While ontology as a general subject is concerned with the being of anything, here we are concerned with the ontology of human beings (the nature and function of being for human beings). Specifically, as a coach, I am concerned with the ontology of leaders and leadership (the nature and function of being for a leader and the actions of effective leadership). Who one is being when being a leader shapes one’s perceptions, emotions, creative imagination, thinking, planning, and consequently one’s actions in the exercise of leadership.

Being a leader and the effective exercise of leadership as one’s natural self-expression does not come from learning and trying to emulate the characteristics or styles of noteworthy leaders, or learning what effective leaders do and trying to emulate them (and most certainly not from merely being in a leadership position, or position of authority). If you are not being a leader, and you try to act like a leader, you are likely to fail. That’s called being inauthentic (playing a role or pretending to be a leader), deadly in any attempt to exercise leadership.

At this time of year people reflect upon their dreams and goals for 2019.  A good place to start is this time last year, January 2018.  What was important to you, what were your dreams and goals?

Taking the time to reflect on 2018 gives you the opportunity to be more intentional in the year ahead.  This is not about making resolutions (which usually don’t last anyway), but about deciding how you want to participatein your life and start living it out now to make 2019 a year of achievement.

Most people never give themselves the opportunity to step back and see where they are in life. Like an artist stepping back from his easel, it’s a fundamental part of assessing how far you’ve come, and where you want to go.

If you’ve never heard of a ‘life audit’ then there’s a good chance you’ll really benefit from one. Put simply, it’s an exercise in self-reflection, allowing us to really look at every single area of our lives, taking stock of things like our goals and distractions, and assessing our overall fulfilment.

Now most of us have a pretty good idea of our goals and downfalls anyway, and that self-awareness is certainly necessary for personal growth. What makes a life audit really beneficial however, is that it lets us look at the bigger picture in a much more objective way. This in turn allows us to formulate plans for achieving our goals, improve areas of our lives that may have been neglected, and chase the things that make us feel fulfilled. It’s essentially a status report for your soul – and there’s plenty of ways in which you can do it. Here’s one.

1) 2018

The first step is to reflect on your goals and dreams for 2018.  Did you achieve them?  For the things you achieved you can give yourself a pat on the back.  The things that didn’t happen, where were you stopped? Did you even get started?  Write a list of unfulfilled goals, next to them write down what happened. Then lastly, what have you learned and what could you have done differently?

2) The Wheel of Life

Simple visual tools are fantastic for this sort of thing, because they keep your audit from become overwhelmingly complicated. ‘The Wheel of Life’ is arguably the most effective way to gauge the balance in your life and your fulfilment in each key area. It covers all the important things, including self-image, work, friends, romance, and personal growth.

Each colour represents a different area of life, while the concentric circles mark satisfaction levels, from 0 to 10, with 10 being the highest. When you’ve got a few moments print out a copy, and colour in the levels that apply to you. The areas are only suggested ones.  You can change them to be more relevant to you. For example, if you wish to focus on your business you can change them to the areas of business important to you. Keep it honest. It only takes a short time to do and this exercise can really highlight imbalances that may not have otherwise occurred to you. These are the difficult areas to focus on when you are setting your goals for 2019.

Excuses and loopholes that hold us back achieving what we want from life.

1. False choice loophole – “I can’t do this, because I’m so busy doing that” – this is one I often use, myself
2. Moral licensing loophole – “I’ve been so good, it’s okay for me to do this”
3. Tomorrow loophole – “It’s okay to skip today, because I’m going to do this tomorrow”
4. Lack of control loophole – “I can’t help myself”
5. Planning to fail loophole – formerly known as the “Apparently irrelevant decision loophole”
6. “This doesn’t count” loophole – “I’m on vacation” “I’m sick” “It’s the weekend”
7. Questionable assumption loophole –“Look, it says it’s healthy on the label”
8. Concern for others loophole – “I can’t do this because it might make other people uncomfortable”
9. Fake self-actualisation loophole – “You only live once! Embrace the moment!”
10. One-coin loophole –“What difference does it make if I break my habit this one time?”

Our brain want to keep us safe and so we often approach life counting on a certain order of things, thinking that predictability and control will keep us safe. Then we encounter the experience of uncertainty, often with chaos close hard on its heels. This ambiguity and randomness can sometimes be disconcerting, as we struggle to understand and make sense of what is happening. 

We try to deal with things dealing rationally, sometimes emotionally. Neuroscientist David Eagleman captures the duality: “There is an ongoing conversation among the different factions in [our] brain, each competing to control the single output channel of [our] behaviour. The rational system is one that cares about the analysis of things in the outside world, while the emotional system monitors the internal state….”

Because we don’t see a ready way to relate powerfully with these dual realities, we attempt to apply patterns of order and the more we do that, the less effective we become. Predictability and control in a world where you are moving to the next level. There is no certainty as an inevitability or predictability of an outcome. We are the ones saying something and looking for a breakthrough to make it happen. Real power occurs when we know we have something to say about the way things are. Recognising that shifts the horizon of what’s possible, and it’s from there the full range available in being human can be explored and lived.