Conscious Leadership: The Roadmap, Step 1: Empowered Responsibility by Artemis Evangelidi

We begin our ‘Roadmap to Conscious Leadership’ series with the core attribute of Empowered Responsibility. This requires that we redefine what responsibility means to us so that we can embrace it in every aspect of our lives. But first let us consider why it is vital that we do so.

Our brains are hardwired with a negativity bias – once important for our evolution, this propensity to focus on negative rather than positive events, is no longer very useful. The flow on effect is that we tend to ruminate on even the smallest of negative occurrences and we are on the lookout for stimuli that are negative in nature. This is why one misstep during our week can keep us feeling off for days and also why mainstream media focuses on all that is wrong with this world rather than the good that surrounds us. Ultimately, all of this feeds into our oftentimes unconscious, victim mindset.

This victim mindset has always had a leading role in our homes, our workplaces and within our society at large. It helps us focus squarely on the negative as we put the blame elsewhere where it can be someone else’s fault; where we are hard done by; and where our suffering is in the hands of others. A spiral that keeps us focused on unpleasant events, directly or indirectly, and keeps reinforcing our negativity bias which doesn’t hesitate to show us all the ways in which we have been let down, once again.

It doesn’t take too much effort to stay on this path given the current state of our world, but the danger here is that it results in us feeling helpless, disempowered, and wrapped up in blame, guilt, and shame. This is where Empowered Responsibility can help us shift this mindset and overcome this bias.

Embracing Empowered Responsibility means stepping back into our power – power from the heart – and realising that we will always have the choice to take charge in any situation and work towards finding alternate solutions. It means that we say: ‘I am no longer a victim of circumstance, I am able to create my life just as I see fit’. We reclaim our inspiration, our creativity, and our courage so that we can co-create with the collective consciousness and change the narrative.

Think of it as an extension of any mindfulness practice, observing the thoughts moving through our awareness without judgement and then recognising that we are not our thoughts. Instead, we own whatever it is that is transpiring as events that have been done by us – directly or indirectly, individually or as a result of the collective consciousness. Being on the path means that we cannot have it both ways. We must accept that we are an interconnected part of the whole, steering the ship as it moves through the waters or if we claim to be somehow removed from this and merely suffering at the hands of ‘the others’, then we can no longer claim to be a part of the whole.

Humanity is currently experiencing one of the greatest evolutionary moments in our history – a turning point that requires us to step into our power and co-create a fair and just world for all, built on respect, peace and love. We cannot do this from the mindset of the victim, but we can do this when we embrace Empowered Responsibility, focused on creating a better ‘new’ from the ashes of the old.