Annie Leib Recap: Unlock Your Authentic Self

I'd like to ship you a free copy of my book Habits of High Performers. If you come and join the 2026 goal setting workshop, I will ship you one of these today. The link is in the notes. Please come and join me to set up the very best 2026 you could imagine. If you've set up goals in the past or New Year's resolutions and they haven't substantiated, I'm here to help you across all the key pillars of your life nail your goals. I'll see you there.

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Next month. I'm excited to be welcoming our former Prime Minister, Sir John Key, our former All Blacks coach, Sir Steve Hanson, and CEO of Christchurch nz, Ali Adams to the HPL High Performance Leadership Program here in Christchurch. We've sold out and I'm so excited to welcome leaders from all over the country, from all different ages and stages and industries. It's going to be an incredible two and a half days of learning, of equipping and of supporting each other in terms of hitting leadership goals and impacting our communities and our organizations. And I want to say a massive, massive thank you to our platinum partners for the HPL events. Brannigan's is an incredible company. If you've got anything you want in terms of HR or executive recruitment and recruitment in general, you've got to go and check out Brannigan's. And also our other platinum partner is VVV Real Estate. For all of your real estate needs, please go and see VVV now. This last session we had the good fortune of welcoming Annie Lieb. Annie Lieb LLC is an executive coaching firm. Using the BREATH framework. It's a modality that helps merge your authentic self with your professional goals. Just think about that for a second. How often have you found yourself not being truly you when you're in the professional capacity of what you're doing? So when you're at work, when you're at a board meeting, you know, when you're trying to get a sale across the line, when you're maybe mentoring someone, how often have you found that you're not truly authentic to who you are at your core? I certainly can. I can remember those moments. There's been lots of moments when I've been inauthentic and it doesn't sit well. And it's something I feel that we all should try to uncover, become aware of and work through. Because as we get closer to being our authentic self and aligning that with our professional goals, Monday morning seems like a dream rather than a challenge or a chore. Here's a few takeaways from Annie and some of you may have listened to to the full episode, but here's just a few takeaways that you might be able to apply somewhere in your life. Annie said that in her opinion, leadership is influence and inspiration. It's about helping guide others to be better versions of themselves.

And I really take away that we need to lead with love in every aspect of our lives and we can do that even if we're leading a team of professional athletes, we can lead them with love. We don't need to be fierce. We don't need to be strong.

Yes, we can be those things, but we can also have love wrapped around it and empathy and appreciation for others. Truly, that's how we can be more authentic. We were brought up to love others. Humans are designed to love. Love is a natural state.

Now, how do you tell if you're not living your authentic life? Here's what Annie had to say about that and see if this kind of resonates with you. If you go to work on a Monday feeling uninspired, like you're just a number, or maybe you're misunderstood, well, Annie would say these are signs that you are simply stuck and living on a hamster wheel. The way we get stuck here is by not doing the work sooner. So start working on yourself and being a more authentic version of you. Learn about who you truly are and what your values are. Now, I know that work is not easy. I. In my mid-20s, I started to do a lot of work around, you know, who am I and what are my values? And I was reading voraciously for more than a decade, but I guess I was searching for that because I was leading in a way that I wasn't really proud of and I was losing my cool and I wasn't treating others as I thought, you know, my authentic self would treat them. And pressure was getting to me. I wasn't handling it well at times. Was I getting results? Yes, you know, world class results in, you know, a few different areas. But there was a lot of collateral. So I urge you to take your time to really figure out what your values are. And, you know, look at where you show up, look at where you spend your time, look at your credit card statement. Those things will show you what you value most. Where you spend your time is what you value most.

The last time I really sat down and did a values audit was shortly after I separated with Lisa, my former wife, and really took stock over a period of months to go, who am I? What am I about? Where am I headed? You know, what is meaningful to me and the reason I share that with you is that Lisa and I continue to have an incredible friendship based on respect and hope that for each other, that we continue to experience happiness and fulfillment. But the only way we can do that is by understanding each other's values. And that has been helpful. Has there been bumps along the road? Hell yes, as in any relationship. But understanding the value base of Another person, whether it's your partner, former partner, your child, somebody that works for you, someone on your team. I mean, it just helps you to understand their actions and their priorities. So my challenge to you is get out there and ask yourself, you know, what are my values? Get a pen and paper out. And Annie actually said, you know, the best place to start when you're stuck is to start journaling using prompts. I often use prompts, and in fact, you know, each day I have three or four prompts as part of my personal leadership planner, and I answer those prompts, and it really helps me to get out of my head and onto the page. Annie actually likes to use single words as prompts. Her favorite word is the word purpose. How fitting, right? Lead on Purpose podcast. I love it. So she suggests that you write that word down and then start journaling every single thing that comes to mind around that word. And this is what I love. She said, use pen and paper. Do not type it. There's a different process cognitively that happens when we write now. What is the breath framework modality? B. Begin where you are. R. Reclaim your power. E. Excavate your values. A, Adapt. T. Go through H. Heal. Now, if you want to go into more detail of what they are, please listen to the full episode. It was really insightful. And Annie says, in order to reclaim your power, you need to be a sponge. Leaders are readers, right? So learn from any place you can and start rebuilding. Stop trying to control everything and just accept that there are just some things out of your control. My take on that is this simple. Control the controllables. The times that I'm at my most stressed or overwhelmed are the times that I'm focusing on the uncontrollables, the things that are well outside my comfort zone. So I urge you to stay within that sphere of what you can control. So, folks, I hope you enjoyed that. I want to urge you to get out there and lead your life on purpose.