393: The guide to make the BEST decisions for your business and life

This is what I need you all to understand right now. If you want a successful, thriving company, it's not always fun. But you have to decide what contracts and boundaries you will be honoring, you will be enforcing, and what type of behavior you will be tolerating in your life. Welcome to the Earn your happy podcast. I'm Lori Harder, founder of The Bliss Project, 3 Time Fitness World champion, fitness expert and cover model, turned self love junkie, lifestyle entrepreneur and author. Each week I'll bring you a guest or a thought that will help you bust through your fears, connect to your soul, and get focused and clear so you can elevate your life, business and relationships. We don't wait until we're ready for someone to tell us we're good enough. We take what we want and we anoint ourselves, get ready to earn, own, and unapologetically rock your happiness every day. Every single day. Are you with me? Here we go. Welcome back to the show. And it's time for another quickie because there's always time to fit in inspiration. And I'm so excited to talk to you about what I'm about to talk to you about. You're like, just tell me what you're going to tell me. So I have been thinking a lot about decision making because I'm finding that in order to run a really successful company and create a culture, and also if you want to start another business or if you want to be successful in the business that you're in, or maybe you're a part of a company or maybe, you know, you work at a big corporate building or whatever that is, if you have a job at all, decision making and making amazing, important, big, incredibly challenging decisions is going to be the key to whether you are happy and successful or not. Right? And we can all end up making decisions, but some of us take a lot longer. And that can cost us a lot. Not only monetarily, but it can cost our peace. I don't know about you, but if I'm sitting in indecision, I just did a podcast on this. I am in massive, like, pain. I'm stressed out, I'm anxious. I go back and forth, I tell myself a million different stories. And so what I want to talk about today is to decide what you'll honor, what you'll enforce, what you'll tolerate, decide what you'll honor, enforce and tolerate. And I thought that if you had a moment. So maybe if you're in your car right now and you really want to get clear on this, you can listen now. But I would highly suggest writing this. I'm telling you, writing and actually getting it out of your body and being really clear is going to be one of the biggest things that you can possibly do for yourself. So I'm actually going to do this for myself on a big board. I may or may not keep it private because I do think this is like my personal code of ethics that I'm going to be writing down. And this will be what I make my decisions on. And I'm telling you, when my company gets bigger and when I start this other company, this will be on the walls as a clear decision making process for myself and for the culture of what I want to create moving forward. So decide what you'll honor, enforce and tolerate. So this is what you're going to make every single decision off. And when I say honor, this is what I want you to think about. So if something is happening in your business or you have been asked to speak somewhere, or you're getting asked to go and do something and you have signed contracts, you decide for yourself personally. We all know that there's like a code of morals and ethics out there, but we all know that majority of people have their own or they go off their own, or they break the ones that we think are culturally standard because really nothing seems to be standard anymore. So we've all signed contracts when we get a cell phone, we've signed contracts when we get married. We sign all of these different contracts in our life and many people honor them and many people don't. But what happens is there are a lot of different things that will hold those contracts in place. And for a lot of people in small businesses or businesses, it has to be them who decides if they're going to hold those things in place. So that's an example of are you going to to honor your contracts and are you going to honor the contracts that you sign that you know may not be massively enforced? That is your decision. This is what you have to write down in your code of ethics. So here's what I have written down for the three things right now. I have at the top of my page, decide what you'll honor and then I have arrows pointing down and then I have decide what you'll enforce and I have arrows pointing down and I have decide what you'll tolerate. And for each one under honor, it says, you know, if you decide to honor, I have, I'm go, I will honor my word. And under that it says, but does my word have any exceptions at any time? And if it does, what are those? So I'm going to write those things down, right? So I'm always going to honor my word. Unless, like, I do have exceptions on some of those. Unless something happens drastic in the company where if honoring my word means having to get rid of everybody's job or if it really threatens. It threatens someone else in the company to the point where it's not healthy for the team, if it's something that seemed like an amazing decision one day and actually could be something that could really harm, you