Session 26. These are the last five sessions. But don’t zone out because these are going to be important lessons for your leadership journey.
Back on day 15, we talked about writing your story. Let’s circle back around to that today with a context you may not have considered. 
To keep things simple, let’s consider ourselves as the main character in our story. After all, this is our life. There’s nothing necessarily selfish about it. We’re looking through our eyes, seeing things the way we see them, and experiencing what we’re experiencing. Perfectly natural. 
And we’ve got two primary options in living the life of this main character that is OUR life. We’re busy writing a hero story or a victim story. 
Think of yourself in those terms. Hero or victim. Examine your life and you’re writing one story or the other. But your story is comprised of many smaller stories. There’s your overall story and then there are the specific chapters of your story. All those little stories that sum up your main story. 
From King Arthur to Sherlock Holmes to Superman – heroes are always heroes. Sometimes they suffer defeat. Sometimes they make foolish decisions. Even superheroes aren’t perfect. You aren’t either. And that’s okay. 
But their overall story – the way everybody would characterize their lives – is the life of a hero. 
When we think of victims we may think of people who were murdered. No matter what kind of person they were we may feel sadness, sympathy, and even sorrow that somebody’s lost their life to such violence. In some cases, people are killed because they’re involved in dangerous things. Or they’re in dangerous situations. Or they’re choosing to be around dangerous people. But sometimes murder is random. Sometimes it’s not through any fault or decision on the part of the victim. 
But there’s a much wider population of victims. In 2019 there were just under 20,000 murder victims in the U.S. That’s entirely too many murders, but a single murder is too many. Sadly, the people who are writing a victim story of their own life number in the millions and millions. People who are choosing to see themselves as pawns of others, or of circumstances beyond their control. 
As a leader, you must write a hero story for yourself and for others you hope to influence. All the people you serve can be influenced by you to write their own hero story. But only if you show them how. 
Heroes Emerge From Burning Buildings, Not Instagram Photos
There’s something we don’t often consider about heroes and that’s, “How are they made?”
Well, they’re not made by living an Instagram life filled with great vacations, exotic cars, and beautiful people. Heroes were made at 911 by greasy, sweaty, exhausted firefighters trying to lead people out of those towers. Heroes were made by a group of randomly thrown together strangers on an airliner when they decided to storm the terrorists and bring a plane destined to kill others. Heroes emerge from disasters, calamities, crises, danger, obstacles, and bad situations. 
Sometimes leaders emerge in such situations. Sometimes leaders find themselves in those circumstances. 
Everybody can be a leader because we all have the capacity to write a story where we’re able to influence others and do for them what they can’t do for themselves. 
Everybody can be a hero because we all have the capacity to write a story where we’re able to rise to the occasion and refuse to be victimized by others or by a situation, no matter who or what caused it.