LET PERSPECTIVE INSPIRE YOU

LEADERSHIP ENDURANCE

 

I’ve written before about how perspective can be the fuel to help you keep going in difficult days.

Another aspect of perspective is to find people who inspire you and learn about their lives.

This is a key point: do not look to those who had lives of ease.

Discover individuals who overcame great obstacles and fought amazing personal battles, yet still accomplished something amazing.

Oprah Winfrey was fired from numerous jobs and was told she didn’t have the talent to be on television. She suffered abuse as a child. Look at her today.

Abraham Lincoln fought depression, led through a war, had serious disagreements with his father and received some of the worst hate mail you’d ever read. But he reunited a nation and set a people free.

Walt Disney was fired from a job for having a lack of imagination. (Hmmmmm….)

Read about Frederick Douglass, Ernest Shackleton, Thomas Edison, FDR, Steve Jobs, and Martin Luther King.

Great accomplishments are only achieved through great struggle.

By studying these lives, we learn what others endured and what they accomplished. You’ll also learn they weren’t perfect, but full of flaws.

That gives us fuel to keep going.

It helps put our struggles and setbacks in perspective and reminds us that the pain is worth it.

So why do I spend a great deal of time reading about people, most of whom are dead?

I need to be reminded that easy never changed the world and that I don’t have to be perfect to have an impact. I really can impact lives and unleash tremendous change.

That doesn’t mean I won’t complain, cuss, and whine about the journey. Oh, I will. I know me very well.

Find those whose lives were harder than yours but they still achieved great things.

Get to know them.

Let them inspire you.

You’ll learn the easy path generates nothing memorable.

Remember, easy never changed the world.

 

– Brian Sanders

Brian Sanders is an author/speaker and Executive Vice President of Positive Alternative Radio. To contact him or for more information about his book, Leadership Endurance, visit www.briansandersauthor.com .