Leaders Love

During our Interpersonal Communications class, our professor had us watch the lecture given by Dr. Leo Buscaglia that was televised called "Speaking of Love". I believe that anybody who is on the road to becoming a leader could learn some very critical lessons in leadership by watching this lecture.


 One of the biggest lessons that we can learn from it is that we need to learn to love others. We need to dedicate ourselves as leaders to loving other people, because we will receive big in return. Buscgalia defines love as LIFE, and all aspects of life, and that if we don't learn to love, then it's as if we hadn't lived life at all. Love is something that every person desires and craves, but there is so little of it being given out. One of the most hard-hitting sentences he states is "senility doesn't happen from being old, it happens from not being loved enough and feeling useless". He reflects on how, in our day and age, old people are downright neglected. We don't care about old people! They're cantankerous and just talk about a bunch of nonsense all of the time! What we don't understand is that people who are older have the best sense of history out of any other cohort on this planet! "If we neglect our history, then we are doomed to repeat it!". The point of this is that if we don't learn to love EVERYBODY, young, old, fat, thin, Chicago Bears fan (I may have found an exception...), then we are missing a vital step in life.

We can avoid this problem. 


We need to commit ourselves to becoming a loving person, which Buscaglia defins as "the loving person is the one who loves him or herself". In the social environment we are forced to live in, seeing people love themselves is RARE; there is just way too much self criticism! A huge part of that is just the media that we are involved with on a daily basis that influences our thoughts. WE NEED TO BATTLE THROUGH FINDING THINGS TO CRITICIZE OURSELVES FOR AND LEARN TO LOVE OURSELVES! Buscaglia says that "you need to find out who you really are, and DEDICATE yourself to developing it, then give it out to others". He warns that the biggest battle that a person will ever fight is the battle to just be themselves, but if a person gives up that battle, then "there is nothing left".


But discovering who we are and learning to love ourselves isn't everything.


Once we discover who we are, we need to give it to others. We are all unique in our own way, and each of us has something to give that nobody else can. Leaders serve others. That's our duty. Buscaglia tells about seeing a speech given by the Dalai Lama one day. One of the main points given was that our main duty as a human being is to help others, but if we can't HELP others, let's not HURT them. Sometimes the best thing that we can give to others is holding back what we REALLY want to say. "Positiveness begets positiveness" Busgalia exclaims. "Make it a habit to shove your fist in your mouth whenever you feel something evil about to come out!". If we work on focusing on the positives in life, then we will learn to love better.


Leaders love. There is no two ways about that. If we want to become true authentic leaders, then we need to take a lesson from Dr. Buscaglia and love everyone we meet, and meet everyone so that we can love them. Nobody wants to cry alone, and nobody wants to die alone. Be that person. Take that initiative and GIVE yourself to someone, but first love yourself.


Don't miss out on love.

My Personal Leadership Revolution

So a couple of months ago I joined a leadership organization with the initial desire just to make money, but as I started learning more about what the organization does, I am finding out that my calling in life is to become a leader of leaders. Although I am so far away from the goal that I have set with leadership, I am taking the initial step to becoming a great leader. I have created this blog as a young college student so that I can check on my progress in leadership by giving my personal visions of leadership to absolutely anybody who is interested. I have a long way to go in my pursuit of success, but this is my first step into trying to build any sort of following. Join me and watch as I grow as a leader and inspire other people to find the leader within themselves. As Chris Brady and Orrin Woodward wrote in the book Launching a Leadership Revolution: "Each of us has a natural well-spring of talent and ability buried within. The drill of leadership is required to tap into the geyser of our potential. As with Yates' drilling equipment, leadership ability will take effort to attain, but the rewards are incalculable".


God bless.
Bear