…started out like a normal infant — self-centered/other-controlling, a screamer, full of B.S., and milking mom for everything I could get. If your trajectory doesn’t change, you journey from the state of infancy to the state of tyranny. It’s not cute anymore. You get older, but no less infantile, just maybe a little more sophisticated, and often blind to who you’ve become.
At BTL, we believe we have met the enemy, and it is us. We all have a little tyranny going on inside, and it’s covertly looking for opportunities to rear its ugly head, especially when a justice thread gets tweaked.
We see this all the time at BTL. Just as I started writing this rant, I got a call from a client where it’s unfolding live — sooner or later, tyrants inside a system have a way of finding each other. Subtle coalitions get forged, fortresses built, power amalgamated, weapons stockpiled, and propaganda propagated. Unchecked, it can sabotage leaders and entire teams. Not good.
It took a revolution for our ancestors to be freed from tyranny and adopt self-rule as one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. And that’s what it took for me to be saved from myself, depose the tyrant known as me, quell the civil war raging inside, and adopt self-rule.
Self-rule is the one you want, but it’s not autonomous. Autonomous leads to a lone and a lonely kingdom it is.
Writing to her husband in 1776 about the new code of laws for our independency, Abigail Adams warned about heeding the lessons of our history. “Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of the husband. Remember all men would be tyrant, if they could.”
The damage done by the tyrant known as Rue is damage I rue. How about you, friend? How is the civil war going in you? Have you deposed your tyrant and adopted self-rule? If you are a husband, ask your Abigail — she just may tell you the truth, and it just may set you free.
Embrace it. Live it. Love it (Thanks, Toto)…
BUILT TO LEAD 
I’ve been told I need to lead/master myself first. It’s taken me a LOOOOONG time to accept that I need this work within, first. and not just a little…A little just subdues my tyrant for a spell. Then he comes back, again and again. My weakness is that I, to quote Chet, “Drive myself nuts fixing others BS while stepping in my own”. I’m learning that the daily discipline of leading myself first is what will allow me to be rock solid helping others…but the order matters. I don’t have to look far either – I’m instructing some young kids day in and day out…but am I following my own advice? More every day, now. I’m learning to enjoy the taste of this humble pie I’m served up via book and blog lately. Better every day.