Asher's Blog

One of the most difficult things to do, perhaps the most difficult, is to consistently do what we tell others to do. It’s fascinating how good we are at teaching, advising, and correcting, yet how poor we often are at learning and applying those same lessons to ourselves. We make mistakes, learn from them, and sometimes even learn the wrong lessons from the right experiences.

After one of our Monday leadership sessions, a colleague asked me an interesting question. She wondered whether an opportunity could actually be a distraction. Specifically, she asked whether a better job offer could distract someone from their true priorities.

My response was simple: anything can be a distraction.

More money can be a distraction, even if you’re not yet the richest. More influence can be a distraction if it pulls you away from your core mission. I’ve seen this play out personally. One of my friends holds a leadership role in an international NGO, doing genuinely good and meaningful work. But over time, that responsibility has displaced his focus on building his own business and sharpening the core skills that entrepreneurship demands. The result is that while he’s busy, he’s no longer intentional about his long-term goals.

Leading yourself requires discernment, knowing what to accept, what to defer, and what to decline, even when those things look good on the surface.

Beyond the usual advice, here are a few principles I believe are especially important when it comes to leading yourself well.

1. Get Ambitious

Everyone solves problems. What differentiates people is the quality of the problem they choose to solve, who they solve it for, and how quickly they solve it. These factors largely determine the value that comes back to them.

Ambition has been unfairly labelled as selfish, but it doesn’t have to be. Healthy ambition is about scale and impact. You should be ambitious about the size of the problem you’re solving and the effect your solution has on society. As your capability grows, you should also be ambitious about solving more problems and creating more value.

Ambition, when properly framed, is not self-serving, it’s value-multiplying. It forces you to try new things, stretch your thinking, and dare to move beyond what feels safe. As the saying goes, if you must think at all, you might as well think big.

2. Get Disciplined

Military service is one of the most respected professions globally, and one reason for this is its predictability. Regardless of geography, the military operates on discipline, structure, and accountability. Duties are performed not based on feelings, but on responsibility. A yes is a yes. A no is a no. Indiscipline has consequences. 

There is no meaningful achievement without discipline.

If you want to build anything significant, you must cultivate consistency in the small things. This is a principle I expect to spend many years unpacking. Discipline isn’t built overnight, it’s formed one habit at a time.

Personally, there are many habits I want to develop, but I’m learning to tackle them sequentially. Two of my current daily habits are being intentionally thankful three times a day (prompted by alarms) and blogging daily. I wouldn’t say I’ve mastered either yet, because I still falter, especially when I miss a reminder. The truth is, a behaviour isn’t yet a habit if it requires an external trigger. It becomes a habit when it happens naturally, without prompting.

Habits are notoriously difficult to form, and even harder to break. Willpower alone is rarely sufficient. This is why it’s important to be cautious about what you start doing repeatedly. What you do the second, third, fourth, or fifth time matters more than the first. If you don’t want a habit to form, don’t start it. If you’ve already started one you want to stop, there are two practical approaches that help.

First, replace the habit rather than trying to remove it. Research in behavioural psychology consistently shows that habits are cue–response–reward loops. Triggers may be time-based, emotional, environmental, sensory, or pressure-driven. The most effective way to interrupt a habit is not to resist the trigger, but to replace the response. This requires deciding ahead of time what you’ll do when the trigger appears. You may not always get it right at first, and that’s okay. Progress matters more than perfection.

Second, document the habit when it happens. Write down what you were thinking and experiencing in the six hours leading up to the behaviour: six, five, four, three, two, one hour before. Note emotional states, environments, conversations, repeated words, or stressors. This reflective practice, supported by cognitive behavioural research, helps surface patterns you may not consciously recognise. Awareness is often the first step toward change.

Leading yourself well is not about control, it’s about clarity. It’s about choosing ambition without distraction, discipline without rigidity, and growth without self-deception. Before you can lead others effectively, you must be honest about what drives you, what distracts you, and what habits you are unconsciously reinforcing.