Author: OliviaVizachero

You’re listening to The Less Stressed Lawyer podcast, Episode 61. Today, we’re talking all about making excuses. 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? Things are good over here in my neck of the woods. I’m all moved into a new condo. I’m getting settled. I think I haven’t talked to you since I first moved in, so it’s an exciting update. I feel like I’ve been here a long time. But I’ve really only been here a week, which is super exciting.

I moved in. I’m getting situated. The mastermind launch is going swimmingly. You’ve got until Friday, May 26, to enroll. So, if you’re thinking about joining and you have questions, reach out to me. If you don’t have questions, you already know that you’re in, amazing. I can’t wait to see you in Big Sky, Montana.

To learn everything you need to know about the mastermind, go to TheLessStressedLawyer.com/mastermind and all the details are there; the dates, what’s included, the results you get, where we’re going to be, what you’re going to learn, everything. Okay? So, go there, TheLessStressedLawyer.com/mastermind, and get all the info. And then, get your application in before enrollment closes.

All right, now that that housekeeping is out of the way, let’s dive in to talking about today’s topic. It’s actually inspired by a coaching conversation that I had with one of my clients earlier this week. It just really resonated with me because I used to struggle with this myself.

And as soon as it came up, in my coaching session with my client, I was like, “Boom! I’ve got to record a podcast episode about this.” Because it’s just such a common problem that people face. I see it happen all the time. And there’s a way to operate your life without doing this.

So, what exactly am I talking about? I’m talking about making excuses. Now, what exactly do I mean by making an excuse? It’s when we’re in a moment, and we’ve done something that isn’t us showing up how we would want to show up. And instead of being honest about it, we come up with an excuse, that basically provides a justification for the result that we’ve created. Okay? It’s an escape hatch, to avoid taking responsibility for you creating the results that you ultimately have.

I’ll give you a couple of examples here. I see this all the time when people are procrastinating on something. Someone might reach out to you and check in and follow up because you promised something, and you haven’t delivered it yet. And instead of being honest about it, you come up with an excuse, and you offer that to the person instead.

“Oh, I didn’t get to this thing because this emergency fell in my lap. Oh, I didn’t get to this thing, because I’ve been really sick. I didn’t get to this thing,” because X, Y, and Z happened. Whatever it is, you come up with an excuse.

And while you may be under the weather, I’m not saying that you need to push through even when you’re not feeling well. But what I mean, in this instance, is you’re using your sickness, your illness, as the excuse. Even though, deep down, you know it’s not really the reason that you didn’t get the thing done. Okay?

I had a client do this recently, and I just responded, I coached them through it. I was like, “If it wasn’t that, what else might be the reason for this?” And as soon as I asked that question, we got to the heart of the matter and found out what was really going on at the root cause. So, you can ask yourself that question too, if you have a sneaking suspicion that you’re making an excuse, and it’s not actually your real reason. Because sometimes it’s even tricky for us to catch on to our own b.s.

So, we’ll go back to the procrastination example. You’ve procrastinated, you’ve been doing other things in the meantime, it’s not just because you’re sick. You’ve been binging Netflix and scrolling on Instagram and talking to your friends and going to Sunday brunch with people that you know and going out to eat with friends on Friday night.

And you could have been doing the thing that you promised someone else that you’d do. But instead of doing it, you haven’t been doing it. You’ve been doing everything else but that.

When they confront you about it, when they check in, when they inquire, instead of telling them the truth, “Hey, I haven’t done that yet because I’ve been procrastinating. Because I don’t feel like doing it. I think I shouldn’t have to do that. It’s just really boring and I don’t I want to do it. I’m dreading it. I’m afraid that I’m not going to do a good job, so I’m pushing it off for that reason. I don’t really know where to get started. So, I just keep putting it on the backburner. I think other stuff’s more important.”

Those are all the honest reasons that you might be procrastinating. Right? “I’m not willing to feel the negative emotion that I’d be forced to feel, if I forced myself to work on that.” That’s the honest truth. But instead of saying that, because I’m sure we would all have thoughts about how that might be received by someone, we make an excuse instead. And we offer them something that “sounds good”.

