The book, ‘Launching Leaders: An Empowering Journey for a New Generation’ is all about helping our newly emerging leaders, the Millennial generation, to make sure they achieve a true fullness in their lives.
It is broken down into 12 chapters.
Chapter 1: Taking Control of Your Life
To take control of your life you need to know that you are a child of God. With that understanding comes the responsibility of working to align your life with what God would have you do. This will involve you learning to remove yourself from the noise of the world, and to learn to communicate with God and receive personal revelation from Him. When you receive inspiration from God, trust Him by taking action immediately, even if it doesn’t fully make sense to you or even if you feel the timing is not right.
This is summarized into a cycle called the Cycle of Spiritual Guidance. This cycle has the following 6 steps:
- Discover your true identity
- Trust your inner voice
- Have faith to act right away
- Be at peace with Heaven’s timing
- Live well
- Repeat throughout your life
Chapter 2: Who Do You Want to Become?
Consider deeply and write down the person you want to become. What are the core values that are important to you and you want to remain true to throughout your life? Are these values in alignment with God’s values? Find joy in the process of becoming and be patient with yourself in developing Christ-like attributes.
Here are the 5 steps to follow in developing your Core Values:
- Find holy ground
- Ponder
- Write Core Value Statements
- Rank your Core Values
- Do your Core Values align with God?
Chapter 3: Mentors: Your Bridge to Success
No person is an island. You can’t achieve your full potential and have a balanced life unless you have mentors. Your greatest mentor should be God. Good mentors lift and inspire, but mentorship is a two-way deal… you must be the type of person that a mentor would like to work with, and you must give to the relationship what you can in return. A healthy mentoring relationship grows over time in trust and friendship. You also must pay it forward by becoming a mentor to others.
Chapter 4: Charting Your Course
Once you have laid the foundation of understanding who you truly are, have established what type of person you want to become in life, and have found your mentors, it’s time to chart the course you will take to get there. There will be multiple long-term goals (destinations) you will want to reach in your life. For each of these you will need to break them down to shorter goals (waypoints) that will help you get there.
Chapter 5: The Formula
There is a formula for achieving your goals. The 6 steps of this formula are:
- Get up early
- Work hard
- Get your education
- Find your oil (product or service you can provide that has value)
- Make your mark
- Give back
Chapter 6: Beware the Double Life
You can’t achieve lasting success, peace and happiness if you are not living true to your principles all the time and in all facets of your life. The small and simple things we do each day are sometimes more important than the bigger choices we make.
Chapter 7: Habits of Success
Your long-term life goals should be broken down into daily to-dos. Be grateful for what you have and the journey. Live in the moment. Understanding the why of what you are doing will help with motivation and consistency. Keep working on your daily to-dos until they are habits.
Chapter 8: Financial Fitness
Making a lot of money is not as important as how you manage money. For those who are not ‘financially fit’ money can come and go easily. The 5 step model for becoming financially fit is:
- Work productively (working hard doesn’t always mean you are being productive)
- Put aside money for yourself first in an ‘Independence Account’ for investments. Once this has reached a level that it covers your living expenses, you have become financially independent.
- Pay tithes
- Establish a budget and stick to it
- Create a ‘rainy-day’ savings account and add money to it regularly
- Create a ‘wish list’ savings account for special items you want
Chapter 9: Rise Above and Make a Difference
Inspiring life goals will cause you discomfort as you grow and change. This discomfort is normal and to be expected, even embraced, because it is inevitable and can be seen everywhere in the natural world around us. You can only make a positive impact on the world if you are willing to go above and beyond the norm.
Chapter 10: Effective Communication and the Power of Storytelling
Effective communication is one of the fundamental skills of all good leaders. One of the most powerful communication tools you can use is stories. Stories are powerful because they are easy to remember, and if constructed well, generate emotions that inspire and can change people. They can teach powerful lessons without being ‘preachy’.
Chapter 11: Giving Back
Giving back is one of the most important parts of the successful formula outlined in this book. The reason is because we can’t achieve a life of inner harmony and peace if we don’t pay it forward by giving back to the community. One example of who this could be done is being a mentor to someone yourself.
You don’t need to wait until you have created an amazing business, or until you are financially independent. You can begin serving those who are more junior than yourself and that haven’t yet achieved what you have. These acts of service don’t need to be grand. They can be small and simple… in fact, these are usually the most meaningful and impactful.
Chapter 12: Onward
After reading this book, it is your responsibility and privilege to put this proven formula of success into practice. To help you along this journey, it is recommended to keep a journal, pray, and being careful about the choices you make every single day. It’s time to move onward!