What Story is Your Career Telling?

All stories are about wolves. All worth repeating, that is. Anything else is sentimental drivel. …Think about it. There’s escaping from the wolves, fighting the wolves, capturing the wolves, taming the wolves. Being thrown to the wolves, or throwing others to the wolves so the wolves will eat them instead of you. Running with the wolf pack. Turning into a wolf. Best of all, turning into the head wolf. No other decent stories exist. Margaret Atwood — The Blind Assassin

Every career has a story to tell — if it’s compelling enough to tell is the question that should drives us. For the purpose of this post, I want to focus on becoming and acting as the head wolf. Not every one can be the head wolf otherwise there won’t be a pack but every pack absolutely needs a head wolf to survive.

There are a many keys to lead properly, but here are some that I believe are vital for any pack leader:

Find a Risk Worth Taking

The head wolf takes risks and leads from the front of the pack. Taking a risk is seeing beyond an idea and realizing, when not many believe in it, what it can become with the right direction. These risks have just as much of a possibility of failure, if not more, than success but you don’t focus on that.

Believe in Yourself

Taking a risk shows that you believe in yourself, your brand and if your belief is strong enough others start to believe it and they become the start of your wolf pack. And this is when leaders start to lead. People that call themselves leaders but don’t take risks need to have a business card to show people they have a “lead” in their title, yet no one else would make the correlation without it.

Evolve — Internally and Externally

The key is knowing yourself to gain the confidence enough to think bigger than most and take the risks you need to evolve into the wolf that you truly are. Ultimately the pack looks to the leader to add direction and value to them personally and professionally. Don’t expect that this evolution will just come to you, look outside and seek out people that can help you evolve, pick up a good habit like running or meditation that will help you get the perspective internally you need to look at things differently.

Don’t Dwell

If you don’t take risks, you stagnate and dwell in a pack of flea covered wolves and you’re scratching more than your head asking yourself “How did I get here”. The most telling is when you realize the truth of how you get out and it scares you back into submission. Always keep moving forward.

Focus

A wise man recently told me that you need to learn to just say “I’m not doing that” and focus on the things you want to do, the things you believe in. If you do that, you start seeing everything as an opportunity and the most rewarding ones are always the risky ones and the risky ones always need a pack leader to become truly special.

Originally published at www.linkedin.com.