Month: November 2023

You’re listening to The Less Stressed Lawyer podcast, Episode 85. Today, we’re talking all about the process of creating a process. You ready? Let’s go.

Welcome to The Less Stressed Lawyer, the only podcast that teaches you how to manage your mind so you can live a life with less stress and far more fulfillment. If you’re a lawyer who’s over the overwhelm and tired of trying to hustle your way to happiness, you’re in the right place. Now, here’s your host, lawyer turned life coach Olivia Vizachero.

Well, hello there. How are you? I hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving. It’s so wild to me you always know what I’ve got going on in my life, and I don’t ever really get to hear what’s going on in yours. But I hope you got to spend it with people who matter most to you.

My parents actually came down. We had a very non-traditional Vizachero family Thanksgiving. It’s different than anything we’ve ever done before. I shouldn’t say that. I went to Chicago, I think two years ago, for Thanksgiving to visit with my aunt, my uncle, and my cousin Emily. I call her Ginger, for those of you who know her. She has red hair, so that’s my nickname for her.

That was the first time I really did something unconventional and didn’t spend it with my parents. This year, I spent it with my parents, but we weren’t at home. I wasn’t in Michigan, and we didn’t have a traditional home-cooked Thanksgiving meal.

We spent the week bopping around Charleston eating our way through the city. I got to go deep-sea fishing with my dad, which was so much fun. It’s something that we used to do when I was a lot younger. I haven’t gone with him in years, so it was really amazing to get out on the water with him and just have a riot.

So, they were down here for almost the whole week. I took some time off of work, which I’ve been coaching people on a lot lately, about their mind drama about taking days off of work. I should do a whole episode on that. I’ll make a note of it. But today’s episode isn’t about that.

Today’s episode is a continuation of what I talked about last week. Last week, I was talking about the process of focusing, and imperfect focus versus perfect focus. I explained in the last episode that I wanted to talk to you about the process of creating a process.

This is something that I do all the time in my own life. It’s something that I use with my clients all the time as well because I’ve seen how effective it is for me. So, here’s the reason I do this, and I’ll explain what it actually means in a second.

But the reason that I create processes, it’s because I’ve learned how I operate. All right? Confusion is an emotion that when I experience it, I tend to shut down. When I feel confused, I do not like moving forward. Is that my perfectionism making an appearance? You’re right, it sure is.

Because I don’t like the discomfort of not knowing. I love the certainty. I love feeling like I’m doing something right, the “right way.” Even though, as a coach, I intellectually know there is no “right way” to do something. That being said, I’m still a human.

So, if I’m doing something new, something I’ve never done before, it’s very easy for me to feel confused. And confused just comes from the thoughts, “I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what I’m doing. I don’t know how to do this.” That’s it. You just think, “I don’t know,” and then you feel confused. That’s all that happened. That’s all that causes confusion.

I’ve also noticed that when I feel confused, I also tend to feel overwhelmed. The two are sort of like cousins, they go together. So, when I’m feeling confused, I also feel overwhelmed. Maybe there are a lot of different options to choose from, and I don’t know where to start. I tell myself that something’s going to be hard or challenging, and it’s going to be difficult for me to complete. So, I’ll feel overwhelmed and confused.

Which is so funny, because if I don’t know how to do it, how can I assume that it’s going to be hard or complicated, and feel overwhelmed? It could be easy, but that’s not what my brain does when it defaults to this setting. When it’s indulging in ‘I don’t know,’ it loves to choose confusion and to choose overwhelm.

When I’m in this state, in this low-value thought cycle, one of the things that I’ve noticed is I really crave someone to tell me how to do whatever it is I need to do. I want them to give me the ‘follow the yellow brick road’ process. Every single step from A to Z, I want them to lay it out for me.

And if I can’t clearly see every single step, again, I shut down because I’m in that low-value cycle. I’m feeling confused. I’m feeling overwhelmed. Where there’s a lack of clarity, I just refuse to move forward.

A lot of people don’t teach things the way that I teach. If you work with me, if you’re a client of mine, you know this. I teach meticulous processes. I make it so clear, so crystal clear what you need to do. I break it down with such specificity because that’s what my brain needs to function at its most optimal level. That’s what I need to get unstuck and to move forward.

I need to know, I call them the micro steps or the micro tasks, 1.1, and then 1.2, and 1.3, and 1.4; every single micro step to doing something. When I have that clarity, I’m able to move forward with such ease.

If you remember back to elementary school, when you learned how to do math, when you learned how to do multiplication or division. In the very beginning, your teacher always tells you, you’ve got to show your work.

And when people glom a bunch of different steps together, and they’re really ambiguous or vague about what they’re teaching and how they’re teaching it, I get really overwhelmed and confused. It doesn’t make sense to me; I can’t see the path forward. Then I end up resisting what they’re teaching me, because it doesn’t make sense to me.

Now, in a perfect world, everyone would just hand me a perfect micro step, micro task, follow the ‘yellow brick road’ process for everything that I need to do. I have worked with some people who have done that for me. Those are the teachers that I end up really resonating with, that I follow, that I am so grateful for, because of the way that they teach. They teach in a way that makes sense to my brain.

But not everyone teaches like that. Sometimes people teach certain concepts really thoroughly, really well, and then they teach other concepts very vaguely. I’ve noticed that I really struggle when people teach vaguely. So, what I end up doing is I resist, I fight. I’m a little combative. I don’t apply what they’re teaching me.

I’ve learned… I worked through this with a friend of mine. She’s a coach, she’s a brilliant marriage coach. Her name is Maggie Reyes. She thinks a lot like I do, our brains work very similarly. So, she has an ability that when someone else says something that I end up feeling confused or overwhelmed about, she’s able to translate it for me and to approach it or teach it to me in a different way that makes sense to my brain.

I’ve noticed, because she’s been patient enough to do this with me, one of the things that she’s helped me do is recognize why I’m so frustrated, why I’m so resistant to whatever I’m being taught. It’s because I’m confused. It’s because I don’t see a clear process. Maggie knows that I have a flowchart brain, a very process, logic, oriented brain.

To give you a little backstory here. I was a math major through most of my undergrad career. I ended up dropping in at the last minute because it was going to extend my undergrad timeline by about another year and a half in order for me to finish it.

But before I dropped that double major, one of the classes that I took was Proof Theory. Proof Theory is all about those logic formulas. If A, then B. If not B, then not A. So, my brain works like that. That’s how I see the world. I see the world in flowcharts, in processes, in equations.

And I know not everyone loves math, but I think you can use math as a really great framework for teaching people things. It’s like, you have to go from A to B before you can go from B to C. You have to go from C to D before you can go from D to E. That’s just how it works.

So, if you think of the world that way, and you think of your problems that way, you can solve them with such greater ease than glomming everything together, jumbling it all up, being really confused and overwhelmed, and not knowing where to start.

Once I learned that I have this pattern of feeling confused and feeling overwhelmed when there’s a lack of clarity, when I don’t have a specific process, and knowing that I shut down when I’m in this state… Like I said, it’d be great if everyone just gave me, spoon-fed me, an amazing flowchart process to simply walk through and apply and implement.

But not everyone does that. Not everyone teaches like me. Not everyone knows that I might need that or that it might be beneficial, so I have to tap into my own resourcefulness. And one of the things that I started doing is to create my own ‘follow the yellow brick road’ processes for anything that I struggle with.

So, I’m going to walk you through a couple different examples. I’m going to start with the most recent one. Recently, I was getting coached by my business coach, Stacy Boehman. Before I raised my hand to get coached on this issue, I recognize that it would probably be good if I flushed out some of my thoughts about the topic that I was going to raise.

The topic that I was going to bring up with her was my resistance to hiring someone. I’m at a point in my business where I could probably really benefit from bringing someone on, even if it’s just part time, and I’ve been very reluctant and resistant to doing that. I noticed that I have a lot of resistance to it.

So, whenever I notice that I have a lot of resistance to something, that’s always a red or pink flag for me to dig a little bit deeper and figure out what’s going on there. What am I resisting? What’s coming up for me? Where are my thought errors?

What problems in my thinking are causing me to not move forward and do something that would actually really benefit me? What negative emotions are coming up for me that I’m resisting or avoiding by not moving forward?

I did a thought download. I just wrote down some of my thoughts about hiring. I noticed very common thoughts that come up for me when I’m embarking on doing something new that I don’t quite understand how to approach.

So, the thoughts were, “I don’t know where to start. I don’t know how to do this. it’s going to be really hard.” Those were the kinds of thoughts that I was thinking. And when I think them, I feel confused and overwhelmed. Then I just spin, I don’t move forward, I don’t figure it out.

You’ve probably heard me talk about this on the podcast before, if you’ve been listening for a while, but one of my favorite questions once we’ve done a thought download and we’ve identified the negative thoughts that we’re thinking, is to simply ask the question: Is this thought true? Now, it’s a thought. Our thoughts are never true. So, the answer is always no, this thought is not true.

But then, from there, I go to work to make the counter argument. I go to work to prove how the thought is not true. So, I want to prove how the opposite is quote “true,” even though the opposite isn’t true either. because thoughts aren’t true. I know that’s a little confusing but bear with me.

So, I challenged the thoughts, “I don’t know where to start. I don’t know how to do this,” knowing that it’s simply a thought and not true. I started to make the opposite argument. I started to make the argument that I did know where to start. I just started to jot down the process.

Now, I allowed myself to not need to have it all figured out. I was, at that time, telling myself, “You probably don’t know the whole process, but you might know some of it.”

I also want to backtrack for just a second. Right before I started to engage in this process of writing out what I think the process is, I noticed I had a lot of victimhood coming up in this moment. I noticed that I desperately wanted my business coach to just give me the process to hire someone.

I was feeling whiny and entitled and sort of desperate and needy. Very much like, “Why can’t you just explain this to me? Why can’t you just tell me what to do?” Being in that energy feels terrible. I never like to feel helpless. I never like to feel I don’t have the ability to be resourceful, to figure things out on my own and to come up with the answers that I need myself.

I think there’s a gentle balance between being willing to get help from a coach, but also not relying on them to do everything for you and to be willing to move forward and figure things out on your own.

So, I noticed my own victim mentality coming up here. Really feeling needy and desperate for someone to just tell me what to do. And yeah, could I start to google stuff and do more research and consume more content and find 18 different people who have 18 different ways of hiring? Yes, I could certainly do that. But it’s not a super-efficient use of my time.

Instead, what I realized is that I could just come up with my own process. If someone teaches me something, and they don’t give me the micro step brick by brick, ‘follow the yellow brick road’ process, I can just create that for myself.

There isn’t one right process. There might be a lot of different ways to do something. And just because mine is different than yours doesn’t make yours wrong and mine right, or mine wrong and yours right. We get to have different processes and arrive at the same result. I don’t need to match yours; I can just come up with one that works for me. So long as it moves me forward, that’s all that matters.

So, that’s what I did for myself. I gave myself permission to not have everything figured out. I, at the time that I embarked on this process and started to list out the steps as they came to my mind, I didn’t think that I would know steps A through Z. I didn’t think I would know the whole process. But I gave myself permission to do it imperfectly, and to just start to list out as many steps as I could think of.

I started with the thoughts, “I don’t know where to start. I don’t know how to do this.” I said, “That can’t be true. Where would you start if you had to take a guess? If you did know, where would you start?”

Here’s what I came up with. I first started by deciding that I would need to make a list of the tasks that the person would do for me. So, make that list, that’s step one.

Step two, decide the number of hours I’d like them to work. I decided on five, very randomly. And then, I actually already know of a matchmaking service that pairs virtual assistants with coaches, with entrepreneurs, so all I need to do is go and fill out their questionnaire. From there, they’ll send me an email notifying me that I’ve been matched with certain candidates.

I’ll read that email, and then the next step will be to schedule interviews with the candidates that they selected. Then, the next step will be to do those interviews. Then, the next step will be to select the one person I want to work for me. Then, the next step will be to invite that person to start working for me, to extend that offer to them, and see what they say.

If they accept, the next step will be to inform the other applicants, the other candidates, that they did not receive the position. And yes, I will have to gag-and-go my way through those conversations, sending those emails or making those phone calls. Then, I will onboard the person and start giving them assignments. I decided that I would pay them as a contractor, likely through PayPal.

