40. CEO Mindset

 You're listening to the success minded woman with Deidre Kiesling, episode 40, CEO  mindset.

 

Hi, I'm Deidrea, a wife and mom to three teenagers, coffee snob and certified life and business coach. If you're a high achieving goal oriented woman and you know you were meant for more, then you are a success minded woman and you're in the right place. I'm here to help you make the money and the impact you've been dreaming of to step into your confidence, create habits and systems to support you.

 

Ditch that imposter syndrome and harness the power of your mind. If you're ready to create a life and business you love, then let's go. I'm so glad you're here.

 

Hi there.  It's raining here hard. It's been raining for days  and I love the rain  except for  this year. I gave myself a challenge to walk outside every day.  Up until now, I've had this somewhat of an all or nothing mentality. So if I couldn't walk for 30 minutes or if I didn't do in the morning, then I wouldn't do it.

 

But I gave myself this realistic. Doable minimum baseline goal  to prove to myself  that I can do what I say I will do to myself.  So my goal is to walk outside. every day for the year.  And I gave myself the minimum of five minutes. Now, five minutes doesn't sound  like very much. Obviously, it's just five minutes.

 

And most days I walk much more than that, usually about 30 minutes. But the minimum of five minutes, I know I can do No matter what  I thought it good, but it's been 23 days and I've walked outside in sleet in ice and in a lot of rain and sometimes when it's dark because I didn't do it all throughout the day, but.

 

I made a promise to myself that I would not go to bed until I did this, and I've done it, and I'm very proud of myself. And five minutes, it could have been easily easy to say, well, it's just five minutes and  I won't do it, or I'll start my streak over tomorrow, but no. I'm committed and I'm doing it and I'm building this muscle of self integrity.

 

And that's one of the things that we're going to talk about today.  So this concept that I'm going to share with you today, it's a really good one. And actually one of my past clients and, um, friend now and co founder with me of her mindset matters, REI, a group coaching program that we. Put together and she still runs to help women build real estate investing businesses.

 

And she said this one concept completely changed her life. And many of my clients have said the same thing.  And it's this,  if I had to pick one thing, one idea, one concept, one phrase that is the foundation of my coaching and my philosophy of life, it's this.  It's the most powerful concept you could ever learn and develop within yourself to achieve your goals and dreams to create the success in your life.

 

However you define that.  And here it is. You are a hundred percent responsible. For your life,  I heard this saying from one of my mentors, Jim Fortin, and I absolutely love. And it's become a mantra to me. If it is to be,  it's up to me.  And if you don't start with this, as you go after your goals and dreams, then all the tools, the growth, the self, the self development, the books, the podcast, the coaching, all of that  comes down to this one concept.

 

And you will be limited to the level that you really grasp this.  You are the one, you are the co creator, creator of your life. And if you want different results.  It's up to you.  And I call this concept  CEO mindset,  deciding to be in charge of your life, to be the leader of your life, to be the CEO of your life.

 

So what is a CEO? It's a business term that stands for chief, Executive officer. It's the leader of a company. It's usually the highest level in an organization. And sometimes a CEO reports to a board of directors. And, but sometimes a CEO is it, it's the, it's the top of the hierarchy. And just like a business has a CEO, you can decide to be the CEO of your life.

 

And what does a CEO do? It's the visionary leader of a company and ultimately responsible for the results of the company. It's accountable for all the business decisions. The CEO sets the strategy and direction where the company is going and the CEO builds a team and delegates the implement.

 

Implementation to the other leaders of the company and then keeps updated and pivots as needed based on data and input inputs about the results. The CEO makes decisions and just like any corporation has a CEO. We all are the CEO of our life.  I've always loved this phrase. The buck stops here. President Truman had a sign on his desk in the Oval Office that said this, the buck stops here.

 

The phrase refers to the notion that the president has to make the decisions and accept the ultimate responsibility for those decisions.  And the buck in your life Stops with you. Live life like the buck stops here.  My husband and I love the show Billions on Showtime. It's one of those shows where we can, we made an agreement that we would not watch it without each other.

