{"id":379527,"date":"2013-08-28T01:11:00","date_gmt":"2013-08-28T01:11:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/staging.annahelizabeth.com\/index.php\/2013\/08\/28\/on-leadership-and-failure\/"},"modified":"2013-08-28T01:11:00","modified_gmt":"2013-08-28T01:11:00","slug":"on-leadership-and-failure","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/staging.annahelizabeth.com\/index.php\/2013\/08\/28\/on-leadership-and-failure\/","title":{"rendered":"On Leadership and Failure"},"content":{"rendered":"
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This morning I\u2019ve got Leadership on my mind.<\/o:p><\/span><\/div>\n

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Last year I applied to speak at a local TEDx event.<\/o:p><\/span><\/div>\n

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The TED organization, for those not familiar with them, is a group whose focus is centered around one central theme: \u201cIdeas worth spreading.\u201d<\/o:p><\/span><\/div>\n

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I\u2019ve been following TED and TEDx (locally branded TED enthusiasts groups) speeches for nearly six years now.<\/o:p><\/span><\/div>\n

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One of my goals has been to take The Five Facets and what I\u2019ve learned about healing to that stage.<\/o:p><\/span><\/div>\n

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There are so many walking wounded among us, so many with hearts that are breaking and emotions that are running errant through their lives.<\/o:p><\/span><\/div>\n

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What we ultimately want to know after Disaster, Death, or Destruction touch our lives is how we are ever going to survive.<\/o:p><\/span><\/div>\n

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Though there is no cookie cutter formula, what my work has discovered is the precious knowledge that each of us has what we need to mend ourselves, to grow through grief and to go on to live a life that is no longer held back by the fracas created by loss.<\/o:p><\/span><\/div>\n

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I believe with all my heart it meets TED\u2019s criteria: It\u2019s an idea worth spreading.<\/o:p><\/span><\/div>\n

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After a brief phone interview with my area\u2019s speaker curator, I learned I hadn\u2019t been accepted.<\/o:p><\/span><\/div>\n

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\u201cIs there anything I can do to improve my chances of participation next year?\u201d I asked.<\/o:p><\/span><\/div>\n

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I was told that my application had been stellar, but I might want to apply earlier and provide a clearer picture of what my presentation entailed.<\/o:p><\/span><\/div>\n

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Though I was disheartened, I recognized the truth in the response.<\/o:p><\/span><\/div>\n

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You see, Journeyers, I\u2019d been thinking about that presentation since the group had formed in my area the year prior.<\/o:p><\/span><\/div>\n

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I couldn\u2019t apply for the inauguration experience as we were to be in Europe on the day of the event.<\/o:p><\/span><\/div>\n

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But throughout the following twelve months, I plotted and planned and fretted over what I would say, how I should say it, and who I wanted to represent, my professional self or my personal side.<\/o:p><\/span><\/div>\n

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It was a quandary that I still hadn\u2019t answered when I fired off the answers to their second year questions.<\/o:p><\/span><\/div>\n

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Clearly, that conflict came through.<\/o:p><\/span><\/div>\n

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So I vowed I\u2019d be better prepared this year, that I\u2019d hone in on my conflicts and resolve those niggling, nagging doubts within me.<\/o:p><\/span><\/div>\n

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I participated in a personal branding event.<\/o:p><\/span><\/div>\n

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I asked myself tough questions about what I wanted to do.<\/o:p><\/span><\/div>\n

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I spent time delving into The Five Facets, defining and developing them, and laying the foundation for the workshops and other speaking I\u2019ve been envisioning for the past twenty-plus years.<\/o:p><\/span><\/div>\n

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I was invited to speak on a Radio program, where I ended up doing a two part piece, Understanding Loss, and subsequently, Understanding Healing.<\/o:p><\/span><\/div>\n

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I\u2019ve been watching and waiting for the application announcements and finally, several weeks back, I inquired about the date.<\/o:p><\/span><\/div>\n

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Yesterday, the curator replied that they did their interviews last March and April.<\/o:p><\/span><\/div>\n

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Can you imagine how bummed I am, Journeyers?<\/o:p><\/span><\/div>\n