So, I wrote this all out in the same setting that I had just moments ago been telling myself, “I don’t know where to get started. I don’t know how to do this. It’s going to be so hard.” What I realized is, just like our brains love to do, my brain was lying to me. I actually did know where to start. And not only did I know where to start, I actually knew the whole process.

Now, my brain was indulging in confusion because I have some other fears around hiring. Can I sustain employing another person? Is my business secure enough to be able to do that? And the answer to those questions is, yes. However, it just shows me where my own self-doubt is. It shows me where I need to build and further develop my self-concept and my identity as a business owner and a CEO.

It’s okay for me to have gaps in that belief, and to go to work on bridging those gaps, on filling those gaps, and becoming more and more confident in my capabilities as a business owner, as an employer. But the confusion protects me from all of that, from having to feel that worry, and to have to work through those questions. Being confused and being overwhelmed gets me to keep spinning and not moving forward.

So, it was so fascinating for me to see that I actually, not only did I not need a process from someone else, I already knew the process. I was able to answer my own question myself.

This is the process of creating a process. This is the process that I want you to start to utilize in your own life. You have to pay attention to where you feel confused and overwhelmed. You want to start to look for it. You want to start to identify it in your day-to-day life.

Then, I want you to pay attention to how you show up when you feel confused and overwhelmed. Do you do what I tend to do, which is shut down and spin and not move forward and get yourself stuck? If that’s you, if you don’t move forward, if you freeze when you feel confused and overwhelmed, I want you to practice creating your own process for whatever it is that you want to do, whatever it is you want to accomplish.

So, I just gave you an example of hiring. Last week, when I was talking about perfect versus imperfect focus, I helped my client come up with a process for focusing. I walked you through that in the last episode. I’ve also walked clients through the process of starting work in the morning.

This is going to seem really, really tedious. But I’ve had clients who say to me that it’s just so hard to start working in the morning. “I can’t bring myself to do it. I procrastinate. I waste hours at the start of my day because I just can’t get myself to start working. I can’t do it. It’s so hard.”

They’ll tell me it’s going to be challenging, “It’s really difficult for me. I’ve so much to do.” That thought will make you feel overwhelmed. “There are so many things that I could do,” that will make you feel overwhelmed. Then, telling yourself, “I don’t know where to start. I don’t know what I should do first,” that’s going to make you feel confused.

So, when that confusion and overwhelm come together, you’re likely just going to stare at your computer screen and shut down. Right? And if you’re telling yourself that it’s so complicated and it’s so convoluted, and it’s so difficult to work through this, you’re not going to have a very good time doing exactly that.

I worked with a client on this. I was like, “Break it down for me. What exactly is hard?” Again, she was glomming it all together, saying, “It’s just all of it. It’s all hard.” I’m like, “No, let’s break this down micro step by micro step, micro task by micro task. Let’s create a ‘follow the yellow brick road’ process for starting work in the morning. “Do you have a hard time getting out of bed?” “Do you have a hard time waking up?” “No, my alarm goes off and I wake up.”

“Okay, great. Next step, getting out of bed. Do you have a hard time doing that?” “No, I don’t. I get out of bed pretty easily.” I’m like, “Okay, what has to come next?” She’s like, “I’ve got to put clothes on.” If she’s working from home she’s going to just go into her office, but she gets dressed first. “Is that a challenge?” “No, it’s not.”

“Okay, then what happens?” “Well, then I make coffee.” I’m like, “Great. Is that hard?” “Nope. That part’s not hard, either.” “Okay, great. Then you walk down the hallway into your office, is that part challenging?” “No, it’s not.” “Okay, then you sit down at your desk, is that part difficult?” “No, it’s not.”

“Okay, then you open up your computer and you log in? Are either of those steps challenging?” “Nope, those aren’t a problem.” I’m like, “Okay, then you open up your email, is that a struggle?” She goes, “Nope, that’s not hard, either.” I’m like, “Great, and then what do you do from there?” She was like, “Well, that’s where I freeze.” I’m like, “Amazing.”

I’m going to talk about pinpointing your resistance in a second, but what we learned here is that this is the time where her confusion and her overwhelm is the highest. She’s telling herself there’s so much to do, there’s so much that she needs to do, and she doesn’t know where to start.

So, one of the things that we decided to do from there is to create a process for figuring out how to decide what to work on. I want to encourage you to come up with your own process for that. I teach a 10-step process for planning your day. I’ve mentioned this on recent podcast episodes.

You’ve got to start by putting everything, all the appointments that you have on your calendar. From there, you’ve got to make an electronic to-do list, and you’ve got to put everything on it. You’ve got to break projects into tasks, micro tasks if possible. You’ve got to estimate the amount of time those tasks take.

Then you’ve got to decide your start and stop times for the day. Calculate your total availability, factoring in time for being a human and time for any meetings you already have scheduled. Once you get that number of your total availability, you want to plan only what fits. Actually, less than what fits.

Then it’s time to implement. You’re going to implement the plan that you put in place. Then you’re going to evaluate what worked, what didn’t work, and what are you going to do differently. Then you’re going to take what you learned and you’re going to adapt. You’re going to apply the learning, and do tomorrow differently. That’s the process for creating your plan for the day, for figuring out what your schedule is going to look like. Alright?

If you do that the day before, which is what I recommend, then you don’t have to sit in front of your computer like this client was, wondering, “What should I be doing?” You’ve already decided. Then your work just becomes doing what you said you were going to do, even when it’s uncomfortable. Even when you don’t feel like it. Even when something else feels more pressing.

You get to create a process for all of this. Think about a process for working out if you had to create the micro steps to working out. Let’s say you work out in the morning. You would need to wake up, get out of bed, put on exercise clothes, put on your tennis shoes, walk out of your room, if you work out at your house go to wherever it is that you do that.

Start the Peloton, start the video on YouTube that you’re going to use to guide you, whatever it is that you use. If you go for a walk, you’re going to walk out of your house and start walking down the street. If you go to the gym, you might need to get in your car and drive to the gym. Then, go into the gym and pick a machine to start with. Maybe decide on a routine. All right?

These are the micro steps that, when put together, create the process of working out. You can do this with so many different things. You can do this. I did this recently with a client. We came up with it a bespoke process that she now uses for processing her email.

She would wake up in the morning and get into the office and start working, and she would be so overwhelmed by her email. She would be telling herself there were so many emails that she didn’t have enough time to get through all of them. That she didn’t know where to start. Again, when you think those thoughts, you’re going to feel confused and overwhelmed.

So, we came up with a process. We decided that she starts by going through her email, and she sets time aside each morning in order to do that. When she’s processing her email, she has four steps that she would take.

There are four actions that she would take: Delete it, save it… I talked about this in the recent email series that I did… Delete it, save it, reply immediately, or create a task on her to-do list and schedule the time where she would reply to that email later. Those are the four steps. That’s the process that she uses.

We also decided that she starts with the first in, as far as received emails goes, rather than starting with the most recently received. She starts at the bottom and just works her way through.

We always go back to this process. Your brain’s going to want to break the rules, that’s okay. But the process works, so you’ve got to work the process. All right? That’s why we come up with the process in the first place.

Now, over time, you may realize that there are holes or gaps or flaws in your process. You can make data-driven decisions to correct those issues. But you don’t want to just keep changing it because you’re indulging in perfectionism, and you think it could always be better.

Or that you don’t like your process, and because you’re not sticking to the process that means there’s something wrong with the process. That’s not accurate. The only thing that’s wrong, is that you’re not exercising discipline to stick to the process that you already created for yourself. That it’s more comfortable to create a new process than it is to force yourself to stick to the one that you’ve already created. So, you got to be onto yourself there.

You can also have a process for entering your time. People have so much resistance to entering their time. But if you create a ‘follow the yellow brick road’ process for entering individual time entries: Pick the client name, pick the client matter, enter the amount of time, enter the narrative, proofread it, hit enter, release the time.

If you create this little tedious process… It’s funny, we actually enjoy tedium. I always tell people, if you want to threaten me with a good time, give me a box of like 4,000 documents and tell me to put it in numerical order; tell me to put them in numerical order or chronological order. That is my idea of fun. I know I sound so exciting, don’t I? But honestly, I just get a kick out of that.

That’s very tedious to sit there. And, I have a whole process for doing it. I would create four piles: Zeros, 1,000s, 2,000s, 3,000s, all the way up to 4,000s. Then, I would set the 1,000s, 2,000s, and 3,000s aside, and I would just focus on the zeros; zero – 100, 101 – 200, 201 – 300, all the way up to 1,000. Then I would create those many piles, and I’d separate them again. Then I’d go through each mini pile and put it in order. That’s what I would do. That’s how I organize things chronologically or numerically.

I have so much fun doing that. When I tell people about that, that really resonates with them. They’re like, “Oh my God, I love doing that too.” So, if you’re someone who likes doing that, but you don’t like entering your time, stop telling yourself you don’t like it because it’s tedious. That’s not true. You actually enjoy tedium, just not the version that comes from time entry.

But all that has to happen, for you to feel differently about entering your time, is for you to change your thoughts about it. One of the ways to do that is to create a micro task process, a ‘follow the yellow brick road’ process.

Now, the reason that this works is threefold. Number one, you really eliminate your resistance when you break things down into micro tasks, into micro steps. Because no individual micro step is that challenging, is that hard. You break them down so specifically, so minutely, that you really don’t have any resistance to doing any one individual task. And then, you can start to rack up the wins.

Which brings me to reason number two that this works: When you create a micro process filled with micro tasks. Your own bespoke process, with all these individual steps, these very small steps. Every time you complete a step, you get a hit of dopamine. And this is how you work with your own brain, with your own primitive conditioning.

When you complete a micro step, a micro task, your brain releases dopamine. You feel good and you get to start to create more momentum for yourself. This is how you organically cultivate motivation. By getting started when you don’t feel like it, completing micro steps, completing micro tasks, and then getting the dopamine hit from the things that you complete. Then working yourself up to feeling really focused, feeling really motivated.

So, that’s the second reason this works, because every time you complete a micro step your brain drugs you, in a good way.

Lastly, the reason that this is so effective, is because it is a great self-study tool, a great self-study approach. Because when you break things down this specifically into these micro tasks… When you are following the yellow brick road and you come to a point in the yellow brick road where you freeze, where you get stuck… Because the tasks are broken down with such specificity, you get a very, very clear, pinpointed picture of where your resistance lies; to what it is that you’re resisting.

That helps you identify the thinking that’s getting in your way and the negative emotions that you’re experiencing. You think those thoughts, negative emotions come up, and then you resist and avoid them. Right?

So, when you have this very clear, pinpointed understanding of the micro step that you’re getting stuck at, you’re going to be able to identify with, again, very extreme specificity, what thoughts am I thinking about this specific micro step? What negative emotions would I be forced to feel if I forced myself to complete this micro step?

It’s going to get you laser focused on what you’re resisting, on what thoughts aren’t serving you, on what negative emotions you’re not willing to feel, and the path forward is going to be so much easier to create. Because those thoughts, those pinpointed thoughts, are going to be the thoughts that you need to change.

And those negative emotions, those pinpointed negative emotions, are going to be the emotions that you need to be willing to feel. You’ve got to force yourself to feel them on purpose. You’ve got to gag-and-go your way through them.

This process, creating your own process when you’re confused and overwhelmed, is a game changer. If you struggle with this, I want to invite you to come work with me. I realize that not everyone sees the world in processes. This is definitely a skill that you can develop, but if it’s not something that you default to naturally…

I was working with my client, when we were talking about creating a process for focusing, and she really struggled to articulate what the process would be. And all you have to do is sit down and start to say, “Well, this is where I would start. This is the first step. And this is the second step.” If you write out the process, like you had to give instructions to another person, that’s what you need to do for yourself.

There’s a really funny video that really articulates this point, it gets this point across so well. So, there’s this exercise that they give young children, and they tell them to give instructions to an adult on how to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. They have to go step by step by step, and they’re told to be as specific as possible.

They start out, and of course, they’re not as specific as possible. They know how to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, so they don’t show their math, they don’t show their work. They glom a bunch of the steps together and they aren’t specific enough.

