Mindset Monday - Lead Yourself First

This is episode 112 of the Empowered Athlete Podcast. This is the Empowered Athlete podcast Mindset Monday 10 minutes with Kari Schneider to learn new mindset tactics and tricks to optimize your performance in sport, business and life. Happy Monday. We are here for Mindset Monday, and I'm so excited to start a new week. Despite the rainy day, despite the cloudy cold weather, it is still amazing because there's so much that we can do and create and connect and be a part of. So today we're talking about leadership and a very specific part of leadership that will make the biggest difference for you in your world. What does this look like? So so before we dive into what it looks like, this topic came up for a couple of reasons. Number one, we just finished our third reset and it feels so powerful to be in a group who are all looking to grow. And that is one of these feelings that puts this pressure on when you've been the person to create it and you're leading the group. And then you start to do these weird things like look back upon yourself or ask yourself questions that don't serve the purpose or don't serve the growth. Questions like are they, Are they, Is this landing for them? Are they liking what I'm presenting, am looking for assurance, reassurance, looking for approval. Those types of thoughts don't necessarily help the leadership role. So I thought about this a little more and I thought back to some of the amazing coaches that I've been lucky enough to work with at an Olympic and national level and remembering what it was like for a lot of the team members, a lot of the athletes or in corporate environments, a lot of business owners or CEOs that I've worked with and seeing the dynamics in a business or on a team and what that looks like, team captains, team coaches, CEOs, management positions, and how the interplay occurs. And one thing I realized is that looking at various leaders in those leadership roles, the people that were being led may not have liked the leader and that didn't matter. It didn't matter if the employees, if the athletes, if the whoever, if the group didn't like the leader, but if they respected the leader, if they believed in the leader, if they thought the leader could get them where they wanted to go or they could work with the leader, that was really all that mattered. So in looking for different material for this mindset Monday, I dove into leadership qualities, dove into leadership skills. I've read a book that I really love by Brene Brown called Dare to Lead. Diving into all These things. There are a number of qualities that come up in leadership that are consistent across the board. Things like integrity, things like strategy, future thinking, empathy, courage, loyalty. All of those things come up. I looked at a whole list of them. Sincere enthusiasm was one of them. Decisiveness, empowerment, charisma. Some of these were on Forbes list, others were business blogs, all sorts of places to find these qualities in leadership. However, what wasn't consistent was a consistent top 10. There were differences all the way across the board in the quality in the skills. There was more consistency. But bottom line, the most important part of this is the fact that someone who's going to lead needs to be able to have the skills to lead themselves. So no matter what I read and no matter what I was looking at, all of these suggestions to lead, other people really don't matter unless someone can lead themselves. If somebody can't lead themselves, what will typically happen? And I've seen this over and over in team settings, if someone can't lead themselves, then they lose the trust of the group that they're leading. The group can see through when someone can't lead themselves. So that component ends up making all the qualities or all the skills fall apart if that person can't apply those skills or those qualities for their own life or for themselves. So in doing so, I came up with three things to do in the space of leading ourselves, being able to lead ourselves effectively. And the reason I stepped into this is because right now, in everything that's going on in the world, people need leaders. They need people to believe in. People want something to believe in someone to believe in a future that looks bright. People want that right now. So it's this thing, this leadership that people are looking for, but it's not going to land and it's not going to work unless people who are leading can lead themselves. If people who are leading are burning themselves out or not practicing what they preach or can't keep going, that's going to be a sign that they're not leading themselves. And that's going to be the most important quality of any of the qualities. And I've seen about 50 of them in looking through this. That's going to be the most important quality to really lead effectively is someone being able to lead themselves. So I came up with with three things that I think are the most important things to do and another three things as the most important things not to do. Now, I'll probably change my mind on this in another week or after we go through, you know, another year or round of reset, I don't know. But this is what's present for me right now. And number one is taking 100% full responsibility for your entire life, meaning it's no one else's fault that something happened. Whatever is going on, it really doesn't matter because you we. I am going to take 100% responsibility for what my life looks like. Doesn't matter what someone else did or didn't do that we may not have had control over. Whatever we have control over. We take full responsibility for whatever we have control over. That's number one. Number two in being able to lead yourself effectively would be growth. And when I say growth, it encompasses a number of things. It encompass being able to fail and learn. That's going to be a critical part of growth. Another one would be being able to be vulnerable enough to step into courage. We can't be courageous without having some level of vulnerability. And the third part of growth is going to be that choosing love. Choosing love over blame over hate, over anger. Choosing love is always going to be able to not only forgive yourself, but be able to put your best toward other people without turning into someone that you don't appreciate or you don't even like. So that's number two. So number one, full responsibility. Number two, growth, encompassing your failing and learning, your vulnerability and courage and really stepping into love. Number three is integrity. Integrity is that showing up? Integrity is that doing what you know to do whether someone's looking or not. That's. Integrity is doing what you know to do whether someone told you to or not. That is integrity. So those three things are really the things to do to step into leading yourself. Now here's three things not to do. Number one, looking outside yourself for reassurance. Looking outside yourself is not where you need to look. Look within to know that you're on the right track. Find your answers from within. That would be number one, don't look for outside assurance. Number two, stay away from the dirty yeses. We all have done this in some form or another, but the dirty yes is the saying yes to something that you don't want to do. I've done. I've done episodes on this before, but don't do the dirty yeses. The dirty yeses are a form of it's almost like stepping away from love. Because when you Dirty yes, not unconditional love. Love is present whether you want to do something or not. And if you say you're doing something, it's like a little. And you don't want to. It's Like a little lie constantly. And the last one for not to do is don't hold grudges. Don't hold those grudges or hold that blame towards other people so that you're carrying that poison around with you. You're actually bringing that toxic toward yourself. So that would be another thing to do in effectively leading yourself. So just to recap the things to do, that's going to be 100% full responsibility for all the things you can control in your life. You're owning it, really owning it. Number two, grow. Growth means failing and learning. Growth means vulnerability and courage. Growth means loving on whatever the situation or whatever the person is instead, instead of stepping into hate or anger. Those are the two top two. And the third is integrity. Integrity is that thing that's going to keep you clear, steady, aligned with your values, and grounded when there may be chaos around you. Do what you know to do. Do what you know to do whether someone sees you or tells you or not. So those are going to be the three things that help you lead yourself. If you can lead yourself, then you can lead through anything. And not only that, you'll be aligned with what you really believe in. You'll believe in yourself when others are looking to believe in you. So step into that leadership role, the biggest, most important leadership role there is, and that is leading yourself. Have a fantastic rest of your day. Really rock your Monday and let it launch the rest of your week, no matter what comes at you. This is your Monday. This is your week. Lead yourself and lead well. Have a great day, guys.