know, the company moving forward or the future of the company. So that's what you need to do, is decide what you'll honor. I will always honor my word. Except for these exceptions, right? So you'll go and you'll look and you'll say, so when something comes up like, okay, this doesn't feel very good, I really don't want to go and speak at this place. Or I really don't want to go to this party now, or I really don't want to do X, Y and Z. Okay, but you said yes, and it doesn't fall under any of those exceptions. So if this is the person that you wanted to be when you were writing this in your highest self, maybe you said a prayer before it. You know, let my highest self write this code of ethics or make these decisions. If you said yes, and it doesn't fall under those exceptions, and you know that you want to honor your word, then guess what your option is. You go and you do the thing, because this is your code of ethics that you've decided this is your highest self, and this is the one when your head hits the pillow, you're going to be the happiest with. So something else about this. You're no longer in indecision. You're no longer going back and forth of if I stayed home, you know, because we said. Let's just say you said yes to going to a wedding that was in another country, and all of a sudden you're like, oh, my God, this seems so hard. Blah, blah, blah. You're doing all the. You're telling yourselves the stories of why you shouldn't go, of the money that you're gonna spend, but you said yes to this person. You were so committed. And so what else this is gonna do is you said yes. It doesn't fall under any of the exceptions. And so you've realized, okay, I've gotta get back into getting committed. And now I'm gonna think of only good stories about what's gonna Happen Now I'm gonna think of how happy they're gonna be when I show up to celebrate the wedding. Now I'm not going like, I'm gonna cut off all other decisions, right? I'm gonna cut off all other stories. I'm go emotions. I'm only going to feel the emotion of saying yes and knowing that I'm honoring my word. There. Boom, done. So this is the decision making process. And if you don't start to understand who you are and who you want to be, the universe doesn't know. And you're always going to be in this flippy floppy back and forth like blobfish. Have you ever googled what a blob fish looks like? It's just all over the place. There's no container, there's nothing to contain. It's like so it has no structure whatsoever. So I can only imagine how we all feel, which I know how we all feel when we are in indecision or when we go back and forth or when we do not know how to answer. So for me, it's like, this is another thing about if I know I'm going to honor my word, you better believe that I'm going to take some time to say yes or no, right? I'm gonna sit on the decision for a day. So if it's a big decision and someone's saying, hey, you know, I'd love for you to come over here, and it's great in the moment, and I say, yeah, yeah, let me know. I'd love to be there. I don't do that anymore, ever. I'm like, you know what? I'll look at my calendar and I'll get back to you tomorrow. So then I go and I sit with it and then I write them or let them know or call them and tell them exactly, you know, like. Like my exact answer of it's probably going to be a no, right? It's probably going to be a no. So I don't jump into yeses at all anymore because it causes so much stress and time of trying to figure out how to say no or how to get out of it. You're not going to have time for this later on in your life when you are starting to run something that is much bigger than what you're doing right now. And I'll tell you that I used to do this all the time. I'd sit in indecision, I would say yes to someone and then I'd go back and I'd say no. Like it was A disaster. And I didn't like how I was showing up. So underneath my Decide what yout'll Honor One of the first things is word. And you can also put different things under there. But also ask, does this have any exceptions? If. If so, drop down another arrow, write the first exception, the second one. Maybe you don't have any exceptions on any of these. So when you go to make a decision, you look at it and you're like, crap. I didn't write any exceptions because my higher self did not want me to get out of this. So the next question decide what you'll enforce, meaning boundaries. So decide what you'll enforce. So, well, my first dropdown is boundaries, and then my second one is contracts. And then underneath that I have under both of them, do I have any exceptions on these boundaries? And then it's do I have any exceptions under these contracts? If so, write them out. So I'm not going to get into too much of this because I really got into a lot of it with the honor one. But this is exactly what I want you to do. So enforce should have one arrow down. And for me, it has boundaries and contracts. Maybe you have a lot of other things. Maybe you have things that are really big for you that you want to write underneath there too. And just write if there's any exceptions. Like, think of everything. Like, okay, if someone is, you know, I'm going to honor everyone's contract that I sign, unless someone falls terribly ill with a terminal disease, unless someone has lost an immediate family member and they need X amount of time or a refund on this. Other than