The adults are instructed to take the instructions very literally and not to bridge or close any of the gaps with their own thinking, with their own reasoning. So, the first step that a child might articulate, if you’ve got a container of peanut butter that’s closed, and a loaf of bread that’s in a bag, they might tell you to put the peanut butter on the bread.

In the most literal sense, because no other instruction has been given, what you would need to do in that case would be to take the closed jar of peanut butter and place it on top of the closed loaf of bread. Right? Obviously, that’s not what the young child means. They mean to spread the peanut butter using a knife, that you also would have, on an individual slice of bread.

But in order to get to that part of the process, you’ve had to go through so many other steps, right? So, think about if you had to instruct someone on how to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Write it out. What are all of the micro steps you would tell them to take?

Open the jar of peanut butter. You might even want to be more specific than that, twist the lid of the jar of peanut butter too. Open the jar of peanut butter or hold the jar of peanut butter in one hand, and then take your other hand, place it on the lid, and grip and twist. See how specific that is?

Then, once you’ve done that, you would need to open the bag of bread. So, you could be specific about that. Take the twisty tie, untwist it, and then open the bag where it opens. Don’t create your own new opening by ripping the bag. Then, reach inside, grab two of the middle pieces of bread, and remove them from the bag. Do you see this level of specificity?

There’s a really funny video, as children are giving these adults this instruction. They go through multiple takes, and each time that the person screws up they have to start over. They learn to be more and more and more specific.

But there’s this really funny clip where this child has gone through a couple iterations of giving instructions, and it’s not going well. They’re starting to get frustrated. They’ve reached the point in the process where they tell the adult to take the knife and put it in the peanut butter. The adult, as instructed, takes that instruction very literally.

The peanut butter jar is open and it’s full, and they take the butter knife, and they drop it into the jar of peanut butter. So, of course, the whole thing gets covered with peanut butter. It’s not the way that we would want to extract the peanut butter from the jar.

Which is to hold the knife in your hand, take the tip of the knife to get a dollop… or a teaspoon, a tablespoon, or however much of some unit of peanut butter, and put it on the tip of the knife… then take that portion and slide it all over the bread, spread it all over the bread.

So, when his adult drops the knife just straight into the jar of peanut butter and gets peanut butter all over the knife, to where it would be totally messy and you’d get it all over your hands if you were to pick the knife back up, the kid just goes, “Ugh,” and takes his hands and smacks them on his forehead because he’s just so exasperated. It’s really charming. It’s a really funny video. I bet you could YouTube it if you wanted to see it.

But it illustrates the point that we aren’t specific enough. That there’s a certain level of specificity that you need to aim for, in order to get yourself unstuck. In order to create a process properly filled with micro steps and micro tasks, so you have a ‘follow the yellow brick road’ way to proceed.

I want you to practice this. Start to search for: Where are you confused in your life? Where are you overwhelmed? What do you do when you feel those feelings? Is that situation right for you to create your own process?

Like I said, If you struggle with this, if you don’t think this way, if you don’t see the world mathematically or in processes or in flowcharts, in that logical if A then B way of thinking, this is something I teach people how to do. So, I invite you to come work with me.

I’m currently enrolling people into The Obsessed Retreat. The Obsessed Retreat is a three-and-a-half-day retreat. We’re going to be in Miami, in March. March 20th through the 23rd, technically. But you would leave the morning of the 24th because we have this fab farewell dinner.

On March 20th through the 24th, you come and you’re going to learn how to solve the problems that you’re facing. I’m going to teach you how to think this way, and how to break it down. This is one of the ways that I teach people to solve their own problems, is to create processes that help them work through the confusion and to get out of the overwhelm.

Not only are you going to learn how to do this, when we’re together in Miami in March, but when you sign up for The Obsessed Retreat, you also get lifetime access to two things. Lifetime access to monthly group coaching calls, and then lifetime access to The Obsessed Retreat member portal.

The member portal is going to be a place for you to ask me questions, get coached on anything that you have an issue with or confusion around, or anything you’re struggling with in between our monthly calls. You can ask for feedback from me, ask my advice on something, you can also interact with the other retreaters.

There’s going to be a community platform there, where you can engage with them, stay in contact with them, cheer each other on, or support one another, that’s going to be so amazing.

Then, there will be additional training resources that I put in, that I add from time to time, so I’m always giving you fresh material to work with. Also, the retreat recordings are going to be in there. So, if you want to refer back to anything that we talked about, anything that we did together when we were in Miami in March, you’re always going to have access to those recordings.

If you want to learn how to think like this, if you want to learn how to approach your problems and solve them with this level of intentionality, being this deliberate with this level of specificity, I will teach you how to do this.

Go to bit.ly/the-obsessed-retreat to register for The Obsessed Retreat in Miami, in March. Enrollment closes December 1st, so don’t waste any time. Go sign up. Right now, there are only a few rooms left at our discounted rate at the Betsy Hotel, so you want to sign up and register as soon as possible.

As soon as you register, you get the information that you need in order to complete your room reservation. And trust me, you’re going to want to stay there. You’re going to want to be in the middle of all of the action. That’s where everyone’s going to be.

It’s just a really wonderful experience to be in the center of it all. To be able to wake up, just come down from your room, and to start workshopping with me. To be able to hang out with people at the pool. To be able to have a drink at the hotel bar with the other retreaters after a long day of solving problems, developing skills, and making plans, which are the three things that we’re going to do in person.

So, go to that website, bit.ly/the-obsessed-retreat, and go sign up. Join me in Miami, in March, and we’ll learn how to do this in real time, together. It’s going to be so much fun.

A couple more announcements. Quick housekeeping, very quickly, I’m teaching a couple of masterclasses and online virtual events that are coming up over the next two months, and I want them to be on your radar.

I am teaching how to set boundaries on December 8th. I am hosting, for the second year in a row, my In With the New Year workshop. That’s where we do a 2023 review, and a 2024 planning session. That is on December 20th.

Then, on January 19th, I’m teaching a masterclass on how to develop business. So, those are the three trainings that I have coming up:  How to Set Boundaries, In With the New Year; a 2023 review and 2024 planning session, and then How to Develop Business. If you head to my linktree, linktr.ee/thelessstressedlawyer, you can register for all of those events there. I would love to see you at all of them.

Last but not least, I announced winners of my rating and review giveaway, the one that I did in October, in the last episode. It has been so fun sending out the prizes that people won to them, this week. Since I’ve announced the winners, people have reached out to me and have been like, “That was me. I won, amazing.”

I’m doing it again. It’s so fun, and ‘tis the season of giving, am I right? So, you have until December 31st to leave a rating and review. This time, so it’s easier for me to track, I want you to send it to me. Take a screenshot. You can email it to me at Olivia@thelessstressedlawyer.com. Or you can send it to me, DM me, on any of my social media platforms, LinkedIn, and Instagram.

Just shoot it to me so I know that you submitted it, and send me your email address. That way, I have a really easy way of reaching out to you and sending you your gift, if you win this next giveaway. So, anytime between now and December 31st, go leave me a rating and review of the podcast and you’re automatically entered to win the prizes that I give out. They’re good, y’all.

So, take a second and go do that. It means the world to me. Your support is so valuable to me. I really appreciate you taking the time to do it. And because you take the time to do it, I want to say thank you with these giveaways. There’s no limit on how many times you can do it. Go submit all the ratings and reviews that you want to enter to win.

I will announce the winner after December 31st, in the new year. I can’t wait to get to that again, it’s going to be so fun.

All right, my friends, that’s what I have for you this week. Go out there and indulge, in the best way, in the process of creating your own processes. I hope this works for you. I trust that it will. Now you just need to trust that it will. That’s what I’ve got for you this week.

I hope you have a beautiful week and I’ll talk to you in the next episode.

Thanks for listening to The Less Stressed Lawyer podcast. If you want more info about Olivia Vizachero or the show’s notes and resources from today’s episode, visit www.TheLessStressedLawyer.com.

You’re listening to The Less Stressed Lawyer podcast, Episode 84. Today, we’re talking all about perfect focus versus imperfect focus. You ready? Let’s go.

Welcome to The Less Stressed Lawyer, the only podcast that teaches you how to manage your mind so you can live a life with less stress and far more fulfillment. If you’re a lawyer who’s over the overwhelm and tired of trying to hustle your way to happiness, you’re in the right place. Now, here’s your host, lawyer turned life coach Olivia Vizachero.

Hey, y’all, how are you? Happy early Thanksgiving. What a fun time of year. I love the fall. I really love fall in the South because it’s about 30 degrees warmer than I’m used to it being, where I’m originally from up in Detroit.

There’s so much that I’m grateful for this year. I’m grateful for you listening to this podcast, I hope you’re getting a ton of value out of it. At the end of this episode, I’m going to announce the winners of the giveaway that I’ve been doing. I ran this last month; I’ve had all of these amazing reviews come in, and I’m going to announce five winners. I’m going to give away five different prizes.

I’m going to announce it here. I’m also going to announce it on my social media, because I’ve posted about it there as well. Some people have submitted reviews, but there’s no identifying information so it’s just your handle on the iTunes app. Not the iTunes app, the Apple Podcast app. I’m going to use your handle, but you’re going to have to reach out to me because I don’t have a way to send it to you. Okay?

Next time I do this, I’m going to build in a mechanism so people can email me proof that they reviewed, and then I’ll have their contact information, which will make it much easier. But we’re going to make do this time.

So, if you listen to the podcast, I’m so grateful for you. Thank you for taking time out of your life to listen to the things that I have to say. My goal is always that I provide you with value, tips and tools, and tricks and tactics, that you can implement on your own in order to start seeing immediate improvement in your day-to-day life. I hope you’re getting that from this podcast.

If you are and you haven’t left me a rating and review yet, or you haven’t subscribed, go ahead, and do that right now. It would mean the world to me.

Other things I’m thankful for: I’m thankful for getting to spend Thanksgiving with my parents. I was just back up in Detroit, and I am going to sound ridiculous, but I go back up there to have my hair done. I’ve been going to the same stylist for a million years. Basically, he’s a really good friend of mine and I just trust him completely. So, I’m willing to fly back and forth in order to have him be the one to do my hair.

But I was just back in Detroit, in order to have that done, and my parents decided, instead of having me come back again to Detroit, they were going to come down to Charleston. So, they’re on their way down here as we speak. I’m so excited to get to spend the holiday with them in a way that looks a little bit different than what we’re used to.

It’s a departure from how we usually celebrate, but I’m going to be honest with you, nothing this year went the way I expected it to. We’re kind of just pulling an audible, or calling an audible on a lot of different things that I didn’t expect to go quite the way that they went. The holidays this year look different for me than what I expected them to look like.

If you’re a client of mine, or your friend of mine, you know exactly what I’m talking about. But I’ll get into that on another episode of the podcast; that’s a total digression.

With that being said, though, I’m super excited. My parents are coming down, they rented a place right on the beach, and they’re going to get to enjoy some time away from their day-to-day life. My dad just sold his business, so this is their first retirement trip, which is so exciting. He and I are going to go deep sea fishing, that’s one of the things that we love to do together.

I haven’t gone with him in years and years, just because of our schedules and he doesn’t travel a ton, especially when he was still working. So, I’m grateful to get to spend some quality time with my folks. I hope you get to spend quality time this week with the people who are important in your life.

I’m going to do a post about this, but if your holiday season looks different than you expected it to, just like my holiday season looks different than I expected it to, my heart goes out to you. You’re going to get through this. You’re a tough little cookie. You’re going to be okay. All right?

Try and make the most of it. Try and find the silver lining. Try and enjoy the parts that you can even if they’re small, and even if they’re not the parts that you wanted to be enjoying this season. Okay?

I’m going to announce, towards the end, the winners of the rating and review giveaway, but let’s dive in to today’s content. Today’s topic came out of a client session last week. I loved the conversation that I had with my clients so much, I knew that I had to share it on the podcast.

My client comes to our session, and I ask her, “Hey, tell me what’s been going on? Give me an update. How have things been going?” She starts off with saying to me, “Hey, Olivia, I’m like really struggling with focusing. I’m just having a hard time focusing.” I said, “Okay, tell me more about that,” and we started to get into it.

I’m going to do a separate podcast, I think it’s going to be the episode right after this one, to talk about how I solve problems. I know I’ve done some content around solving problems, but this is a specific way that I’ve learned to get myself unstuck, by creating a process out of thin air. I’m going to walk you through and teach you how to do that for yourself. That’s a separate episode, though.

