MBA1768 Guest Teacher – Laurie Gerber – How to Build Personal Integrity

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Hey oh. Welcome to the Hunter, our MBA show. Because when you get better, so does your business. That's why we deliver daily 10 minute business lessons for the real world. I'm your host, your coach, your teacher Omar Zenholm. I'm also the co founder of Webinar Ninja, an independent software company I started with my partner back in 2014. And today's episode is a guest teacher episode. Today's guest teacher is Lori Gerber and she'll be teaching you how to build personal integrity. What do we mean by personal integrity? Well, we mean keeping the promises you make to yourself. Have you ever said to yourself, I'm going to do XYZ this quarter, I'm going to accomplish these tasks. I'm going to reach out to X number of clients and you don't follow through. Well, in today's episode with our guest teacher Lori Gerber, we're going to dissect why does that happen? And how to fight it with practical strategies. This episode is so valuable. So let's get into it. Let's get down to business.

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Today's guest teacher, Lori Gerber has been passionate about personal development for years, helping coaches and individuals all over the world with her message and our Powerful talks on TEDx, regular webinars at General assembly and has been featured on TV shows like Dr. Phil and the Today Show. And she's here today to help us be more accountable to build rock solid personal integrity. I'm going to pass it on to Lori now, but I'll be back for my own takeaways and to wrap up the episode. But for now, take it away Lori.

Hello everyone. So excited to be here and to talk about one of my personal favorite topics, personal integrity. That is how to keep a promise to yourself. At Handel Group, we think that building personal integrity is the key to success and all areas of your life. Not just business, not just work, money, your relationship to yourself, your relationship to others, your body, your health, you name it. And personal integrity isn't just the secret sauce to success, but also to happiness, to self esteem, to personal pride. I tried so many things before. I tried the hand on methods, personal integrity. And none of them got me where I wanted to go. Because personal integrity connects the heart of the head and the body. Now ask yourself, did you ever notice that when it comes to keeping a promise to someone else, you're really good at it? I mean, if you say to a colleague or a friend or even your kid, I'm gonna pick you up at 3 o', clock, you don't mean I'll pick you up at 3 o' clock unless something better comes along, you're gonna pick them up at 3 o'.

Clock.

