LaRae Quy

May 2013
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7 Ways Leaders Can Hack Into Their Own Life: Tips From A Former FBI Counterintelligence Agent

Posted on April 22, 2013 by LaRae Quy

Hacking Your Mind

As an FBI undercover and counterintelligence agent, I spent twenty-four years investigating people. But the most important life I ever investigated was my own.

When I sleuthed out my own story, I could begin to pinpoint patterns in the way my mental toughness was developed over the years—the times I’d persevered in business and life, and won.

Just as importantly, the times I’d given up and sold myself short.

Hacking Into Your Own Story

You can do the same by hacking into your own story so you can apply the same knowledge to understanding your behaviors, traits, and strengths. You learn which ones move you forward in business and life, and also identify the ones that hold you back.

In my book, Secrets of A Strong Mind, I discuss many ways to hack into your own life.

Here are 7 ways:

1. Take Ownership. FBI new agents spend a great deal of time defining their strengths, talents, and skills so they can quickly lean into them when confronted with risk, uncertainty, and discomfort. The secret to strong living in both business and life is being able to repeat instances of success again and again.

Hack tip: Train yourself to recognize your strengths by recalling a time when you reacted to adversity in a way that moved you forward in the direction you wanted to go. Chances are good that you responded from a place of strength, so take ownership of it by acknowledging it.

2. Strut Your Stuff. It is not uncommon for FBI agents to move assignments several times in their career. Over time, they will settle in one area of expertise that has been defined, in large part, by their strengths, talents, and skills.

Hack tip: Keep your strengths easily accessible by constantly working to develop them so you can call them into action when you need them. When you use your strengths, you’re in the zone where the right decisions come to you. You feel challenged in the way you like to be challenged.

3. Admit you’re not perfect. Survival in hostile and volatile environments often requires an honest assessment of talents and skills. A small but agile FBI agent may be a good choice for a SWAT assignment; a brawny but empathic agent might be used in sensitive interviews. The most competent agents are those who have identified their weaknesses so they can navigate their career in ways that allow them to minimize exposure to areas where they lack proficiency.

Hack tip: Do not worry about what was left out; instead, develop what was left in. It is the mark of a strong and wise mind to respect your weaknesses so you can anticipate your response and minimize their impact. Read Now, Discover Your Strengths by Marcus Buckingham.

4. Keep moving. FBI agents are placed in a variety of fast-moving situations. There is no time to let a self-limiting barrier keep them from confronting an adversary or pushing ahead in an interrogation. Constant training throughout their career allows agents to continually move though barriers, because the closer they get to them the more they can educate ourselves about them.

Hack tip: Break your barriers by continually pushing beyond the the limits you have set for yourself. You do not need total clarity to move forward. Many times, the steps to follow and actions to take will not reveal themselves to you until you have moved closer to the very thing that creates fear inside you.

5. Get emotional. FBI agents know that emotions like fear and anger are OK. It’s complacency that will kill them. A little emotion keeps them on their toes. Agents understand that an emotion like fear is their early warning system in fast-moving situations. Their awareness of the fear doesn’t mean they back away from the unknown because they don’t know what they’ll find; instead, they move forward with caution and strategy.

Hack tip: Acknowledge your emotions for what they are rather than let them lead you towards poor judgments and irrational behavior. Learn how your brain recruits your body to express emotion. Understand what you’re feeling when you’re feeling it. Emotions are often a pacifying system to deal with stress, and as such, can be excellent indicators of a change in our environment.

6. Put yourself under surveillance. FBI agents routinely place the target of their investigation under surveillance to uncover patterns in their behavior. It is an essential first step in an FBI investigation. A surveillance log is kept, and once a target’s normal routine is established, it’s much easier to recognize aberrant behavior.

Hack tip: Keep a log of everyday activities so you can pinpoint situations that influence your attitude or behavior. Rather than reviewing your daily activities as a linear recitation of facts and figures, scan them so you can identify highlights: specific experiences that produced a reaction or moved you in some way. Once those experiences have been identified, you can drill down further to see whether you responded the same way on other days or in different circumstances.

7. Scare yourself. Much of the training at the FBI Academy in Quantico, Virginia involves moving new agents out of their comfort zone. If instructors aren’t challenging new agents physically, intellectually, and emotionally, they aren’t doing their job. It’s not a bad thing to be alert and uncomfortable. Training does not encourage agents to become paranoid, but a little discomfort keeps a person from becoming too comfortable with past or current success.