I want to talk about what I did with this client in particular, when we were addressing the issue of focusing. So, she comes to the session, and she tells me she’s struggling with staying focused, with being focused, with focusing, and I asked her, “Walk me through the process. If you had to create a process for focusing, a step-by-step process, that you could follow, walk me through it. What would it look like?”

She really struggled to articulate and form an answer for what I was asking her to articulate. She was like, “Frankly, respectfully, if I knew how to focus, I wouldn’t be having this problem. I wouldn’t be asking you this question. I wouldn’t be bringing this up right now.”

While I totally understand where she’s coming from, I do want to teach you to tap into your own ability to create a process, sort of out of thin air. Just to be able to talk yourself through it, to start to identify steps. The more we talked, I realized she was struggling to really understand what I was asking her to do.

So, I knew at that moment that I was going to walk her through it. I was going to explain, by way of example, what I was talking about. But before I got to that, through the course of our conversation, I realized… and I’ve never articulated this quite this way before, and I was so excited to share it with you… I realized there’s two different types of focus.

There’s perfect, ideal focus. And then, there’s imperfect focus. So many people are chasing and craving perfect, ideal focus. Now, what the heck am I talking about? Perfect, ideal focus is the focus that you experience when you work on something you want to be working on. It’s where you devote all of your attention to something. You don’t pick your head up, you don’t come up for air, you don’t distract yourself, you don’t allow interruptions. You just stay focused, like laser focused.

Then, the second time that this comes up… So, the first time is when you really want to be working on something, when you’re really into it. All right? For me, if you’ve ever watched me do a jigsaw puzzle, I am in to it. That is an understatement, I promise you. I am intense.

I did a puzzle with my aunt and my cousin Kenna, a couple weeks ago. I guess it was maybe the end of September. I guess, it was right before I moved to Charleston. So, a couple months ago, I suppose. But we worked on a jigsaw puzzle at my parents’ house, and they are just like me. They are just as intense.

They are so focused; talk about perfect, ideal focus. Neither of us, or none of us, did anything other than work on this puzzle start to finish. We got it done in an entire sitting. There were no distractions, no funny business, we just got to work.

Myopically laser focused, that’s ideal focus. So, when we want to be working on something, when we’re really into it, we’re perfectly focused then. The other time I see people perfectly focused is when they’re working on something at the very last minute, and if they don’t remain focused, they won’t finish it in time.

You’re up against a really hard deadline. You put your phone down, you don’t do any of the things that would normally distract you or allow you to buffer and procrastinate, you just get to work. Those are two examples of perfect, ideal focus.

What I was asking my client to do, was to walk me through… Let’s say I couldn’t see, and you needed to describe to me what it looks like, what you would need to do step by step by step, microscopic step by step by step, what you need to do in order to perfectly focus. If you were to describe it to me, what would it look like?

So, it would look like putting your phone down. Start working on whatever it is. Not stopping, not grabbing your phone at any point. And working to completion, right? That’s what it would look like to perfectly focus, the process of perfectly focusing.

Now, that’s not what most of us do. So, when we’re not up against a tight deadline rushing at the last minute, or we’re not working on something that we really, really, really want to be working on, that we’re really into, we end up doing the second type of focusing, which is imperfectly focusing. I’m going to call this “imperfect focus.”

Imperfect focus looks like getting distracted, allowing yourself to be distracted, distracting yourself, allowing interruptions, losing your attention, turning to something else while you’re in the middle of doing the task at hand. That’s what imperfect focus looks like.

My perfectionists, if you’re listening to this, you know you’re making imperfect focus a problem. Just like my client was when she said, “Olivia, I’m struggling to focus. I’m having a hard time focusing.” What happens is when you focus imperfectly and you get distracted, you distract yourself, you allow yourself to be interrupted, then you get frustrated with the fact that you’re not focusing perfectly. So then, you invest more time into the distracted activity. Okay?

You focus more imperfectly. You stop focusing because you’re frustrated with yourself. You’re discouraged, and you’re upset with yourself for not perfectly focusing, instead of giving yourself some grace.

Now, what I don’t mean by ‘giving yourself some grace’ is just saying, “Yeah, it is what it is. I’m having a hard time focusing. I’m not going to pay attention, and I’m not going to get back to what I was doing.” That’s not what I’m talking about here. What I mean by ‘giving yourself some grace’ is, what if the process for imperfect focus looked like this?

I’m going to use recording this podcast, as an example. Now, this isn’t every time I record the podcast, but a lot of times I record the podcast, if I was to break down and describe to you step by step by step by step by step, the things that I do in an imperfectly focused manner, which is typically how I record this thing, it looks like:

I sit down in front of my computer, I put my phone away, I open up GarageBand, which is the app on my Mac that I use to record my podcast episodes. I plug in my podcast microphone. I use a specific microphone to record it, it gives the best sound. I click the file in the Settings tab to make sure that the microphone is hooked up. That way I don’t record the episode without using the correct mic, and have poor audio quality and need to record it all again.

So, once I’ve sat down, put my phone away, opened GarageBand, and check to make sure the mic is plugged in and it’s on the right setting, then I record the intro. That’s the part where I say, “You’re listening to The Less Stressed Lawyer podcast, Episode 84. Today, we’re talking about…” Then, I give you the title, and I say, “You ready? Let’s go.”

Then I pause, and I outline the episode. I go through and I figure out roughly what I want to say. Now, I don’t script out the entire thing. But I do map out the things that I want to talk about, the points that I want to make, and then I start recording.

So, if I were to list that out… Let me count them. Sit down, step one. Step two, put phone away. Step three, open up GarageBand. Step four, plug in mic. Step five, check mic. Step six, record intro. Step seven, outline the podcast. Step eight is to start recording the core content.

Normally, for me, step eight is to give you a little bit of an update on my life, what’s been going on. We just do a little bit of the pleasantries in the beginning. Just to bring you all along with me in my life and feel like you’re a part of my life, just like I am privileged to be a part of your life. So, that’s step eight.

Then, step nine is to get into the meat and potatoes of the episode. So, I start recording that part. And lo and behold, as I’m doing this, I always reach a point where I subconsciously think to myself, “Shoot, I don’t know what to say next.”

As soon as I think the thought, “I don’t know what to say next. I’m not sure what to say next. I don’t know where to go from here;” it’s just a tiny, micro, little thought; then I feel confused. That’s the emotion that that thought creates for me.

When I think the thought, “I don’t know what to say next,” and I feel confused, step 10 is, I stop recording. I press pause, or I press the Stop button. Step 11 is, I grab my phone. Step 12 is, I go on Instagram. Step 13 is, I start to scroll. Step 14 is, I catch myself. Step 15 is, I stop, and I remind myself, “We’re not done with the episode, yet.” Step 16 is, I put my phone back down. And step 17 is, I start recording again. Okay? I figure out what I’m going to say next, and I start recording again.

Now, this process, this part of the process specifically, from where I think to myself, “I don’t know what to say next,” that’s step 10. Then I feel confused, and I stop recording, I grab my phone, and I go on Instagram. Or I text someone, I check my email, I go on LinkedIn, whatever the activity is that I use to distract myself. Then I catch myself, I stop doing it, I put my phone down, and then I go back to recording and figure out what to say next. I keep recording until this happens again.

What I end up doing is, I record the podcast as I cycle through and repeat steps 9-16, over and over and over again, until I get to the point where I get close enough towards the end of the episode that I see the end in sight. Then, I pivot and transition back to that perfect focus, rather than the imperfect focus.

I just power through and I record the rest of the episode. Because the end is so near, that I’m really motivated to just get it done so I can get the dopamine hit of finishing the project that I’m working on, recording the episode.

Now, what I’ve noticed is different about me than the way my clients think about this, is that I don’t beat myself up for being imperfectly focused. I don’t give myself a hard time. I don’t make it a problem. I recognize when I’m recording something, or doing an activity that I don’t have the utmost enthusiasm for. As much as I love teaching you guys things, this is an activity that I’m not always in the mood to do. That’s me being completely transparent.

Just like I’m not always in the mood to respond to an email. Or I’m not always in the mood to record video content for social media. Or I’m not always in the mood to create a post. We don’t need to be in the mood in order to do something.

You just need to know, if you’re not in the mood to do it you’re going to have resistance to finishing it. And it’s likely that you’re going to be imperfectly focused, and more likely to distract yourself while you’re working on something than you are if you’re really jazzed about something. I am very jazzed about recording this episode. I was super inspired when I brought this up with my client last week, and I couldn’t wait to talk to you about it, so I’m able to just power through.

But other times, I pick topics that I believe are really useful for you, but I am not always super, super excited about that topic at that time. I probably planned it in advance, I knew I wanted to record it to get it to you, but I’m not feeling super motivated. We don’t want to rely on motivation to get work done.

When we’re motivated, we’re perfectly focused. But when we’re not motivated, we’re going to be imperfectly focused. You just get to decide that being imperfectly focused isn’t a problem. If you make it a problem, you’re going to devote more time to the distraction. Unlike what I do, which is my goal, is to reduce the amount of distracted time as much as possible, without expecting there to be no distracted time at all.

So, your goal, when you’re working on being imperfectly focused, you’re going to leave room for yourself to get distracted, to distract yourself from the task at hand. Then, the whole goal, the whole thing you want to be striving for, is just to make those distracted moments take the least amount of time as possible.

You want to catch yourself as quick as you can, realizing that you distracted yourself. Then, you want to stop engaging in the distracted activity, and you want to turn back to the task at hand, the thing that you’re in the middle of doing, as quickly as possible.

So, you’re making these distraction cycles, steps 9-16 or 10-16, you’re making them as short as possible. That’s the goal when you’re working on being imperfectly focused. You’re not beating yourself up, you’re just paying attention to yourself. You’re being curious, you’re watching this happen, and you’re working to reduce the distracted time as much as possible. All right?

That’s what it looks like to be imperfectly focused. That’s the process of “focusing,” if you think of focusing as a verb. Something that you actively strive for, you actively work towards with your actions. These are all of the little, microscopic steps that you would need to take in order to “focus,” to be focused. To create the result of working on something in a focused manner.

There’s perfect focus, and there’s imperfect focus. Most of the time, you’re going to be imperfectly focusing. Now, the more you get better at imperfectly focusing, the more often you will also perfectly focus. But you’re not going to have a perfect track record. This isn’t going to be 100% of the time, “I’m perfectly, ideally focused on the task in front of me.”

You’ve got to leave room for yourself to be a human. To not make it a problem, and to know how to course correct as quickly as possible. That’s the goal here, course correcting as quickly as possible.

So, I want you to take this concept with you. I want you to go into your week, and if you’re struggling to focus on something, I want you to aim for imperfect focus, not perfect focus. I’ve given you the process for imperfectly focusing.

Now, I gave you an example from my own life, the podcast, recording episodes like this. But you could use this with email, right? Let’s say, email’s coming in and you want to clear your inbox. What needs to happen? Go through and create a process for yourself. What does imperfect focus look like for that?

Or if you need to respond to an email, you’re going to open up the email you received, you’re going to read it. Actually, let me back up. We’ll get even more specific. You’re going to open your computer. You’re going to open your email. Your phone’s going to have to be put away. It’s going to need to be next to you, not in front of you, unless you’re using your phone to respond to email, right?

You have to close out of the other apps. Open up the email application. Read the email. Decide, right then and there, to respond to it. Draft your answer, or start drafting your answer. Type out your intro, “Hello, how are you? I hope this email finds you well.” I’m not actually recommending that you say that, that’s a little cheesy. But you get my point. Open the email, and then start typing what you need to say in the email.

Now, you might catch yourself thinking, “I don’t know what to say next,” and you feel confused, and you stop typing the email. You jump to something else, something that distracts you from having to sit through and figure out what to say next, having to work through that confusion that you experience.

If you’re imperfectly focusing, you’re not going to make this a problem. You’re just going to notice that you’ve turned your attention to something else. You’re going to realize why you turned your attention to something else. It’s because you were feeling confused about what to say next. And you’re going to stop doing the distracted activity.

