DREIESKIVA​|Roald Kvam

Someone once said: “If you’ve learned how to sail your ship, you have no reason to fear the wind.”
I would say: If you’ve learned how to lead yourself, you have every reason to love life.

Personal leadership—or self-leadership, if you prefer—draws out the potential from the totality of your talents and polishes it.

There is something powerful about the fact that this concerns you. It’s as personal as it can possibly get: Your best You.
Self-leadership is about leading yourself from who you are and from your values—that is, from the inside out.
It may not give you more out of life in a material sense.
But it will certainly give you more of yourself in your life. Probably better results, too.

Personal leadership can be described as the ability to…

a) crystallize and focus your thinking,
and with that…
b) establish a clear direction for your life,
upon which you…
c) commit yourself to move in that direction,
and finally…
d) implement a set of actions to attain, achieve, or become what you have defined as goals in your life.

Anyone can describe their life story—looking backward. Often in painful detail about missed opportunities or poor choices.
Others decide to lead their life forward.
These become the authors of their own lives.

Who would you rather be? A historian? Or a strategist for your future?

Personal leadership is your commitment to take a leadership role in your own life. You make use of every moment to build your way of living and acting—moment by moment.

Personal leadership is about putting yourself 1st.
Personal means about you. And leadership means to come first.

Let’s be concrete.

To lead yourself—personally—is to ask yourself:
“How must I think and act in order to be my best—today, tomorrow, and the day after?”
More than just asking yourself that question, it’s about daring to regularly turn your gaze away from what lies ahead of you in order to explore what lies within you.

Why?

Because you matter!

Your inner landscape reveals important things about who you are—and who you want to be.
Dare to explore the terrain inside of you. It’s wild, beautiful, a little witty—and incredibly useful.
Never accept any kind of belittling of the insights that come from within.
I was taught not to trust my feelings. Today I say: Well, maybe.
Yes, my feelings can be moody, but they’re always full of useful information and well worth listening to.
Even though some of them clearly need to be interpreted (and perhaps re-routed) before they’re allowed to trigger actions in real life.

Still—do these inner signals matter in my self-leadership?
Absolutely!

No matter what, you are designed for more than just reacting to external circumstances.
You are designed to shape your world, leave a mark, and make a difference where you live.

Meeting people who lead themselves is a gift.
Because such people give others the space to explore, grow, and unfold.
People who dare to truly meet themselves—who stop, say hello, and get acquainted with themselves—tend to meet others with radical generosity.
Yes, there’s a kind of grace zone around them.
I love being around gracious people.
That’s where I can also be—and grow—as myself.

This kind of personal leadership puts a sharp focus on the individual—
not to isolate them, but to unleash a collective creative force.
Because when we cultivate healthy self-awareness and genuine curiosity about the “Self” that others are,
we don’t remain two tiny planets in separate universes.
We become a clear “you”, a safe “me”, and a thriving “us.”

Your practice of self-leadership should carry your colors.
Mine will carry mine.
Still, here’s a set of practices we might reflect on—practices that can challenge us if we want to grow or check whether we already have enough of them in our lives:

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I respect the unique value of every human being.
Including myself.
I don’t have to be like someone else.
And no one else has to be like me.

I reflect on what I do.
Is it heartfelt?
Is it open and grounded in a good intention?
Does it come with a responsibility I’m willing to carry?

I renew myself, which means I slow myself down.
Many of us overextend ourselves instead of renewing ourselves.
I’ve been deep enough in the ditch to understand that’s not a smart way to live.
Listen:
If you don’t slow down enough to renew yourself, you’ll end up exhausting yourself—
and becoming marked by life instead of making your mark in life… with, yes: your life.

I enrich myself beyond just what feels good, with a kind of joy that doesn’t come from meeting others’ outer expectations—but from mastering my own inner expectations of my Self.

I am effective because I work with my strengths (instead of strengthening my weaknesses), so I achieve maximum results with minimum time and energy.
When I dare to operate as myself—not a poor imitation of others’ stronger talents—quality work and quality time happen at once.

I am motivated and inspired because I not only know what I do well, but why I do what I do.
Every task then becomes more than just work.
It becomes my opportunity to contribute as Me, with My talents, in pursuit of goals that my Self believes in.

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In short?
Give yourself permission to love what you are capable of doing:

Lead yourself to your life.
Leave your mark on the world.
Expand your sphere of influence from the inside out.

You were not designed to be a tame copy of someone else.
None of us were.

Take up space! And give space!
Yes—write your story forward.