Leadership isn’t a title. It’s a choice

I woke up angry today.

Nothing had happened. I'd just set my alarm for 5.40 instead of 5.30, which meant no lying in bed contemplating life for ten minutes — I had to get straight up and walk straight out the door.

Then I got in our new car. It's a futuristic EV, and I’m still not 100% clear on exactly how it works. I couldn’t put it in gear, my phone wouldn’t connect … nothing seemed to cooperate.

Then I walked into yoga late — I didn't even know I was late, I'm never late and to my hazy-eyed surprise my German, straight-talking teacher impatiently told me she wasn't waiting any longer … it wasn’t off to a great start.

The easy way to write it off?

“It’s just one of those days.”

But was it one of those days because it just was? Or was it one of those days because I was, and everything I met just reflected that back at me?

My yoga teacher was direct, same as always. Angry-me heard an attack; any-other-version-of-me would have laughed and acknowledged my tardiness (truth be told, any-other-version of me would have known what the time was).

Like it or not, your state changes what you see, and what you see changes how you respond, and how you respond becomes the day everyone else around you gets to experience too.

I could have kept the anger running all day. If I choose that, fine, at least I'm consciously reaping what I sow. But I know it serves nothing. So this morning I took a few minutes and consciously changed how I was feeling before I let the day carry on without me. Not by out-positivity-ing my mood, but by acknowledging it and recognising the uselessness of carrying this around with me all day.

My first client today had done the same thing, in his own way, over a longer stretch — a real shift in his state of being, and the world around him had genuinely started to shift with it. We talked about how he'd got there. Like most things, it was a choice. One choice followed by hundreds, if not thousands of smaller choices to honour that big choice over and over again in the moments that threatened to pull him back to his previous way of operating.

We make thousands of choices a day, almost all of them unconscious.

How you choose to be — happy, excited, short-tempered, closed — is one you're making in every single moment, whether you are aware of it or not.

The edge is to be aware of it.

Then consciously choose how to be.

Real leadership does not sit around complaining or feeling sorry for itself. Real leadership acknowledges challenges and faces them head on. Real leadership has very little to do with title, position or being handed authority. It's a state of being. And the truest form of it is simple: taking responsibility for the fact that everything is as it is, because you are as you are — and knowing you can change that at any moment you choose to.

You are not the effect of your day.

You are the cause of it.

That has consequences beyond you. Your state doesn't stay contained to you — your team inherits it, and so does your family.

As you wrap up the week, I’ll ask you - how are you choosing to be today? Does it serve you, or not?