that, no, like, other than that, I am not refunding anyone's money because it was completely in the contract, right? Like, something like this, it needs to be so rock solid and clear so that when you get those tough decisions of maybe you had a retreat, right? Maybe you had a retreat and it had all of the contracts locked solid. You had lawyers look at it, you have all the papers written up, and this is your very first retreat because you are leaving your corporate job and you finally want to be doing this and you're not clear on how you're going to enforce your contracts. Like, you haven't actually thought about it because you've been too busy in the planning. And all of a sudden, maybe people right before get a lot of fear around leaving the country or doing something. They're used to it. And I totally get this because I've had this will be my eighth Bliss project. And every time, right before Bliss comes People start getting scared and they want a refund. Well, I've already paid for them, so I absolutely am not giving you a refund because that is the contract. You read it, you signed it. This is exactly what your soul wanted. And now it is now on you to know that you are breaking a contract. And that is a lesson that you have to learn, because I'm honoring and locking in the contract I made with myself of keeping my contract and making sure that you get your butt there or that you learn from this lesson. If I just said yes to all of these people who were afraid, like, yeah, here's your money back, no one would ever come. And then I would never be able to book the event and you would never. I would never be able to have this business or do these events again, because word gets out quickly. This is what I need you all to understand right now. If you want a successful, thriving company. It's not. Not always fun. But you have to decide what contracts and boundaries you will be honoring, you will be enforcing and what type of behavior you will be tolerating in your life, because you will be living what you tolerate. So if it's underneath enforce, you have that arrow down. Then you have boundaries, and then you have contracts. And then you make sure you write out any and all exceptions. And. And as soon as a decision comes up and someone starts pushing those boundaries or testing them or trying not to honor something, you look back at what your highest self wrote and you stick to that no matter what. It is not your job to make people like you. It is your job to honor your soul contract and keep moving forward with your life's purpose in offering whatever you can to help other people. But with that comes a lot of trials and challenges. And the first thing that will come, I feel like, especially for women, will get tested in this area, is people judging your character out of these different decisions. But all you have to know is that you honored who you were in that moment. You honored exactly your word, you honored your contracts, and you showed up exactly how you should. So then my third one is what will you tolerate? And under that, I have treatment. Just as in how will people treat you? How will people show up like this could be endless things. So what will you tolerate? What kind of culture do you want at work? What are the different ways that people are going to be showing up? So underneath tolerate. Just decide what you want underneath there. So what will you tolerate? Your maybe how your family treats you and write any exceptions or write how you want them to treat you. Right. Or what you won't tolerate. Sorry about that. And then. Right. Are there any exceptions to this? Like if you wrote, you know, under tolerate with family, how what will you not tolerate? People being a certain way to you, maybe people not showing up to any of your holidays, whatever that looks like, and then say, are there any exceptions? Well, of course there are exceptions, but if it doesn't fall underneath those things in the decision making process, when someone's treating you poorly, you need to also then say, what steps will I take? Will the first one be, you know, if I want this to go smoothly and I want to get back to love no matter what? Because this, you're writing this with, like, literally before you write this, say a prayer and say, please guide me to help me understand exactly how I wanna show up in really challenging situations with the highest good and the highest love or whatever that looks like. Maybe spirit guide me, maybe God help me, however, but definitely say a prayer before writing this. And then underneath that you'll say, you know, what do I want to, how do I want to respond when these are broken by other people or when I break them? Right. Is the first step a convers? And if that conversation doesn't go smoothly, then what? And if it's been several conversations, you decide, you know, if I have two or three conversations and this keeps happening, or maybe if this happens two more times, like you make an actual decision and you say, then I'm putting a boundary up and I'm not allowing this person in my life for a while, or however that looks, and you've made a decision so you're no longer in the black and white saying, this happened again, I knew I shouldn't have let this happen, or I can't believe this is going on, or this is all I'm thinking about, or I'm so mad at this, this person. Like that is an energy drain. It is draining you from