Awesome V Awful

We recently engaged the fabulous Cam Calkoen to present to our Business School audience within our Thought Leaders community. Cam is an extraordinary human, living and thriving with Cerebral Palsy. Cam's big word for as long as I have known him is 'AWESOME'. As I watched him weave stories and inspire our community, I started to think about AWE in all its forms and how we, as thought leaders, navigate the shock and awe of life for ourselves and those we serve.

Dave Wild, one of our colourful community members made a comment in the side chat that added fuel to the fire. Dave remarked on the interesting linguistic twist in the idea that 'Awesome' only has 'some awe' and 'Aweful' the negative being 'full of awe.' Made me giggle at the crazy logic of the English language.

This pendulum then from awesome to awe-full is exactly why I think Awareness is the goal. It's not that life is awesome all the time or awe-full all the time. It's that you are aware of the swing and manage to stay up and back from the swinging.

 

 

Often, we use comparison as a motivational tool. How do I compare to person X? How can I be more like person X? Or perhaps, less like person Y. Comparison, though, can quickly turn negative as we use it to make ourselves impostors or somehow not good enough to play the game of leadership.

Awareness is once again how you rise up (you can download a copy of Rise Up here) and lead from above the line.

Next time you admire someone, use your awareness of what they are doing or being to fill you full of awe but equally use that awareness to take action towards being the leader the world needs you to be. When we wake up to a new reality (awareness), we can often be overwhelmed by our past ignorance and as such move very quickly from denial to despair and end up doing nothing new with our new level of consciousness. Awareness shifts activity if you allow it to.

Rise up.
Be aware.
Lead.