Which comes first, the student or the teacher?
When the student is ready, the teacher appears and when the teacher is ready, the student appears.
All of us are students of life. Sometimes, we are the students and sometimes, we are the teachers and don’t even recognize it until the student appears. Oftentimes, we are so busy checking off the to-do list that we miss opportunities to share our knowledge. When we get so focused on checking off those lists, we can become burned out, overwhelmed and exhausted. And before we even realize it,once we experience burnout; our mental, emotional and physical health start to fail along with our financial health. Unfortunately, we cannot prevent this from happening completely. Although, once we take notice that we are becoming exhausted, we can make intentional choices to redirect our experience.
One intentional choice we can make is to teach one person something that we already know. By doing so, we feel more useful and valuable. When we feel useful and valuable, we feel more joy in our lives. When we build up joy, we find more experiences to teach others and our exhaustion weakens. We are no longer checking off the to-do list, we are seeking opportunities to teach. When we teach, we can identify how our life experiences have meaning and value. By seeing that our life has meaning and value, our purpose begins to shape right in front of us without ever noticing it before. Until we acknowledge all the steps that have led us to this moment.
From birth on, we are constantly learning and growing. When we learn something that we didn’t know, we gain knowledge. When we share that knowledge it becomes wisdom. When others take action from the wisdom we share, we empower them. When we empower another, we leave a legacy.
As leaders, here are a few questions we can continue to ask ourselves about to lead with intention:
“Do I want to leave people better than I found them?
What do I want my legacy to be?
How do I want people to remember me?
At my retirement party, what would make me joy filled when I hear them describe me as what type of leader I was?
On a scale of 1 - 10, how passionate am I about developing emerging leaders?
On a scale of 1 - 10, how willing am I to share my learning experiences?
What would support me to make those numbers higher?”
After considering the above questions, then we can start to reverse engineer what intentions we want to set on how we choose to show up as a leader.
Leadership is a skill that almost everyone has in some capacity. When we get intentional about choosing how we want to show up, our teachers will show up and guide the way without even realizing it.
As we move forward being more aware and intentional with our leadership, others will start to ask for our wise counsel. It’s a natural progression.
When knowledge is shared, it becomes wisdom.
When wisdom is shared, the person who shares it becomes the teacher, mentor and guide.
Sharing wisdom shapes our purpose.
The more we teach, the more intentionally we become and we will notice more opportunities to teach when the student appears. When we share the lessons learned from the obstacles that we’ve overcome, we ignite a tiny spark of hope, love, connection and community. And when we ignite that spark, the whole world lights up.