Then, you’re going to turn back to the email and you’re going to sit in the confusion. You’re going to work through it. You’re going to figure out the next sentence you need to say, and then you’re going to type it. Then you’re going to type another sentence after that, and another sentence after that.

And if you distract yourself again, because you’ve reached another point in the email where you think, “I don’t know what to say next,” and you feel confused, you’re going to repeat that process, that loop part, of this imperfect focus process. You’re going to stop doing the distracted activity once you catch yourself and you realize why you’re doing it.

You’re going to turn back to the email, you’re going to figure out what to say next, and you’re going to keep doing that, working in that loop, completing that cycle as many times as necessary, and shortening the time period of distraction as much as you can, until you’re done with the email.

Same thing with writing a brief or drafting a contract. Same thing with reviewing documents. You distract yourself because you get a little bored or you get confused about what to do next, or you’re not sure whether documents relevant or not, or you don’t know what to say. Notice your pattern. You feel a negative feeling because you’re thinking a thought, and then you distract yourself.

The art of being imperfectly focused is being able to recognize why you distract yourself, what you’re distracting yourself from, and to catch yourself. To course correct and go back to the task at hand. Sit in the discomfort. Work through it, and get a little bit further to make a little bit more progress.

Take this with you. Go out there, and work on being imperfectly focused. Don’t fixate on having to have 100% of your attention, 100% of the time, doing the thing that you decided to do. That’s ideal, absolutely. But if that’s not what happens, if you get distracted and you distract yourself from what it is that you’re doing, because you’re confused, because you’re bored, for whatever other reason, figure out the reason, and then practice being imperfectly focused.

I hope this helps you. I hope you have a beautiful Thanksgiving. I’m going to talk to you in the next episode. But before I leave you, let’s pick the five winners. Actually, I lied. Before I get to the five winners, quick announcement.

If you’re following me on social media, you already know this, but I am in the middle of a launch for my upcoming retreat. The retreat is called The Obsessed Retreat. It starts with a three and a half day in-person event. We’re going to be in Miami Beach, Florida, March 20 – 23.

The whole point of the retreat is, it’s designed to help you create a life you’re obsessed with. I am really a huge advocate for living a life that you absolutely love, not just a life that you merely tolerate. I really want people to live a life they’re obsessed with.

The way that you do that, there’s a three-part framework that I’m going to teach you. We’re going to solve problems, that’s day one of the workshop. Day two, I’m going to teach you how to develop the skills you need in order to create a life you’re obsessed with. We’re going to talk about making decisions ahead of time, developing discipline, and practicing constraint. Those are essential to creating a life that you’re obsessed with, a life that you love.

And then, on day three, we’re going to set goals and make plans. You’re going to map out everything that you need to do and want to do in 2024, in order to create the results you want and get where you want to go. So, three days; we meet, we do the welcome reception. You know, I always do that when I host events, an amazing welcome reception. It’s going to be so fun; you get to meet me and all the other retreaters.

Then, we wake up the next morning, breakfast is served, group breakfast, so delicious. Then, we dive in. We do six-hour days, three days in a row. So, that’s 18 hours of workshopping, coaching, growing, learning transforming. Three days.

Day one is all about solving the problems you’re facing. We’re going to talk about the professional aspects of your life, and also the personal aspects of your life. Because in order to create a life you’re obsessed with, we can’t just have one area be good, it’s all got to be good. So, we’re going to solve problems on day one.

Day two, we’re going to develop those essential skills. And then, day three, we’re going to set goals and make plans. Then, of course, just like I always do, it ends with a really decadent, lavish, farewell dinner where we get to celebrate everything that we accomplished in person.

Now, people keep asking me, “Olivia, in addition to the in-person event, is there any other support that we get when we sign up for The Obsessed Retreat?” The answer is, yes. When you sign up to attend The Obsessed Retreat, you get lifetime access to two different things.

Number one, you get lifetime access, you heard me right, lifetime access to monthly group coaching calls. They’re live calls. Each month, we’re going to coach, go through different exercises, different prompts I give you, in order to make sure you accomplish what you set out to achieve. It’s going to be amazing support, to make sure you stay on track and achieve what you set out to when we’re in person, together in Miami, in March.

You’re also going to get lifetime access to The Obsessed Retreat member portal. The member portal is going to be where you can come and submit questions or issues to get coached on, and I’ll coach you in writing. Written coaching is so, so powerful.

Number one, you can sit with it. Sometimes when you get coached live, in person, face to face, or over Zoom, you have a hard time taking everything in all at once. Now, obviously, face to face, live, in real time, coaching is super, super powerful, super effective.

But so is written coaching, just for different reasons. You get to sit with it, you notice different things, you can slow yourself down, you can go back to it over and over again, and recognize different aspects of the coaching that feel more relevant at one time over another. Written coaching is super powerful.

So, inside the member portal, which you also get lifetime access to, you’re going to be able to submit questions to me. It can just be simple questions that you just want answers to. You want advice, tips, tricks, feedback on something, but you can also submit issues to get coached on and I’ll coach you in writing, and respond in writing, to your questions.

You also get to watch the retreat recording replays. They’re going to be available in the member portal. I’ll also be adding additional materials over the months, over the years, for you to watch on demand. I love over delivering to my people, so I’m constantly going to be updating the member portal with new stuff in there. It’s going to be so fun. Kind of like Easter eggs, or like Christmas Day.

You also are going to have a community platform. So, you’re going to be able to stay connected to everyone that you meet in person, all of the rest of the retreaters. You’ll be able to stay connected inside the member portal.

So, that’s what you get when you join. The three and a half day event in Miami, in March; March 20 – 23. Then, you get lifetime access to the monthly group coaching calls and The Obsessed Retreat member portal. It is an insane value, you guys.

When I decided to add on the monthly coaching calls, the lifetime access to that, I blew my own mind. I just can’t get over it. And the response has been epic. People keep reaching out to me, and they’re like, “I can’t believe that. I was so excited to come and be with you in Miami, and now this. I can’t believe you’re offering this to us.” People are so excited because they know it’s everything they need to really accomplish what they want to accomplish.

So, if you’re interested in working with me… Also, I’m getting ready to launch a members-only subscription for lawyers only. Because I knew that I was getting ready to launch that, I wanted to give people an opportunity to work with me whether or not they practice law.

Because a lot of people who follow me, they’re former lawyers. They’re people who used to practice but they’ve transitioned to something else. And rather than comingling lawyers and former lawyers inside the subscription that I’m starting at the end of December… And will start officially in January; our first call’s January 10… I wanted to create a space, a program, an offering for everyone. For anyone who listens to me, or who follows me, who has been interested in working with me.

If that’s you, if you’re listening right now, this is your opportunity to work with me. All right? So, you want to make sure that you register. You can go to bit.ly/the-obsessed-retreat. Or you can go to my social media platforms, LinkedIn, or Instagram, and access it there. There’s a link in my bio in both places, for you to access and register for The Obsessed Retreat.

You can also go to my link tree, which is linktr.ee/thelessstressedlawyer. That’s another way to access the registration page for The Obsessed Retreat. The retreat, the lifetime access to the monthly group coaching calls and the member portal, cost $4,000. You can pay that all at once or in installment payments.

So, if you’re interested in working with me, make sure you sign up. You’ve got to sign up before December 1. And if you want to stay at the venue that the retreat is being hosted at, we’re staying at The Betsy Hotel in Miami Beach, Florida. It’s on South Beach, it’s absolutely incredible. If you have followed me on social media, you know I don’t pull any punches. I don’t skimp when it comes to the locations that I select. I want it to not only be a transformative experience for you, but I want it to feel like a vacation. I want it to feel luxurious and decadent.

So, The Betsy Hotel is absolutely that. Just to-the-nines, over the top stunning. If you want to stay at The Betsy Hotel, we have a very, very, very… I’m going to say it one more time… a very limited room block. So, you want to register for the retreat as soon as you possibly can, in order to make sure you get in that room block at our discounted rate. It’s $579 a night, which is a steal for Miami, at the time of year that we’re going to be there. Especially for a location as nice as The Betsy.

So, make sure you go to my social media, go to bit.ly/the-obsessed-retreat, and sign up and join me in Miami, in March, to create a life you’re obsessed with. I can’t wait to see you in South Beach.

Alright, without further ado, here are the five winners of the reading and review contest, or giveaway, I suppose. I’m just reading the handle that you submitted the rating and review with, and then you are going to have to reach out to me.

You can contact me on social media, Instagram, or LinkedIn. Just DM me, or you can email me at Olivia@thelessstressedlawyer.com. Just send me your contact information, send me your email, so I can send you the gift that I’m going to send you. All right?

So, here are the five winners: Kristen King Jaiven. If I’m mispronouncing that, I’m so sorry. The second person, the handle is, The Peace_Maker. So, I don’t know who that is. You’re going to have to reach out to me and let me know. The third person is, RJP Injurt Attorney; that’s the handle. The fourth person is, JRLevenson. And the fifth person, also another handle that I can’t recognize who it is, keepin’itRayl; keepin’itRayl, like keeping it real, but not quite.

Okay, those are the five. If you contact me, you will receive your prize. For anyone listening, I’m going to do this again. Actually, we can just start it right now. I will do another giveaway by the end of the year. So, you have between now and the end of the year to submit a rating and review. The rating and review winners, the giveaway winners, receive a $50 gift certificate to Amazon. A $50 gift card to Amazon.

You get to buy yourself whatever it is you want. If you’re anything like me, you love buying things for yourself. I love getting myself presents, especially during the holiday season. So, this is just a little bonus; you get to go buy yourself something. Reach out to me if you’re one of the five winners, and I will send you your Amazon gift card.

Thank you again, so much, for taking time out of your busy day to help me share this podcast with more people. It means the world to me. I am very thankful for you, and I’m thankful for everyone else who took the time to leave a rating and review.

You can resubmit, too. That’s how I understand iTunes to work. So, you can submit another rating and review if you want another opportunity to join and to win the next one. So, the next one will go until December 31, and then I’ll pick five more winners.

All right, that’s what I’ve got for you this week, my friends. I hope you have a beautiful week, and a wonderful Thanksgiving, and I will talk to you in the next episode.

Thanks for listening to The Less Stressed Lawyer podcast. If you want more info about Olivia Vizachero or the show’s notes and resources from today’s episode, visit www.TheLessStressedLawyer.com.

You’re listening to The Less Stressed Lawyer podcast, Episode 83. Today, we’re continuing to talk about caring about what other people think, Part 2. Specifically, how to stop caring about what they think. You ready? Let’s go.

Welcome to The Less Stressed Lawyer, the only podcast that teaches you how to manage your mind so you can live a life with less stress and far more fulfillment. If you’re a lawyer who’s over the overwhelm and tired of trying to hustle your way to happiness, you’re in the right place. Now, here’s your host, lawyer turned life coach Olivia Vizachero.

Well, hello there. How’s it going? As you already gathered from the intro, I am continuing this two-part episode about caring about what other people think. In the last episode, we talked about what it costs you to care about what other people think, the impact that caring about other people’s opinions has on your life.

Quite typically, it’s a negative impact that it has on your life, right? So, you’ve had some time to let that marinate, to start to create some awareness around what caring about other people’s opinions is costing you. How it’s impacting your life, whether it’s on a day-to-day level or on a much grander scale.

I gave you some examples of ways that I’ve overcome caring about other people’s opinions and how it’s benefited me. So, hopefully, we’ve started to make the case for why you might not want to care about what other people think.

Now, I work with a handful of people that think it’s important to care about other people’s opinions, and I just want to offer you, it’s okay to not care about them. Bad things won’t happen if you care about your own opinion more than you care about other people’s opinions of you. Okay?

If that seems foreign to you, you’re going to have to trust me a little bit on this one. I want to walk through a framework that you can use in your own life, if maybe you’re receptive to this, if maybe you’re not resistant to the idea that it actually can be okay to not give so much credence to what other people think.

If you’ve gotten on board with the idea that you want to stop caring about what other people think, that you don’t need to be preoccupied with it, that it’s okay if you’re not obsessed with controlling other people’s opinions of you, and you don’t want to devote all of this time, attention, and energy to caring about other people’s opinions of you, then you need a framework to do it.

A lot of people feel like they don’t know where to get started. They don’t know how to not care about what other people think. So, that’s what we’re going to cover in today’s episode; we’re going to talk about the “how.”

