It all starts with you. You have been given an incredible opportunity; you have been gifted with a life, a mind, and a body, truly an incredible domain. But how wise a ruler will you be? How good a caretaker? Will you be permissive and lax? What will be your leadership style? Indulgent, soft, and sloppy, anything goes? Whatever feels good in the present moment regardless of the longer-term consequences?
Or will you be a wise, thoughtful, prudent sovereign with the foresight to provide the direction, guidelines, and guardrails that ensure your kingdom prospers? Will you provide purpose, principles, and meaning? Set high standards, promulgate good values, and set forth inspiring and challenging goals and tasks to enable that resources under your jurisdiction become the best they can be?
Little that is good comes easy and it is in the chosen journey to the mountain top, we find our highest and best self. As President John F. Kennedy said in his famous “moonshot” speech, we choose certain tasks “not because they are easy, but because they are hard; because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills.”
I hope you take your responsibility to yourself seriously, that you endeavor to be an exemplary guardian of the kingdom you have been entrusted with, that thinking of yourself in this light inspires you to assume and exercise greater self-oversight.
Closing Quotes:
“Discipline is the bridge between goals and accomplishment.” – Jim Rohn, 1930-2009
“Some people regard discipline as a chore. For me, it is a kind of order that sets me free to fly.” – Julie Andrews, b. 1945
“Seek freedom and become captive of your desires. Seek discipline and find your liberty.” – Frank Herbert, 1920-1986, Dune
As always, I share what I most want and need to learn. – Nathan S. Collier