521. He said, She said - How to be a leader

You have to be nimble with your expectations. You can't latch on to outdated expectations. That's where your misery comes from.

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 single day. Are you with me? Here we go. Foreign.

Hey, everyone, we're back.

Welcome back to another episode of he said, she Said. I am loving seeing everybody who are sharing all of these podcasts. This is so much fun. I'm feeling like people might be liking this duo maybe more than me alone. Just kidding.

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So I feel like we've been seeing two different ideas, two different roads right now of what is going on out in the world. We were kind of talking about this. You were saying there's two things going on. Number one, expectations. Number two, potentially missing the chance to lead. So tell me what comes up for you when I say that.

Well, okay. We're having this chat this morning, and there's a lot of people, obviously, that are scared, a lot of people with uncertainty, and even people who are ill. We've got massive compassion for that. But one of the things that keeps somebody scared, one of the things that keeps somebody in fear is a lack of leadership. And I'm not saying that they need to find someone else to lead them. I'm saying a lack of acting as a leader. And I know right now you hear this and you might be in a place where you're like, I'm not ready to be a leader of anybody. What are you talking about? I'm barely making it right now. And while we acknowledge that this is your chance to start with just leading yourself, because there's all types of important leadership, right? There's leading yourself, if that's all you can do, and then there's leading your family, and then maybe you're leading your friends, Maybe you're leading a big group online. Maybe you're leading tens of thousands of people. But the whole point is this. When you feel stuck and when you feel uncertain, you're not supposed to necessarily turn to somebody else for leadership. You need to become the leader that you're seeking, even if you just start with yourself.

So it's interesting because there's. I feel like we're speaking to a specific person here, and this is somebody who is ready to do something but feels like they're spinning their wheels. Like, I believe that this person. I definitely. This is me. Because I've been having to wake up every single day, and some mornings I wake up and I'm like, the reality of what we're in hits me. And I think that's important. I think it's important not to dodge it. I think it's important to know, like, oh, my gosh, this could be something that we're sitting in for a very long time, but also then to say, okay, then, what can I do for myself this morning? I am not capable of leading anyone until I wake up and take care of me first. So I literally have to say to myself, what do I need to do to lead myself? What's gonna feel really good for me today to accomplish? Because I know when I do that, when I take care of me, when I just go, start by drinking my glass of water and getting my workout in, I have a more clear head of what I'm going to do that day. And all of the feelings of, like, okay, now I can take a leadership role begin. Because I've done the things to lead myself. And I know that there's some people who are, like, still needing to grasp what's going on or still kind of maybe mourning what their life was and still understanding, like, the feelings that are going on right now. So for those people, I do think it's important to sit in that for a while. But if you're ready, like, if you're having that call of, like, okay, I've. I've sat here enough. I definitely am feeling the urgency of wanting to lead. We can start by leading yourself. And some of you, if you've never led people or you don't view yourself as a leader, you absolutely are. But it does start with you. So give me some examples, Chris, of how you lead yourself. What does it look like? Do you wake up feeling like a leader every day?

No, it's. It's obviously our bulletproof routine that makes me feel like a leader every single Day I do wake up excited to lead, but that's only because I've trained myself over tons of repetition over a very long time to look for the opportunity to be the bright spot. Here's what happens. A lot of people in a crisis, they start to pull back and they start to keep their head down, and they go to a dark place or a scared place, and there's a vacuum of leadership. I wake up every day excited that it's easier to stand out as a leader right now than ever before. Because if you're the bright spot, if you're the one that is sharing certainty, if you're the one that is sharing direction, then you are going to stand out and people are going to be attracted to that. But that's too much for some individuals to grasp. Right now, I want to speak to the person who has trouble leading themselves. There's a great oxymoron going on in many people's lives right now, and it's this. You are hearing this and you are saying, lead myself. I don't know when my next paycheck is coming. I feel depressed. I don't know what the first step is going to be. I feel out of control. And while I know that those are real feelings, in your reality, here's the great paradox. You feel that way because you're not leading yourself. You're not not seeing yourself as a leader, right? So when you're saying, be a leader, I can't even be a leader because of X, Y, Z. The great dichotomy of that is that until you see yourself as someone who is capable of leading just yourself, those problems, X, Y, and Z, they're only going to get worse.

