Welcome to the Deploy Yourself Newsletter. Every two weeks I share what impactful leadership looks like to show you how powerful you are. I also share the most insightful lessons and stories I encountered in the last two weeks. You can also read this issue online.
Hey,
We are much more powerful than we think we are. I shared the first of the three main ways we can tap into this hidden power in the last newsletter, and the second is the subject of today’s e-mail. I will share the last source of power in the next newsletter.
The Power Of Your Emotions
Emotions are usually seen as a weakness – something that we must hide or suppress if we want to progress and succeed. Yet I have found that they can be our biggest strength and motivator. Emotions can overwhelm us occasionally, but without them, we would have no joy or happiness either.
Here are 3 ways you can make your emotions work for you, rather than against you –
- Each Emotion Tells You What You Care About – Often in life, you don’t know what you care about and what matters to you. As a result, you end up accepting the standards and values which other people (parents, society, culture, etc) decide. However, trying to live your life by others’ standards is akin to surrendering your own will and judgment. If you listen to your emotions, they can reveal what you care about. They can reveal what makes you unique.
- Don’t Try To Fit In When You Are Made To Stand Out – People too often hate that they are different from everybody else and try too hard to become someone they are not. No two people are the same, just like no two flowers or no two birds are the same. Your uniqueness comes from what you care about, and your emotions are the gateway to understanding that.
- Respond To Your Emotions, Don’t React – Your emotions can impede your ability to think and act rationally if you allow yourselves to be overwhelmed by them. They can hold you captive, dictate your actions, and prevent you from Deploying Yourself. However, there is always a gap between emotion and your response. And that gap allows you to “choose” your response aligned with what you care about and the future you want to see in the world.
Understanding your emotions and understanding what they conceal enables your unique light to shine upon the world, instead of following the path others have decided for you. This way you can achieve what you always knew you were meant to do.
Reply to this email right now if it sparked something for you, or if you want to know more…
Articles and Stories Which Have Fascinated Me
One
Jim Rohn on the disappointments of life:
“Let’s face it … people and events are going to continue to both hurt and disappoint you. Among the people will be those you most love, as well as those you least know. Seldom is it their intent to purposely hurt you, but rather, a variety of situations mostly beyond your control will cause them to act, speak, or think in ways which can have an adverse effect upon you, your present feelings and emotions, and the way your life upholds. It has been this way through six thousand years of recorded history, and your hurt or grief is not the first time a human has been deeply hurt by the inappropriate actions of another.
The only way to avoid being touched by life––the good as well as the bad––is to withdraw from society, and even then you will disappoint yourself, and your imagining about what is going on out there will haunt you and hurt you. Knowing this, there is but one solution that will support you when people and events hurt you, and that is to learn to work harder on your personal growth than anything else. Since you cannot control the weather, or the traffic, or the one you love, or your neighbors, or your boss, then you must learn to control you … the one whose response to the difficulties of life really counts.”
From Jim Rohn’s book “Seasons of Life”
Two
Character and Success
“Perhaps there is no more important component of character than steadfast resolution. The boy who is going to make a great man, or is going to count in any way in after life, must make up his mind not merely to overcome a thousand obstacles, but to win in spite of a thousand repulses or defeats. He may be able to wrest success along the lines on which he originally started. He may have to try something entirely new. On the one hand, he must not be volatile and irresolute, and, on the other hand, he must not fear to try a new line because he has failed in another.
Alike for the nation and the individual, the one indispensable requisite is character—character that does and dares as well as endures, character that is active in the performance of virtue no less than firm in the refusal to do aught that is vicious or degraded.”
From the speech “Character and Success” by Theodore Roosevelt
That’s it for now. If you have any questions, just hit reply. All the best,
Sumit
(Twitter) @SumitGupta
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