Lead Yourself 1st!

See, I be catchin’ you starin’, be careful

The idle mind is a dangerous place to be left in

But keep your eyes on me…”

Anderson Paak, Heart Don’t Stand a Chance, Malibu Album

“Heart Don’t Stand a Chance.” so you may as well lead yourself first in this world. Do you know who Anderson Paak is? It doesn’t matter. The reference is poetic for my purposes so if the Spirit moves you while in the altered social reality of COVID-19, click the title. Truth for me though is that my heart never did stand a chance of being safe. To risk it is both gambit and liability.

My Heart was Tampered With (majorly)

I deal in leadership as a researcher but it’s the leadership of self that arrested my attention around 2009. I was in my ‘feels” ruminating on my own journey through basketball, namely the lessons it taught me. If I’m being real, I was brooding over a lot related to hoop. There was some bitterness, some regret for leaving the game too soon. And I left it twice, once in 1999 to attend seminary and then again in 2005 to get married. Coincidentally, I wrote a bathroom-reading length mini journal about the lessons I learned from NOT playing basketball and the lessons became my CORE 12 matrix of life principles.

I discovered a process, a rising downward into humility and away from bullshit. I reflected on things that forced me to admit cowardice and great bravery. We have all those moments truthfully. And it was both fun and painful to reflect on how sports took hold of me or I of it. You know what the coldest piece of this reflection was though? It was that 10-12 years ago was preparing for the ultimate bout with self.

How I came to Lead Self

I wrote these nightly reflections just before bed, each chapter taking me back in time to various periods between 9-years old and my 30th birthday. But the 12 leadership lessons I landed on…things like “Submit to truths that are inconvenient but lead to victory,” “Respect yourself, your superiors, your subordinates and your peers,” and “Mind your own business” were merely preparation for the real opportunity to lead self. How do I know?…

…Because I published the book in 2011 but by 2014 I was a father, by 2015 my marriage was disintegrating, by 2016 I was separated, by 2017 I was slowly settling a divorce, by 2018 I was actually divorced and by the Fall of 2019, I was remarried, co-parenting my son and beginning a new journey as a stepfather.

I grew up in Inglewood/South Central Los Angeles, two extremely dangerous urban centers. I lost friends to gang violence before I was out of high school and saw/heard my share of fatal incidents. But the last six years was like 1-part woodshed ass -whipping and liberation simultaneously and it was worse than any “Hood” scuffle or tragedy. The heart never stood a chance in this space. The undulating elation and sorrow from personal bouts with disappointment, opportunity, failure, hope, bewilderment and love were juxtaposed with the collective horror of the media-streamed murders of Black men by police and retaliation toward law enforcement officers.

From 2012 to the present my heart felt like the images I saw as a child when the Space Shuttle Challenger exploded as my classmates and I watched all those years back. See, the heart effervesces, it breaks and it bleeds. Political divides, racism, divorce, split-custody, isolation, my own violations of personal ethics all led me to the conclusion that leading self had to be a thing.

Self Leadership vs. “Follow me @”

What kind of thing is it? Turns out, Self-Leadership is a researched field, a discipline, the unsung study of why we do and what we do. It is about intrinsic motivation and it is about constructive thinking. It is what allows us to create conversations where they don’t exist. And it is what silences the voices of rebuke and accusation that come from your conscience, religious tribes and Facebook/IG/Twitter/TikTok communities.

For as much as we make a science of gaining followers, my incidental reflection about basketball turned into arguably the most significant reprised discovery of our age – SELF LEADERSHIP. And it doesn’t mean attaining perfection. Self Leadership is something else. Humility, empathy, deference, dialogue… are among the tools to enter this space and I’m learning that America never prioritized any of these. But she will need humility just to admit that… And that I am learning starts individually. #Leadself1st