Self leadership leads to authenticity.. an interview with Sarah Keen Post

Sarah Keen Post shares her journey and learning into self-leadership in this podcast.In 2006 Sarah was over 200lbs, her quality of life was not what she really wanted and more importantly she realised she wasn't being the mom she wanted to be. In a reflective moment she told herself--"this is not acceptable'! That's where she started out leading herself without even realising that she was doing it.Any good leader has the discipline of self-leadership. It comes back to having a relationship with yourself, internally not externally. It's always challenging to be self-disciplined as there are inner parts that don't want you to change. It comes from that feeling of being safe where you are as you know where you are and the mind has created the story around that situation. And when you decide to step out of that scenario and create a new script for your life that's when those parts start to get in the way, and it becomes a battle.This is where mindset becomes very important. Your mindset also has to transform with you. So, it's a physical transformation from a mindset perspective.How do you go about that?Everyone is different. For everyone the motivation differs. One has to find out what that particular moment is which acts as a strong motivation. For Sarah it was getting angry and fed up being the way she was. It's at this point, that one's mindset comes into play very heavily, where you actually decide on what's best for yourself and not give in to whatever pressures or advise friends, family or acquaintances maybe saying as they may want you to remain in that comfort zone. Doing that then helps one to do what is best for one so that then in turn one can help others do what is best for them.It's being true to yourself and ignoring the outside noise or chatter because the outside noise tends to influence us. This is part of the Brave Leadership concept of Kimberly Davis. One has to be brave to do it because you will have outside chatter that will try to conform you into who you are at the present moment.It does create and bring resistance. What helps is levelling up i.e. evolving and changing and transforming.Today the change has evolved into servant leadership.Having had this journey and meeting people who have helped Sarah with time, knowledge and expertise, she has arrived at a point where she is now ready to complete the circle by helping others through showing them that they can do a mindset change or transformation and how to do it.The key to making such a transformation successful is not taking it all on at once. For e.g. 'today is the day I have to start my diet'-- if we take the change as a lifestyle, we are setting ourselves up for failure. Whereas if you shift that to a 'this is how I will be living' and you accept yourself without being overly hard on yourself then the change takes hold. In leadership speak this is known or termed as 'shaping'. When you start something, you identify what is the most critical thing to do and focus on that. It has to be taken step by step and doing that will make you have the connection between leadership and transformation.When people realise that they have this power-- to lead themselves through their own transformation - that is the key to the change in mindset.As an analogy if you have the best-looking house in the street but it doesn't have anything inside it’s not a home. Yet if you have a comfortable home inside which reflects you and love and warmth, you're not so concerned about how the outside looks. It's no different to a human. You've got to be at home first i.e. you've got to be comfortable with yourself first.Leadership is about letting the criticism, that comes with resistance, go knowing what you are doing, you're doing for...