Self-Leadership

When we think of the word “leadership”, we automatically picture the scene of a shakha, with a shikshak conducting the shakha with utmost efficiency. However, this weekend, we at SIP discovered a new form of leadership; self-leadership. This form of leadership ensures that you as an individual continue to thrive in any situation by bearing the consequences of your mistakes so that you can improve from them.

We found in Abhyaas Varg 2, that in order to be an effective “self-leader”, you have to put the shields down when you are bombarded with criticism and allow yourself to feel emotions such as disappointment and anger at yourself. At this moment, you will have two choices

1) To give up

2) To step up

If you choose to step up, this will lead to self-improvement and a thirst to strive towards a goal. If we look at any of the great leaders history shows us, we will clearly see a point where they were forced to put down these “shields” and this was, what may be seen as, a realisation point in their lives. The great leaders always went with the second option. And this weekend, I feel as though I have had, tiny although it may be, a realisation point.

This weekend’s Abhyaas Varg was a real eye opener to us all. We realised that in order to protect our pride and ego, we put up barriers such as intellectualisation (where you try to rationalise mistakes you made) when we are criticised. We were regularly bombarded with questions about why we had not delivered on certain parts of our project and why we were unable to perform at a presentation given to adhikaris of the varg. And soon enough we learnt (the hard way) that accepting your mistakes is much better than hiding from them behind reasoning. I was 100% sure that I would not give up, and so I could only step up. If we are able to accept the mistakes we make, then we will be able to learn from them and thus better ourselves to prevent those mistakes from occurring again.

It is in this manner that we can become great karyekartas. For we want to change the society, we must change ourselves to become the ideals to which a benchmark can be set.