Personal Integrity: Did I Do What I Said I Was Going To Do?

Melissa: The question was about how to measure if you're being successful or not. Not if you've hit a major result and then it's a success, but day-to-day, how do you measure if you were successful or not? I loved his answer. So simple.

At the end of every day, ask yourself, "Did I do what I said I was going to do today?" If the answer is yes, you are winning. That is success.

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Welcome back to The Law Firm Owner Podcast. Okay, well, today, we're going to talk about personal integrity. This is something that, indirectly, I've talked about a lot on the podcast, and I want to offer you guys today a way to approach this topic.

What I mean by personal integrity is the relationship you have to yourself. We have a lot of relationships. We have relationships with loved ones. We have relationships with employees. We have relationships with colleagues, etc. We can go on and on, but we don't always stop and think about or give care and thought to the relationship you have to yourself.

This is a big deal. The stronger that your relationship is to yourself, the more trust there is, and the more trust you have in yourself, the faster you end up creating results that you want to create. Every time you do something you said you were going to do, it's like making a deposit. Every time you don't follow through, it's like making a withdrawal, and your brain is keeping score whether you realize it or not.

If you've broken promises to yourself enough times, your plans stop meaning anything. You put something on the calendar, and some part of you already knows it's likely not going to happen. And so, and guess what? It doesn't happen. And then everything feels harder than it should because you're dragging around a version of you that you can't count on.

But the reverse is also true. When your word to yourself is solid, decisions get faster. Follow-through gets easier. Goals stop being theoretical because when you decide to do something, it's as good as done. That is why this matters. That is the engine underneath everything else in this episode. Do you do the things you say you're going to do? That's what it boils down to.

And you already know how to keep your word. You do it for a living. You would never blow a court deadline. Your license depends on honoring commitments to clients, to courts, to opposing counsel, and you do it under pressure every single week. But the deadlines that you set for yourself? The priorities that you say are a priority, but they're not urgent, though they're important?

This spans personal and professional. It could be the workout, the dinner with your family, the extra hour of sleep, broken constantly. It could be development plans for your team members. It could be doing the things that you say you're going to do for the health of your business, broken constantly. No consequences filed. The only person you've decided doesn't get that version of you is you. 

Now, for some of us, this is slippery because we don't always declare what we're going to do. We don't always have a plan on what we're going to do. So then there's nothing to really honor there. We may have intentions that are unspoken, undercurrents of, "Well, of course, I want to spend more time with my family. Of course, I want to be healthier. Of course, I want to sleep more. Of course, I want to develop my team members. Of course, I want to hire that rock star." But we don't necessarily make those things an actual priority. 

And when I say make it a priority, it means you don't schedule time to give to those things. Some of you have created this reality for yourself where you spend plenty of quality time with your family, and that doesn't even feel like something that needs to be bumped. That's great. Or you've been doing certain things that you said you would do. Okay, great. A lot of people don't feel that way. A lot of people have this tiny voice inside that tells them they should be spending more time quality time with their loved ones, as an example, or they should be pouring into their team. So, as you listen today, where is that little voice for you?

Everyone I have the privilege of working with in business is very intentional about planning for their business. And then through working together and through accountability and coaching, their actions actually line up with what they want to create. They're very intentional with how they think. They're intentional with how they feel. They are intentional with the actions that they take, and thus, they are intentional with the results that get created that they want to create. That is something we reverse engineer. We get very intentional with how we're going to spend our time working towards a goal.

But here's the thing. I always say this to clients, you are building your firm. We are building what we're building, but not at the cost of you. And that sounds lovely, and I think that really resonates with people, and I'm glad because I mean it. But people don't necessarily define what "at the cost of me" might look like. The first thing that usually comes to people's minds is, "Yeah, I'm running myself ragged. I'm not eating lunch. I'm not eating enough. Basically, I'm just so busy that I am leaving myself in the dust."

That's a valid thing to think through and to be intentional about, so you don't leave yourself in the dust. So you aren't building this firm at the cost of you. But what does that mean? Just beyond running yourself ragged. We're all in it. We all have a ceiling, but you're willing to test how far that ceiling is. You're willing to drag yourself through the mud for a bit. Everybody I work with, that's true for. They're used to really cranking and really work hard. And it is, it does stack up, and it is at the cost of them. 

But just because you can doesn't mean you should. So now let's talk about what's the ripple effect? The ripple effect in your firm and in your life of running yourself ragged. What is the impact of doing this at the cost of you? What does that mean for you?

