Lockdown: Day 284

Stories get told around the world at rapid speed. The digital age allows it and the internet fans both the positive and the negatives. The facts and fiction. 

Brene Brown has insight into vulnerability; Jay Shetty will train you to meditate and practice self-control; Diego Perez aka Yung Pueblo (a direct translation means young people) will teach you to listen to your Inward voice. My favourite author this month is Croatian, Dr. Marko Saravanja. 

Like Shetty, Saravanja is a Monk and an entrepreneur. He serves on the advisory board at FNB. Yes, really! 

He is a leader with nearly two decades of experience under his belt. I wish to get there one day. Martin Challenor, a lecturer of mine once told me that I would make a fine editor. It was his response to an opinion piece he assigned to a bunch of enthusiastic journalism students titled “Why I want to become an editor.”

I had the opportunity to lead from the front two years after that assignment. I led the online publication at my Technikon for 1 year. Since then I fell into my insecurity and tripped spectacularly, over and over again, on boulders of self-doubt. 

Now I could blame my failures and previous low self-esteem on numerous things. I could say that hard, dismissive, unappreciative superiors are the reason that I’ve never become a ferocious leader of a newsroom, but I won’t. Alternatively, I can point fingers at my government and say, well fuck them. What do they do other than steal from the citizen? I could hate them all, but I don’t. 

Stay with me. 

I realise now that bad leadership is not the cause of low self-esteem, resentment, and hurt. Bad leadership is just bad leadership. 

How I react to every situation rests with me. I can cry out of frustration because a government department sucks. Or if I’m pinched to the size of a pea in the workplace by three words. “Are you stupid?” I could respond with a, “Go fuck yourself!” But play that movie out in your head. Can you imagine the ending? I can. I see tears and joblessness. 

Let’s rewind a bit. So I drove around with two copies of Dr. Saravanja’s book, Secrets of Success for the entire December.

Each day I would decide not to remove it from my boot because didn’t want it in my house. Honestly, 2020 wore me down. I became tired of opinions. I had enough of absorbing thoughts and opinions. And let’s face it, there are a lot floating around. In fact, I’m doing it right now. You’re reading my opinions. I am grateful that you are.  

I have so many opinions and I couldn’t bear to open another book that preached a narrative about success. I’m successful already is what I thought. I smile as I type this because I would never admit openly that I am sometimes quite self-absorbed. It’s the truth and I make no excuses for it. It’s the way I am but then I started reading Dr. Saravanja’s book. I had what I have dubbed a God moment. 

For a while, I have been dwelling on the book of Ezra in the Bible. I’ve read it before but it’s never made sense to me like this. The second quote in the monk’s book had a poignant sentence: 

“To master the external world, we need first to master our inner world.”

Uuuuurgh! I sighed loudly in frustration. The cat even stared me down in contempt. 

Shoot me, I thought. 

But then I recalled Ezra. He was a leader. In the old testament, the people of Israel were mucking about for 70 years in exile around 538 BC before they were allowed to return to Jerusalem. A Persian Emperor named Cyrus fulfilled a promise and recalled them. Three of them answered a call to rebuild the house of God. Ezra is tasked with leading the Jews back to God because when you lose the company you keep, you lose your balance. Right? I do.  

It got me thinking about leadership in general. How I sometimes put pressure on myself to please, bend, twist, and evolve to suit people in positions of power. This trait of mine wasn’t out of respect, I used to fear leadership. I used to get heart palpitations from as early as 2003 when my boss would call. These days I feel excited. I welcome debate, I share opinions and thoughts and I try to be as honest as I can be.    

As I’ve come into my own skin in the past 5 years I have come to realize that being in a leadership position is hard. I have stopped undermining authority inwardly the way I used to. Like Ezra, God is in control, and no matter what empire ruled people had to be strong because God allowed it. 

I want to take the opportunity to encourage you tonight. 

If you have a boss, a line manager, or a colleague that steals your joy: flip the switch and dig deep in your soul and forgive them. Not because you’re better than they are. But because forgiveness is a win for the self. Master your inner world - Dr. Saravanja is correct. 

The power rests with you. You can choose to think your boss is an asshole - but try not to today.  

He or she is there for a reason. Celebrate your uniqueness and find all the reasons in the world to celebrate the uniqueness of the ones you loathe. 

“Unleash the light that shines within you and becomes like a shining star that lights up the darkness on earth.” Dr. Marko Saravanja.