Hack tip: To gain a better awareness of your behavior in situations of risk, uncertainty, and discomfort, go out of your way to place yourself in uncomfortable situations. Expose yourself to activities that you might ordinary avoid because you’re worried about the downside. Your awareness of your reaction to risk, uncertainty, and discomfort is more acute and focused when you purposely place yourself in these situations. Use them as a learning tool so you can anticipate your responses when confronted with the real thing.

What tips would you add on how to hack into your life?

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Filed under: Future Leadership Issues, Leadership Lessons Learned, Leading & Developing Other Leaders, Professional Development | Tagged: adversity, leadership, Professional Development, Strengths, strong minded | 10 Comments »

Leaders: 6 Steps to Use a Positive Attitude to Strengthen Your Resilience

Posted on April 3, 2013 by LaRae Quy

A couple of months ago a good friend suffered a major heart attack. While in the emergency room, he had a second heart attack and almost died on the operating table.

The heart surgeon told my friend that he should recuperate in a short period and lead a normal life. In the following weeks, however, my friend did not improve.

He was weak, tired, depressed, and continued to experience debilitating chest pains.

The Heart of a Leader

Concerned, the doctor inserted a camera through an artery and into the heart to get a better idea of how the heart was functioning. With each pump, a good supply of blood was reaching all parts of the heart. The doctor explained that while there was severe damage to the heart, like any muscle, it would heal since the entire heart was receiving blood.

Armed with that knowledge, my friend went home and almost immediately began to feel better.

When he felt sharp pains in the heart as he walked or moved, he was not concerned since he knew that vital supplies of blood were reaching all parts of the heart, and not leaving other parts to atrophy. This knowledge gave him confidence to continue walking through the pain he felt because he knew his heart was healing.

My friend is not the only one who has used positive thinking to strengthen his resilience.

In my book, Secrets of A Strong Mind, I talk about how success as an FBI Agent often meant focusing on the things that I could control: my own beliefs, attitudes, emotions—and ultimately, behavior. I found several similarities between the way my friend and I both used positive thinking to become more resilient when confronted with the unexpected obstacles that show up in life and work:

1. Fill Knowledge Gaps

My friend gathered information that was meaningful to him in his particular situation. Once he assessed this information, he could move forward because he knew his heart was getting the blood it needed to eventually heal.

Similarly, as an FBI agent it was important to continue to collect evidence when faced with an obstacle.

Filling knowledge gaps by sorting facts from speculation was an important strategy so the next steps could be intentional, specific, and measurable.

2. Encourage Curiosity

My friend and his family became experts in heart attacks. This curiosity increased their awareness of other knowledge gaps that existed.

Curiosity is one of the most important character traits an FBI agent can possess. When dealt an unexpected blow, it’s important to remain curious about the situation. Curiosity is a way to keep uncovering opportunities and further learning experiences.

3. Focus On the Presence of Positive Outcomes

As part of his recovery, my friend started cardio rehabilitation. Even though he had major heart damage, every day he was able to see and understand that, as heart attacks go, there were many positive aspects to his situation.

When confronted with an obstacle, successful FBI agents do not waste time and energy searching for ways to reduce the impact of a bad outcome.

Instead, they look the situation square in the face and find ways of uncovering good outcomes in the wake of bad circumstances. It’s a simple shift in emphasis, but an important one and it is at the heart of positive thinking.

The difference is focusing on the good outcomes that come from bad experiences.

4. Renew Spiritually

Since my friend was having a second heart attack while on the operating table, he was not given anesthesia because the surgeons wanted to make sure his brain was getting enough blood. As a result, he heard everything that was said and knew he came close to dying twice.

But he felt no panic; he was overcome with an incredible sense of peace and calm. It renewed his interest in spirituality. [Need Help in this area? See HelpOnTheWay]

When I retired from the FBI a few years ago, I decided to pursue graduate studies at San Francisco Theological Seminary. People thought it strange that I would move from FBI investigations to theological studies. To me, it was perfectly logical: FBI investigations uncover levels of truth, just as our spirituality does.

