Leadership is when we care for others and work with everyone to attain goals. A great leader always works with his/her team. Always understanding and supporting their needs.

In this photo below, the leader of this pack of wolves is where the blue arrow is pointing.

A true leader is always behind the pack. S/he has got their back in every sense.

But before you can care for others, you need to care and understand yourself. That is why in an airplane, they announce put your own oxygen mask before helping another.

5 Skills of Being a Great Leader

1. Being Aware of Your Feelings

The first step is to be aware of yourself. And the first step of being aware is naming and understanding feelings.

We feel multiple things in a day – happiness, sadness, guilt, anger, joy, love, jealousy and many more emotions. As humans these emotions guide the way we look at our world and deal with situations.

A great way to be aware is to identify and name emotions. When you know this you can successfully tell your parents how you feel and together you can find how to deal with negative emotions and celebrate positive emotions.

Below are some activities you can do at home to identify & name emotions:

2. Keeping Your Cool

Now that we have identified what we are feeling, the next skill is to manage the emotion. Some emotions overwhelm us and we need tools to help us to feel okay again.

These are 5 tools come in Keeping Our Cool!

1. Breathe In the Flowers & Breathe Out Your Birthday Candles!

Breathing helps to switch off our fight/flight response in our brain. When this response switches off we can actually think of proper solutions.

So when you are getting upset close your eyes and imagine a beautiful garden and breathe in the lovely flowers, and when you breathe out imagine your birthday cake and candles and blow hard!

2. Listen to Music

Music takes your attention away and calms you down. It may give you the break you need to deal with it later.

3. Draw/Write in A Journal

Drawing or writing your worries or anger away helps to diffuse the problem in your brain and may help you find a different way of looking at the situation.

4. Hug A Soft Toy or Family Member

Hugging emits good hormones in our body like oxytocin and makes us feel instantly better in our brains and hearts. So when you wanna feel better, ask for a hug from a parent or hug your pet or favorite soft toy!

5. Happy Place

To fly away from the current scenario to more happier times so all those lovely emotions can flood your body and you start feeling safer and happier.

Like the children above think of a time when you were really happy:)

3. Believing In Yourself

Now that we know about emotions let’s talk about how we feel about ourselves and why it’s important.

Self love is when we can love, believe and forgive ourselves. This means to care and nurture our own emotions, believe that we can do things and forgive ourselves when we make mistakes.

Things to tell yourself everyday

I am good enough

I am brave

I am creative

I am wonderful

I am amazing

I am a super kid

Write your favorite thing to tell yourself on a piece of paper and stick it on top of your mirror. Say this to yourself at the start of every day. And you will become what you believe.

If you will not believe in yourself, who will?

4. Keeping On Learning

Now that you believe, you must continue to grow. A growth mindset means you can learn any skill with practice. It means that we are not born a certain way and remain that all our life.

We can choose to grow, adapt, change and become anything we want.

When your mind says – ‘I cannot do this‘ – just add a YET

I can’t read YET, I can’t swim YET, I can’t sing YET, I can’t draw YET

Change what you say to yourself and you can change everything!

5. Understanding Another’s Feelings

And as you grow the final quality a leader must have is – empathy. Empathy means understanding another’s feelings and perspective. (To know more about empathy & perspective please click on links and read the article)

Empathy allows us to share feelings with others and understand their emotions. It helps us know our family and friends better and makes us care better for them.

Sometimes I feel just like you, I understand what you’re going through

Sometimes you feel just like me, that understanding is called empathy

You, Me & Empathy

Below are some fun activities you can ask your parent to do with you to understand empathy better!

So have fun trying all these activities and becoming a better leader for tomorrow!

Our world needs leaders like you!

(This article is dedicated to my daughter – Aashvi. She inspires, challenges, and urges me to be more. And always awaits my next kid’s read!)