Now, the first step to getting over your preoccupation about caring about other people’s opinions of you, is you need to really understand why you care in the first place. There are a couple different reasons that we care. First and foremost, it’s part of our primitive conditioning as humans.

Belonging to the group, belonging to the majority, being a part of that cohesive communal unit, that is a survival mechanism. It is a way that we ensure our survival. It’s a way that we protect ourselves. I want you to think back to the hunter/gatherer days.

Your existence quite literally depended on your ability to be part of the group. You couldn’t do everything that you would need to do in order to survive on your own, by yourself. You needed to rely on belonging to the collective in order to survive. And that’s just a part of our human conditioning that we haven’t evolved out of. So, that desire to belong, that push to belong, that’s still within us.

Now, what’s good news, is that we can be pretty self-reliant. I do believe that as humans we need other people in our lives, in different ways, in order to really thrive and be our best, and to have the most enriched experience on this planet during our time here. But for the most part, we can provide for ourselves. Very different from how we couldn’t provide for ourselves in these primitive days, right?

So, even though we’ve evolved out of that, that we’ve advanced enough to where we can pretty much just provide for ourselves, we haven’t evolved enough to the point where we no longer have this primitive condition where we have this desire to belong. This is just a protective mechanism.

You want to know that it’s there, just to simply understand where this drive, this desire, this internal longing is coming from, to wanting to belong, to wanting to be accepted by the group. Okay?

We’re also taught to care. In addition to our primitive conditioning, if you’re thinking about the nature versus nurture, nature is the primitive conditioning, but nurturing, meaning how we’re raised, also plays a big role in our caring about what other people think. So, we’re taught to care about other people’s opinions of us.

Think about what you learned growing up. Where did you learn to care about other people’s opinions of you? You probably learned this both explicitly and implicitly. One of the ways we typically learn this growing up, oftentimes from our parents or other authority figures, they will say to us, “If you do X, people will think this about you. You can’t do Y, because if you do it, people will think that.”

So, we get taught that our actions determine someone else’s judgments of us. That our actions beget a certain viewpoint, a certain opinion. That that is bad, and we need to protect ourselves from that happening. That we need to be concerned about what other people think.

Also, if we’re being really honest here, this is a way that people control other people. I like to think of this as the poor man’s control mechanism. As you go through life, you become intimately aware that you don’t actually have the ability to control other people’s behavior. We can’t control what another person does or doesn’t do.

Instead of just accepting the fact that we don’t control another person’s behavior, what people will do is they will attempt to judge or shame or guilt someone in the hopes of altering their behavior. Right? If you fear judgment and someone judges you, or threatens to judge you, if you do something, you may not engage in that behavior to avoid the judgment.

Again, this is the poor man’s control mechanism. It recognizes that people can’t actually force you to do something against your will. But they can attempt to influence you by threatening to shame, guilt or judge you. This is very effective.

If you’ve been taught that you’re responsible for how other people feel, and you’re responsible for controlling other people’s opinions, and that you need to guard against and prevent anyone else from having a negative opinion of you, this is an effective way that people can manipulate you.

We see this a lot in organized religion. Or with parents raising children, wanting to control their behavior. We also see this in friend groups and different relationships, even romantic relationships. Someone will judge or attempt to guilt or shame the other person.

Now, no one can guilt or shame you without your permission. So, you have to change your own thoughts, to feel ashamed or to feel guilty, in order for this to be effective. Another person can’t make you feel those feelings. You cause yourself to experience those emotions because of the thoughts that you choose to think.

So, that’s always within your control, whether or not you choose that emotional experience for yourself. But you want to be aware, if you are someone who chooses that emotional experience for yourself, why is this happening?

It’s because you were taught to care about what other people think. And someone might want you to care about their opinion, in order for you to alter your behavior. Whether or not you succumb to this tactic is up to you though, it’s optional.

Now, another way that we get taught to care about what other people think happens in a more implicit way. It actually happens in both negative ways and in positive ways. So, one of the negative ways that I see this implicitly play out is by hearing other people judge other people. It’s not being directed at you, but you’re watching someone else have an opinion about someone else, they articulate it, and you bear witness to it.

You form a negative association with that person’s opinion about the third person, and you want to protect yourself against it. So, you learn to care about what other people think and alter your behavior accordingly.

The other time this happens is a more positive experience. Which is where you receive praise for doing something that someone else thinks is “good,” or “acceptable.” There is no true, inherent good, that’s just a subjective opinion about a particular action that you might take.

But when we receive praise for our behavior, it feels good because we then give ourselves permission to think positive thoughts about ourselves. And because that experience feels good, we learn to care about what other people think.

Now, unfortunately, if you care, in a positive sense, what other people think, you’ll also tend to care in the negative sense about what people think, right? If the positive feedback and praise has you feeling excellent about yourself, then negative feedback and criticism and judgment will make you feel badly about yourself.

So, you really want to strive to get to the place where you don’t care about another person’s opinion of you, whether it’s good or bad. You really just want to care about your own opinion of yourself.

These are some examples of why and how we’re taught to care about other people’s opinions in the first place. Actually, let me add one more example of how we’re taught implicitly to care about other people’s opinions. Think about the people who raised you, they probably care about what other people think as well.

And when they model this for you, you will learn that it is important to care about other people’s opinions, about other people’s judgments of you, right? If your parents are concerned about what other people think it shows you that other people’s opinions are important. So, this is another implicit lesson that we get taught, that we pick up over time as we’re growing up.

Okay, now that you understand why you have this habit of caring about what other people think, why we as humans have this habit about caring what other people think, it’s time to break the habit. In order to do that, we need to identify the judgments that you think people have about you.

We started this exercise in the last episode, in part one of this two-part series. But if you missed that episode, or it’s not fresh in your memory, you can go through and complete this exercise again. I just want you to take a second and think about: What are you afraid other people think about you? Finish the sentence: People think I’m…, and fill in the blank.

Complete that sentence as many ways as you can think of completing it. You can even get more specific; you can identify specific groups of people. So, “My clients think I’m… My friends think I’m… My colleagues think I’m… My boss thinks I’m… My parents think I’m… My partner thinks I’m… My children think I’m…” Go ahead and identify all the judgments that you think people have about you.

Then, from there, you have to go through, and for each opinion that you’re afraid someone thinks about you, for each judgment you’re afraid someone’s making about you, you have to go through and distinguish the facts from the story that you’re telling about them.

So, the first question I want you to ask yourself is: Did the person or the people who you think hold this opinion about you, did they actually say this to your face? Is this a direct quote? Did this happen verbatim or are you reading this meaning into a situation? Is this just the story you’re telling yourself about a particular set of facts? You really want to separate what did they actually say versus what are you making it mean?

For instance, did someone tell you to revise something? If that’s the fact, are you making it mean that they think you’re not smart? Or that they think you’re not a good writer? They didn’t say those things, you’re just assigning meaning to what they said. That’s the opinion you’re telling yourself that they have of you, even though they never articulated that opinion to you.

Did someone ask you to work over the weekend, and you make that mean that they think you’re lazy? They didn’t call you lazy, you’re just assigning that opinion to the person even though they never articulated it to you.

When you do this, you’re going to notice two different options appear; two different options become available to you. In the first instance, you recognize that you’re just giving this additional meaning to the facts. Someone actually didn’t express this opinion to you. Your brain is just offering this up to you.

So, in those instances, what I want to offer you is that you can check it with yourself. Option number one is, can you just make it mean something else? There’s whatever they actually said or did, or they’ve never even said anything or did anything, but whatever the facts are, can you just tell yourself a different story?

Can you admit to yourself that you aren’t a mind reader, that you don’t actually know what they’re thinking, that they might be thinking this instead? Can you put a more positive spin on the situation? Can you read different meaning into it? Read a meaning that’s a lot less malicious, or a lot less negative than the one that you’ve been assigning to that story?

That’s the first option. If you can tell yourself a different story, and you can just give different meaning to a particular set of facts, you’re going to feel better. You just get to change the narrative about the opinion that the person holds. Because you don’t even know what the opinion is to begin with.

However, sometimes that doesn’t work. A good example of this is when I was getting started marketing myself on social media. I was creating a story in my own head about what other people thought. No one had reached out to me to tell me that they thought my marketing was stupid, that coaching was stupid, that I couldn’t hack it as an attorney. No one was telling me that; that was all in my own head.

The facts were, I was marketing. I think that’s the actually the only fact now that I think of it. No one was reaching out to say anything to me. The facts were, I was marketing, and some of my former colleagues were connected with me on LinkedIn.

Now, I can’t even say that a fact was that they saw it, because I don’t know that to be true. I would guess that it was likely that some of my former colleagues were seeing my stuff on LinkedIn, but I can’t guarantee it. So, with that being said, at the time, the only facts that I had were that I was connected with former colleagues on LinkedIn, and I was also marketing and posting content on LinkedIn.

The story that I crafted in my beautiful brain was that they were judging me. That they thought what I was doing was stupid. That they thought I was a failure. So, option one, in this instance, when I go in and I separate fact from story, I could just assign different meaning. I could come up with a different story, a different narrative.

For instance, I could come up with the story that my colleagues, my former colleagues, were happy for me that I was pursuing something that made me happy, right? Or that they thought what I was doing was cool, or useful or valuable. I could have told myself that story instead.

But I’m going to be really honest with you, I tried to coach myself but this thought, these judgments, these opinions that I had come up with in my brain, they were really, really sticky. So, as much as I tried to tell myself a different story about other people’s opinions about what I was doing, I wasn’t able to get it to stick.

So, option number two, if you can’t change the assumptions that you’ve been making about other people’s opinions, or if the person actually said the opinion that you are now thinking about, if they actually said it verbatim, then here’s what you need to do. Instead, you need to decide what you want to do about the judgment.

To start, you need to notice the impact that these thoughts have on you. How do you feel when you think them? How do you feel when you think, “People think I’m…? He or she thinks I’m…? They think I’m…?

When you think about the opinion you’re afraid people have of you, or the opinion that they told you they have you, check in with yourself? What’s the one word emotion you experience when you think about this? Do you feel inadequate? Do you feel ashamed? Do you feel insecure? Or do you feel attacked and misunderstood?

If you’re feeling inadequate, ashamed, guilty, or insecure, part of you is agreeing with this judgment. Part of you is agreeing with their opinion of you.

If you’re feeling misunderstood, you probably don’t agree with it. It’s always important to check in here, does part of you agree with it? But if you don’t agree with it, or there’s a part of you that doesn’t agree with it, then you’re going to feel misunderstood. And based on how you’re feeling, it’s going to help you figure out how you want to move forward. How you proceed in light of this judgment that you’re on the receiving end of.

So, if part of you agrees with the judgment, with the opinion, you want to start with asking yourself, do you want to agree with it? If you do want to agree with it, then there really isn’t a problem here, you can release the negative emotion.

If you’re like, “Yeah, that’s kind of right about me. That actually makes sense,” then you, and the person with the opinion, are actually in agreement and we don’t have an issue to resolve here.

Now, if you don’t want to agree with it, if part of you agrees with that, or all of you agrees with it but you don’t want to agree with it, what you need to do is make the case for how it’s not true. So, whatever the judgment is, make the counter argument. As you do this, you also are reiterating to yourself that opinions about you aren’t true. Opinions aren’t facts, okay? Opinions are just subjective statements about facts. They don’t have truth to them.

They’re just opinions, so make the case against the negative opinion. Talk through it: How is this opinion of me not true? And then, decide what you want to think about yourself instead? Then work on finding evidence to support that belief.

Now, if you fall into the second camp, if you don’t agree with the judgment, if you don’t agree with the opinion, and you’re feeling misunderstood, you get to think about, what do I want to do instead?

A lot of people in this instance want to start to defend themselves. I really want you to question your urge to do that. I really want you to think through that. Does it make sense for you to defend yourself? For you to correct the record? For you to try and convince the other person that they’re wrong about you?

Or might it be more effective, and a better use of your time, to simply allow yourself to feel misunderstood, to feel judged, to feel criticized? When you think about defending yourself, I want you to think about, what’s your motive behind defending yourself? Are you hoping to convince the other person to change their opinion? Are you trying to change the other person’s mind?