I was just thinking of, you know, when this first started, I have all of these different mindsets that run through my head because I. I'm an analyzer. So I like to actually put myself in each mindset. And I think one of them was like, well, you know, because I'm starting this new company right now. And I was like, well, I'll wait for things to start up again for me to start up. That was a mindset, right? It was like, I'll wait for things to start up for me to start up this company and, you know, take off where I left off. And I realized that that whole mindset was kind of like a way that people are thinking and that there might have been a tinge of that in. In myself, like kind of waiting for something to happen with this. And I realized that I can't wait for Life to start back up. To start my life, I have to start my life, and then life is created. And it was a huge moment of just like nothing is. I'm. I'm. I am the starter. Like, I'm the fire starter. I'm the person who's going to start everything. I can start something completely different. You have to shift immediately on what you believe that you can do, because otherwise I'm literally waiting for something to happen in order for me to begin something that I want to begin. When I can be a shapeshifter and be like, what can I work on right now? What could I start up? How could something like this begin in uncertain times? Because people are still having cocktails every single night. It's actually extremely popular. So what's something that I could do right now to keep going, to start something and not wait for life to start back up?

Well, wake up, call everybody. It's already started back up.

It's already here. It's been here.

I mean, listen, I'm not kidding. Your comeback has already started getting back in shape, has already started building your business, has already started starting it from scratch, has already started being positive, designing your plan for when the momentum is in full swing. That has already started. So if you're waiting for things to, quote, start back up like Lori was waiting for, for a moment, they've already started back up. No one's given you the memo. Here's the memo.

And I think what's happening is, is we are kind of in this. We're facing this spot of, like, when, when is it going to start? And I'm kind of almost letting that go now and saying, we don't know when. We don't know what it's going to even look like when it begins. Because if we look at these other countries who have it, like, they have a very slow start, and if we're waiting and waiting and waiting, this is going to be an extremely long year when it can be a really, really beautiful year. And I'm reading. I'm reading this book by John Maxwell right now. It's called Leader Shift. Like, what a great title for exactly what's happening right now. Because that's what he talks about.

Interviewed him about that book on my podcast. It's remarkable.

It's such. It's such great timing because, yeah, it's not leadership anymore. It's like every leader has to shift or they're no longer leading. You're no longer lead yourself. If you're going to stick to your old plan of The. The way that things were. And I'm not saying it won't go back to somewhat how it was, but you have to realize what is right now. And I want to just share this story that I read this morning, and it's something called the Stockdale Paradox. Stockdale was somebody who was in prison during the war, and he was not sure when he was going to get out. And years and years and years went by, and someone who was interviewing him said, who didn't get out, get out. And he said, the optimists didn't get out. The people who kept setting dates and saying, oh, at Easter, we'll get out. And Easter came and went, and then Christmas came and went, and they kept setting these dates of, this is when it'll be normal. This is when it'll get out. And he said, the people who survived and whose spirits thrived were the people who. And this is what the Stockdale Paradox is. I'll read it to you. He said, retain faith that you will prevail in the end, regardless of the difficulties, and. And at the same time, confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they may be. He said, these twin expectations of faith and fact help us to believe we can prevail in the end, but remind us that the process won't be easy. And John Maxwell goes into talking about how to have hope and to face hardships every single day. So it's not like you're burying your head in the sand. You are looking, but you're also having massive hope and you're shifting. Sting.

Here's what I'm hearing from that. Stop putting a timeline on it. Stop putting a when on it. Face the exact facts today. But when I say that, I don't mean, like, the brutal, horrible facts. What I mean is the facts are this. There's still opportunity everywhere. The facts are you have to shift, but you can shift right now. The facts are you might be locked in your home, but that gives you the time and space to do and be whoever you want to do and be. The facts are this. We in our history have never been given a timeout like this to be able to create what we want to create without falling behind, because everybody is on timeout. And I think that's an awesome fact.