One of the best ways to foster a positive attitude is to acknowledge there is something bigger, better, and bolder than us. Click to Tweet

5. Recruit Social Support

Heart attack victims often suffer from depression and my friend was aware of this. Instead of relying on medication, he focused on ways he could reach out to friends and family members for support.

To grow as an individual, we must be able to connect with others.The people we gather around us in times of crisis or obstacles should be ones that help us develop a positive attitude toward ourselves and our situation.

If we want to grow consciously, we must deliberately decide which connections will strengthen us and which ones will weaken us.

6. Practice Gratitude

Needless to say, my friend was extremely grateful for the support and prayers that created positive thinking during this ordeal. But gratitude isn’t just about giving thanks or counting your blessings. It is noticing and appreciating the positive in the world. Even when the world is imperfect.

As law enforcement, I saw people in a variety of circumstances and came to appreciate that gratitude does not require a life full of material comforts.

Instead, it is an interior attitude of thankfulness regardless of one’s circumstances.

Leaders need to cultivate a positive attitude so they can maintain their resiliency. This will enable them to speedily recover from problems and maintain elasticity so they bend, stretch, and not break during challenging situations.

How do you maintain a positive attitude? How has a positive attitude helped you strengthen your resilience? I would love to hear your thoughts!

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Filed under: Leadership Lessons Learned, Professional Development | Tagged: curiosity, Gratitude, Leaders, leadership, Positive Thinking, resilience | 7 Comments »

Lead With a Strong Mind and Soft Heart

Posted on June 25, 2012 by LaRae Quy

The Letter to the Ephesians in the New Testament is a brilliant summary of what it means to lead with a strong mind and soft heart.

The writer tells us that we are most fully alive when we do good to others.

The Apostle Paul wrote this almost two thousand ago, and yet as an FBI Agent, I am surprised at how his exhortation of teamwork and leadership seems to perfectly encapsulate modern thinking.

On Leadership and Paint Balls

Several times a year the FBI firearms unit requires agents to qualify with their weapon. Our training frequently included various forms of stress tests where we worked in teams to make arrests.

To make the scenarios even more stressful, we frequently were given special guns that shoot paint balls, and then sent out to discover how much control we had over our mental and physical reflexes when making those arrests.

Nothing goes unnoticed with a paint gun shootout. Every mistake is splattered somewhere—the paint bullets can leave bruises and stick to hair for days.

Of more importance, however, were the red splotches that indicated one of our team members had been shot or killed.

To Live or Die

We put on goggles and Kevlar helmets; our instructors gave us the arrest scenario and then acted as observers as they watched our every decision and the movements required to carry out our decision.

We entered old houses with attics and blind corners, no obvious plan or path to follow, so we improvised and adapted to our circumstances as we moved along.

When you’re in the thick of it, all you really think about is surviving.

You don’t want to scrub paint off your clothes when you get home or feel the sting of a paint ball hitting your hand or neck.

The trials are physical as well as mental, but in a stress course of this type the mission is threefold:

The mission
Your colleagues
And yourself

—in that order.

Inspect What You Expect

In our review at the end of the day, the observers talk about what happened and what they saw.

Without fail, the biggest mistakes focused on the lack of communication between the agents.

Many times, one of us could see when another agent was headed for danger or taking too much risk. Rather than warning that person, many of us were too afraid of getting hurt ourselves to find a way to prevent the inevitable paint ball hit.

On Business and Life

Firearms training taught me many lessons about business and life. It taught me about the importance of building a strong mind while keeping a soft heart—Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians was right. We are more fully alive and human when we use our talents as leaders to build up our teams and put their needs before our own.

Here are three ways that the paint ball exercises helped me understand how “doing good to others” can create leaders with a strong mind and soft heart:

Communicate

Our firearms team did not communicate well with one another because we were too caught up in our own dramas. Each was strategizing on what to do next and what to anticipate.

In a hostile and unpredictable environment, it is important to stay in the moment. This may sound easy, but it means staying fully focused on the needs of the people with whom you’re communicating and putting their needs before your own. This means that you do not come first—and this is why really paying attention to someone else can be so difficult.

Here are a few ways to stay in the moment with another person:
Make good eye contact to let them know that your focus is on them.
Give them your full attention.
Fight the urge to race ahead when they are speaking.
Watch for eye movement when speaking because you may have touched a soft spot.
Observe their lips when speaking because people compress them when they are stressed.

