Welcome back to Little Leadership Lessons, my newsletter highlighting short but powerful insights to help you lead with confidence and create lasting results. These lessons come directly from my research, interviews, and coaching work with six- and seven-figure creator-founders.
I hope you’ve had a great week and that you might be sitting with a moment of quiet, a hot cup of tea or coffee, and a beautiful view as you dig into this week’s newsletter. Even if that’s not physically possible, perhaps you can imagine a similar setting.
Let’s get to it.
A Beautiful Photo of Nature
Little Leadership Lesson: Reclaim Who You Already Are
When we find ourselves aimless or in a rut, it’s probably because we’re either suppressing a part of ourselves that we should be expressing, or we’ve lost connection to the meaning of what we’re doing.
[…] I once heard a quote that reflects this: “the most dangerous type of person is a person with no purpose or meaning behind what they’re doing because they’ll find meaning in anything.
– Polina Pompliano, Good Work Ep 11
My Take On Suppression, Ruts, and Rediscovering Our Inner World
One way to tell the story of the last five years of my life is this: I’ve been reclaiming lost parts of myself.
- The little boy who loved diving into nerdy rabbit holes.
- The teenager who lived for hip-hop, sports, and sneakers.
- The artist inside—the part of me that’s deeply creative, expressive, alive.
- The man who longs for vulnerable, soulful connection.
- The wide-eyed optimist who still sees the best in others.
- The young me who wanted to be loved, cherished, and poured into.
What if becoming who we’re meant to be isn’t about striving, succeeding, or transforming… but about surrendering to who we already are?
Michelangelo is attributed with a quote about sculpture that reflects this idea:
“The sculpture is already complete within the marble block. I just have to chisel away the superfluous material.”
Like the sculpture waiting to be revealed in the stone, there’s a version of you that’s already whole. But over time, it may have been buried—by awards, shame, trauma, money, busyness, burnout.
By expectations. By roles you thought you had to play. By habits and patterns designed to keep you safe in the home and community you grew up in.
This process of revealing the hidden you happens independent of your success in life and work. Which is exactly why so many highly successful creators — people who have achieved more than most people ever will… come to me with this same challenge.
“Help me find myself again” might be the universal request for help every client I work with is making. We all have an inner world that is longing to be reflected in our outer reality.
As Polina said on the podcast, burnout, ruts, aimlessness — these are signs that something is longing to be expressed rather suppressed.
A Question to Apply This to Your Life
If you find yourself in a rut, burned out, going through the motions, or perhaps just have a sense that your inner and outer lives are misaligned… ask yourself:
- Who am I, really? (Or perhaps, who was I before the cruft of the world got in the way?)
- What part of me is crying out to be acknowledged, reclaimed, and expressed?
- What might happen if, this time, that part was supported by the strong, capable adult you’ve become?
- What work might you do if you let the truest version of you lead?
And what support would you need in order to let that version of yourself take the reigns moving forward?
In my experience, this is the work of a lifetime. It’s the work that leads to sustained excellence and a deeply fulfilling life.
And that’s what I hope for you.
Thanks for Being Here!
Hope you enjoyed this edition of Little Leadership Lessons, direct from my research and work with six- and seven-figure creator founders.
If you’d like a few starting points for digging into the hidden you beneath the layers of stone, here are a few places to start: A Hidden Wholeness, Let Your Life Speak, Radical Acceptance, It Didn’t Start with You, Women Who Run with the Wolves, and No Bad Parts.
If this edition of LLL resonated with you, hit reply and tell me: what part of yourself are you reclaiming right now?
Much love and respect,
PS: If you haven’t already, please take a few minutes to complete my subscriber survey. I’ll be giving a $150 gift card to the restaurant of your choice to one person who completes the survey by April 30th.