For some people, it is that they wish they spent more time with their family. For some people, it's not about time, it's about being present. When they're with their family or loved ones, they're present with their family. For some, it's really taking care of themselves and their health. For some, it's sleep, which is also health-oriented. I don't know what it is for you. 

I work closely with people to ensure that they are aligning themselves up and acting with more and more and more personal integrity, meaning how they operate, how they show up, that it's actually in line with their intentions. It's actually in line with what they said they wanted. But there's other things that maybe they are leaving in the dust.

You have an opportunity to listen to the whispers, to listen to the things where there's this little hint of, "I should be more present with my family," or, "I should be taking a walk or moving my body somehow," or, "I should be sleeping an extra hour a night or more." There's this thread, and the reason that you feel like you should, it's not out of guilt. It's because it's really what you want. 

Guilt nags. Desire—I mentioned the word 'whisper' above—desire whispers. Learn to tell the difference. It's not just being prioritized in a way where it's winning. Something else is winning out over it. Personal integrity, as I've said before, is the relationship between you and you. It's strengthening that relationship and really trusting yourself that when you want to do something and you say you're going to do it, it is as good as done.

This all starts with planning. This all starts with saying, "This is how I'm going to spend my time," based on what I want to create. They'll do it for business, at least the ones I work with, because that's what we do, right? They'll do it for the business, especially when they have a partner that's helping them prioritize and holding their commitments for prioritization on what matters in the business. But they tend to let drop the other elements of taking care of themselves. They don't calendar this stuff in because they think it's going to take a lot.

I hear from people, and I know it's what people are thinking. "I don't really have a lot of time to give." And so, because that's what's running through your mind, it feels pointless to actually calendar time. It's like, "Okay, I don't really have that much time, and this isn't my first focus." Whether it should or shouldn't be, that's not what we're arguing today, but usually something is winning out because we don't feel like we have these huge swaths of time to give to it.

Here is the truth: Turtle steps get you where you want to go. It is not these huge amounts of time that's needed in order to make progress. It's the quality of time you're spending engaging with that thing that you want.

I did a podcast episode a while back called "All In" or "Going All In," one of those two things. We'll put it in the show notes. It was about this idea that you don't need a lot of time. You just have to be all in when you do show up for the things that you say you want to do. 

If you have this drive to be more present with your family, for example, what is one small thing you can do that you're going to be very intentional about, that you're going to calendar? And when you show up for that one thing, and it may be 30 minutes, you are all in on that one thing, nothing else.

Because if you show up, let's say, at dinner with your family and you are all caps, ALL IN, totally present, totally engaged, having conversations, soaking up your family, soaking up whatever your family is in that moment, if you're being really present, they're not missing you for that 30-minute window. It's better than being around your family for four hours and not being present and being sort of in and out. So it really is about being all in.

I highly recommend that podcast episode. If any of this is resonating with you, you'll probably like that episode as well. 

But what do you have a whisper about? What are the things that you know you need to be more present for? You know you need to be paying more attention to, but it hasn't made the cut. Put those things in your calendar. That specific small action you're going to take, put it in your calendar. Your job is to make a plan and honor your plan.

I talk about this a lot with business because, naturally, I'm talking to law firm owners about building their businesses, but it shouldn't be at the cost of you. When I teach Monday Map, which is a process, how to plan your week in a really strong way, I say in the guide, "Not just work." This is about you as the owner. When you're planning your week and how you're going to show up for your week, this is about you, not just about your firm. Yes, your firm is going to benefit. Yes, your clients are going to benefit, but it's not just about work. So don't only calendar work things. Calendar what matters. Then you show up for your calendar because then you're honoring the things that you say matter, the things that you pre-decided matter, and they made it onto your calendar. 

There needs to be time for you as a human. You're not a robot. There has to be rejuvenation time in your calendar somewhere. And again, it doesn't have to be these huge swaths of time. It can be a shorter amount of time, but be fully present for the things that you add in, for the things that will rejuvenate you, for the things that you're making deposits into the things that matter most to you: your family, other loved ones, other special projects, hobbies, whatever it is. Be fully present for those things. Allow yourself to really deeply relax into whatever you're doing. Be very present in whatever you're doing, and it will rejuvenate you. 

If you have time on your calendar for something that means rejuvenating space to you, maybe it's going for a hike, whatever it is for you, but you're constantly thinking about work or what you should have done, what you could have done, what you need to do next week, then you're not fully present with the rejuvenation piece. So you're not going to be rejuvenated. It's very inefficient. What's more efficient, but not as easy to do, is to plan in a way that sets you up for success. Not just sets your firm up for success, sets you up for success. And then you show the F up.

