What defines a life well lived? Experience teaches that the answer to that will depend upon how wholeheartedly you lived and led.

Many folks might say, "Living is hard enough, you mean I have to lead too?"

With today’s challenges and pace, we all have to lead our colleagues, our customers, our staff, our relatives and ourselves, as well as learn how to be led by others. Life is not a spectator sport. We’re all on the playing field and need both to coach, as well as be coached.

And leading is not just for the few, the great and noble of vision, the senior levels anymore; we need it for immediate action at all levels of life at home as well as in business.

Your capacity for wholehearted leading depends upon how courageously you respond to the opportunities and challenges of life. Dr. Martin Luther King was not the only leader to have a dream too. It takes courage to make your dreams come true.

If courage is so critical, then what is it? How do you access it, and where do you start?

Courage is not the absence of fear. It is not simply one bold act, only for heroes. It is the willingness to act, in the moment, in spite of fear, to do what is right.

It also defines, shapes and directs the impact of your life experience, based on small, daily acts.

It is in the daily exercise of courage that we claim our heart and really create our life.

Indeed, the word courage is derived from an ancient word meaning "heart".

To exercise courage is to find your heart in the practice of leading others and of responding fully to the challenges of daily life.

The first act of courage, without which there is no sense of direction, is the courage to dream and to express that dream.

From a Wholehearted Leading and Living perspective, this means knowing what is most important, vital and alive within your soul. Questions such as: what is the aim of your life? What do you wish to contribute, to create? What is the quality of the relationships you wish to have? What is the purpose of your marriage, of your organization, of your work?

It takes courage to dream, to tell yourself the truth about what you wish to create, especially when you don’t think you can have it, don’t deserve it or can’t create it. There is great power in having the courage to tell yourself the truth about what is most vital and your heart’s desire.

Then, it takes even more courage to express that dream and to put it out into the world. This is especially true in our cynical age and in culture of victomology.

To dare to claim the right to dream and to own that dream publicly is often to invite criticism calls to remember your place or patronization from those who doubt either themselves or you. Also, we have been taught to blame others, surrender our power and look to someone else to take care of us, to lead us, versus seizing our life and claiming a leading role.

When you have the courage to dream, you create a powerful "Future Pull", which draws you forward into the life, the work, the relationships you really want to have. How do you do this?

There are three powerful tools:

• Modeling
• Imagining
• Activating