Leading,

Dr. Ron Lewis

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BONUS VIDEO!

www.lewisway.com
Created By
Dr. Ron Lewis
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Credits:

Created with images by Jamie Street - "untitled image" • Gursimrat Ganda - "untitled image" • Austin Distel - "This CEO and entrepreneur are working on their laptops building a social media marketing strategy to showing bloggers how to make money on Facebook, Pinterest, and Instagram. Teamwork on this promotion will bring lots of sales for their startup. Photographer @breeandstephenphoto. Models: @austindistel and @argelalgura. ❤️ If you use this photo on your site, I would be very appreciative if you would please credit in the caption or meta to "www.distel.co". ❤️ " • Allie Smith - "untitled image" • Nicolas Cool - "untitled image"