Leadership Is More Than a Title—It’s a Life Well Led

Most people don’t fail at leadership because they lack the necessary skills to lead. Rather, they fail because they never fully understood what leadership really is. Instead, they chase titles, power, and influence. And in the process, they end up chasing time too—watching years slip by without ever fully living them.

Leadership isn’t something you perform when the spotlight hits. It’s how you live when no one’s paying attention. It’s the choice to lead yourself first—through success, through setbacks, and through every ordinary moment in between.

If you want a life that’s fully lived—not just passed through—you have to stop treating leadership as a title you earn and start treating it as a way of being.

Stoic Leadership Principles Have the Power to Transform Leaders

The Stoics understood this long before LinkedIn profiles and job promotions. Epictetus, a Stoic philosopher who knew hardship firsthand, said it plainly: “Every event has two handles: one by which it can be carried, and one by which it cannot.”

You don’t control every event, but you do control which handle you grab. And choosing the handle you grab determines whether you pass through your life—or actually live it.

Here are Five Ways to Embrace Leadership as a Lifestyle:

1. Understand That Every Situation Comes with Two Handles
   Every moment gives you two handles. One by which it can be carried—and one that cannot. The wrong handle doesn’t fail because the challenge was too big. It fails because it was never built to hold. It just looked easier in the moment.

   When tension rises, do you grab the handle of anger or the one of composure? When you fail, do you look for someone to blame, or do you take ownership of the situation? When your ego flares, do you protect it, or do you lead in spite of it?

   Grabbing the handle that holds doesn’t just determine how you move through hard moments. It determines whether you live your life—or just react to it.

   Leadership isn’t about what happens to you. It’s about how you choose to carry it.

2. Take Ownership of How You Lead
   Authority is granted through external titles, giving someone the right to command. Power, on the other hand, is often based on something that can be leveraged like status, resources or money. Leadership is different. It comes from how you live. How you lead is always within your control and it can inspire other people in a way that authority and power cannot.

   If your ability to lead disappears when your title does, it was never leadership to begin with. Real leadership isn’t about getting others to move for you, it’s about inspiring movement because of who you are.

   Leadership doesn’t wait for permission. It’s a decision you make, every moment, to lead yourself first.

3. Recognize That Obstacles Aren’t Detours—They Are the Path
   Amor Fati—love of fate—is a Stoic mindset that doesn’t just accept obstacles.

   It uses them. It means that you don’t just take the hits and survive, you get stronger because of them. You grow through adversity, not around it. Obstacles are invitations to build something better, tougher and more aligned.

   Leadership doesn’t fight reality, it makes reality work for it.

4. Take the Time to Think Through a Situation
   Most people react to adversity without thinking. But true leaders pause. That pause—the leadership reflex—is what makes the difference. It’s like the parent car arm: the instinct to throw your arm out in front of your kid when you slam on the brakes. It’s that immediate instinct to protect, pause, reassess—instead of lashing out or shutting down.

   But taking the time to pause and be curious forces the question:

   Is this obstacle actually a dead end—or is it an opportunity?

   Leadership isn’t a knee-jerk response. It’s about leaning in, taking the time to think and finding the opening.

5. Fight For What Really Matters
   Endurance isn’t about stubbornly pushing through for the sake of pride. It’s about chasing the outcomes that actually matter—not the ones that look good on paper, or the ones that win the meeting. I’m talking about the ones that align with your integrity, your purpose, and your real mission.

You can “win” and still lose everything that counts.

Leaders who endure build from the inside out. They trust the long game—and live for the outcome that holds.

Written by Becky Schmooke.
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