This morning, I’m going to read an excerpt from my first book, Balancing Act: Teach, Coach, Mentor, Inspire. The point of today’s Muse is to shine a bright light on our responsibility as leaders to hone the skills of self-awareness and engaging in challenging conversations.

This episode tells the story of 10-year-old Andy as a member of the La Crosse Boychoir, my mentor, Dan Johnson-Wilmot, and outlines three benefits of focusing on good posture for your personal and professional journey of continuous improvement.

"Nothing says “you’ve got this,” more than good posture. Many people will tell you that “clothes make the person,” but those clothes have to fit onto a frame—your frame. So before you go out and spend big money on a new wardrobe to boost self confidence, make the time to invest in posture by strengthening both mind and body."

If I’m living my personal purpose in both life and work and striving toward my long-term personal vision, then the likelihood that I feel unworthy of my successes is reduced because my success is more genuine to me and, no pun intended, purposeful. So if natural feelings of unworthiness and self-doubt creep in, I can remind myself that my success didn’t come out of nowhere, but was instead the result of planning, skill, and hard work.

In my opinion, the minimum acceptable height of “the bar” is to be a decent human. You see, it’s in times of great stress and conflict that the words I live by come into play the most. When the going gets tough, sometimes everything boils down to a fairly basic choice—to be a decent human being, or allow base instinct and ego to take over and say/do things that I’ll regret later. “Andy, just be a decent human being right here, right now.” But what does decency mean? Let’s explore.

The process of getting to know yourself is difficult, but deeply satisfying. Self-reflection and personal planning exercises are two important tools to understand and employ on the journey toward greater self-awareness and enlightenment. In this muse, we’re going to take the promised deep dive into the concept of the personal A3.

The first step on the journey to strengthen the fidelity of our inner eye is to recognize our obligation to learn and continuously improve. Without a strong inner eye, we become rigid, fixed and unyielding. Without a strong inner eye, it is difficult to see ourselves as part of the solution to challenges. We easily fall into the trap of a blame mindset and are easily swayed by strong voices that are not our own.