What can a simple, ordinary, everyday Hobbit by the name of Bilbo Baggins teach us about life and leadership?
Well if you’re anything like the millions of adults and children world-wide who have already seen this phenomenon of movie, you’ll realise that there are a few key ingredients that every life adventurer, hero and ‘quest taker’ needs to be successful on the journey towards rediscovering the courage, power and purpose within.
After close to 3 hours of stunning landscapes, epic battles fraught with danger, incredible computer generated imagery, and an ending that left everything up in the air The Hobbit which has already taken in excess of $1 billion dollars at the box-office world-wide certainly has a story and deeper message for all of us.
So here it is …
My Top 8 Life and Leadership Lessons from Middle Earth …
That will help you develop greater courage, certainty and confidence to follow your own personal life quest.
1. You Must Be Willing to Leave Home
As with all great adventures the quest for greatness always begins … well from ‘The Beginning’! In the case of The Hobbit a young Bilbo Baggins finds that his first step in embracing the ‘unexpected adventure’ is simply that he needs to first leave the comfort of his own home. The place where he has his routine, is accustomed to habit, where there is no uncertainty or challenges to be faced.
All of us have our own homes. The quiet little places that we call our comfort zones. All of us also have at sometime chosen to stay where we are, rather than take a leap of faith, a step of courage and join an amazing adventure of life.
The Lesson: You will never find your holy grail until you have the courage to leave the comfort of your own home.
So where do you need to leave home? What unexpected adventure do you need to step out and embrace today?
2. You Need a Team on a Quest
Have you ever noticed that nearly every person who has ever been successful in life – did not get their on their own? After all … any quest that is worthwhile needs the support, alliance, skills and encouragement of a committed and supportive team.
Along his journey the young Hobbit Bilbo is joined by a wizard, dwarves and elves, each with their own skills, talents and innate abilities. Some can fight, others shoot arrows, some weave magic, while others provide encouragement, acknowledgement and support.
The Lesson: Don’t struggle on your own, when all around you are people with the skills and willingness to help.
So… what door do you need to knock on? Who do you need to ask? Who needs to be a vital part of your leadership team?
3. You Need an Inspiring Vision
How do you get people to follow you on a quest? Especially when that quest may involve uncertainty, challenges and hardships?
Every great leader knows that an ‘inspired vision’ is the fuel that brings people together as one, and creates the inspiration and influence to unleash real magic in the world.
The Lesson: Vision ignites souls. Vision connects. Vision has the capacity to powerfully create change.
Is your life or business vision clear? Does it inspire you? Does it move you to be filled with tears of joy, happiness, gratitude? Remember – if doesn’t move you – how can you expect it to move others.
4. You Need to Believe in Magic
Isn’t it funny how as children we can believe that anything is possible, yet as we grow older we lose that sense of enchantment, that sense of mystery and wonder to even believe in the unbelievable?
The reality is that each of us have access to our own wizard, our own ‘Gandalf’ within. The power to weave and create magic within our lives is not outside of us, it’s an inherent part of our soul that is just waiting to be awakened.
The Lesson: To create magic in your life you first have to believe in it. To believe in it you have to know that you are the co-creator.
That by shifting your awareness, your consciousness, your thoughts and beliefs – just maybe , you can create miracles – powerful shift in perception.
What do you believe in currently impossible to change? Where do you feel stuck and limited? What would truly owning your power mean to you?
5. Find Your Courage
A great revelation from the unexpected adventure of Bilbo Baggins in The Hobbit is that courage in not found in the absence of fear. But rather true courage is the ability to take action in spite of great fear.
Every great leader and master has experienced some form of fear in the midst of pursuing their highest goals and dreams. The question is: will you choose to act from a place of “creation” or “desperation”, will you choose to “respond” or “react” to your situation?
The first is driven by a belief in self and the faith that the power to create the results you want are within you right now. While latter is driven by fear, a need to escape or get out of a situation that causes you grief, pain or hardship.
The Lesson: Your greatest life challenge now, also holds within it the seed of great opportunity. How you choose to respond or react is up to you.
What action do you now need to take in the face of your greatest fear or challenge?
6. It’s What’s Underground that Often Matters Most
At one point in The Hobbit movie Bilbo and his faithful companions find themselves captured underground, beneath the earth in the goblin’s lair. A place that is just filled with nightmarish ghouls that want to destroy them.
Often when we look at our life results we can sometimes feel disappointed and disillusioned that we are not where we ideally want to be. We can easily look at what’s happening in our life on the surface, and question why we’re not producing the financial fruits, the relationship fruits, the career and business fruits that we really desire. However as T. Harv Eker often says “It’s the roots that create the fruits”.
Just like in The Hobbit sometimes we have to look for the goblins, the beliefs and limiting patterns, that exist within our own unconscious thoughts that lie beneath the surface. Just knowing that we have almost 60,000 thoughts a day of which 90% are the same as yesterday should tell us something!
The Lesson: If the “roots create the fruits” then you had better start first attending to what’s really beneath the surface of your own consciousness.
7. You Need to Find Your Inner-Warrior
Go back 1000 or even 2000 years and you’ll notice that in the shadow of the great wars, battles and conflicts was an inherent ‘warrior spirit’ within the heart and souls of men and women who were driven by the need for survival, and the glory of conquest.
In our modern world, we have almost forgone the need to connect with our ‘inner warrior’ that part of every man and women that can be the fuel, the fire and the persistence needed to realise a chosen objective. After all, how many of us really feel threatened by our existence, how many of us find ourselves in situations of survival or battle every day.
While many may shirk at the notion of being a ‘warrior’, sometimes in life we need to find the inner-courage, the inner-fire, the positive anger that helps us to ‘take back our power’ and breakthrough limitations that keep us captive or stuck. Even Bilbo Baggins had to pick up his Elven sword and find the courage to step forward and slay the wilder beast.
Life Lesson: Don’t be afraid of showing your ‘inner-warrior’. When you channel your positive anger towards a worthy cause, you ignite the spirit of destiny that exists within every leader.
Where do I need to pick up my sword and fight for what I believe in today?
8. The Movie Doesn’t End
If you’re like me, then you were probably left feeling a little deflated with the ending of The Hobbit – An Unexpected Adventure.
Just when it appears that good had triumphed over evil, and that the adventurers were about to realise their quest – the movie ended. Yes ended, without any resolution, without any conquest, without completion. Why? Because the director in his or her wisdom knew that the real story was not complete, that in fact there just might be another movie or two still before we arrive at our destination.
Isn’t it funny how our lives are pretty much the same. We are here for a moment in eternity, a fleeting glimpse between a birth and a death, where the only things we will take our life experiences, the ways that we have grown and the gratitude for the people we have most influenced.
Life Lesson: Great leaders know that they only have a short time in this life. Perspective helps us to realise that we only have a moment to make a difference. To stand for something great that we believe in. And to be the very best that they can be.
So what do you want the rest of this movie that is your life to be about??