Happy Sunday Everyone:
Sitting here is Scottsdale after finishing up my 19th coaching summit with CORE. Rick Ruby (owner) runs these events like nothing I’ve ever seen before. Nothing is missed, ever.
As a coach, Rick holds us to a higher standard than anyone else, including never being late. He’s serious enough about it that it’s a known fact that we will be fined $1000/minute for being late to any of the pre-meetings that take place each morning at 7:15. Over the past 3 years I think we’ve issued 7K in fines for being late, which isn’t bad considering there are 44 coaches. Friday morning comes around and 7:15 comes and goes, no Rick. 7:20, no Rick and at that point we send out a search party. Rick is so reliable and so true to his word, 1/2 the coaches, including me, thought he might have died. Turns out he woke up, having the flu, put his head back on the pillow and accidentally fell asleep. He was in the room at 7:25 and immediately fined himself $10,000 for being 10 minutes late. For the record, the fine money goes to charity.
I understand reading this probably sounds insane, and maybe it is but after being around it for as long as I have, it’s simply honoring your word. I can’t do it justice, how this whole thing works, but hanging around with people that honor their word is the right way to go. From Friday Morning to now, I’ve been thinking about it a lot. One important thought for me as I dissect it further is honoring my own word to me. The buildup of true confidence in one’s self is directly proportional to honoring one’s word to one’s self. Honoring your word to others starts with honoring your word to yourself. How many times do you tell yourself you’re going to make X amount of calls on Monday, you’re going to work out X amount of days, you’re going to return a call, etc….and then you don’t, you’re taking away from your word. From my perspective, you’re crushing your confidence in yourself by not doing what you say you’re going to do….I know this from firsthand experience. On the positive side is the opposite, the continuing effort/actions of honoring your word to yourself makes it an automatic to deliver what you promised others as well.
Not sure this message is written as clearly as it is in my head. For some of us reading this that struggle with keeping their word to others, work on keeping your word to yourself first, it then becomes much easier to pay it forward.
I was talking to Rick about this last night, his final comment to me was “you always need to make sure your word is the word”….what he meant was simply that there is nothing more important in life than honoring your word, to yourself, and to others.
Have a great rest of you Sunday!