Another part of my presentation in Oklahoma City on Leadership:
If you look around the world today, you will see that most people are on auto pilot.
- This means that most people wake up every day at the latest possible time that they can to get to school.
- They drive the same route to work as everybody else.
- They arrive at the same time as everybody else and go to the same desk that everybody else goes to.
- They work the minimum numbers of hours they have to get done what needs to be done.
- They drive home the exact same way that they came.
- They go to bed so they can wake up and do it all over again in the morning.
Doing the same thing every day is very comfortable and very safe. It makes us feel good to know exactly where we are going and what is waiting for us once we get there. If something ever disrupts this comfort it scares us.
For example: If something blocks our road on the way to work, we don’t know what to do for a while. It makes us squirm. We must adjust.
Occasionally you find someone who thinks that we can be doing something in a better way. That person believes that we can learn a better way in school. Or we can do something in our community or our neighborhood to help another group of people. That person sees a problem that has existed for a long time and has found a new way to solve.
That kind of person is a leader.
And good leaders are hard to find.
They are rare because most people just want to do the same thing because it is safe. We need more people like you and you, and you that are not happy with being comfortable and safe. We need young people such as yourselves to stand up and say “Hey… I think we should go to the mountain top. And I know a great way to get there. It may be hard. It may take longer than the other way. We may stub our toe every now and then or scrape our knees. It is not going to be the same way that all the other people are going. But we will be much better people by the time that we get there.”