If you are, really question whether or not you want to invest time into defending yourself. The reason it’s important to take a look at this, to slow yourself down and really question whether or not you want to do that, is because the truth of the matter is, you can’t control what another person thinks.

So, there are two huge truths, when it comes to caring about what other people think, that you really want to internalize. Truth number one is that people’s opinions of you are not true. Opinions aren’t true. Facts are true. Circumstances are true. Another person’s opinion of you is not true. It’s also not false. That’s not the measurement of an opinion. Okay? Opinions are simply opinions, and every person gets to form their own opinions.

Which brings me to my second truth that you want to accept, is that other people’s opinions of you aren’t within your control. Think about examples of things where other people have opinions that differ from you, and you don’t even think to correct it, or you don’t think to make the other person wrong.

Think about someone’s food preferences. Some people like chocolate, other people don’t. We don’t make chocolate right or wrong based on people’s opinions of chocolate. Same thing with, I don’t really love kiwis. I think my cousin loves kiwis. I don’t love the texture of them. Now, that doesn’t make Kiwis good or bad. It doesn’t make her right or me right, or her wrong or me wrong. We just simply get to have different opinions about kiwis.

Same thing with pineapple on pizza. It isn’t inherently good or inherently bad. No one’s opinion about pineapple being on pizza is right or wrong. We simply just get to have different opinions. Same thing with restaurant recommendations or movies.

Some people, my dad for example, he doesn’t like The Godfather, he kind of thinks it’s boring. It is my favorite movie. Now I don’t make him wrong, he’s right for him and I get to be right for me. But neither of us are inherently right or inherently wrong. It’s simply, we hold different opinions about the same thing. Which we’re perfectly allowed to do.

No matter how hard I tried to convince my dad that The Godfather is amazing, he still holds his same opinion, as is his right to do so. He’s allowed to do that. Again, that does doesn’t make him right or me wrong, or vice versa. It’s just that we have different opinions about a thing.

Now, we mistakenly get taught growing up that we actually do have input and influence over another person’s opinion. But if you think about the examples that I’m offering to you, if you’ve tried to convince someone’s taste in movies to change and it hasn’t worked, you’ve done it to no avail, you know you can’t control another person’s opinion.

For instance, a really good client and friend of mine, Jen, she loves the movie The Matrix, and I can’t stand it. That doesn’t make her wrong or me wrong. No matter how much she tries to get me to love it, I’m not going to love it. That’s just my opinion about the movie and I’m not going to change it.

We notice our same lack of control about other people’s opinions or judgments when we try and convince someone to change their political viewpoints. Right? Typically, that does not work. Same thing if you’ve ever tried to cheer someone up. I think there’s really no better example of this, of our lack of control over another person’s opinion, over another person’s thought process, than when we attempt to cheer someone up and it doesn’t work.

It’s because we don’t control their opinions. We don’t control what other people think, and we don’t control how they feel. So, you’ve got to, if you want to care less about what other people think, you have to accept these two truths.

You have to accept that other people’s opinions of you aren’t true. If you understand the other people’s opinions of you aren’t true, then you get to concern yourself so much less with what other people think. If it’s not true, why does it matter?

Then, the second truth, which is, you don’t actually have control over another person’s opinions. They get to form their own opinions. They get to have them, and you don’t get to change them. So, why expend any energy trying to change them if you can’t? When you accept these two truths, you really free yourself from carrying about other people’s opinions of you.

So, you want to figure out what you think other people think. Separate fact from story. If no one actually said the opinion verbatim, decide, can you tell yourself a different story? Can you change the narrative? If you can’t, or someone actually did say their opinion to you, decide or figure out how you feel about it.

Do you feel attacked and misunderstood? Or do you feel insecure, inadequate, guilty, ashamed? Depending on how you feel, it’s going to depend and determine what you do from there.

If you feel inadequate and insecure and ashamed and guilty, if you’re feeling badly about yourself, a part of you agrees with the judgment. And you’ve got to figure out what you want to do about that. Do you want to agree with it, yes or no?

If you don’t, figure out how the judgment or the opinion is not true. And then decide what you want to think about yourself instead. Make a case for it. Find evidence to support that new belief.

If you fall into the misunderstood, attacked, criticized camp, and you feel as though someone is being wrong about you, then decide if you can just release your caring about it? Can you just allow yourself to feel misunderstood on purpose? Can you just sit in the discomfort of letting someone be wrong about you, rather than needing to defend yourself? Or trying to control the narrative? Or get someone to change their opinion, get someone to change their mind?

Which, if you’ve had someone try to get you to change your mind, you probably know that’s a futile exercise. So, can you just let yourself feel misunderstood? There’s so much power in just allowing yourself to feel misunderstood. I truly believe this is a superpower when you learn to master it.

Lastly, one thing that I want everyone to practice, that will help you get better and better and better at caring less about what other people think, is really learning to cultivate your own self confidence. The way that we do that is, number one, develop your own self-concept.

Figure out what you want to believe about yourself. How do you think about yourself? What opinions do you want to have? Make up your own mind before anyone else makes up theirs. Then evaluate yourself frequently. How do you think you’re doing? Make up your mind before you receive feedback.

I do this every time I do a presentation. Before I ever receive feedback from someone else, I’ve made up my own mind. How do I think I’ve done? How do I think I did? What could I have done better? What did I do really well? What will I do differently next time?

You also get to decide, are you even open to feedback? Now, you can’t perfectly control whether someone gives you unsolicited feedback or not, because people have free will. But I do like to decide, am I even open to feedback? Do I want to care about positive feedback? Just like I want to decide, do I want to care about negative feedback?

I really want to make sure I monitor myself for whether I am being intentional about being open to different types of feedback, whether it’s positive or negative. If you care about the positive feedback, you’re going to care about the negative feedback. So, take that into consideration when you’re deciding what types of feedback to care about and to concern yourself with. Okay?

These are the steps about how to care less about what other people think. I hope you walk yourself through this process. This is a process that you get to bring with you into your day-to-day life to help you care less about other people’s opinions of you.

I want you to go out there and develop a strong opinion of yourself. Develop your self-concept, evaluate yourself frequently, make up your own mind about you, about how you’ve done, before you receive feedback.

These are great ways to guard against being preoccupied with what other people think. But remember, no matter what someone thinks about you, their opinions of you are not true. You can’t control their opinions, so don’t concern yourself with them. Free up your time, free up your mental energy, to devote yourself to something that is within your control instead. All right?

Okay, my friends, that is what I have for you this week. I hope you have a beautiful week. I will talk to you in the next episode.

Thanks for listening to The Less Stressed Lawyer podcast. If you want more info about Olivia Vizachero or the show’s notes and resources from today’s episode, visit www.TheLessStressedLawyer.com.

You’re listening to The Less Stressed Lawyer podcast, Episode 82. Today, we’re talking all about how to stop caring about what other people think. You ready? Let’s go.

Welcome to The Less Stressed Lawyer, the only podcast that teaches you how to manage your mind so you can live a life with less stress and far more fulfillment. If you’re a lawyer who’s over the overwhelm and tired of trying to hustle your way to happiness, you’re in the right place. Now, here’s your host, lawyer turned life coach Olivia Vizachero.

Well, hello there. How are you? I hope you’re as excited as I am to talk about how to stop caring about what other people think. This is one of the coaching concepts that I was introduced to pretty early on into my relationship with coaching, if that makes sense, and it was really transformational for me.

I used to care so much about what everyone thought, and it had such a negative impact on my life. I’m going to talk a decent amount about that in today’s episode. I have so much to say, I’ve actually learned a lot about this, but I also have a lot of my own stuff to share as well.

I’m going to turn this into a two part episode because I don’t want it to be obnoxiously long, and I don’t want to rush through the things that I have to teach you. So, I’m going to take my time with it, and just cover it in two separate episodes.

Today’s episode is really going to focus on getting intimately aware of what caring about what other people think is costing you. What being preoccupied with other people’s opinions about you, and about what you’re doing, what kind of impact that’s having on your life. That’s what I want to talk about today.

Then, in the next episode, little teaser, I’m going to go through and teach you a framework that I recently taught in a masterclass that I hosted. That teaches you what you need to do in order to stop caring about what other people think. So, I really want to give you the ability to free yourselves from caring about other people’s opinions.

I’m going to walk you through a process. You guys know that I love a process. I tell everyone that I have a flowchart brain. That is really how my brain sees the world and approaches every single problem. I can turn it into a flowchart or a logic tree, a decision tree. That’s how I see the world. It’s very much like mathematical proof theory. I see everything as an if/then equation.

So, I broke down ‘how to stop caring about what other people think’ into a process that I’m going to give you in the next episode. But first, let’s slow down a second, and talk about if you’re someone who cares a lot about what other people think about you, about what you do, about what you don’t do, or even about other people.

If you care about other people’s opinions about other people, I think we weaponize that against ourselves as well. It’s like, you notice someone else’s judgment of another person. Then our fear of being judged, our fear of having someone have an opinion about us, ultimately deters our behavior or impacts our behavior in some way.

We might have wanted to do something… I’ll just use a silly example. Let’s say, you wanted to get a tattoo. But then you heard your grandmother talking about someone else with a tattoo, and she was judging the person with the tattoo, and then you choose to not get the tattoo because you saw your grandmother exhibit an opinion about someone else. Right?

So, it’s these three different ways that we care about other people’s opinions: Their opinions about us, their opinions about our actions, and then their opinions about other people and their actions. We use all three of these opinions against ourselves to really hinder the things that we do.

Take a second and start to take an inventory. I’m going to talk a little bit more about this in the next episode, and we’re going to go through part of the exercise. It will just be identifying judgments that you think people have about you. But we can start that process now. What are you afraid that other people think about you?

The easiest way to start to identify the judgments that you’re afraid people have, the opinions that you think they have, is just to finish the sentence, “People think I’m…” People think I’m what? “People think I’m…” Okay? Complete that sentence as many ways as you can think of.

If you want to get more specific, if that’s a little too broad for you, that’s not a problem. We can get more specific with what we mean by “people.” So, what do your clients think of you? What do your colleagues think of you? What does your boss think about you? What do the associates you supervise think about you?

What does your assistant think about you? What does your partner think about you? What do your parents think about you? What do your friends think about you? What do your kids think about you? What do your neighbors think about you? Start to make lists for each of these categories of people.

You can even get so specific as to say one specific person. So, whoever the person that you might be worried about having some judgments or opinions of you, just list their name. “He/She/They, think this. Eric thinks this about me. Miranda thinks that about me.” Just pick the person and start to write out the judgments or the opinions you think they have about you.

Now, think about the action that you take. So, those are going to be judgments particularly geared towards just who you are as a person, based on your personality or the actions that you’ve taken. But it’s a judgment about someone’s personality based on the actions that they’ve taken. Right?

For example, if you don’t work weekends, you might think someone’s opinion of you is that you’re not a team player. Okay? Now, that would be a judgment about you, even though it’s based off of the action. Versus a judgement about the action itself.

So, what would you think that someone thinks about your actions? Would you think, that they think not working on the weekends is irresponsible? These are going to be a little redundant. But you guys know that I like a little bit of redundancy, because it pulls out some nuance in the different things that come up when we answer redundant questions.

Start to make lists. What are all of the judgments that you think people have about you and the things that you do? Or the things that you want to do that you’re afraid to do, because you’re afraid to be judged for doing them?

For instance, maybe you’re a vegetarian and you’re questioning that. And you want to start eating meat again, but a lot of your friends are also vegetarian. So, what judgements would they have about you eating meat? Maybe you’re not making the switch back to eating meat because you’re afraid of being judged. That’s just an example.

But I want you to compile your lists. What are these judgments? List them all out. Then I want you to start to think about this, what is it costing you to care about these opinions, about these judgments? What aren’t you doing because you’re afraid someone is thinking this thought, or would think this thought if you did something different than what you’re doing?

What aren’t you pursuing in your life because you’re afraid that someone else is going to judge you or have an opinion about what you would pursue, or how you would pursue it? What parts of yourself are you hiding? Are you playing small in some way? Or are you being more agreeable? Are you shrinking yourself and your personality to avoid someone else’s opinion of you? What are you missing out on?