You know what is pretty cool right now is that, yes, because we already went through the recession. You and I are in a. We're finding ourselves in a really great spot at this time, just as far as how we feel with our Runway, for keeping our team, for moving Forward and things like that. But what I am really deeply relating to is a lot of people who are saying they don't have the money to start the thing that they want. Like, that's the story they're telling themselves right now. And I get it. I was just about to go into a huge raise of money in order to even begin this company, you guys. Like, I was about to go raise 3 to 4 million dollars, and guess what is not happening. Right. People are not necessarily. It's not necessarily the greatest time in history to go and ask people for money. So I felt for a while in the exact same boat, like, I don't have the money in order to begin this, because in order to begin it the way that we have it planned, I need this three to four million dollars. So I was feeling the exact way as many people, like, I don't have the money to begin what I want. What if I have zero dollars? How can I start? So this is where I'm at, is what can I do? How can I create this foundation? What can I start with? $0. And what' me is I can just build community like a mother. Like, I can literally not necessarily like your mother, but not you, Chris, anyone's mother. But I can go and focus on completely different things, and I can be a leader with or without the money to start this company or the money that I expected to start this company well.

And I want to coach you live right now. You have an expectation hangover. You do have the money to start this company, but in a time of risk, you feel like you don't want to, you know, go all in. So you're looking for new and creative ways to feel like you're in momentum.

Because my expectation was to start it with X amount of dollars.

Yeah.

Yes.

With, like, with a bang.

Yes.

Yep. The bottom line is this. A lot of people are suffering. And I'm going to borrow a line from our friend Christine Hessler. A lot of people are suffering from an expectation hangover right now, and it's causing them to freeze.

Yep.

And your expectations of what was are damaging what could be.

It's so true. I think a lot of us have different expectation hangovers. I'll just. We were actually talking about yours the other day of just even, like, thinking you were gonna have a little bit of downtime during this time. So every day we go on our walks, and you're like, a little verklempt in the beginning because you're like, I thought I was gonna have time today, and I'm like you truly were suffering last week because you had an expectation that you thought this was going to be downtime for you and it's not. And I'm like, okay, you don't need to suffer. You just served so hard and you loved it. And if you can let go of I think I'm going to have downtime, then you don't. It's you guys. We, this is all we do to ourselves over and over. We think it's going to be one way. And because it's not, we actually suffer when we had a great day day.

Your expectations are great because they give you a target.

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Yes, but how quickly can you shift?

Yes, you have to be nimble with your expectations. You can't latch on to outdated expectations. That's where your misery comes from.

Chris be nimble. Chris be quick.

I was going to make a joke about a dick.

Chris shifted over the candlestick. All right. Anyhow, I hope that you are seeing some spots that you can just see where you can let go. I think that's gonna be huge at first is I think in order to even see where you can lead yourself, you have to let go of your expectation of how you thought this was gonna be or how you necessarily see it going. Cause in the beginning I did think that I was gonna do a lot more. And then I was like, okay, how about Lori, maybe you don't decide to write an entire book during this and you really do just keep up what you're doing. You keep up your workouts, you lead yourself. And then you also try to figure out how you can move forward on this company in a completely new way. And that's kind of rocking my boat right now. Like, it's kind of rocking my world a little bit. Because it is. That does sound challenging to me. I'm having trouble leading myself in a new direction because I was so focused on this other direction. So right now, in the mornings, like, honestly, I was struggling this morning. Chris knows that I, like, mentally struggle until I lead myself, AKA do you know, maybe whether it's a prayer or meditation or a workout and just get my thoughts together or I can feel really scattered. So what I'm doing is every day I'm waking up. How can I lead myself? And what is one thing I can do on my business to make myself feel fulfilled that day?

It's so funny that we had opposite expectations. As soon as this was all happening, I was like, ooh, I get time off and I'm just going to chill because I was coming out of my busy season. Yeah, so you wanted to be busy.

I wanted to do everything.

This new business, and I wanted to chill. And we got opposite gifts.

Yep, totally.

But they're gifts.

I'm finding myself cleaning the house a lot.

All right, guys, listen. Lead yourself first and foremost. Lead others after you've led yourself, and be very cautious of those outdated expectations that you have. Thanks for tuning in. Remember, it's not when this starts up again, it's already started back up again. You have to participate.

Thank you, guys. I can't wait to see what you get out of this podcast. Make sure you share it or text it with a friend, upload it, and tag Chris and I so we can know what your takeaways are. And we would love to hear what topics you want for next week. Love y'.

All.

Bye.

Love hearing from you guys.

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.

It.