I came across this article by William Deresiewicz – Solitude & Leadership <http://theamericanscholar.org/solitude-and-leadership/>

I couldn’t agree more with the following paragraphs in it:

“No, what makes him a thinker—and a leader—is precisely that he is able to think things through for himself. And because he can, he has the confidence, the courage, to argue for his ideas even when they aren’t popular. Even when they don’t please his superiors. Courage: there is physical courage, which you all possess in abundance, and then there is another kind of courage, moral courage, the courage to stand up for what you believe.”

and

“The position of the leader is ultimately an intensely solitary, even intensely lonely one. However many people you may consult, you are the one who has to make the hard decisions. And at such moments, all you really have is yourself.”

When your ideas are popular, you don’t need to do anything, since someone else can come along and implement them for you. It’s when your ideas are unpopular – that’s when you are especially needed to see them through implementation because no one else is going to do it – and this can be a terribly lonely process.

Thomas Edison – “I didn’t fail. I just found 2,000 ways that did not work”

When your idea is unpopular, you will be told of 2,000 ways where your idea will not work, but with enough persistence, you should be able to find one way where it does work – and that is all you need.