Authenticity

Leadership begins with knowing who we are and what we believe. Authenticity is the need for leaders to be themselves regardless of the situation. For this reason, it is more than self-awareness; it is the ability to share the deepest and truest part of ourselves with others.

In a changing and volatile environment, it’s not how you decide; it’s about why. The why of a decision in the midst of confusion and uncertainty is a fusion of the heart and mind. There is no time for trying to remember business school formats or emergency preparedness plans.

The journey toward authenticity is twofold:

Discovering our personal values and beliefs
Exhibiting behavior that is consistent with those same values and beliefs.

We can be authentic leaders if we are committed to be being true to ourselves—regardless of the situation we are in or the people around us—so we can be real and genuine.

Pre-emptive

We should not be unfazed by the failure of a colleague. If we can alert them to a danger that lies ahead, we should do so. If we pushed aside our selfish desire to get ahead, perhaps there would be fewer bodies lying by the side of the road.

Leaders can create a pre-emptive culture in their own environments. This is the true definition of teamwork, where each member watches the back of the others and warns them against making career errors.

Not every master plan is genius. Not every scheme works. As leaders, you know this better than anyone. Circumstances and environments can change quickly, in business and life, and even the best plan is impossible to follow. If you do good to others by building your team up, your world won’t fall apart when the unexpected shows up.

“Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear.” ~ Ephesians 4:29

How can you combine a strong mind with a soft heart? Do leaders always need to be team players? How can you make a hard decision with a soft heart?

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Filed under: Authentic Leadership, Leadership Lessons Learned, Leading & Developing Other Leaders | Tagged: communication, leadership, strong mind, strong minded, teamwork | 5 Comments »

3 Ways Leaders Can Cure Complacency

Posted on June 3, 2012 by LaRae Quy

I spent over twenty years working as both an FBI undercover and counterintelligence agent.

My job was to identify foreign spies who were operating in the United States, find out what they were stealing and stop them, assess whether they possessed the type of information the U.S. needed, and if they did, find ways to persuade them to work for our government.

I share the lessons I learned about surviving in an environment of deception, hostility, and fear.

Coincidentally, these same conditions also exist in business and life.

If you are going to survive in today’s world, you will need to learn how to navigate through the smoke and mirrors that create confusion in investments, marketing, and relationships.

Lead Yourself

The first person we need to lead is ourselves. We do this by leading with personal strength rather than a plan. Powerful leaders are empowered from within.

Plans fail because people are not predictable and we have very little control over our environment. Survival depends upon flexibility, breaking through barriers, and accepting new challenges.

Complacency will lead to extinction.

FBI defensive tactics trained us to always lead with our strong side. I’m right-handed and both my right hand and leg are stronger than my left. We were taught us that if we lead with our strong side, it’s easier to stay on balance when confronted with the unknown and we’re better poised to react in a way that could save our life.

We are more vulnerable when we’re approached from a weakness or blind spot.

Leading From Strength

Instead of sending us to the gym everyday to build up the muscles on our weak side, we spent our time learning how to lead most efficiently from our place of strength. This meant that we had to know our weaknesses and manage them as best we could while relying upon our strengths for survival.

Complacency is toxic because it is a stealth attitude that creeps up on us without our awareness. It makes us vulnerable because we’ve unconsciously let our guard down and are no longer alert to the nature of threats that surround aspects of business or aspects and life.

When this happens, we’re no longer operating from our center, from that place of strength that gives us balance. Complacency can often be a subconscious need to re-evaluate our goals, mission, or vision.

Stop Complacency

Here are three ways to prevent you from becoming complacent in your business, leadership role, and life:

1. Create an Inner Circle

We all have an inner circle of close friends, family, and others we interact with on a regular basis. To maximize their impact on your life, ask yourself whether they are the right people with whom you want closer interaction.

By forging your inner circle with intention, you can collect people who reflect back your full potential.

Collect people who see the best in you and believe in your dreams for yourself.
Eliminate people who take advantage of your generous nature.
Discard those who ask for more than their fair share.
Protect yourself and fill your life with people whose values match your own.
Surround yourself with people who accept your gifts, in return.

2. Find a Mentor

There are few people more valuable than mentors. They should be inspirational; more importantly, they need to be able to see and accept you for who you really are.

They need to encourage you to keep charging ahead, keep chasing your dreams, and keep making plans.