 

It's sort of a date night for us and it took us a long time. to get through it for all of us to get together and have the right energy and time to read to watch it together. But in the last season, the villain, Michael Prince, who owns and leads the hedge fund that the plot centers around decides to run for president.

 

And he had a new interpretation of this phrase, and he had a sign on his desk, on his desk that said, I. Am the buck,  which is really an even higher level of thinking than the buck stops here.  And in many ways, we all are the buck. If you think about the buck is the currency of our life. We get to define it, what we give, what we exchange our time, our money, our energy and attention in life, our currency of life.

 

We get to decide what it is and how we spend it. And the currency of your life, your buck. is always your thoughts  because your thoughts create your results, which is why I'm always talking about your thoughts and your thinking on the podcast. And what you think about frequently becomes your beliefs and your beliefs run your life.

 

So you are the CEO of your life.  And I want you to believe that, believe that you are in charge, that you are responsible for your life and your results  and whatever your success, however you define it, you create it because of who you are, your way of being in the world. I think we should all be. The CEO of our life.

 

And the more that you really grasp this and live this concept, the more you will achieve, the more you will create the life of your dreams.  The CEO creates the vision and inspires, motivates, leads the company to create the results. And you Do the exact same thing in your life. You are the visionary of your life or not, because you see, we are all living our life either by default,  letting life happen to us or by design, designing the life we would love and then creating it.

 

And in order to design your life, you must have a CEO mindset. You must take 100 percent responsibility for making that happen. You must be vision driven, not condition based driven. And I talk more about that in episode 28 on being a visionary woman.  Being a visionary, being a CEO is self leadership, self management.

 

And I want to tell you this  life can be harder  when you're in charge  steering the ship. Being in charge, running a company, running your life, taking complete ownership of your results is hard. It's harder that way. But the good news is, is that then you know where you're going. You decide where you're going.

 

And so there's two pieces to the CEO mindset that I'm going to talk about today. So the first is identity. It's being a CEO. And then the second part is mindset. And I'm going to go into five different parts of mindset that you must have to be the CEO of your life. Okay. We start with identity, being a CEO.

 

You have to be a CEO. You have to have the identity of a leader of the leader of your life.

 

And you can make things happen and start, um, showing up differently in your life, but if you don't have this identity and then maintain it and raise yourself to being the CEO of your life and your business, if you have a business, then you won't be able to sustain your results. And I have experienced this firsthand and it's one of those things that I didn't even realize until looking back until I've evolved and grown and kind of.

 

Really understood this concept of the CEO mindset and started really. Implementing it.  And so  many, many years ago, if you go back and listen to the first episode, I talk about my story about how many times I left corporate to start my own business. And then I kept going back to corporate  corporate because it was more of my comfort zone.

 

Um, but one of the times I didn't remember which time is probably like the third or fourth time that I left corporate. I was starting my own consulting company. I was creating a consulting company that That sold projects and staff projects for, um,  implementation projects for HR systems, which is what I was doing the last part of my career.

 

So I made this decision. I was starting this company and within days of making that decision, a whole series of events happened. And I happened to have. All these meetings set up with other CEOs of other consulting companies to talk about possible partnerships.  Now listen, this all happened in the, in the period of like one week.

 

I made this decision. I mean, I'd been thinking about it for a really long time, but I actually made the decision to do it. And things just started rolling. I made phone calls. I had emails and all this activity started happening. And I will never forget this about where I was in my office, sitting on this yellow chair in the corner,  having these three calls with different CEOs.

 

I was in it. I was being the CEO. I was having these partnerships. I was collaborating,  talking about all these ideas. I was in it. I was being the CEO and I was. These CEOs,  you know, they were just having the conversation with me as if I was a peer and we were collaborating and coming up with all these ideas.

 

And I had 1 call and then I had another call and then I had another call within the  like, within like a 2 hour period. I'd had. These three calls  and when the last call was over, I was sitting in that yellow chair and I remember thinking,  I just had three calls with three CEOs and they talked to me like I was a CEO  and I was just like, this is happening.

 

This is really happening,  but you know what?  I didn't follow through on it. I got busy with my current projects and contracts and  I, I didn't follow through. I just, I let everything. Go back to the status quo and  it didn't, I didn't get the results of that momentum and those relationships that I was creating.

