How Do You Prove Your Greatness?

Evaluate your personality before conveying your vision, drawing on the model of a consciousness unconquered by the power of the present.

US President John Fitzgerald Kennedy was the man who made unforgettable the day of June 26th. He was visiting Berlin. A crowd of 120,000 Berliners gathered in front of the Schöneberg Rathaus (City Hall) to hear President Kennedy speech. They began gathering in the square long before he was due to arrive, and when he finally appeared on the podium they gave him an ovation of several minutes.

Kennedy started his speech by saying: "Freedom has many difficulties and democracy is not perfect, but we have never had to put a wall up to keep our people in." In an impassioned speech, the President told them West Berlin was a symbol of freedom in a world threatened by the Cold War. In the end, he uttered the following words, which got famous: "All free men, wherever they may live, are citizens of Berlin, and therefore, as a free man, I take pride in the words, 'Ich bin ein Berliner."

Before offering people a direction, you must be objective with yourself. A true leader does not run after new and inadequate ways for transmitting his vision, he does not need to draw attention so pointedly through novelty and originality.

There must be a permanent internal inspection to which you would conform by yourself - and depending on its result, to be able and willing to change what is wrong. This inspection, carried out seriously, has the sole and exclusive purpose of transforming and perfecting your own leadership potential, it is the only means, by which could be acquired that particular form of self-realization. The leader needs an answer, a reaction especially during the period of development. The ability to evaluate himself it is his greatest strength.

Can you get closer to people by regaining your inner strength in their lives, which recommends you as an indispensable condition of overcoming the phase of widening the horizon that you can only comprehend from a certain height?

I admire what comedian Danny Thomas said: "All of us are born for a reason, but all of us don't discover why. Success has nothing to do with what you gain or accomplish for yourself. It's what you do for others." I think the same thing told, indirectly, and John Fitzgerald Kennedy when he addressed to the Berliners. "I am a Berliner" he confessed with a joy of his whole being that those about 120,000 people gathered in front of Schöneberg City Hall received it as a surprising gift. In other words, Kennedy has found his sense - this was to increase the contribution of the Berliners towards him and towards the nation that he was leading.

Therefore, you see, before cultivating sympathy you must broaden the limits of your own horizon. You must see yourself as part of the community; you must help in rebuilding the mentality and values ​​of the others around you. One of the leadership's great wonders is that your inner strength and your retrieval in the lives of people are getting you closer to them. Although, the Americans were not seen well at that time by the Germans, the Berliners have come to perceive Kennedy as their family member with a higher rank, not as an aggressor.

In his speech, John Fitzgerald Kennedy proved that he is up to the task. Basically, he proved that thinking based on accepting the existence of a concrete life experience can lead to much more advantageous decisions and more appropriate to the situation.

1. Are you making appeal to emotions in order to enliven people's existence?

2. Do you inspire positive feelings in those you lead? (remember that all the eyes turn toward you, waiting for your reaction, which function as an emotional guide. By the message that you transmit, you give people a way to interpret the significance of the events, and thus to react emotionally to them.) You must be aware that the way you communicate, your style and your behavior affect the mood of the people around you.

3. Do you succeed or fail in channeling people's emotions in the right direction?

Can you appeal to a reality that is always being built and rebuilt at the level of a collective consciousness, so as to highlight the consequences of actions that are difficult to predict?

The man who made ​​the June 26 highlights your commitment in fulfilling the requirements of others: a weak commitment will lead to a poor rallying; a strong commitment leads to a rallying of a large number of followers and supporters.

The way, in which Kennedy has related to the Berliners, resulted in cancellation of any negative evaluation, which could decrease his popularity. This thing is good not to overlook. For just as the balance and the comforting calm of the nature are often shattered by violent disasters (earthquakes, floods, fires, etc.) similarly your leadership potential, which is evaluated precisely by the report that you establish with the others around you, may decrease enormously if the means by which you express your personality, commitment, appreciation for people, does not align with your inner states.

The consequence is to generate a major confusion and to compromise a favorable environment of creating long-term cooperative relationships. Or, in simpler words, people could not accept your vision if you do not manage first to prove that you are endowed with a leadership potential – namely, if you do not manage to decipher all that people need, to positively influence their emotions, by seeking ways to prove by safe and clear ways your true affection.

Prove your greatness, by adjusting your leadership potential according to your ability to understand and control the feelings of others. Make evidence of the fact that the leadership you promote, expresses your own values, otherwise you will not manage to highlight your most relevant and useful skills. Express by the way of your leadership the art of influencing in good your thinking, behavior and the mentality of the others - an art that would be aligned with your inner states, reflecting your ideas, thoughts and feelings. Alternatively, more simply told an art by which to stimulate the continuous and efficient improvement.

Can you prove that the leadership you promote expresses your own values, so that you can highlight your most relevant and useful skills for the future – in the midst of a present that either can’t or doesn’t want to see the future?

1. Are you fulfilling well your role of an emotional guide? Your affective mood and the tone that you use in relationship with others, what impact has on them?

2. How do you prove your greatness?

3. Are you adjusting your potential depending on your ability to understand and control the feelings of others?

4. Are you offering people a sense of clarity and direction? Do you manage to create an emotional climate that encourages and cultivates loyalty and confidence?

I hope from all my heart that your answers to these questions to broaden the limits of your own horizon. For contributing to the reconstruction of the mentality and values of those around you, first you first need to develop your emotional intelligence - through self-education, through self-awareness, self-discipline and empathy.

The horizon of a high observatory is given by the power of the leader to give meaning and value to his actions, so that the present experienced will be the mirror in which other people will later recognize themselves as the successors of a long line of forerunners.

You Prove Your Greatness by your commitment to be the “continuous present” of a present in which things move. Or, as the French writer Antoine de Saint-Exupery put it: “To build the future is to build the present; it is the birth of a desire that is valid today.”