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There\u2019s a part of my brain that wants to say, See, you\u2019re not as smart as you think you are. See, you fucked up again. See, it\u2019s not meant to be, this whole Five Facets thing. See, people have been saying that The Five Facets sounds droll and uninteresting\u2026<\/i><\/o:p><\/span><\/div>\n

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I\u2019m not going to listen to that naysayer.<\/o:p><\/span><\/div>\n

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Disappointed? Yes.<\/o:p><\/span><\/div>\n

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Frustrated? Absolutely.<\/o:p><\/span><\/div>\n

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Determined to take something positive from this and keep moving forward? You betcha!<\/o:p><\/span><\/div>\n

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I\u2019m going to head into the direction of other opportunities, seek out other connections I\u2019ve made and move forward.<\/o:p><\/span><\/div>\n

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One of those associations could be through HOBY, an organization that focuses on our future\u2019s leaders.<\/o:p><\/span><\/div>\n

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Warren and I felt so blessed and honored when Big Guy\u2019s school nominated him to represent them at last year\u2019s Youth Leadership event.<\/o:p><\/span><\/div>\n

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As I listened to the organizer speak to parents and participants on that final day, I couldn\u2019t help but think about the importance of knowing that leaders don\u2019t have to be impervious to imperfection.<\/o:p><\/span><\/div>\n

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Hugh O\u2019Brian, HOBY\u2019s founder, <\/span>speaks of affording our youth the “encouragement to recognize his or her own potential, regardless of background,” and poses the questions, “Will that person be satisfied merely to exist, or seek a meaningful purpose? Will he or she dare to dream the impossible dream?”<\/span><\/o:p><\/span><\/div>\n

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For years I felt that my mistakes and my depression defined who I was.<\/o:p><\/span><\/div>\n

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And thus, though I dreamed the dream of helping others heal, I believed that thinking about it was where my dream had to end.<\/o:p><\/span><\/div>\n

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What I’ve discovered along the way is that leadership doesn’t mean we have to be SuperHuman and impervious to failure or illness.<\/o:p><\/span><\/div>\n

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Failure neither defines us nor prevents us from Doing, from living out our ambitions and being the person each of us aspires to be.<\/o:p><\/span><\/div>\n

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It’s an important message for us all, one I feel is especially essential for the young men and women of our future to hear, to give them some encouragement, something to fall back on should they ever fall victim to the same line of thinking…<\/o:p><\/span><\/div>\n

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John F. Kennedy once said, \u201cLeadership and learning are <\/span>indispensable to each other.\u201d<\/o:p><\/span><\/div>\n

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And Thomas Edison said, \u201cI have not failed. I\u2019ve just found 10,000 ways that don\u2019t work.\u201d<\/o:p><\/span><\/div>\n

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The way I see it, me and my Five Facets have many more chances and much work ahead of us\u2026<\/o:p><\/span><\/div>\n

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Each of us has that potential, Journeyers, to be the best we can be, to lead the best way we know how\u2026<\/o:p><\/span><\/div>\n

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For we are all leaders at some time or another in our lives, sometimes when we aren\u2019t even aware we\u2019re leading\u2026<\/o:p><\/span><\/div>\n

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Hugs and healing, Journeyer\u2026<\/o:p><\/span><\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

Soon\u2026<\/span><\/span><\/a><\/o:p><\/span><\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

\ufeff<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This morning I\u2019ve got Leadership on my mind. Last year I applied to speak at a local TEDx event. The TED organization, for those not familiar with them, is a group whose focus is centered around one central theme: \u201cIdeas worth spreading.\u201d I\u2019ve been following TED and TEDx (locally branded TED enthusiasts groups) speeches for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3912,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[915,644,283,1126,1127,261,430,1116,432,69,1128],"class_list":["post-379527","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-courage","tag-encouragement","tag-failure","tag-hoby","tag-ideas-worth-spreading","tag-leadership","tag-ted","tag-tedx","tag-tedxwomen","tag-the-five-facets","tag-youth-leaders"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/staging.annahelizabeth.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/08\/On-Leadership-and-Failure.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.annahelizabeth.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/379527","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.annahelizabeth.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.annahelizabeth.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.annahelizabeth.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.annahelizabeth.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=379527"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/staging.annahelizabeth.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/379527\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.annahelizabeth.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3912"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.annahelizabeth.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=379527"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.annahelizabeth.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=379527"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.annahelizabeth.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=379527"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}