 

And the reason is, and I didn't realize that at the time, but now.  Now that I've really learned so much more about these concepts and how we show up in our life and really about goal achievement is that I didn't have the identity, like in my bones. I didn't believe that I was a CEO. So even though I was on those calls and I was having those conversations and they saw me as a CEO, as a peer, as a potential business partner.

 

I didn't have it.  in myself. I was, it's almost like I was acting like I was pretending.  I mean, I was really showing, I knew I had that in me, but I couldn't maintain the identity. And that's where, that's why the identity of who you're being is so important. You can start to create these results, but if you don't have it in your bones, in your cells, in your identity as being.

 

The one in charge and being the CEO. And for me, it was the literal being the CEO. It didn't work out. And it was really because of who I was being and who I, how I was thinking about myself. And that's why I know it's so important. The identity of who you're being now in my story, I was, it was literally the CEO, but this is true of any actual role that you're wanting to create.

 

In your life, in your business. When Misty and I were, uh, coaching, uh, real estate investors, and she still does that, one of the first things that we would ask the women to do is to say out loud, I am a real estate investor to claim it, to own it, to be it, because it always starts with your identity,  who you are, who you are being.

 

And so you have to claim it. You have to decide to be the CEO. Of your life to be the leader of your life,  you have to remind yourself that I'm in charge because you are always in charge of what you're thinking and your life will rise or fall  example to the level of your identity  and your success becomes inevitable.

 

With the CEO mindset because you are being a CEO  and the truth is, it's not really about the result. Those come from your identity, so you don't wait to be a CEO until you have what you want. You be the CEO and then you get what you want.  And remember that you get to define success, what, however, whatever that means to you.

 

And that's the ultimate goal. And the idea that you are in charge of your life and you get to decide to create it however you would love.  Because being a CEO is a visionary. So you have to have a vision for the life you would love living.  And if you want more explanation of that, go back and listen to episode 24 when I talk all about the power of vision.

 

Okay, so that was the first part, identity, being a CEO of your life. And now the second part is mindset. And this is how you think and how you act. And you must have a growth mindset, which is always looking for opportunities, looking at things in different ways, knowing that you are always growing and evolving versus to fix mindset, which is like, it's fixed, it's stuck at where you say, well, that's just how it is, or this is just who I am.

 

It's, it's really having this abundant, expressive, expansive mentality.  And I will remind you and me and all of us about mindset. You are where your attention is.  So you have to pay attention to where your mindset is. What are you focusing on? What are you noticing? Is it expansion? Is it feeling abundant?

 

Or is it constrictive? Is it in scarcity? Because you're always thinking about all the ways it will work? Or are you always thinking about the ways it won't work? Are you focused on what's going right?  Or are you focused on what's going wrong? It starts with that, with a growth mindset.  And then there's five pieces to how the mindset of a CEO shows up in your life.

 

Number one, leadership. Be the leader of your life. Don't follow just because other people are doing something. You be you. and lead your life  and you get this one life. So be the leader of it. Number two, commitment, a promise you make to yourself and to your dreams.  For me, I say, I'm doing this thing. This is happening.

 

I write that in my journal almost every day. This is happening. And then I tell myself, keep going. Commitment is a contract you make with yourself. And I love this quote, and I know I've shared it probably many times on the podcast, but it is very appropriate in this part when we're talking about commitment.

 

So William H. Murray was one of the first mountaineers to summit Mount Everest. And he said this about commitment  until one is committed. There is hesitancy, the chance to draw back always in effectiveness concerning all acts of initiative and creation. There is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans  that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then providence moves to and all sorts of things occur.

 

to help one that never otherwise would have occurred. Commitment.  Number three is discipline.  And I think that discipline is, um, I think it's something that we all know we need to be more disciplined, but actually I think you need to be Uh, deliberate and intangible to create discipline to be disciplined.

 

It does not come naturally, because being disciplined is basically the definition of that is doing what we don't want to do or doing things whether, you know, regardless of how we think or feel about it and discipline is  actually it's outside of our comfort zone because our comfort zone is remember the motivational triad is to  keep us safe, be as efficient as possible and seek pleasure, seek pleasure, avoid pain, be as efficient as possible, which is the.

