The Depths Of The Soul

People will be willing to accept you as leader as long as they will perceive you as a man approached to their soul.

At the end of the movie "Prince of Persia - The Sands of Time" , there is a dialogue between the princess of Alamut, Tamina, and the Prince of Persia, Dastan, who followed to marry so that the two nations to be closely linked not only by neighborhood and friendship relations.

- How can I trust the man who pierced the walls of my town? the princess asked Dastan, earnestly looking at him, surveying with a constant attention like, trying to decipher his intentions.

Dastan's look was calm and even brilliant. Looking deep into her eyes, filled with an inexpressible joy, he replied with that warmth of heart that will not ever find when you are looking for:

- I begin to think I'm no longer the same person who has pierced them.

Leadership: Are you experiencing the main features of a difficult, and yet, ultimately fulfilling road of an ideal created with an unwavering faith in a victory that ensures your return from a feeling of "deja-vu"?

In his voice vibrated a certainty, a conviction, and an energy, which alarmed the princess. Looking at him astonished, excited, Tamina exclaimed cautiously:

- It's a short period for a person to change so much.

- Perhaps, answered Dastan, who undoubtedly remembered all the events lived with her.

- It looks like you discovered something Prince... a new spiritual consciousness.

- A destiny, he replies in a voice full of quiet.

And then it was as if time has stood still. These words lit the fire in the heart of Princess. She looked at Dastan with an expression of tenderness that seems like love, the voice of her heart was completely happy and had promised only joy and fulfillment. An almost superhuman serenity seemed to enshroud them both as a halo. Their blood felt the same ardors.

Leadership: Does the inspiration to accomplish a great destiny stem from your total acceptance of a reality called "coincidenta oppositorum" in the act of retrieving the self from which you have always fled?

One of the secrets of leadership is that you do not need to understand one thing to feel it. There are times when people feel instinctively, but cannot express in words. I just know. I understand instantly how things really are. Perhaps the reason or conscious may fail, but heart will never betray them.

Princess Tamina examined Prince Dastan only by eyes, she did not judge the facts, but she felt his nature, soul, in his warm and tender eyes. Watching the glimpse from his eyes, she understood. She was immediately engulfed in a kind of respectful and mute admiration. As she could look to the depths of his soul, and saw the true face, his true nature, his true "ego". She would never be valued that union if not "seen" the soul of Prince, what he thought in his mind and what he felt for her.

As a leader, you must take a journey: a journey towards yourself, that will help you know in detail the personality and the beliefs that you have, and to consider your choices that you will have to make. Look at you with the eyes of your soul, and then shape your potential after your own beliefs, criteria and ideas. Seek to be as you see yourself. Give voice to the reality through what you are, what you think, what you feel, and what you want. The leadership is strengthened by developing your emotional intelligence.

Coincidenta oppositorum, a philosophical and religious concept that signifies the "coincidence of opposites", applies in the situation where two people with completely different convictions, through a twist of fate, come to share the same experiences, the same values, to possess similar knowledge and to think through each other’s thoughts at every next step.

And to find your self from which you have always fled is similar to buying a map that helps you shorten your way to the final destination even when you’re about to give up on your journey.

Leadership: Do you practice the application of freedom in alternation when you are about to feel something you do not want to feel?

Leadership is the product of your contribution to perpetuating a correct and clear understanding of the experience to connect with others. The way in which you manifest yourself in their eyes, ensuring the ratio between natural and forced, says a thing or two about your refinement, about the depth of your own reality – where you see yourself as an entirely different person, giving criteria to classify the dispersed elements in your personal climate.

In this regard, leadership isn’t only about a future filled with aspirations that you can see through the mind power of controlling reality, but it’s also about the present where you find yourself as a spirit, leaving your mark on improving those contrasting aspects that have a significant impact on the conscience. The conscience of being the bearer of a unique destiny – the destiny of your own functioning in relation with a high significance level.

The definition of what places you in a higher "illumination" configuration and transformation, at a conscious level, towards a new dimension of who you truly are is given by the French author Marguerite Yourcenar in one of her books:

"We all practice applying the liberty in alternation: emotions, ideas, preoccupations, at any moment they must be able to interrupt themselves and start all over again. The certainty to be able to chase them away or call them back like slaves that deprive us of any tyrannical tendency, untying ourselves of the feeling of any restraint."

Everything that relates with your personality and convictions, either distancing you of what you usually include in the sphere of your own greatness, or drawing you closer to what fuels your happiness, is reflected in this "liberty in alternation", that must be practiced as a role-play.

It points to the expectations, attitudes and strategies of the individual for his approach in a changing climate, in a game full of interruptions and replays that always fully represent his own thoughts and feelings. And in this case leadership can be considered the result of a hard work with the self, accompanied by a leap in the future, a cantonation in the past and a coming back to the present.

To feel something that you don’t want to feel is to admit that what you were doing before you failed was not what you wanted, or that what is happening to you is an amplification of the previously crystalized feelings of abandonment.

Many leaders are showing a growing concern towards achieving results, placing less value on the human side. They are looking to simply push people in the right direction, directly or indirectly forcing them to line on their own beliefs and values. But they do not understand that to change people you need to intervene in their behavior, in the minds and especially their hearts. People feel who you are, and if they do not see you as a person able to express genuine feelings of care and compassion, as a long-term partner, but perceive you as a master, then it will never create a spiritual bond between you and them.

Just as the blood supply towards tissues depends primarily on the amount of blood that the heart pumps, namely on the cardiac output - so achieving an emotional maturity, which is absolutely necessary to establish and maintain on long term the relationships with the people around, depends primarily on the positive contribution that your leadership has in the increasing of people's ability of relating to you, and of the "quantity" of patience you should impose to yourself in order to find their value, their true nature and their true characteristics.

Sometimes, if you want to change something that doesn’t work in your life you must be aware and recognize that what you need to experience is someone else’s creation.

The Depths Of The Soul are hard to penetrate, especially for those who do not know the answer to what is happening to them all along the sinuous path of a destiny from which one cannot escape, not matter what.

It's very important for a leader to be perceived by the people who elected him as their ally, a person close to them, which will drive them like a guide on the best ways. Sometimes his soul (his true nature) is not known until after long collaborations and sometimes can only be guessed. But once discovered, people's behavior will be favorable to leader, or will take a bad turn which will create a huge gap between them, placing them in antagonistic positions, harmful to both sides.

How does your leadership contribute to the increasing of your people's ability of relating to you?