Mentoring fills us with hope.

Fill in the following sentences:

A great mentor in my life is ______________________
I could be a mentor to___________________________
I am inspired by _______________________________

3. Look for Adventure

Adventure is about taking risks, large and small, and this requires enthusiasm. It means stepping out into the unknown to discover your full potential.

Staying open to new experiences is a daily adventure because you don’t know what you’ll find in those new experiences. Maybe you’ll discover that you want to do something different, that you want to write a mission statement, or have a new vision for your life.

Complacency and adventure cannot co-exist.

Fill in the following sentences:

It would be fun to _____________________
I would like to try _____________________
I would step out of my comfort zone by ___________________

You must learn to lead yourself before you can lead others and this can only happened if you are empowered from within. The world provides enough deception and isolation—don’t worry about being afraid of the unknown. It’s the complacency that will kill you.

When was the last time you thought about the quality of your inner circle? How are you a mentor to others? What was your last adventure?

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The complacency of fools (christianpf.com)
Complacency Kills (fireofficermentor.com)
Is Your Business Suffering From This Silent Killer? (inc.com)

Filed under: Authentic Leadership, Leadership Lessons Learned, Professional Development | Tagged: complacency, empower, empowerment, leadership, mentors, Risk | 7 Comments »

How Leaders Can Develop Self-Worth

Posted on March 6, 2012 by LaRae Quy

Self-worth can be defined as understanding ourselves as “authentically strong.” We are talking about insight that gives us access to the real power that resides in each one of us—not something that is given to us by others.

Our personalities begin experimenting with emergency solutions in early childhood—we all had different ways of coping with not getting to play with the red ball in the playground.

Our Self-Concept

The ego is our self-concept—the way we see ourselves—and thus it is subject to misconceptions. That’s why ego is often referred to as our “false-self.” Most of us are not the imposters we’re pretending to be. In fact, only by seeing beyond those false perceptions can we be truly authentic.

Self-worth is not something to be created—it is something to be discovered.

Eckhart Tolle referred to this process as awakening to the way that the ego misuses our power and strength. The ego has told us lies about ourselves from a very early age.

On Love and Respect

My ego told me that I could not be loved and respected unless I excelled and earned praise for my exceptional performance. This lie can be traced back to my childhood experiences while learning to ride a horse and work cattle on our ranch in Wyoming. Horses and cattle were our business, not a hobby, and so there was pressure to perform as a cowboy starting at the age of six.

What started out as an emergency solution has evolved into the way I see myself.

The need to perform for praise, which led to acceptance and love as a child, has stayed with me throughout my adult life.

Most spiritual leaders and therapists will confirm that there is nothing on which people are so fixated as their self-image. They are literally prepared to go through the gates of Hell just so they don’t have to give it up.

Your True Identity

The question is:

Do we have the freedom to be anything other than this role and its image?

The answer is yes.

Many people are attracted and drawn to the spiritual life because they want to disarm internally and abandon the defenses of the self-image that they’ve created for themselves. The bad news of the human condition and fall from grace can be replaced by the good news of redemption.

Layers of “Truth”

Layers of Truth As an FBI agent, I learned to disarm my suspects both externally and internally. Taking a gun away was the easy part; scraping away the layers until the truth could be uncovered was the difficult part. Truth is not discovered; it is uncovered because it’s been there the whole time.

We do not have to invent it or create it.

Authenticity is the experience of our own personal dignity and worth. It is an awareness of the way our personality has come to terms with its environment. As leaders who lead in every part of our business and life, we need to be authentic if we’re to genuinely believe in our self-worth.

Three Questions

Here are three questions you can ask yourself to uncover how your self-worth has been misused by your ego:

What’s an unproductive pattern of behavior that keeps resurfacing in your life?
What’s the impact of these negative patterns on yourself and others?
What is the source or origin of this behavior?

Once you become authentically strong, you have self-worth; if you have self-worth, you are empowered to live life on purpose rather than by accident.

Don’t let others tell you who you are.

Authentic Strength

Authentic strength comes from understanding your self-worth

It helps to:

Deepen your understanding of yourself
Defuse negative emotions that can derail your daily life
Gain clarity on your projects and life
Acknowledge your conscious and subconscious fears
Heal relationships that are broken

Leading with a sense of self-worth helps us to land on our feet when confronted with the unknown because we’re responding from a place that is strong—authentically.