I really love this next question. A friend of mine reached out to me recently, and he made this point about how you’re really always just choosing your regret, which regret will you have? The regret of doing something, or the regret of not doing it?

So, the last question I have for you, when we’re thinking about what is it costing us to care about other people’s opinions, is: What regrets are you accumulating by caring about what other people think? How you’re altering the things that you do, and the things that you don’t do, in response, or even in anticipation, of someone else’s judgment?

You can pause this episode and take a minute or two to really think about this. What is it costing you to be preoccupied with what people think of you? It almost makes me start to get emotional when I really think about how limiting it is to care about what other people think.

How we limit our experiences. How we don’t live authentically. How we don’t pursue the lives that we would prefer to be living, because we’re afraid of someone else’s opinion of us.

Now, if you’re having a hard time articulating what caring about other people’s opinions is costing you, another question that gets at this is just to ask and answer: Where in your life would you choose a different option than what you’re currently choosing, if no one had an opinion about it?

It’s like, “Oh if no one had opinion, I definitely wouldn’t go home for Christmas. If no one had an opinion, I’d never work weekends. If no one had an opinion, I would never show up to work before 10am. If no one had an opinion, I would only check my email once a day.”

Think about it. How would you be showing up differently if you didn’t care about what another person thinks? If no one had an opinion about what it is that you do or don’t do?

I wanted to talk about some of the ways that this has shown up in my life. Once I learned… We’re going to talk about this in the next episode. The operative word here is really the word “opinion.” Right? So, we have to come to terms with the fact that other people’s opinions of us aren’t true.

Because opinions are not facts. Opinions are just that, opinions. Just thoughts someone else thinks about us. They get to have their own judgments, or their own subjective stance on something, but that doesn’t mean their stance is true. Facts are true. Stances, opinions, are just subjective beliefs. Okay?

Their thoughts… and you’ve heard me talk at length about the difference between circumstances and thoughts. So, another person’s opinion is just their thought. It’s not true. It’s not a fact about us.

Once I learned that other people’s opinions about us weren’t true, and also, that we can’t control what another person thinks about us… Again, that’s a very in depth topic, so I’m going to go into detail about that in the next episode.

But I learned these two things: That opinions about us aren’t true. And that we don’t control another person’s opinion about us. When I learned those two things, it really was permission for me to start living the life that I wanted to be living. I started to live life on my own terms.

When I realized that I didn’t have control over what another person thought about me, I really decided to spend a lot less time caring about what other people think. If we believe we can control another person’s opinion, then we think that we need to twist ourselves into a pretzel in order to control their opinion of us.

But if you realize that that is something that is outside of your control, and also that their negative thoughts about you, their negative opinion of you, their judgement of you isn’t true, so that means they get to have it. And you don’t have to concern yourself with it.

That was really my permission slip to start living life the way that I wanted to. To start living a life that felt authentic to me, and in alignment for me. A life on my own terms.

So, when I learned this concept, I started making different decisions in my life. One of the decisions that I made really, really early on, I wanted to have an elective surgery done. People in my family had strong opinions about it. And for a really long time, I hindered myself, and I didn’t pursue something that I knew deep down I wanted to do for my own health and happiness. I didn’t do it because I was afraid of being judged for doing it.

Sometimes people don’t tell us what we think, and we’re just making an assumption about what they think. Other times people tell us what they’re thinking. This was an instance where people were telling me what they were thinking.

When I realized that their opinions weren’t true, and also that I couldn’t control their opinions, I couldn’t change their mind, I decided to stop concerning myself with what they were thinking. I made the decision that made me happy. I elected to go forward with the procedure.

I’m so, so happy that I did. I absolutely believe it was the right choice for me. I’m so proud of myself for making that decision. It was the decision that was most aligned with what I wanted for myself, and it was only available to me on the other side of caring about what other people think.

Now, if I’m thinking temporally, one of the decisions that came shortly after this time was my decision to leave my big law job. A lot of people I know had a lot of really strong opinions about that decision. I might have mentioned that on the podcast before. I talk about it pretty openly.

But my friends and family were really opinionated about my decision to leave big law. They thought it was irresponsible. They thought I was being foolish. They thought it was stupid for me to walk away from that type of prestige and that kind of salary.

I had to trust myself to know what was right for me. I had to let them judge me, and I had to not care about what they thought. I actually worked with a woman, and she was amazing. She did the Attorney Development in the firm that I worked at. I was having my annual meeting with her, and before we were going to dive in and talk about some of the things that I was struggling with; I was really struggling with time management and procrastination at the time.

Before we dove into really workshopping a strategy to improve, she sat me down and she said, “I have to be honest with you. I think you’re really unhappy. I think you’re tragically unhappy in this job.” I just started crying. As soon as she said it, I broke down. Because she was right, I was tragically unhappy in that job.

I admitted to her that I was so, so unhappy, and that it wasn’t what I wanted to be doing. I didn’t feel like I was doing a good job there. It’s just not what I wanted for myself. I just felt like it was not the right fit. She simply asked me such a powerful question; such a simple question, but a powerful one. She asked me, “What’s keeping you here? You don’t have to keep coming to a job you don’t like.”

I realized that there were two main things that were keeping me there. Actually, three main things. My parents’ opinion about me working there, that was one. And then the other two were about my perceived opinions, judgments, that my colleagues would make. So, I figured that people would think that I failed, and that I couldn’t hack it as an attorney.

Now, those judgments are kind of similar. But those were really the two statements that came up in my head at the time, so I’m just rehashing both of them for you. Those were the judgments that I was afraid that other people were going to have of me.

I kept choosing to stay in a job that I didn’t enjoy, because I was trying to prevent someone from having that opinion about me. Okay? Now, that is not a great reason to stay in a job, because you’re afraid about what other people will think if you leave it.

Great reasons to stay in a job are that you love it, you feel fulfilled by doing the type of work that you’re doing, you have fun, you find it stimulating and rewarding, you enjoy the people that you work with. That wasn’t me. I was just trying to avoid other people’s judgment by continuing to stay in a job that I didn’t like.

When I recognized that those were my reasons, I realized that I didn’t want to keep making that decision for those reasons. I wanted to choose differently. I wanted to let people have whatever judgments they were going to have. My parents had judgments. I’m sure people who I worked with had judgments when I left; about me, about my performance, about who I was, and the type of lawyer I was.

I just had to let them have their opinions. I had to take care of myself and do what was right for me. I also did this when I started my own business, when I quit practicing law, which was not too long after I left big law, but a little while later. A lot of people had judgments about me starting a coaching business.

I’ve talked about this a decent amount, especially every time I talk about business development. I really struggled with putting myself out there on social media, because I was so afraid of my former colleagues seeing my social media content and judging me.

I thought that they were going to think that I was stupid, and that coaching was stupid, and that I was pathetic for starting a coaching business, and that I couldn’t hack it as an attorney, and that I had failed as a lawyer and that’s why I was doing something else.

Now, that’s not true. I could have had a long, successful career as a criminal defense attorney. That was work that I was passionate about. But I really wanted to become a coach, because I believe this is how I can truly best help people in the world. I believe in what I teach so strongly. I always tell people, “I feel like I went to law school in order to help people. And I finally feel like I actually do that now, in the work that I’m doing now.”

But in the beginning, when I was getting my business off of the ground, I was hesitant to put myself out there. I really had to force myself to feel exposed, to feel embarrassed in front of other people, and feel judged. Because I believed that they had opinions about me, and about what I was going to be doing online.

I recognized that there were two options for me. I could keep caring about what they think. And if I cared about what they think, and I let myself hold myself back from marketing, I was never going to be successful. I wasn’t going to make anything of my business. I wasn’t going to get it off the ground. I wasn’t going to start making money.

I could care enough to hinder myself and my future success, the success that was ultimately available to me. Or I could deal with their judgment, deal with their opinions, stop caring about what other people think or thought at the time, long enough to start putting myself out there.

That’s what I ultimately did. And honestly, not caring about what other people thought, or at least not caring enough to let it hold me back, it was a game changer. I now get to live a life that I love, because I got over caring about what other people think enough to pursue what was important to me.

Even recently, I’m renting furnished condos, and I was raised by a dad who strenuously believes that renting is a waste of your money. That was an opinion that I was allowing myself to be hindered by. I knew that he would think that. I knew that a lot of people would probably think that I was being impractical or irresponsible with spending money, when I own a perfectly fine house in Michigan that I could just continue to live in.

But the truth is, I don’t want to. I want to live in different places across the country and across the world. I want to live in beautiful places that I don’t have to decorate. And to me, that’s worth it. Even if other people don’t think it’s worth it. That’s okay for them to have that opinion. I don’t have to hinder myself or alter my behavior because of it. I can simply not care about their judgment, and I can do what makes me happy.

These are just a few different examples of ways that once I learned that I can’t control what other people think, and that other people’s opinions of me aren’t true, I started to give myself permission to choose what was important to me. To choose what I wanted, and to care less about what they thought of what I was doing. Okay?

It would be so tragic to me to envision a life where I never got over caring about what other people think. I would probably be still working in a job that I strenuously disliked. I wouldn’t have pursued running my own business. I would have held myself back from that.

I would have played it safe and played small. I would have never started showing up on social media. I wouldn’t have made changes in my life that make me happy, even if they don’t seem “practical” or responsible. I’d be living as less of myself. I’d be living less of the life that I want to be living.

Now, I’m not wanting to really hold myself back, personality wise. Some people might think I’m over the top, and I’m okay with that. But I know a lot of people who hold themselves back and water themselves down, because they’re afraid of being judged by other people.

So, if that’s something that you’re doing, think about that. Who would you be? How would you get to show up? What would you be doing instead, if you stopped caring so much about what other people think? What is it costing you? Is it costing you the life that you want to be living? Is it costing you beautiful experiences that you would get to have, if you didn’t care so much about other people’s opinions of you and the things that you do?

Would you have fewer regrets in life if you got over caring about other people’s opinions? Would you miss out on fewer things, if you stopped caring so much about what other people think? What goals would you set? What activities would you try? What adventures would you embark on?

My guess is, if you’re someone who feels crippled by the weight of other people’s opinions of you, your life would be so much fuller, so much more rewarding, so much more enjoyable, if you finally stopped caring about what people think. I really want the pain here to be as high as possible. Because I really want to incentivize you to adopt the framework that I’m going to teach you in the next episode.

I see people fight what I teach on this because it’s quite foreign to how we were raised. We were raised to care about what other people think. We were raised that other people’s opinions matter. So, this seems foreign to people. We were also raised to believe that we can control what other people think of us.

So, when I offer you that other people’s opinions aren’t true, other people’s thoughts about you aren’t true, and that they’re not within your control, it goes against so much of our upbringing. People really fight me on this.

I have a lot of my clients ask me, “Did you struggle with thought work, and learning the model, and coming to believe that circumstances are neutral and that it’s our thoughts that cause our feelings? And that we have the power to change our own thoughts, but not someone else’s thoughts?”

People ask me all the time, “Did you struggle with adopting that?” And very candidly, I didn’t. I didn’t. I was experiencing so much suffering from living a life I didn’t love, to making choices I didn’t love, because I was caring so much about what other people thought, that when someone introduced me to a different way of thinking, I just adopted it.

I really felt like, “You know what? You’ve got a better framework than I do for how to navigate life. I’m all ears. I’m all in.” I didn’t fight it at all. So, I really want you to be clear: What is caring about what other people think costing you?

I want you to become intimately familiar with the pain and suffering that caring about other people’s opinions is creating in your life. Because when I introduce you to a framework to stop caring about what other people think, rather than being apprehensive or skeptical and resisting it and saying, “No, that can’t be right. That goes against what I was taught growing up,” I want you to adopt it.

I want you to just dive headfirst, be all in, and really see how it can be right for you. How it can be true for you. Okay? I promise you, the life that you get to live when you get over caring about other people’s opinions, it’s delicious.

You get to that delicious life a lot faster if you don’t resist the things that I’m going to teach you, when I teach you the specific process for how to care less about what other people think. All right, I will give that to you in the next episode.

In the meantime, I hope you have a beautiful week, and I will talk to you in the next episode.

Thanks for listening to The Less Stressed Lawyer podcast. If you want more info about Olivia Vizachero or the show’s notes and resources from today’s episode, visit www.TheLessStressedLawyer.com.