But then when you make a promise to yourself, like I'm gonna start a blog, or I'm gonna be on social media for only X amount of time a day, or I'm gonna organize my office or I'm gonna make this request of so and so or I'm gonna exercise three times a week. You are more than willing to excuse yourself from it as long as you feel bad about it. In fact, the worse you feel about it, the guiltier you feel, the more excusable it is, the better a person you feel like you are. But powerless. Powerless over the circumstances and unable to keep a promise to yourself. Everyone else is getting out of promises to themselves. No one else seems to be getting to the gym or having a good attitude under these circumstances. Why should I have to? Well, personal integrity is the ability to make and keep promises to yourself that are a match for your dreams, your personal, heartfelt dreams. That is the alignment of your heart, which is your deepest desires, your mind, which is your thinking and planning, and your actions, your body. No surprise here. Human beings really stink at keeping promises to ourselves. And we walk around like, personal integrity. It's just something that you have or you don't have, like you're a good person or you're not a good person. I mean, we feel so bad so much of the time about not doing what we said we do or not doing what we wish we'd do. We must be good people. But between the excuses and the feeling bad, we end up feeling like good people, but powerless people. Powerless to get what we truly, truly want in those areas that we're still stuck in. So again, we think to ourselves, we're not hurting anyone's feelings if we blow off a promise to ourself. But we forget that we are ruining our relationship to ourself. That's the most important relationship. Your relationship to yourself is the most important. So being able to shine a light on this, to giggle at this, to tell the truth about our own lack of personal integrity has integrity to it. That's the beginning. The ability to deal with and lighten up about your humanity, about your fallibility, to get honest, about your dishonesty. That's the beginning of building the muscle of personal integrity. So first we have to start to hear the voice of our dream. What is it that you're avoiding that you're not doing, that you wish you would, that just keeps knocking on the door for you? And then right after that, you're gonna hear all of your excuses. Because anywhere in your life you are not pursuing what you wish you would, there is a bevy of excuses. In fact, we've determined the eight most popular types. You can go ahead and listen to these. See if you find yourself in any of these, you might have a different one. No problem. Number one, I don't care. They don't care anyway. It's not a big deal. Whatever. That relationship would have been too much work anyhow. That project would have been too much work anyhow. I don't care. Number two, the passive excuse. This is just happening to me. It's beyond my control. Netflix sucked me in. Or one of my personal favorites. I can't help how much I sleep at night. I'm not purposely waking up in the middle of the night. I don't know where the time goes. That's number two, the passive excuse. Number three, the genetic excuse. I was born this way. This is how my family is. This is how our bodies look. This is how we are about conflict. Nothing can change that. The victim excuse. I have to entertain people, so of course I have to drink. It's not my fault, it's happening to me. Everyone else is doing it. That's number five. Everyone else is doing it. Everyone else's sex lives go south after a few years of marriage and kids. Everyone else keeps the baby weight on. It's okay because everyone else is doing it. Six passed precedent. I've never been able to do this before. Why would I be able to do it now? So you think to yourself, I've never been able to stay on a schedule. I've never been good at working under a deadline. I've never been a morning person. I've never been good at sticking to a food plan. To which I say, how convenient. And number seven, this is just how things are. Listen, I had too much of a screwed up childhood for me to ever get over it and ever be successful in this area. And last but not least, for our martyrs. I have done enough. You've done enough. Excuse I gave at the office. If you ask me for one more thing, I'm gonna break. I can't handle one more thing. I just raised two kids as a single parent. Or fill in the blank. Everyone has their own favorite excuses. Excuses are brilliant. They keep us from having to do what we don't want to do. They explain why something is the way that it is. There are no fault insurance policies. Unfortunately, our happiness, our self esteem and our pride pay the premium. So you have to learn how to make and keep a promise to yourself. Even when that voice in your head wants to make an excuse, wants to chicken out, wants to be a brat and not do it, you need to be able to make a promise to yourself and keep it. So here's the trick. Make a realistic promise. A stretch, but doable. If every house. If every room in your house is a disaster, you're gonna promise clutter clearing one room a week. If you've never run a mile before and you want to run a marathon in a year, you're gonna start with a couple miles a week. You're not gonna dive into the deep end. You're gonna wade into the shallow end and build the muscle. So one of the first promises I ever made was to make two contacts a day to build my business. Anyone can do that. It was a stretch. For me, because I was making zero, but it was doable. So it needs to be realistic. It needs to be something that you can do, not a fantasy. And it needs to be a stretch, something you'd be impressed by if you just thought of something that's probably it. Make sure that your promise is super specific. This is where people really, really mess up. It has to be loophole free. And trust me, I am Lupolian the Great. So it has to be loophole free. So when I make a promise that I will exercise, I don't say I'll exercise more or I'll try to exercise three times a week. No, I say I will exercise three times a week for 30 minutes by Sunday midnight. So super specific. When your day ends, when your week ends, how many times you're gonna do something or by when you're gonna do something and for how long. Duration is very important. So you're going to encounter when you make your first new promise to yourself, the voice of fear. Coming up, we call that the chicken. You're also going to encounter the voice of your tantruming. I don't want to. Inner child, your inner four year old, we call that the brat. And you're going to want to, you're really, really going to want to make promises that are, you know, things like I'll eat less or I'll be nicer. I remember I used to say to myself, I'll be nicer to my husband. This time I'll be nicer. Which is not a promise, it is not specific and it is not measurable. How are we going to keep a promise that's not measurable? Exactly. It's impossible. You're going to use powerful language. No hoping, no trying, no wishing, no vagueness. And by golly, if you know you're not going to keep this promise while you're on vacation or when you have relatives visiting or you're sick, please write that into the promise itself. Don't promise to tweet something every day if you are in a remote island with no wi fi. The more you resent having to keep a particular promise in an area of life, the more you probably need that very promise. So please learn to love your leash. As soon as you love it, you don't even need it anymore. And my final tip for making a promise is do it now. Don't wait. Start now. To human better is to take action now. It's not going to be a better idea later. And you're not more likely to start later. So first you have to really acknowledge how last on your list you have been and decide to put yourself first. Get annoyed with the fact that you've been forsaking your own dreams. It's a crime against your heart. So make a promise. Just one little promise to start and immediately find a buddy. When you work with a coach, obviously you have a ready made buddy. When you do interview life, we offer you buddies. But no matter what you're doing, you can find an accountability buddy that is a human being that will hold you to your promise no matter what through thick and thin. Very different than a drinking buddy. Okay, so that's someone you're gonna tell about your promise and have them hold you to it. You're also gonna tell everyone who will listen. Because the more people who know, the more likely you are to keep the promise. And then finally, here's the clincher. Pick someone close to you and determine if you don't keep the promise, they get 20 bucks. That's called an artificial self imposed consequence. Doesn't have to be money. It could be a favor or a pie or a poem or just something annoying like a hundred push ups, but something annoying to remind you to stay present to your dream and to keep your promise. This is truly the special sauce of personal integrity is this ability to keep that promise because you put in the right annoying consequence. This is a muscle. It's not going to be easy to do at first, but you're going to build the muscle just like you would work out at the gym. And you're going to get better and better and better at it. Now listen, I hope you've learned something from this today. I hope really that you will actually go and practice it. I am Lori Gerber, Handel Group Life Coaching. If you want all the tools laid out for you for how to build personal integrity, please check out Inner U Life. It's our 12 module coaching course, self guided digital. It gives you everything we give our private coaching clients from self to career, to love to body, all, all of the topics. We cover it all in inner U coach. That's I, n, n e r, the letter U coach c o, a, c h. And please use 100 MBA 75. It's a special code that will give you half off for your lifetime subscription to inner U. That's $100 MBA 75. That's going to make it half off for you. And if you're still not sure, you're welcome to just take our little quiz, it's called the current Reality quiz to see if coaching is right for you. To see what areas you need work on. And if you'd like that, you can go to my.inriyu coach crq. I'll spell that out. It's my.I n n e r the letter u.c o a c h crq which stands for Current Reality Quiz. Thanks again for joining me today.

