I’m racking my brain to find a non covid related topic to laugh about and finding it difficult to do… 
I’m about done with this one thing inserting itself unannounced and uninvited into every single aspect of my life. Not the sickness itself, you understand, but the sickness of the drama it’s blown itself up into that demands all the air time. 
TALK ABOUT ME!!!!!
I’ve talked with Brits whose parents experienced the bombings in the war and they tell me a similar story and it’s this: Their parents eventually denied the right of the war to rule every aspect of their existence. 
That war was intrusive in ways you can’t imagine if you grew up in our wonderful country, but growing up in a peaceful place exacts a price: We lose our ability to ask ourselves the all important question: 
What would our lives look like if things got fifty times worse? 
Well, multiply the fear and panic by fifty and the only solution would be for everyone to jump off a bridge holding their gaming consoles close to their hearts. 
If war overtook us we’d all curl up into a ball in front of the TV and die because we’ve forgotten how to fight back. The first fight takes place inside of myself. 
I have to get to a place where my thoughts and words become disciplined. As soon as I speak initial drama I tend to believe whatever it is I just said, then I stop evaluating whether it’s true or real or not and look only for evidence to support my first panic, lest I fail to take myself seriously. 
At a point in this past week the fatigue of having to lead some people who don’t appear to want to lead themselves overtook me, and people like me don’t say that very often because my brain doesn’t have an end point for where I quit trying (mostly thanks to my dad:), and it took a few days to sort out what exactly it was. 
Now I will say that some people are great. They’re adapting well and doing what they ought to. They’re leading themselves and their families well. They’re a great help in the city and community. 
But too many others are not. I finally realized what it was that was so exhausting: they are not leading themselves well. People who haven’t learned to lead themselves often resort to the following things: 
Panic, anger, and hating anybody who’s not in an angry panic:)
Helping them mature in mentality or emotion is also a double edged blade because it’s far easier to blame anybody but themselves for their state, and sometimes that’s me. 
People who don’t lead themselves well get really mad when no one follows them, even though technically they’re not even following themselves because they’re not going anywhere good and they know it. 
People who don’t lead themselves well think that a bigger platform for their thoughts or the way they filter information will make them feel better, even though they don’t have the results such a platform would expect.
All that would do is stroke their ego, but if anyone would actually follow them it would add the guilt of being personally responsible for the failure of other people too. 
One Venue Kids teacher said she wanted to put a cover on top of Venue procedures that said “Don’t screw up other people’s kids”. 
Good. She should feel the weight of working with children. Leaders can’t afford the random opinions of the masses that aren’t based in actual results. Messing up your own life is your choice. Messing up others is another guilty animal. 
When adults act on behalf of children, they have to take out “The sky is falling!!!” piece when someone skins their knee. The sky is not falling and the world will continue to spin, unless you’re in a weird, fearful headspace, or you’re a five year old child in a weird fearful headspace. 
Here’s what a real leader does: PROJECT TODAY’S PRESSURE INTO TOMORROW. 
In my experience only a very small percent of the population I have lived and worked with can actually do this in a non destructive way, for themselves and certainly for other people. 
Simplify: Take today’s ACTUAL danger, emotional state, etc, multiply it by ten and project how long you could live with it and not take an axe to the bottom of the boat to “let the water out”.
Take your current workload as a business owner who wants to multiply their business by ten, multiply your workload by ten and see if you can live with the weight of it. 
If the answer is you couldn’t, then you’re forced to change something today so you don’t die of pressure tomorrow. In short, you’re forced to invent a new mentality that could actually handle it, and you implement it immediately. THAT, ladies and gentlemen, will tell you whether you’re leading yourself well or not. 
And it’s beyond ironic that people who can’t lead themselves well yet think for some reason they can lead everyone else well. 
When you step out with courage and start taking back tomorrow’s emotional state, failure is inevitable. People who lead themselves well constantly have the humility that having to work through failure brings. It takes out the desire to be treated like a god because God doesn’t make silly mistakes like we do. 
People who are arm-chair experts have little humility. They don’t have to pay for their mistakes because they’re not actually implementing much, and because no one follows them they never have to watch the hardship of someone following their direction when their direction was harmful. 
I know these are deep thoughts when the drama just wants us to concentrate on the surface and post more outrage online so we don’t have to think about anything in our own lives. 
All that to say, today’s topic was still covid related somehow so I’ll feel the shame of silly failure and decide I don’t like it and will move on with my life:)