Success Advice
Effective Leadership Begins With the Reflection in the Mirror

If you’d like to learn how to become an effective leader so you can influence many people throughout your life, sign up for the free 90-Day Master Class hosted by the founder of Addicted2Success.com, Joel Brown.
Our global community is facing continuous turbulence. With the current status being less of a new normal and more of a “no normal,” being able to skillfully navigate as a leader has become a top priority. While trying to stay focused above the noise, manage your personal life, and adapt to new work-life adjustments, you may also be in a position to manage a team, composed of individuals who are also going through troubling uncertainty.
The stark reality is that in order to operate effectively as a leader, you must first start with the reflection in the mirror. It is paramount that each leader develop ways to manage their own heightened emotions and stressors in order to thrive – not just survive – in our distressed global climate.
Now more than ever, making intentional decisions to manage one’s emotional and mental state is vital to attaining clarity, cultivating ideas, and constructively handling day to day interactions. With the relentless negative news and an environment which is subject to drastic change on a daily or hourly basis, it is easy to become overwhelmed. Fear, doubt and defeat have a funny way of sneaking in at times when hope, conviction and problem solving are actually what is needed most.
“Never lose hope. Never forget the power of intentions and desires.” – Debasish Mridha
In a leadership role, everyone from peers to team members and ownership look to you as the true north – the person who can help get their ship back on course, mitigate damage along the way, and outline the path forward. Therefore, it is crucial that the captain of the ship remains calm and collected, instilling confidence that they have the ingenuity and grit to navigate the storm and bring everyone out safely on the other side. So the question becomes, how can you do that when your own emotions and stressors are at an all-time high?
Leaders also realize that active listening is key when managing others – after all, people need to feel heard and in order to guide someone, knowing where they stand is half the battle. This means you need to be present in the conversations taking place – not distracted and consumed by the turbulence swirling around you.
As we look to a future that is riddled with uncertainty, cultivating an active daily practice to manage perspective is an essential part of establishing well-being. After all, your perspective has great influence over your decisions, the teams you manage, and the overall health of the companies you represent. So the healthier your mind is and the more thoughtfully your emotions are managed, the better your decision making ability will be to help you navigate the unknown. It will also help you lead by example so your team can embrace similar practices to elevate their overall mental and emotional state.
They often say the simplest of things are the hardest – this is what many people think of first when they think of meditation. However, daily meditation of just 20 minutes has been shown to provide mental clarity that lasts through the work day and compounds upon itself.
This practice can be cultivated by simply doing the following:
- Choose a time frame every day that you will dedicate to meditation. It’s ideal if you can do your meditation right after waking up.
- Create a calm, quiet place in your home to meditate where you will not be interrupted.
- When you go to meditate, make sure your phone is on silent. If you feel you need to set your timer, be sure that it is a soft sound otherwise it may startle you.
- Sit in an easy comfortable position, close your eyes, and simply breathe. Deepen each breath with every inhale. Let stress, anxiety and fear go with every exhale.
- Repeat this for 20 minutes allowing your thoughts to come and go and your mind to settle. It will seem noisy in your mind at first, but over time your thoughts will seem more like a soft song and less like a rock concert rolling loudly around in your mind.
“Empty your mind, be formless, shapeless – like water. Now you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup, you put water into a bottle, it becomes the bottle, you put it in a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Now water can flow or it can crash. Be water, my friend.” – Bruce Lee
This practice for many has become a cornerstone of their daily routines – setting the stage for “successful” days and productive weeks. We all have challenging emails, calls, conversations and beyond in both our personal and professional lives. So being able to harness a calm state of mind and a balanced set of emotions will allow you to lead better, dream bigger, think outside the box and help model healthy behaviors for your team, your circle and beyond.
While appearing simple, choosing 20 minutes a day for your 2020 practice – a mere 1% of your day – may challenge you, however, this active practice will reveal amplified results, creating a profound ripple effect into a positive future.
What do you think makes an effective leader? Share your thoughts with us below!
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Success Advice
How to Break the Cycles of Mediocrity and Manifest Your Greatness
There is no greatness without becoming and there is no becoming with authenticity

In just a few weeks, we will be wrapping up 2023. Can you believe it? This year has been absolutely incredible for me.