exactly where you're supposed to be, who you're supposed to be helping. It's draining you from giving the love you're supposed to give to your family and to yourself. Right? So being really clear on what are these decisions in life, do they have any exceptions? Because nothing is black and white, right? You have to write out the gray and also understanding that, yes, you want to stick to this as close as possible, but there will be an exception that you don't know about or that you forget about. But for the most part, you're going to be really clear when you're going to try to make an exception that isn't really an exception you want to be making at all. And you're like, that just is. Yeah, that's not going to work for me. So you're going to know that it's, it's kind of, it's threatening who you wrote down that you want to be. Because maybe your character is being challenged, maybe someone's telling you you're a bad person because of something and you're like, you know, this all says, I followed my rules and contracts. So I'm going to go ahead and just stick with this decision and make peace with it and pray around it and know that if I don't do this that I'm not going to be able to have the self respect for myself. I'll know that I'm not actually protecting this sacred business that I want to start that's helping so many lives, that's employing so many people or is about to employ a lot of people or is changing the legacy of a lot of families. That's what you have to remember is your boundaries and your contracts and your word. And what you're saying no to is a protective barrier on this sacred business and money that you're making to help move people forward. You have to get right with saying no. You have to get right with making money. You have to get right with when people challenge you. Let them not like you, stick to your decisions that you know are right.

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About this because I see so many businesses not make it. I see so many people start to crumble when things get hard. If you're an entrepreneur, your job is to solve problems. That's it. So if you wake up and there aren't problems, you might need to look at your business and if it's moving forward fast enough or if it's growing fast enough. So honestly, if a problem comes, know that you chose to be an entrepreneur because you wanted to be the one who wants to solve the problems. So if you don't want to be the one who doesn't or who doesn't have problems, you guys go work for, you know, someone else or something that you don't have to even worry about, or a company that you don't care about. Because even if you go work for an amazing corporate company or you are working, you know, somewhere that you love, you're going to feel this. Like the only way to not solve problems or have pain or have hard times like this, or have tough decisions is if you don't give a flying F about the place that you are working. And that's not how any of us want to be right? If, if you love what you do, if you enjoy what you do, I don't care what position you're in, you will absolutely have to solve challenging problems. And majority of those problems are going to be with people or they're going to be solved through people. And I'll tell you, it's not going to be the easy route. It's going to be you having to stand up and say what you need to say to move things forward or create a boundary or stick to something, or stand up for your culture or not tolerate something, not tolerate certain treatment, not tolerate how people are showing up. So, you guys, I just want you to know this is all a part of it. It's beautiful, it's for you. And it's either all for you or none of it is. That is my belief in life and that is what gets me through every day, and that's what keeps me excited about life. So that even when massive challenges on a platter come, I'm just like, all of this is for me, all of this is happening for me. I've adopted the belief that this is all a setup for what is coming next. I need this new muscle that feels so painful in order to know how to move through quicker, easier, better on this next problem that's coming around, this bigger thing that I will get to work on. So I was thinking today, when we get a problem as entrepreneurs or in the workplace at all, you know, sometimes it's easy to get stuck in them. So maybe someone on your team, if you're in network marketing, has really hurt your feelings or stabbed you in the back or is totally going against what you're saying. Or maybe someone you know who works for you has just done a complete 180 and you were just completely shocked by what's going on, or you can't tolerate the way someone's showing up Anymore, or maybe one of your clients or a coaching client or something like that is breaking contracts. Or you're, you know, maybe they're saying things about you or they don't like the way that you've done things. And we can get really stuck in those problems. And the thing is, those aren't the problems that are going to move your business forward, and those aren't the things that are going to help. Those are actually going to drain you. That's actually harmful to your company. If you don't make a decision quickly, move on and make peace. So I was thinking today, I was actually in Soul Cycle thinking about this, this, and I thought, oh, my God, when we get stuck on a problem, it's like going to the