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Filed under: Authentic Leadership, Leadership Lessons Learned | Tagged: authentic leadership, business, ego, image, leadership, Self-Image, self-worth | 9 Comments »

4 Simple Ways Leaders Can Follow Their True North

Posted on February 24, 2012 by LaRae Quy

Most of us are passive spectators in our life. We plan careers, retirement nest eggs, and vacations, but we do not plan our life. As a result, we don’t live our life on purpose.

Is it any wonder that many of us feel unfulfilled and not following our higher calling?

We are not empowered and are no longer active participants in the direction our life is going.

Anchoring Your Goals

Research has shown that people who regularly write down their goals earn as much as nine times more than their counterparts who do not write down goals.

Over 80% of Americans do not have goals
16% say they do have goals but don’t write them down
Less than 4% actually write them down

Guess who they are? They are the ones making nine times more than the rest of us.

Without goals to anchor us, we find ourselves adrift in life. We may think we know what our goals are, but if we aren’t living our life around them, then we’re not living our life on purpose.

A goal is a dream set to paper. If you don’t have a dream, how can you have a dream come true?

Finding Your True North

Inner Self In a previous post, I shared the story of Oleg, a KGB officer that I met while working as an FBI undercover agent a few years ago. Neither Oleg nor the Russians knew that the FBI had identified him as a Russian Intelligence Officer.

If they had, he would have been sent back to Moscow immediately.

Oleg’s cover was a Russian businessman involved with the joint venture. I represented myself as an individual working for an international public relations company.

We met at a seminar, but the one thing we never talked about was his work.

It wasn’t that Oleg couldn’t talk about some aspects of his overt job; it was that he didn’t want to talk about them. He couldn’t drum up enough enthusiasm about the job to even keep up a good conversation. His lack of engagement in what he was doing was a clue that he was not doing something he felt passionate about.

Oleg was not following his True North. Somewhere along the line, he had compromised and had settled for less than his dream.

Here are 4 ways I encouraged Oleg to empower himself and start following his true north:

1. Explore Lifetime Goals

I encouraged Oleg to look deeper into the goals he set for himself in each of the areas listed below. It helped for him to look at each aspect of his life as a spoke in a wheel, with each leading to the hub, which is the heart. To have a balanced life, each spoke needs attention.

Career
Spirituality
Education
Recreation
Travel
Relationships
Family
Health
Financial

As I got to know Oleg better, I’d probe about the important aspects of each spoke—not all in one day, but over time—and ask how much attention he gave to each of them, and what his goals were in each area.

2. Be Specific

“If you aim at nothing, you will hit it every time.” B.J. Marshall

I encouraged Oleg to be specific with his answers. How many of us go into a restaurant and say, “Bring me food?” Instead, we’re very specific, picking what we want from the menu, and sometimes asking for substitutions to what is offered.

Do not just say, “My goal is to be more spiritual.”

Be specific.
Articulate ways in which you will be more spiritual in the 6 months, in the next year, in the next 5 years.
Write down your goal in clear and vivid terms.
List the steps needed to get there.

3. Own It

As I talked to Oleg about his goals, I learned that, besides relationships with his family, his goals were to travel and write. He had fallen into a rut in his career at an early age and was now afraid to move away from a secure job and retirement.

At some point, Oleg needed to learn that he was either living his own life or someone else’s dream for him. He was not setting his own course, and it left him empty and unfulfilled in his work and life.

Review your list of goals.
Write down reasons why your idea or goal will work.
Acknowledge issues that will need to be overcome.

4. Start a Life Plan

Never ask, Can I do this? Instead ask, How can I do this?

Living your life on purpose is an intentional act. It requires a simple plan to set your goals in action. Start by answering these questions:

Envisioned future – when and how is the goal functioning at it’s best
Inspiration – identify scripture, books, poems, speakers and authors from which to draw inspiration
Current reality – be honest; where are you in relation to the envisioned future
Specific actions needed – list what you will need to do to accomplish your goal

Writing down his goals helped Oleg to gain clarity on what he really wanted to do in life. Once he took ownership of his future, he was able to break it down and follow his True North. As it turned out, Oleg’s higher calling turned out to not be the KGB, and he resigned to begin a new career in writing.

