Don't live your life, lead it

Fantastic Harvard Business Review blog post today entitled “Don’t Live Your Life, Lead It”, delineating the difference between passively living your life and proactively leading it with specific examples of what a difference your mindset makes.

“Leading life is a prerequisite of personal and professional growth. When we lead our lives, we set a vision and intentionally resolve to advance from a lower state to a higher state. We are not resigning to live life as it is.“

I love the phrase “don’t live your life, lead it” - this is the perfect way to describe the evolution of my life from my 20’s to the shift in my 30’s. For years I was living life. It happened, I went with it. I pursued more career-wise but personally I put my focus on staying on track for the life I thought I should be living.  I forgot to lead the life that I wanted to live.  

It’s amazing how much more vivid life is now, more color, more depth, more joy.  I ran into a peer from an environmental council I used to sit on for my township. He last saw me when I was 6 months pregnant. He asked how my baby was and how my husband was. When I informed him I was divorced now, he said “oh, you poor thing” and as I tried to relate on the salient points of the last 2 ½ years, he kept saying “oh, poor thing”.  What?? I was trying to tell him I am a badass, why was he saying “poor thing”?  Some people are so blind.  Apparently I’m not living the life he thought I should be - and thank God for that!

When did you make a decision to lead your life in a certain way?