 

Opposite  of discipline. So just know that you are going to need discipline and discipline is required for goal achievement.  So the next one, number four, responsibility.  This is huge. You are a hundred percent responsible for your life. And I love this quote. And she actually does a, uh, a podcast about this and I'll put the link in the show notes or she does it.

 

She has a YouTube video too for Mel Robbins. And she says this, no one is coming.  No one is coming.  It's up to you. If you want a different life, a better life, a life you would love living. It's up to you to create it. I think she also says, no one cares.  Like no one cares what your goals and dreams are. Like they're busy with their own life.

 

So it is up to you. No one is coming.  And if it is to be, it is up to me. And when you really claim that and own that and take 100 percent responsibility for your life and don't expect someone else to come and save you, to come and rescue you, to come and do the work for you, No one is coming when you really accept that.

 

It's very empowering because you are in charge of you. You can control your thoughts, your feelings, your actions, and ultimately your results. It's very empowering and no one is coming to grow your business to heal your pain, to improve your marriage, to lose the way. No one is coming. It's up to you. Your life is your responsibility.

 

Your dreams are your responsibility, and it's up to you.  So make a decision to take responsibility for who you are becoming, for what you are creating in your,  in your future, and it takes courage. And all dreamers and all dreams realized are on the other side of courage. And remember that when you take responsibility, you are being empowered.

 

You are being in control. You are being in charge of your life.  Okay. Number five choice.  You can always choose how you respond to anything.  We can't always control obviously what happens in our life, but we always have a choice. And how we handle it, we can react to it. We can, we can be the victim of the circumstances of our life, or we can respond.

 

We can take responsibility and choose how we want to deal with anything that comes our way.  And this could be small things like when someone cut you off in traffic, you can choose to let them in to just allow that and stay calm. And, and sometimes I think, well, you know, they must really be in a hurry or really  need to go someplace.

 

Or sometimes I just think, wow, they're really. You know  Stuck in their life. Like, I think I really do believe this saying is how you do anything is how you do everything. And people that drive aggressively and are forceful and, you know, move into traffic and butt in their way. I mean, I feel kind of sorry for them because that is really a sad way to live your life.

 

So you can choose, like in any area, but I like to say traffic, like you can just let people in. You can just let them come in and let them be in a hurry and let them be frenzied. And you don't have to be frustrated and irritated and, you know, say, well, like, who do they think they are? You can just say, yeah, they're.

 

That's who they are. And that's okay. It's in the little things that we get to practice this muscle of choice.  And in, and then we can really use it in the big things.

 

So we always have different choices. We can always choose how to react or respond to be calm and flexible or irritated and frustrated. We Always have this choice and honestly, I will say that there, there's a big difference between understanding this concept and implementing this concept. And what I tell my clients is that first, when you really start to take ownership and responsibility for choice and choosing how to react versus respond first, you first, you'll notice it afterwards.

 

So something happens, let's say you have a fight or an argument and you yell and you get mad and defensive and you storm off. The first thing when you start implementing this concept is that you'll notice it like the whole scene will have played out and then you'll notice it. You're like, wow, I just reacted in a way that I don't that I wouldn't choose.

 

So that's the first thing you notice it afterwards. And the next phase of it is you'll notice it. While it's happening. So you're in an argument or you're frustrated or you're dealing with something and you're in that moment and you notice that you're being reactive that you're being triggered and you are choosing to stay with it and not do change anything about it.

 

And then the third step is that you notice it. before it's happening. Like you feel yourself, you're still getting triggered. You're still feeling, feeling reactive, like in your mind and in your body, but you're pausing, you're slowing down and you're choosing your words and you're choosing your demeanor and you're choosing how you want to show up.

 

And then the final phase is that you do this so many times that it happens naturally, but this is something that takes, it could take years to actually develop this. Um, but it first starts with understanding this concept and choosing to  To allow yourself to, to be. Uh, responding to life instead of reacting to life.

