What comes to your mind when you think of the word “leader”?  The President of the United States? The CEO of a major company? Perhaps somebody who has made a name for themselves in entertainment or sports? These are all examples of people with powerful worldwide influence both professionally and personally.  Almost everything they do makes the news and millions of people follow their good or bad examples, depending on what lifestyle they are leading. This is a lot of responsibility! Do you think you could handle it?  Perhaps you are saying to yourself “I’m glad I’m not famous!”

The thing is, whether you are famous or not you probably have a much bigger sphere of influence than you realize. You influence all the people you know every day by the decisions you make, the things you say, the way you spend your money, the car you drive and even the way you handle your love life! People are watching you at home, in your neighborhood, at church, at your children’s soccer games and everywhere else you go. Also, if you are involved in social media you could be regularly influencing people all over the world who don’t even know you personally.

This means every one of us is in leadership! We may not be mentioned on the news regularly or have our names on a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, but everyone’s life has a strong influence on somebody.  The problem is those of us who have been living in relative obscurity often think of our lives as “private” and that what we do is “our own business”. However, what we do can inspire other people to follow in our footsteps whether we want them to or not! The good news is that we can really help people by the way we live our daily lives.

Perhaps the best examples I know of positive leadership are my parents, Mike and Gail Sonnenberg.  Not that either of them is an international celebrity. Far from it! Neither of them has ever run for public office, acted in a film, recorded a hit song or been the star of even one YouTube video. Yet, both of them have consistently lived lives of Christian faith, American patriotism, and responsible behavior.  As a result, their lives have had powerful influence on the members of our family, the people they have gone to church with, the people they have worked with and even people who came by our house trying to sell us something.

In fact, one of the main reasons I live the way I do today is because my parents have been such excellent examples to me year in and year out. Not that I have always lived as wisely as they have, but these days I make it a point to follow their examples as well as I can. Living like that brings me great happiness and also save me a lot of trouble, grief and embarrassment!

One the best examples of my parent’s consistency over the years is their faithful church attendance. The only reason they are ever absent from the pews is serious illness. Even when they ran a business that required them to work on Sundays they figured out a method so that they could be faithful to both their God and their business. Each Sunday one of them would attend the Sunday morning service while the other one worked and then they would switch places on Sunday evening so that the person who missed the Sunday morning service could go to church on Sunday night. This did not go unnoticed by anyone who knew them, even my cousin Larry, who is a professing atheist. Larry once said, “Uncle Mike could make the devil feel guilty for not going to church!”

Sometimes a person can become a role model completely by accident!  I live in a neighborhood of 98 houses that are built on a half mile circle of road.  It’s an excellent place to do fitness walking and during many of the fourteen months that I was losing 159 pounds I made it a point to walk around that circle 20 times a day for a total of ten miles. I did this faithfully for several months until I was able to get a treadmill and continue my fitness program at home.

Now I need to underscore that I was not making any effort to influence anybody! I just knew I had a lot of weight to lose and I wanted to get rid of it as fast as I could and that meant sticking to my fitness program regardless of the weather, what day of the week it was and what I was missing on TV!  I didn’t let anything get in my way. I stuck to my new plan for healthy eating, took some helpful weight-loss and nutrition supplements and I kept on walking. The result was that I was shrinking before my neighbor’s eyes and the smaller I got the more of my neighbors were joining me on the sidewalk! They also were very interested in everything else I was doing to lose weight.

It was at this point that I suddenly realized that I was in leadership! This struck me as very ironic, because I had started out morbidly obese and was still on my journey to a healthy weight when my new “weight-loss role model” status was thrust upon me. I wasn’t a doctor, a nutritionist or a personal trainer, but I did have one thing going for me: success! Obviously my weight-loss program was working and that was all the credentials I needed for people to be interested in my story. In fact, not only did several of my neighbors start their own weight-loss programs because of my influence, they also picked up their phones and started calling friends and family members all over the globe and sharing my weight-loss story with people who had never met me!  Before I knew it, my story was in nine countries and once I posted my “Before” and “After” photos on Facebook that number of countries increased to twelve!

My neighbors were not the only people who noticed my transformation. I also was getting a lot of attention at work, church and everywhere else I went where people recognized me and noticed my new figure. As my weight continued to go down some of my friends started encouraging me to write a book. At first I was unsure about the idea, but eventually they persuaded me and I sat down in front of my computer and began to write.

I am now on my second year of keeping the weight off and the name of the book I wrote about my weight-loss journey is No Salads Required! How I Lost 159 Pounds without Salads, Celery, Sit-Ups or Surgery and How You Can Too!  It contains my personal story, the details of what I did to lose the weight, lessons I learned along the way and what I am doing to remain in shape. I have worked hard to make it both informative and entertaining and I hope my readers really enjoy it. This book will be available to order from Amazon.com and other stores in either late August or early September of 2015.

So here are some questions for  you to contemplate: What kind of example are you living? If somebody lives their lives the way you do what will happen to them? Will their lives be better because they have met you? These are important things to consider, because even when you think nobody is interested in your activities, in reality there is always somebody who is.