The Oracle of Delphi told Socrates that he was the wisest man in all of Athens. After many years of reflection, Socrates had the answer. He was the wisest, because he knew he wasn’t the wisest. Pretty cool, huh? Leaders know the road of self-knowledge and self-discovery are never ending. This yellow brick road leads to many rewards, but not pot of gold. The rewards found here are contained within the journey, not the destination. You see, there is no destination for leaders. Knowing yourself means separating who you are and who you want to be from what the world thinks you are and wants you to be. Most of us, including myself, lived up to other people’s expectations for years before discovering the power of the space between stimulus and response, and the freedom and responsibility of choice.
 
There are four lessons of personal renaissance:
 
First lesson: You are your own best teacher. No one knows how best you learn than you. Even if you’re not consciously aware of your learning style, you likely gravitate to it anyway. Learning is experienced through personal transformation, a literal transformation of brain architecture. Your brain actually alters its connections when you learn something new. The new chemistry, the new expression of the learning process is what allows self-understanding, and ultimately leads to your ability to express your new self. This is how reinvention really takes place on a cellular level. Any personal renaissance for a leader is almost always motivated internally – meaning that leaders have an intrinsic motivation to teach themselves, what I call intrinsic insatiation.   And that motivation is always influenced by a leader’s sense of role in any situation – because no matter the situation, as a leader, you always have some role to play in every situation (this role is usually defined as a perceived gap in where you think you should be and where you think others think you should be). That internal drive and the perception of role drive leaders to never stop learning.
 
Second lesson: Take ownership. A personal renaissance takes place when people assume ownership. All of the sudden the stakes are higher – the pain of failure is more palpable. And yet for an authentic leader, failure is not an option, so the responsibility then of ownership… breeds success. And for great leaders, they create their own success – they take the building blocks of life and experience education in their very own self-designed university – the school of life.
 
Third Lesson: Learn from everything. I learned in executive coaching school that we can learn from everything – it’s absolutely true if we allow the perspective to saturate our understanding of how the world works. If we can develop a tolerance for every conceivable experience, then we have set the appropriate table, the right platform that allows you to learn from everything and gain perspective from everyone. For leaders, learning is seeing the world simultaneously as it is and as it can be. This is where the term we use here at WealthBridge comes into play – intervision – the ability to see the future and the past at the same time. It’s not about being present (that’s one dimension). It’s about being in two places at one time. Taking an honest stock of the present situation while understanding how those implications influence our vision, and how they were impacted by our past. Leaders understand what they see, and take appropriate action on that understanding. The holy grail of learning from everything is making connections. Leaders connect disparate ideas from many different industries and make the application work in their own business. This is the synthetic mind that Howard Gardner tells us will be so vital in the next 25 years. Learn how to connect. Practice taking ideas from other disciplines and apply them in your business. Mental gymnastics are very important.
 
Fourth Lesson: Reflection on experience leads to understanding. Reflecting on experience is a means of having a Socratic dialogue with yourself, asking the right questions at the right time, in order to discover the truth of yourself and your life. What really happened? Why did it happen? What did it do to me? What did it mean to me? Reflection is asking the questions that promote self-awareness and true understanding of an experience, so that it can inform the future. So then the importance of reflecting on experience, the idea that reflecting leads to understanding is a main component of a leader’s mind. Learning and understanding unlock the ability of a leader to move forward à to be self-directed – to be proactive. To look forward with acuity means we must have reflected, or looked back, with brutal honesty. Leaders learn from others, but true Authentic leadership is not emulation. – leaders don’t simply copy another person’s creed and actions. They take the distinguishing characteristics from others that allow them to differentiate, and then synthesize the other with self, and in the process of reinvention, the leader with a distinctive voice all their own emerges from the experiment.
 
We began this article with Socrates; we end with Socrates…He said, “The unexamined life is not worth living.”  Leaders use their experiences, and the examination of those experiences, instead of being used by them. They remain in control and at choice. When you consider the prevailing equation that most people subscribe to: Family + Friends + Workplace + Society = You.   But to undergo a personal renaissance of self, stick yourself in the denominator [Family + Friends + Workplace + Society / You]. The denominator is all powerful…rather than being designed by your experience, you become your own designer. You become cause and effect rather than a mere product of your environment. The process begins with Self-awareness = once you accept yourself and your uniqueness, it fosters self-knowledge = knowledge always leads to confidence and ownership = what you own, you can control = what you control, you can express à awareness that ultimately results in Self-expression. You make your own life by assuming ownership of the space between stimulus, what happens to you, and your response to it. What lies in the space is the freedom to choose your response. Choose to know yourself better than anyone, and learn to lead the most important revolution in your life – the personal renaissance of the leader in you.