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Mr Irwin's Thought for the Term
Posted on: 26/02/2021Self-Leadership
Our ‘Thought for the Term’ for Term 4 is self-leadership. But what exactly does self- leadership mean? To me, self-leadership starts with being brave enough to be honest with ourselves. Leadership is about development, improvement and making things better - therefore self-leadership is about developing ourselves, improving ourselves and making ourselves better. However, to make ourselves better through self-leadership we must first be honest with ourselves about what it is we want to improve. And then we must take action to implement the improvements we want to see.
All self-leadership grows from self-knowledge. It is so easy to fall into the trap of comparing ourselves to others and the picture-perfect lives that so many people present across a multitude of social media platforms. We’ve all done it, we’ve all made ourselves feel inadequate because we don’t think we are as successful, happy or accomplished as online others.
Firstly, what we see on social media is not a true reflection of reality and secondly, even if it was, it doesn’t matter because those pictures don’t represent the journey we are on, they are somebody else’s journey. Self-leadership is not about judging ourselves against others and improving so that we can be more like them. Self-leadership is improving so we can better at being ourselves. Accept who you are, know who you are and be honest with yourself about which bits of you could be better.
As we start to return to our school community from March 8th, we will undoubtedly reflect on the challenges that the last 12 months have brought and what we have learnt about ourselves during this period. We can also start to look ahead to the opportunities the coming 12 months present us with and use this self-knowledge to identify the aspects of our own journeys we would like to improve.
Use self-leadership and consider what you ‘could’ do to make those improvements rather than accepting someone else’s version of what ‘you should’ be doing. Considering what you ‘could’ do leads to creative thinking about how to achieve your goals in a way that is relevant to you. It is exciting when your self-leadership empowers you to make changes that are grounded in your own self-knowledge and when you develop and grow on your own terms.
I’d encourage everyone to consider the opportunities that the ‘re-start’ of the year brings. Identify what ‘could’ be done to develop your self-leadership – who is the person you ‘could’ be & what ‘could’ you do to get there