I’ll give you another example of this. It comes up for people all the time when they’re running late. You can watch people feed you drama and excuses when they’re running late; when they’re behind schedule, when they said they’d be somewhere at a certain time, and then they’re not there when they said that they were going to be there. They show up quite a bit later.

So, in that moment, they could make an excuse, “Oh, there was traffic. I got stuck at work. Someone came into my office,” there were all of these different things that could have happened that set them behind schedule. Those are the excuses. When the truth is, you left too late; you didn’t plan well, you spent more time doing an activity, when you should have stopped yourself in order to leave and get to the place that you promised to be on time, on time.

You didn’t have the uncomfortable conversation to say, “Hey, I can’t actually talk right now, I’m on my way out.” Perhaps because you were afraid that someone would be mad at you, or you felt guilty turning someone away.

The truth is that you were unwilling to feel that discomfort and have the conversation, tell them no, set a boundary, follow through on your original plan. Instead, you fell victim to that discomfort. You avoided it by people pleasing and doing what was more comfortable in the moment.

But we never tell people that that’s why we’re late. Right? We give them that excuse. “There was traffic. I got caught by a train. Someone came in and I couldn’t say no, I had to talk to them. I didn’t have a choice. A client called me. I had to respond.” Lots of I had to-had to-had to-I can’t-I can’t-I can’t-I must-I must-I must. I didn’t have any choice or say in the matter, right? That’s how we think about this. Instead of just being honest about what it actually was.

This comes up quite a bit in weight loss, too. I love weight loss examples, just because they’re so commonplace and easy to see in our mind’s eye. So, I’ve had clients do this before, where they’re supposed to be eating a certain way, they decided ahead of time that they would eat following a certain protocol.

And then, they don’t eat following that protocol. They eat off plan. They eat in a way that’s not aligned with their goals. And then, they start to make excuses for it. “Well, I couldn’t eat healthy because I attended this event. And this was the only food that was available. Well, I couldn’t eat that way because I was traveling, and it just wasn’t possible for me to eat as I planned.”

Now, the truth here, is that you didn’t plan and prepare accordingly. And then, you defaulted to what was available, because it was easier in the moment rather than going hungry. Or just abstaining from the food that was provided, and then figuring it out later. No, I’m not suggesting you starve yourself. Don’t go ahead and run away with what I’m saying here and really take it to an extreme.

But check in with yourself, are you making excuses when it comes to this? We probably do this with working out too, right? All the different excuses when the truth is you just haven’t made it a priority. You haven’t been willing to do the things that would make that activity a non-negotiable. That would ensure that you complete it, that you follow your plan.

I see this come up a lot with investments as well. We’ll blame not having the money for the reason that we don’t do something. And when you look at someone’s spending, you very quickly can see, “Oh, no. No, you have the money. You just spent it this way instead of spending it this way.”

But it’s such a more comfortable excuse for us to tell ourselves, “Oh, I don’t have the money.” Or to tell someone else, “Oh, I can’t do that. I don’t have the money,” rather than being honest about what it is, “Oh, I don’t want to do this. Oh, I don’t value this enough. Oh, it’s not a priority for me.”

I see people do this with investment decisions when they’re thinking about investing in coaching. This comes up a lot. “Oh, I don’t have the money. I can’t afford to do that.” And then, when you look at their spending, you can quickly see that’s not true. This just isn’t a priority for you. But most people don’t want to admit that they prioritize their luxury car or a vacation over their personal development and solving some of the problems that they’re encountering.

I’ve also seen this with some of my friends who will make excuses about not having the money, to avoid having to do things with friends. Instead of people pleasing them, they’ll lie. They still don’t move fully into integrity by just being honest and telling the person the truth.

So, they settle for this middle of the road option where they make an excuse, “Oh, you know, I’d love to go on vacation with you. But I just really can’t afford it right now.” When, if you looked at their finances, they could afford it.

They just don’t want to go on vacation with the person for whatever reason. Maybe they don’t think they’re close enough friends. Maybe they don’t think that vacationing with the person would be fun. So, they come up with an excuse. We do this when it comes to turning down social engagements all the time. We make excuses, instead of being honest.

Now, you can also decide that you don’t need to offer an explanation. But you can just honor your knowing, rather than offering an excuse or an explanation. You can just offer your response, you can offer your answer, and leave it at that. But that tends to be really uncomfortable for people, so they don’t do that, they make an excuse instead.

