Lead From Your Heart…

I titled this past series The Unlikely Places From Which Success is Born because I think so often the world tries to tell us what success is and is not – and most of the time it is just not true. Each of us is on a journey. Each of our journeys are unique. But we have more in common than we know – and one commonality is that when we lead from our heart, success can come from the hardest, darkest, and most challenging times.

Even as I started this process of sharing my writing 30 days ago, it has been more of an internal roller coaster than a steady path towards growth or success. I asked my husband after publishing one of my first posts, “At what point will I not want to vomit when doing this?” I’m happy to report that several posts in, my desire to find a rock and crawl under it has transformed into just subtle waves of nausea when I hit “publish” (baby steps, friends…). But like in all things, when we’re BOLD and do what we know we’re being called to do, our work will impact others.

As educators, we have the most incredible job in the world – to literally change lives through education. As leaders, we have a tremendous opportunity to shape the culture of an organization, to set the vision for where we want to go in our work and to be a model of positive leadership. And as leaders, we get to decide HOW we do this – in way that reaches people’s hearts; in a way that touches and changes lives. It all comes down to the place from which we choose to lead… our heads or our hearts.

Remember that as you go down your own path, let it be your own journey. Remember that success is not a destination. And even if you travel through dark and scary places like failure or fear, or hard places like faith – that sometimes those are the VERY places from which things like greatness, hope and success are born!

As a HUGE thanks for following along and sending words of encouragement along the way, here is the first release of the full TCWSE Talk I gave earlier this spring: The Unlikely Places From Which Success is Born!