Marjorie Dudley

Back-to-school season is here, and with it comes new teachers, new routines, new schedules…and apparently, new opportunities to test my self-leadership before 8:00 a.m.

My kids are in a new school building this year, which means a brand-new traffic pattern for the carpool line. There are four lanes, a ton of kids, cars everywhere, and—as you might expect during the first few weeks—a little bit of chaos.

And then there is that dad.

For the last couple of days, he has found a way to cut the line.

Every. Single. Time.

And it frustrates the heck out of me.

Now, logically, I know this is not a crisis. No one is in danger. The additional delay probably amounts to a minute or two. In the grand scheme of my day, it means absolutely nothing.

But there I am, sitting in my car thinking, Seriously? We are all waiting. What makes you think you don’t have to?

And strangely enough, it made me think about Dolly Parton.

One of the things I’ve always admired about Dolly is that her joy seems to come from within. She doesn’t appear to hand other people control over her emotional state. She chooses joy. She chooses humor. She chooses to spread light.

She seems remarkably unbothered.

And there I was, letting a stranger in an SUV determine my mood before I’d even finished my morning coffee.

The irony wasn’t lost on me.

It also reminded me of something I wrote about in Lead Yourself First: sometimes the very values that make us who we are can work against us when we allow them to extend beyond where they serve us.

I have a deeply rooted value around fairness. Rightness matters to me. Rules matter. If everyone else is waiting their turn, you wait your turn.

There are plenty of places where that value serves me well. It shapes how I lead, how I make decisions, how I advocate for people and how I approach accountability.

But values can have a shadow side.

My commitment to fairness doesn’t require me to become emotionally invested every time someone else behaves unfairly.

My belief in doing the right thing doesn’t mean I need to internally prosecute every person who doesn’t.

And my standards for my own behavior don’t automatically become standards I get to impose on every stranger I encounter.

That’s where self-awareness has to become self-leadership.

Tony Robbins has often taught a version of this idea: other people don’t simply “make” us feel something. We participate in our own emotional response.

That’s uncomfortable because it takes away one of our favorite excuses.

He made me angry.

She ruined my morning.

They frustrated me.

Did they?

Or did they do something—and then I gave that action permission to occupy far more of my attention and emotional energy than it deserved?

That’s the real work.

We often think leadership is demonstrated in the big moments: the difficult conversation, the crisis, the major decision, the presentation in front of hundreds of people.

But leadership is also practiced in a carpool line.

It’s practiced when someone cuts you off in traffic.

When an email arrives with a tone you don’t appreciate.

When a coworker doesn’t follow the process.

When someone is rude at the grocery store.

When your spouse leaves something on the counter for the 947th time.

Those moments feel insignificant, but they’re repetitions. And repetitions become habits.

If every small inconvenience gets to dictate our emotional state, we are practicing reactivity.

If we can notice the reaction, understand where it’s coming from, and intentionally choose what deserves our energy, we’re practicing self-leadership.

That doesn’t mean becoming passive. It doesn’t mean abandoning standards, ignoring injustice or pretending things don’t bother us.

It means developing enough self-awareness to know the difference between something that requires our action and something that merely invites our irritation.

That’s a distinction I am still learning.

And maybe that’s part of what made Dolly Parton so magnetic. Her light didn’t seem dependent on everyone around her behaving the way she wanted them to behave. She didn’t need the world to cooperate before she decided who she was going to be in it.

There is tremendous power in that.

The goal isn’t to become a person who never gets annoyed. I’m certainly not there—and carpool dad may continue providing me with opportunities to practice.

The goal is to shorten the distance between reaction and intentional response.

To catch ourselves thinking, This is really bothering me, and become curious about why.

What value is being poked?

What expectation isn’t being met?

Does something actually need to be done?

Or am I allowing someone else’s choices to determine who I become for the next five minutes, hour or entire day?

Lead Yourself First is built around the idea that leadership starts long before anyone follows us. It starts with the ability to understand ourselves, manage ourselves and intentionally choose who we want to be—especially when circumstances make that choice harder.

Sometimes that lesson comes from adversity.

Sometimes it comes from the people we admire.

And apparently, sometimes it comes from Dolly Parton and a dad cutting the carpool line.

Tomorrow morning, he may cut me off again.

I can’t control that.

But I can decide whether he gets to take my peace with him.

And maybe that’s the whole point.

Lead yourself first—because not everything that deserves your attention deserves your energy.

Stay Relentless.