How did you find your True North? What tips can you share about how to live your True North with intention? What can you share about your implementation of a life plan?

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Filed under: Life Balance, Professional Development, Values-Based Leadership | Tagged: empower, empowered, empowerment, goals, Inspiration, life plan, True North | 5 Comments »

Leaders: What Does A Great Life Look Like?

Posted on January 23, 2012 by LaRae Quy

If we want to create a great life, we must first create the greatness in ourselves. Greatness is usually coined in terms of success, but what if winning isn’t everything? What if “simply making the effort to win” is the path to greatness?

Often, the focus on results and the spoils rewarded us from them gives us our greatest lessons in life. This is because ”the great lessons” are often outwardly proud and magnificent to view and ponder. These are things seen, felt, heard, and experienced outside of one’s self.

From the time we were in grade school, we are taught that the best answers in life come from books or from someone else’s head.
To emphasize a point, we often quote a leader who lived a great life—it gives heft to our argument.
By association, we are also great thinkers, or so the thinking goes.

These examples of great results are overt and outside of ourselves. They are awake in the public domain.

But what if a secret to a great life could regularly be found somewhere else? What if many wonderful treasures are buried inside of us, just waiting to be recognized?

To really tap the goldmine of wealth, what the world really needs to hear are those ideas inside your head!

The World of YouTube

Good ideas do not need to be huge; they just need to be yours.

The founders of YouTube started out with a easy way to share videos on-line. It was a simple idea but a short ime later they sold their company to Google for $1.6 billion and “Time” magazine named their idea the Invention of the Year.

To live a great life is this:

Never ask, “Can I do this?” Instead ask, “How can I do this?”

Dreams or Nightmares?

I spent a great deal of my early life lacking confidence in my ability to make my dreams come true. And then there was always that exhortation from adults to do this:

“Quit dreaming . . . be practical!”

It wasn’t until I was an adult before I realized that there will always be someone to remind us we can’t, or shouldn’t, or won’t.

As I became more personally empowered, I began to understand that I can, should, and will.

Getting through the FBI Academy as a new agent presented many challenges for me. I found push ups and the six-mile run to be very difficult. But these were requirements and failure to show excellence in all areas could mean being washed out from the Academy.

If I didn’t take responsibility for my own dreams right then and there, I’d never see them come true.

Grab Your Great Life

Overcoming Obstacles

Here are the best-practices that empowered me to overcome the obstacles I faced so I could live the great life I dreamed about:

1) Examine the labels you give yourself

The labels that others give you don’t matter as much as the ones you give yourself. Those that are self-imposed are boundaries that can limit where you move. Subconsciously, you may not let yourself cross them.

“Not an athlete“ was a label quickly given to me in the first few days of the Academy. I trained but made little progress. I gradually came to understand that not only had my classmates given me this label, but that I had accepted it, too. As long as I kept it, I wouldn’t be able to move beyond the self-imposed boundaries.

Once I peeled back the label, I found an inner strength that translated to physical strength as well.

2) Empower from the inside

Empowerment is an attitude that is quiet and tranquil.

It’s not noisy and fragmented. Empowerment comes by having a steady purpose—a goal. I knew I would attain it when I finally believed it—I needed to believe I could become an FBI agent. Then my goals and purpose came into sharper focus.

3) Drive back the fear

Not only did I have difficulty with push ups and the 6 mile run, I couldn’t swim and had a fear of heights. Jumping off a twenty-foot diving board was another one of the requirements to graduate from the Academy. Never have I felt fear as acutely as I felt looking down from the top of the diving board.

What propelled me to take the jump? I wanted the badge more than I feared the water. I decided I wanted it more than I was afraid of it.

A great life happens when you follow that voice that only you can hear. Once you hear it, and follow it, your life will become a wonderful adventure—Your Best Adventure!

What leadership labels have you accepted from others? What labels do you give yourself? How do you empower yourself to achieve your goals?

**********

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Image Sources: 2.bp.blogspot.com

Empower Yourself! (successful-blog.com)
Self-empowerment (mentorgirls.wordpress.com)
The Fun And Games Of The FBI [Crime] (kotaku.com)

Filed under: Leadership Lessons Learned, Life Balance, Professional Development | Tagged: empower, empowerment, leadership, overcome obstacles, personal development | 4 Comments »

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