 

And I want to remind you and all of us that we get to decide the meaning that we make of everything that happens in our life. And I know we can't control everything in our life, although I think a lot of us would like that. I know a lot of us type A people would just. Like if the world would just do what we say and listen to us, like everything would be better, but it's not so we are always going to have things that we can't control circumstances, situations, conditions that we would not choose, but we can always choose how we respond.

 

Versus react when we respond, we're being deliberate and intentional with what you're thinking and doing and reacting is always our default mode to be defensive, to be argumentative, to blame, to, to basically not take responsibility and blame it outside of ourselves. Okay, enough about choice.  Okay, I saved the best for last self integrity.

 

So integrity is doing what you say you will do no matter what.  And often we are really good at this for other people. Um, we honor our commitments. We do what we say we will do for other people. Sometimes not even, sometimes not even all the time for other people, but oftentimes we don't do it as much for ourselves.

 

So this is about keeping your word to yourself. In the book, the four agreements, which is one of my all time favorite books that I write sitting right here on my credenza, um, it's four agreements that you make with yourself to live your best life. And I did a whole podcast on this, but the, one of the four agreements is this.

 

Impeccable with your word.  And one of the ways to do that is to do what you say you will do. For yourself and most importantly, and being the CEO of your life is for yourself. Do what you tell yourself you will do.  And studies have shown,  studies have shown that in business when integrity is a core value, productivity can increase up to 500  percent  500 percent increase in productivity when nothing else changes in the business except employees working with integrity.

 

And integrity builds trust. And I think that's one of the reasons why this study shows that it's so effective in increasing productivity. Because when you are working in a team and you trust that other people are showing up, that other people are doing what they say they will do, then you will do what you say you will do.

 

And.  With trust brings safety, brings collaboration, and when you're working together with trust and integrity, I can see how that would increase productivity. And we can use this same concept in our life. We can have self integrity, which builds self trust. And I believe that self trust is self love, and that self love Loving ourselves no matter what is the foundation of living our best life.

 

So how would you feel about someone who told you every day that they would meet you at the gym and then every day? They go and you're not there,  you, they would lose trust with you and they would not believe what you say. And they might even decide to not be your friend anymore and for sure not be your accountability partner at the gym anymore.

 

And I know that's a, uh, uh, uh, uh, what is the word? A broad, um,  scenario. That's not the word I'm trying to think of. Um,  we do that. We make promises to ourself.  And we don't keep them. We make excuses. We let other things get in the way. But imagine your life. If when you told yourself you would do something, you did it.

 

Always you would be more mindful and intentional when you make commitments because you would consider all your other commitments. You would be more realistic. You will rely on yourself. You will trust yourself that you will do what you say you will do  and really the end game. of self trust and the foundation of self love and trusting yourself is who you are becoming as you go after your goals and dreams.

 

Because really that is the goal. And I believe that nothing is more important than self love and holding yourself accountable. Having integrity with yourself is how you do it.  And this is what I'm doing, building self trust with myself, with my, with my goal of 365 days of walking outside, no matter what, for at least five minutes.

 

I'm building trust with myself because, let's face it, it's not hard. Anyone can walk outside for five minutes.  And because it's so small, because it's so easy, it's also easy to dismiss it, say it doesn't count. It's only five minutes. But for me, every day, whether it's five minutes or 35 minutes, I'm being accountable to myself.

 

And listen, no one's watching, no one's keeping score, but I know I'm keeping score. And honestly, my family's starting to notice and I didn't even tell them what I'm doing. They just noticed like, Oh, when are you going to go to walk? Oh, you're going on your walk. So people are always watching and you're being example of who you are in all of these small ways and all of these small commitments.

 

So in summary, I will leave you with this.  Take a hundred percent responsibility for your life by being the CEO  and embrace a CEO mindset for you and your life. And remember this, if it is to be,  it's up to me. All right. Thanks for listening and I'll talk to y'all next week.  If you love what you're learning here on the podcast and you want to start.

 

Implementing these concepts into your daily life, then you must get my free course where I will teach you how to get 10 hours back a week. Imagine what you could create with 10 more hours a week. So go to the dreamacademy.  com slash free course and learn about the magic wand of time. Thanks for listening.

 

Bye.