What is your name? Jaakko Murtomäki
What is your background? I was born and raised and I'm still living in Tampere, Finland. I'm an only child from a divorced family but nowadays I have two families and a little brother so things turned out quite well. I have always been a more musical and less physical type. My school background ends at high school for now and since then I have been self-educating myself in all the things I have found interesting and useful. By day I am building a career in sales currently working as a Training Manager in a Telemarketing company. By night I am building a career in music concentrating on three different bands as a singer, guitar player and a songwriter (You can check out one of my bands at www.myspace.com/hopeshallows). The time left in between I use for rest, love and exercise. I live with my girlfriend and we have two cats to keep us busy. Biggest challenges I have this year are recording a full-length album, running a marathon and mastering my duties as a chairman of a sport club called Forsal (www.forsal.fi) so I'm just filled with excitement. I keep a blog (in Finnish though) to document different things I go through while chasing my dreams (check it out at www.lakipiste.com).
When and how did you encounter Self-Leadership for the first time? It was roughly the fall of 2005 when I made the decision to join Network marketing. Some of you might think I'm an idiot and from time to time I am, but that decision was one of the best ones I have ever made. The whole 18-month endeavor I had as a striving entrepreneur in a business, that almost all of friends and relatives thought could never work, gave something much more than personal wealth (which It didn't). During that time I learned so much about goal setting, people skills, sales, marketing, attitude and much more that I seriously doubt I wouldn't made it so far as today without it.
What does Self-Leadership mean to you personally? Self-leadership for me right now means getting in touch of who I REALLY am. Lately I've given a lot of though to a phrase from James Dean, which goes "Dream as you'll live forever, live as you'll die today". I've been fairly skilled at the dreaming part for a few years now, but in my opinion the more important part of living is actual hard work. I believe I am doing a good job because I've never felt so alive than recently, and I'm really close to enjoying the journey all the time. Overall I think of self-leadership as a way of taking control of the outcome of my life.
What is your tip or tool towards good Self-Leadership? Every challenge or goal you give yourself will take somewhere, usually forward. Don't hesitate to make a decision just because there is a chance to fail. After all the hardest times tend to let us learn the most.
