Why Being a “Vanilla Person” Enhances Leadership
🥣I was sitting with a bowl of Keto friendly vanilla ice cream the other night, marvelling at how this creation had no sugar in it and still tasted so yummy! 😋
Keto is my new thing at the moment, I have the positive peer pressure of my high performing friends Mark, Perry and Elom to thank for that! 💪
I digress, as I was eating this deliciousness 🍦I was thinking of all the ways you could complement this ice cream with different toppings and ingredients, flavours of every sort.
🍨That’s the beauty of Vanilla Ice cream vs Chocolate or Strawberry, you can do anything with it and it will always work because of its vanilla!
This got me thinking about being classed as a vanilla kind of person. 👨💼Being someone who didn’t have a strong personality! A person who was easy to be around and can to blend into almost anything and improve that thing.
🧒🏻When I was growing up and looking for a male role model all I saw were men with big personalities fighting for attention, to me, this seemed to be what a real man was. 🥊
©So, I copied this, developing a strong personality that some would find overbearing and demanding.
👺This personality developed further in high school with all the accompanying shame and fear that gets accumulated during our formative years.
What I was left with was a flavour of personality that was becoming difficult to blend.
Over the years I tried to improve my life and found success here and there, but what I didn’t realise until much later was that a stronger personality meant limitation. ⛓
Very little capacity for reinvention (the kind that transforms a bowl of vanilla ice cream into a hot fudge sundae or a banana split).
Have you ever experienced this, when you meet someone who is “set in their ways” no room for improvement or reinvention, just more of the same?
Eventually, I realised that my ability to lead myself and others was not possible unless I began to strip away the personality I thought I was, to access my Core identity so to speak.
🏃🏼♂️Moving away from repetitive thoughts and behaviours that I had attached to WHO I AM. Such as people-pleasing, self-sabotage, and angry outbursts.
What I have found is that the more “vanilla” I become, the easier it is for me to become something else for a while without needing to stay that way permanently.🎭
Being vanilla means freedom from a pre-set outcome. A predetermined life. A permanent personality.
📚When you’re vanilla you become the Author of your own identity in each moment. Amazingly how the word Author and Authentic have the same etymological root)
Could it be that real Authenticity is reinventing yourself from vanilla each time, each day, each moment? Like being a screenwriter and an actor at the same time!
Can you imagine what that could do for you?
To become an actor willing to take on any role, to BE or not to BE anyone you wish! without attachment?
So if you got this far, what are some of the limitations that your current flavour imposes on you?
AND< Just for today, how could you be 5% more vanilla?
With love,
Ryan
