I watched as hundreds of chattering High School girls blazed a new path across the college campus where they were attending a summer camp.

But to my surprise, they were ALL heading in the wrong direction!

I had recently been told that people were like cattle. They blindly followed the herd wherever it went. Even if it was wrong.

I had a hard time believing this, until I witnessed it with my own eyes.

I confess, I have often found myself in a daze, in the midst of traffic, only to realize too late that I missed my exit.

Distracted by conversations, cell phones and various activities we often tend to let the crowd determine the direction we are going in.

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we just had a built in GPS for life?

Enter in your life’s goals and the GPS would give you a turn by turn map for the next several years. All of the decisions premade for you.

No fear or trepidation of making a mistake or missing our true calling!

But that would be too safe. Where is the sense of adventure in that?

You’ll notice there tends to be two types of people in the world –

Leaders and Followers.

Being a leader doesn’t have to be designated by a title. You may be a leader without even realizing it.

Someone was leading that group of High School girls, unfortunately she was leading them in the wrong direction!

There lies the critical difference in being a successful leader – you have to have a specific destination in mind.

Most followers are content to go along with the crowd assuming the leader is going to take them where they want to end up.

That is as crazy as driving down the highway, following the flow of traffic, assuming that you will arrive at your destination.

You think that’s funny, but most people live like this on a day to day basis.

How about you?

Are you leading? If you are, do you have a specific end goal in mind?

Or, are you a follower? Being a follower is not a bad thing. The greatest teams consist mostly of really great followers.

But a great follower has faith that the person they chose to follow has the same end goal in mind.

Without that tangible GPS we have to rely on our internal one.

So, the key factor is really for everyone to have a desired objective.

Leaders lead, and followers choose to follow someone that they can join with to forge a path to their desired destination.

Both will probably have a few detours and take some breaks along the road, but that is the exciting part of the journey.

More importantly, the idea is not to get discouraged when the road does detour

and the journey doesn’t seem to be turning out at all like you planned.

Do you ever feel like you are the only one going in a certain direction?

It can be a scary feeling.

I felt the same way that day, like maybe I missed something, but I knew where I was supposed to be going, so I went that way alone.

Then others behind me saw there was more than one choice. They were able to choose to go with the crowd or towards our next destination.

You never know who may be watching to see where you choose to go.

Stay focused on your destination and the team you are traveling with whether you are leading or following.

Either way don’t end up in a herd of cattle going in the wrong direction.

Love,

Pazazdance