gym and having a really hard workout. And after leaving, just like trying to get back into the pain of how much it hurt while you were doing squats and how agonizing that was and how terrible it felt while you were at the gym and how sore your muscles are. It's like, you guys, when we leave the gym, we're like, yeah, okay, that was really hard. But now I'm going to focus on what it's going to do for me. So this is what we need to do. Instead of being like, oh, this is so hard, the problem happened. You don't have to focus on it now. You ask yourself, why is this happening for me? How do I move through with peace, with love of the highest good, and understand that sometimes when you're doing something hard and making a hard decision, it's actually because that other person needs this lesson. You can't rob people of lessons, right? You cannot rob people of their lessons. And a lot of times when you make tough decisions and you have to stand up for yourself, you are one of the biggest pieces of their lessons that they would never be receiving if you did not do that. So it's not only a lesson for you to stand up for yourself and your boundaries, but also for them. So it's equal. We're all fulfilling Soul contracts every single day. And I can tell you whether it was in my fitness business or for my monthly membership program, I can tell you whether it was during writing a book and working out contracts. I can tell you whether it's hiring employees or being in network, network marketing and working with a big team or now doing big events or whatever that looks like. It has always been challenging. It has always been hard. I've always questioned, oh, my God, is this what I'm supposed to be doing? This is really Hard should it feel this painful? And now I'm like, okay, let's not focus on that. Like, why would I go back and be like, wow, that squat was terrible. It really hurt. Oh, my muscles were so fatigued. I can't believe it. Like, no, this is all for me. This is all making me better. I love that I get to do this. I'm so freaking blessed. Bring on the problem. Because problems are why I'm here. If we didn't have any, you wouldn't be an entrepreneur and you wouldn't have a business. Like, you are solving a problem the day that you say that you want a business because your business is going to solve problems, right? My business is going to provide X, my coaching is going to provide x my food. Whatever it is, it's going to provide something. You are solving a problem. So guess what comes with that. You're going to be solving problems every single day. Day. And it's gonna rock your world. And it's so worth it. And it's all about reframing. And you guys, I'm super fiery because I've had a lot of people come to me like, either worried about their business or how are they gonna, you know, say no to this? Or they're having a lot of trouble honoring their word. They're having a lot of trouble honoring their boundaries. I'm like, you're not gonna keep what you have and it can't keep growing because you're not gonna be able to handle the bigger decisions later on. So do it now. Decide who you are now by writing this all out and using this graph. It's not going to be easy, but it's going to be clear. And the more clear that you are, the faster you move. And the faster you move, the more that the thing that's burning in your heart and your purpose is going to be out in the world and you're going to feel so much peace at the end of the day because you're fulfilling your God given purpose. You're fulfilling your God given purpose. So you guys, I'm sending you so much love today. Thank you for that. I was just on a rant because I have so many amazing women in my life right now who are having trouble with making decisions, making tough decisions and feeling like they're, you know, their boundaries are getting crossed left and right. And I'm like, well, this is something that we're tolerating, right? So what are we tolerating? This is what your life is going to look like if you didn't tolerate people pushing those boundaries, it would stop showing up. It's because our lessons will keep showing up until we understand what we need to do clearly. So I really hope this helped you guys. I hope that you can put your hand on your stomach and feel a little bit of fire of knowing who you are and letting that person come out more. Because that higher self absolutely knows best. So I love you guys so much. Let me know what you got out of this. If it was something that's hitting you right exactly where you're at, I would love to know if it helped you make any decisions. And once you make that decision, let me know. Let me know if you find some peace on the other side. So sending you so much love you guys. Until next time, earn your happy. Bye everyone. Thank you. Thank you guys so much for spending this time with me on the Earn your Happy podcast. I am so glad that you stopped by. If you could take one second to share this episode with someone you think would love it, that would be absolutely amazing and we would be forever grateful. Also, please leave us a review if you feel so moved by going to itunes and leaving us an honest thought, an honest comment. Tell us what you think. Tell us what you want to hear more of. It would really help us out on our journey to helping thousands and thousands of people. Until then, don't forget to earn your happy. Thanks again guys. Bye Bye.