Becoming Your Best: 

The 12 Principles of Highly Successful Leaders

1. Be True Character 

Life is a series of experiences, each one of which makes us bigger, even though sometimes it is hard to realize this. For the world was built to develop character, and we must learn that the setbacks and grieves which we endure help us in our marching onward.

                                                               -Henry Ford

Being true to character is being true to yourself. Character is not what a person claims to personally have. Character is what others testify of you. If you boast of having character excessively, your boast is a hot air balloon being tossed from place to place. True character is not in the saying, not in the boasting, but in the living. Character is walking in integrity, not while being watched, but when in our own space, when no one of apparent authority is present. True character is acknowledging and living like there is a God who is All-knowing and All-present. You want to be pleasing to God, not just every once and a while, but at all times and not just when it makes us look good.

                                                                                                                                             

2. Use your Imagination 

They who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night.  

-Edgar Allan Poe

Imagination, which can also be called inner vision, is a gift that has many positive applications, but more than often it is not well-developed or correctly used. Few people possess the ability to control what enters their minds. They let their minds and imagination do as they please, and let any stray thought or mental image appear on the screen of their inner vision. This lack of control leads to lack of control over their 

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3. Apply the power of knowledge

`Our teachers told it to us when we were growing up in order to inspire us to want to learn, business leaders and authors instilled that principle over and over again, and maybe even our parents told us it a time or two.The truth is, knowledge really does have a lot to do with the amount of success we achieve. It really does contain a lot of power. But the thing is, the knowledge part really isn’t where the power lies. Knowledge is pretty much useless unless you apply it to your life.

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4. Never Give Up

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5. Find Peace And Balance 

Letting go helps us to to live in a more peaceful state of mind and helps restore our balance. It allows others to be responsible for themselves and for us to take our hands off situations that do not belong to us. This frees us from unnecessary stress.

 Melody Beattie

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6. Live the Golden Rule

The Golden Rule doesn't really mean that you should treat someone else exactly as you'd want them to treat you, it means that you should try to imagine how they want to be treated, and do that. So when you put yourself in their shoes, ask yourself how you think they want to be treated

At the end of the day, the Golden Rule is called the Golden Rule for a reason - do unto others as you would have done to you. In terms of commandments you could probably just do that one and you would be well off. If everybody could adhere to that one, we'd be OK, as long as a masochist wasn't in charge of people. 

-Chad Kroeger

______________________________________________________________________7. Build and maintain trust

When we, through our educational culture, through the media, through the entertainment culture, give our children the impression that human beings cannot control their passions, we are telling them, in effect, that human beings cannot be trusted with freedom. 

-Alan Keyes

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8.Quick to listen slow to wrath

I used to do my best thinking while staring out airplane windows. The seat-back video system put a stop to that. Now I sit and watch old' Friends' and 'Everybody Loves Raymond' episodes. Walking is good, but here again, technology has interfered. I like to listen to iTunes while I walk home. I guess I don't think anymore. 

-Mary Roach

______________________________________________________________________9. Lead with vision

You have to have a big vision and take very small steps to get there. You have to be humble as you execute but visionary and gigantic in terms of your aspiration. In the Internet industry, it's not about grand innovation, it's about a lot of little innovations: every day, every week, every month, making something a little bit better. 

-Jason Calacanis

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10. Manage with a plan

Any time women come together with a collective intention, it's a powerful thing. Whether it's sitting down making a quilt, in a kitchen preparing a meal, in a club reading the same book, or around the table playing cards, or planning a birthday party, when women come together with a collective intention, magic happens. 

-Phylicia Rashad

________________________________________________________________________10. Do what matters the most

________________________________________________________________________11. Be accountable

Governments can no longer control 100 percent of the story. Time and geographical boundaries disappear. In places like China and all over the Middle East, social-media outlets are being used to expose and hold accountable public officials that don't want to be held accountable for corruption and human rights abuses.

 Amy Jo Martin