Now, I've talked about this a lot on the podcast in general, but the reason I'm bringing this back today is because honoring your plan, doing the things you said you were going to do, that is personal integrity.

I was listening to an interview with Nir Eyal, who wrote the book Indistractable. I always refer to him as my brother from another mother. I love everything he teaches. I agree with it. We essentially teach very similar things when it comes to planning your time and honoring your plan. But we have a different language that we bring to it and a different way of teaching.

I was listening to an interview with him, and the question was about how to measure if you're being successful or not. Not if you've hit a major result and then it's a success, but day-to-day, how do you measure if you were successful or not? I loved his answer. So simple. 

At the end of every day, ask yourself, "Did I do what I said I was going to do today?" If the answer is yes, you are winning. That is success. It summed up so well what I circle around a lot with clients. And I think that is a beautiful, brilliant filter question for the end of the day. The end of a week can work too, but there's a lot that can happen in a week. Every day, to me, that resonates deeply. "Did I do the things I said I was going to do today?" Meaning, did I honor my calendar today? Because if you make a plan and you're calendaring how you should be spending your time and what you should be doing, then did you honor your calendar? Did you do the things you were going to you said you were going to do today? 

Because if you're planning well enough, it's all there. You're just supposed to follow that guide of your calendar. So did you do that? That's the filter question, a check and balance for yourself to see how you're doing with personal integrity. The first step is you have to plan the things that are important to you. It has to go in your calendar. It can't just live in your head as a wishful thing. And again, don't skip putting something important on your calendar because you feel like you don't have enough time or space to give to it. You're probably wrong about that.

Really question your assumptions. Maybe you think you should spend more time with your kids. What if you spent this really concentrated, all-in amount of time with your kids or your spouse or whoever else you really care about and love? What if you spent a shorter amount of time but were so deeply focused and so present with them? And that's on your calendar. These are the things that matter. 

What I don't want to see people do, and we work hard with clients to make sure this isn't happening, what I don't want to see people do is build a really great firm that's not on their terms, meaning it is at the cost of them on some level. It's at the cost of some value on some level to them. That's not okay with me. I don't want to have anything to do with someone building a firm where them as the owner, as a whole person, isn't considered. That doesn't get to happen in my world. I don't want it to happen on my watch. And I can't control others, but I can keep reminding. 

So this is me reminding you. Make plans that honor you as the whole person, not just one or two big efforts and results you're trying to create. When you honor you as a whole person in that plan, you're giving space, even if it's a small amount of space. It matters. If you're giving space in your calendar, then your job is to show up for your calendar. And at the end of the day, ask yourself, "Did I do what I said I was going to do today?" And if the answer is yes, success, my friend. 

If the answer is no, don't make it mean something bad. Don't beat yourself up over it. There's zero upside to beating yourself up over anything. If the answer is no, you need to have a look at one of two things.

The first, you didn't plan well enough. Maybe you didn't set yourself up to be able to even answer that question with a yes because you packed so much in so tight, cutting corners on what you're scheduling, that basically you made an unrealistic schedule for yourself to follow. Then you're setting yourself up to fail. There's no way you were going to be able to answer the question at the end of the day, "Yes, I did everything I said I was going to do." 

So are you setting yourself up poorly? Do you need to plan better? Or is it that you did have a great plan, but you gave into distractions while you were supposed to be executing on your plan? That is about trading instant gratification for delayed gratification, meaning in the moment, checking your email feels easier than writing the brief. Scrolling feels easier than the walk you planned.

But the gratification you delayed is so much richer, so much more fulfilling than the hit you get from giving into whatever you felt like doing in the moment instead of doing what you said you were going to do in the moment.

The instant version is a hit. The delayed version is the actual reward. Honor your plan because it's intentional. Your plan was intentional.  So that's one of two things. Have a look. If your answer is, "No, I did not do what I said I was going to do today," which one is it? Treat this like math. Which one is it?

Did you not plan well enough, or did you not honor your plan because you gave into distractions and urges to do other things? Once you can identify where it went wrong, then you can get to work. Then you know exactly what to do. No use beating yourself up, saying, "I should have done better. Why can't I just stick with this?" No, no, no, no, no, no, no. Figure out which path you need to work on, and then work on that thing. Go figure it out. Get to work. 

I hope this helps. I think that filter question is powerful. It helps us know and be tuned in with whether we're strengthening that relationship with ourselves, that trust with ourselves, and increasing our personal integrity. At the end of every day, "Did I do what I said I was going to do?" You keep your word for a living. Starting today, keep it with yourself too. 

All right, everybody. Have a beautiful week. I'll talk to you next Tuesday.

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