The Chief Executive Officer of Your Life—You!

Too many people leave their life’s direction and meaning to others.

They abdicate responsibility for their happiness, for their satisfaction, and for their results. They wait for someone else to do something. They blame others when things are not as they would want them to be . . . if only they had the power to change things.

There is only one person with the power to change things.

You, CEO.

The Chief Executive Officer is the highest-ranking executive function in business. This idea can and should be applied to your life: You, Inc.

You are the CEO of your life. And it’s a lot of responsibility (with a relatively short tenure, too).

You are ultimately responsible for all of the outcomes of your life and all of the results. Outcomes aren’t necessarily positive, but you are going to produce them anyway. Results are positive, and it is your job to make sure that the results that you produce are positive and something more than just outcomes.

As the Chief Executive of your life, you are responsible for developing a vision for your life. You are responsible for determining what your life will mean to you—and what it might mean to others.

Either you develop the vision for your life, or you have one provided for you by other people’s expectations (some faction of society, enabled by the television, the Internet, the media, etc., will be more than happy to provide you with a shallow, unfulfilling vision if you allow them to).

This isn’t easy. It’s not supposed to be. No one wants a legacy that is this: “He could have been someone who did something really great, but he decided to conform to the low expectations the world had for him instead. He could have lived, loved, laughed, and left a legacy, but he decided to watch a bit of television instead.”

Most of us don’t spend nearly enough time thinking about our responsibility as Chief Executive Officer of our lives. Worse still, too many of us have too small a vision of ourselves, and all of us are capable of much, much more. But even when you get the vision right, the execution isn’t easy.

Who will you be?

Execution is Everything

You provide the vision and you provide the heavy lifting that is the execution. Your not only the Chief Executive Officer, you are also the only employee of You, Inc.

It’s easy to get caught up in the daily demands life throws your way. It’s unbelievably easy to spend your time responding to other people’s demands of you, never taking the time to reflect on whether or not the activities that you take are moving you closer to your vision.

It’s hard to say “no.” But you have to say “no” to all of the things that will prevent you from making your life what you want it to be. If you don’t say “no” to the unimportant, you won’t have room to say “yes” to the things that move you closer to your vision.

What’s important to you? What’s really, really important to you? Is it reflected on your calendar? More still, is it reflected in your relationships? (I write this after most recently being accused in the comments of a post of writing “kumbaya crap.” So be it. Kumbaya!) Think relationships.

As the Chief Executive Officer of your life, you have to make sure that all of your efforts and energies are used to produce the life that you imagine for yourself. You have to measure the results and determine whether or not the results are what they need to be or if changes must be made to the strategy or the execution.

Maybe your only employee needs to be working a little harder?