I have seen amazing doors opened, new relationships formed and I am seeing dreams realized in my life. While this seems like the hallmarks of a great year, this has also been the most challenging year of my life. With all of the change happening in my life, I have been forced out of my comfort zone and challenged to grow in every area of my life.
I can truly say that I have made the most of my moments this year and I have used everything as a catalyst for maximizing my greatest potential.
As a revolutionary leader, I have the pleasure of consulting and advising leaders around the world to fulfill purpose, realize their greatest potential and make an impact.
I want to share some insights with you that will help you to break cycles of mediocrity and manifest your greatness.
Everything legal must come through the matrix
I am sure that some of you are wondering why I am using the term matrix. However, what you have to understand is that I am trying to make a highly complex spiritual principle practical to understand.
Regardless of your spiritual beliefs, every life has an origin and I believe that origin is divine and begins with eternity. You are birthed from eternity and into time to fulfill a unique purpose and assignment in your lifetime and generation.
The matrix is simply the portal or vehicle that brings something out of the invisible realm and into tangible form. The problem with much of the teaching today is that it excludes the matrix. We are told to believe that success is instantaneous and overnight.
Nobody talks about how a dream progresses through stages beginning with visualization and ultimately culminating in manifestation. Without a matrix or portal then everything that you attempt to birth and build will be illegal.
The matrix not only makes you legal but it gives you the authority and power to function as the greatest expression of who you were created to be.
Every matrix has an incubation process
While many people admire and respect me today, I remember a time when nobody knew who I was or the significance of my message. How did I get to where I am today? I got here through an incubation process.
In other words, everything that has been destined for your life is incubating and awaiting a set time of manifestation. The problem is that most people live their entire lives idle and never initiate the incubation process.
What do I meany by that? Most people are living reckless and very few people are living intentionally. I am amazed at the number of people I have conversations with that have no vision, goals or strategies for their lives. They show great promise and they have undeniable potential.
However, without development they will die with their dreams still in them.
Everything that has been destined for your life must be incubated and converted to become realities born to time.
“Visualize this thing that you want, see it, feel it, believe in it. Make your mental blueprint and begin to build.” – Robert Collier
You must give expression to that which is not yet born to time
When you think about a matrix or a prophetic incubation process, you have to understand that potential is often unrealized and untapped. In other words, your potential is in raw form and your potential cannot serve you as long as it is untapped.
The thing that makes me valuable is that I have the ability to convert potential into power. I have done it in my own life and I have empowered leaders around the world to do the same. How do you convert potential into power?
First, it is important to note that you have to perceive potential. If you cannot perceive your potential then you can never cultivate your potential. In addition, you must take the time to cultivate your potential. We often get excited about our capabilities; however, we never expand our capacity in order to realize our greatest potential.
In other words, the strength of your potential is only discovered through your willingness to stretch. The more we are challenged the more we are empowered to expand our capacity for greatness. Most of all, you must begin to express your potential. The expression of potential is different for every person.
For example, the expression of my potential is best demonstrated through the thoughts, ideas, products, services, books, etc.
For another person the expression of potential may look like a screenplay, artwork, sports, scientific discoveries, medical breakthroughs, etc.
Regardless of the form of expression, I know that you will live empty and unfulfilled until you make the decision to express your potential. The expression of your potential gives voice to your dreams, life to your vision, significance to your moments and activates your true power.
You must manifest your greatness
As a revolutionary thinker and leader, my work has impacted people around the world. I am grateful that my life is a source of empowerment to so many people. However, before anyone could ever benefit from my life, I had to make a non-negotiable decision to become who I was born to be.
I wish I could tell you that this journey is easy and that you will get there overnight. However, in a world that celebrates us for doing we are often criticized for being. As a result, I wasted a lot of time trying to be who other people wanted me to be instead of being who I was born to be.
There is no greatness without becoming and there is no becoming with authenticity. It is through our bravery to be vulnerable that we ultimately manifest our greatness. We do not bless the world by being a duplicate. We bless the world when we honor our difference. When you honor your difference you honor your potential.
Ultimately, your difference is how you manifest your greatness.
When you present anything but your authentic self to the world, you are playing small and you are robbing the world of your significance. Manifesting your greatness requires you to master your gifts.
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