People try to engage with joy from a place in their brain. In our brains, we are told that if we want to learn something, we should study it. If we want to perfect something, we should practice it. If we want to change our behavior, we should go through a regimented process of doing that thing once or twice (or a hundred times) until it becomes habit. All of these are true, and yet they are woefully insufficient for a whole and complete journey into joy that calls your heart to smile back at you becoming you.
For joy to become grounded in our lives in a way that inspires our hearts forward, it must be engaged in with our hearts. Why? Because joy is about that warm feeling of love washing through you when you are most able to be the leader that you feel called to be. So, love is not an offering of the brain. It comes from the heart. In your heart is the well-rehearsed practice of knowing how best to love yourself. Not from something that someone else taught you, but from an innate knowingness of what is best for your heart to authentically grow. This knowingness is what each leader must tap into to make joy more than an output of a goal that they set for themselves.
Naming and honoring what you know you need to do for your own heart to grow is what supplants the fears, toxicity, and brain tactics that have been taught to you in a way that lifts the feelings that you constantly must overcome. If you are trying to overcome, then you will have to really practice joy. If it is your intent to simply honor what your soul already knows to be true, then you can simply choose to be that version of you. Regardless of your age, life experiences, education, or accomplishments, if you have not honored the inner truths that make you you, then you will always feel like an imposter. This is true, but it is not the will of the universe.
“But for the heart, the soul has no light to guide you through the night.”
It is the will of each heart to grow and flourish. Life has nothing to do with power over others. Life is about knowing how to empower yourself from within, and, in doing so, remove the influence others have unnecessarily had on you. Center this as a critical component for you to understand what it means to become the leader that you are designed to be, and you will walk a path that infuses joy into your leadership journey in every breath.
Every heart is a leader because every soul has a golden nugget of wisdom to share with the world. This must be honored as we consider who is to lead, let alone lead well. Those who are ready to lead will not solely be in a position of power by title. Those who are ready to lead will be in a higher and more evolved place in their hearts. This allows them to move with an incredible sense of authenticity such that others will grant them the permissions they need to be able to lead with the accountability of their whole soul behind them. Leaders who lead without this grounded sense of who they are in the community of humanity will flail around looking for whatever attention the world might give them. Give them attention for spewing hate, and they will take it. Give them attention for lying, and they will revel in it. Give them attention for abusing others, and they will consider themselves a God. But none of that actually makes them a leader. And neither they nor you will have any joy for it.
Leadership requires both heart and brain; it requires wisdom. That is what allows a leader to hear more clearly the best option, not for their ego, but for their heart to grow. And when one heart grows, then all hearts can be free to grow as well. This is what true leadership looks like. This is what making joy a habit looks like.