Oh, The Choices We Make!

“Let choice whisper in your ear and love murmur in your heart. Be ready. Here comes life.” -Maya Angelou

Many of us have a little recorder in our heads that badgers us about we should and shouldn’t do. It’s the sound of our parents, our friends, our colleagues telling us which direction to go, what decisions to make, what is best for our career. And sometimes that counsel isn’t helpful at all and may get in the way as so beautifully expressed by Robert Frost, “Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.” 

This week I heard a wonderful speaker, Carolyn McKnight, PhD. at the We Can Do Better conference in Portland. She spoke of the importance of leaders creating their personal purpose statement as a framework for choices and she asked the audience, “What animates your life, and your career…what are you doing in the world?” She went on to state that becoming a great leader is synonymous with becoming who you are at your core and it very well may be a “path less traveled!”
 
I’m spending this week, pondering my personal leadership purpose statement which has probably changed over the years. But I do believe it will serve as a guide “as those choices whisper in my ear.”