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What a real raw, important lesson by Lori Gerber. Don't forget to take her up on her offer on our Interu Life Online course over at Interu Coach and use promo code $100 MBA75. You'll get half off using that code. I love the fact that Lori actually went through some of the most common things we tell ourselves. Really, they're excuses for not fulfilling our promises to ourselves. It's good to be aware of that, to be aware of the conversations we have with ourselves. You know, I always say that entrepreneurship is 95% a mental game. If you can have control over the way you think and not be subjugated to it, taking control over it, being aware of it, it's going to help you navigate and improve your business at an incredible level. Because how we operate, the things we say to ourselves, will change the way we feel and therefore change what we do. At the end of the day, we do things based on how we feel in the moment. Whether we decide to pick up that phone and make that sales call or sit down in front of that computer and write that blog post, we need to be in control. We can't just be at the whims of the way we and that all stems from the conversations we have with ourselves. Being mentally tough, being resilient, and making sure you don't let yourself down in this process of building a business is critical to your success. Personally, as an entrepreneur, I have to say, I've been through a lot of ups and downs in my entrepreneurial career, and the only thing that gets me through it is me focusing on what I can control, following through on the things that I plan to do, and chipping away at the tasks I have set out. You owe it to yourself. At the end of the day, you're doing this for your own satisfaction, for your own gratification, for your own fulfillment. This is why we become entrepreneurs. What's the whole point? If you're not feeling good about it, you owe it to yourself to implement the things that you learned in today's lesson. Thanks so much for listening to the $100 MBA show. If you love what you hear, make sure you hit subscribe so you don't miss a beat. By hitting subscribe, you get access to all our archived lessons. It's absolutely free, so go ahead and do that on whatever app you use to listen to podcasts. Before I go, I want to leave you with this. How many times have you seen a product on TV or you've seen it in a store and you thought, wow, I had this idea. It's a thing. Now in the real world, the only difference between you and the person that actually put it in the store is that they implement it. They actually took action with the thoughts in their head. These are opportunities we have in our hands always as an entrepreneur, almost on a day to day basis. So seize those moments, take action, implement and reap the benefits. Thanks so much for listening and I'll check you in tomorrow's episode. I'll see you then. Take care.

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