For: the ambitious person figuring out how to lead, grow, and intentionally build a fulfilling life - one step up at time. From: someone on the journey too. Released every Thursday at 4:30pm CST.
👣 Step 49: Bring the Mountain Home
👣 Step 49: Bring the Mountain HomeIn 2021, I was blessed to attend Sigma Chi’s Horizons Leadership Summit in Snowbird, Utah with two close fraternity brothers. As I look back on the past 5 years, that trip was my inflection point. Horizons was my light switch. Before Horizons, I was a leader, but it was more out of happenstance. I was innately good at things, but I never really invested in them. I was the kid who got good grades but never really studied, or the guy people listened to, but I never truly aimed to lead. After Horizons, the light turned on. I completely dove into leadership. I pursued personal development, additional responsibilities, skills training, emotional intelligence, and so much more. I saw the importance of leadership and that we need more good leaders in this world. And more importantly, I saw that I could be one of those leaders (as well as others around me). Horizons has a saying: “Bring the mountain home.” On the mountain, you learn a lot about yourself and how to lead. You learn how to be more self aware and a stronger critical thinker. You learn how to deeply connect with others and understand what they value. You learn how to lead through your values. But if you don’t bring that home with you to share the knowledge with others and improve their lives, it’s all for nothing. We could bring the mountain home more often in our lives. As leaders, it’s our responsibility to enlighten and empower others. As humans, it’s our responsibility to make others’ lives better. To leave the world better than we found it. It can be small, like sharing a new song or restaurant you think they’ll love. Or it can be life-changing, like sharing a new thought process or connecting them to a person that can help them grow closer to their goal. How many times do we go to a workshop or conference, meet new people, learn a lot of great things, get super inspired and motivated, then go home and resume life as normal? How frequently do we learn something new, try a new method of doing something, enjoy the result, then keep it to ourselves? How often do we travel, experience new places and cultures, learn more about the human condition, discover new ways of living, thinking, and socializing, then fly home and settle back into our routines and mindsets? As this newsletter lands in your inbox, I’m in Maryland wrapping up Goodwill’s Senior Leader Program. I’ve learned a lot, and I’ve tasked myself with bringing this mountain home. What mountain can you bring home? See you next Thursday, Steppers. We will succeed, Grayson Song of the Week:
I had a completely different song planned for today's newsletter, but it's the 10th anniversary of Blonde, and I just had to highlight a song from it. I vividly remember where I was and what I felt when I first listened to it. On the mattress in my parent's living room, right after the 2016 flood. Lights off, raining, both headphones in, just taking in all of the sounds and emotions. I'd never heard anything like Blonde before, and I haven't since. This album brings me back to Summer 2016. Old relationships. High school football. Starbucks pink drinks and sunsets. Pokemon Go. A different time. A good time. Cheers to Frank Ocean and Blonde - my favorite album of all time and a true masterpiece. |
Grayson Stepanek
For: the ambitious person figuring out how to lead, grow, and intentionally build a fulfilling life - one step up at time. From: someone on the journey too. Released every Thursday at 4:30pm CST.
👣 Step 58: Invisible Labor I'm a music lover. Always have been, always will be. One music award that's always stuck out in a weird way to me is the Grammy's "Best New Artist" award. Because those artists aren't new. They've been making music for years. They just became popular enough in the past 1-2 years for us to collectively view them as "new." But that's wrong, and it disregards a lot of their foundational, behind the scenes work that got them to that place. It disregards their invisible...
👣 Step 57: Prioritize, Then Prioritize Again Last Saturday, I ran the Courir a la Musique 8k and had a blast! Beautiful weather, amazing friends, a rich Cajun culture, and I actually hit my pace goal with 10:31. Even though I had fun and did pretty well, I wasn't nearly as trained as I planned to be. Over the past month, I've had to prioritize other things, and running just fell into the maintenance category. And that's okay. Prioritization has been a big thing for me the past few weeks, and...
👣 Step 56: Doing Nothing is Doing Something A few weeks ago, I talked about one of my mottos: "If you want to, you will." I want to note that the opposite is also true: "If you don't want to, you won't." The first form of the phrase denotes action. Doing. The second form denotes inaction. Not doing. But both are still action. And it is very important to truly understand that. As humans, we struggle understanding things that we can't see or measure. We understand when someone's broken a bone,...