Now, check in with yourself. Are you an excuse maker? If you are, I don’t want you to judge yourself. I just want you to notice it. And I want us to explore, during the course of this episode, why you might do it. Okay? We get to decide, is it even a problem? So, that’s always the first place that we start. I’m not going to assume that this is a problem. There’s no moral judgment here. Okay?

This starts with deciding, who do you want to be? If you don’t care about lying, about making an excuse when it’s not true, about operating in what someone might consider a manner that is out of integrity, then it’s not a problem. If you’re like, “That’s a white lie. No big deal. No one gets hurt. It’s fine. It makes my life easier. Who cares?” Then, amazing. Don’t worry about it, then it isn’t a problem for you. And that’s okay.

But if you decide that you want to be the kind of person who is honest and operates from a place of integrity, someone who doesn’t make excuses in order to hit the easy button, take the escape route, then being a person who makes excuses isn’t in alignment with that. But then we are presented with a problem because we essentially have dissonance, two things competing against one another.

To become someone who operates from a place of integrity, we’ve got to stop making excuses. And that begs the question, but how? But how exactly do we do that, Olivia? Well, let’s dive in and talk about it.

First things first, when it comes to making excuses, you have to check in with yourself and make sure you’re not believing your own excuses. So many people buy their own bullshit, they believe their own drama. They make an excuse, and they think that it’s true. They’re really in the narrative of their own victimhood, of their own helplessness.

So, if you do this, if your life feels very dramatic, if you feel like you’re always dealing with an emergency, there’s always something coming up at the last minute, you’re always handling something unexpected, things are outside of your control, life is happening to you. If that’s you, you’re likely believing your own excuses. You’re buying into the story that your primitive brain is serving up to you; you’re thinking that it’s true.

And if you think it’s true, you’re definitely going to say it and pass it on to other people. It’s going to be how you communicate and what you tell them. Because you’re going to see it as just being the truth. It’s going to feel very matter of fact. So, you’ve got to be onto yourself here. And this is where having a coach really comes in handy, because we can’t always see our own bullshit.

It really helps to have someone else point it out to us. For them to question, “Hey, is that actually true? What if it’s not true? How might it not be true? What if this is actually true instead.”

Some of my clients often say to me I’m such an expert at seeing how people operate, and understanding why they’re doing the things that they’re doing, and getting to the root issue at hand. Understanding why someone might make an excuse, being able to spot them, and understand why we’re making it in the first place. And then how to stop making it, what to do instead.

So, coaching really does come in handy here. We just can’t see our own blind spots. Having a coach helps us identify them, so we can create awareness. And then from awareness, we can decide whether or not we want to make a change.

An easy way to spot if you are making and believing your own excuses will be if you hear yourself, say very frequently, “Oh, I can’t do that. Oh, I had to do that. Oh, I didn’t have a choice. I didn’t have a say in the matter. My hands were tied. It just is that way. It is the way that it was.” All of these things are lies, lies, lies, lies.

If you’ve listened to the podcast before, you’ve probably heard me say there’s only four things you need to do. I recently added a fifth one, after someone turned to me on to the fact that there is a fifth one. It’s you need to eat, drink some fluids, sleep sometimes, and breathe. And you also need to use the restroom. So, if it’s not those five things, you don’t have to do it.

If you’re telling yourself that you can’t do something, or you had to do something, that’s just bullshit. And you want to be onto yourself. You want to turn your bullshit detector on, and know that it simply isn’t true. That instead what is true is that you always have a choice.

Now, you’ve probably heard me say this before, too. You may not always love your choices. The choices you have may have undesirable consequences. But you do have choices, nevertheless. So, you always want to remember that.

People love tricking themselves into feeling helpless by believing their own excuses. Now, why is this true? Why is this the case? Well, for starters, it helps them feel justified for whatever unintentional action they choose to make next. Whatever decision they make next. It helps you feel more justified, more resigned, more accepting of your decisions, rather than facing the uncomfortable truth that you do have a choice, and you’re choosing the path of least resistance.

You’re choosing to make this excuse. You’re choosing not to operate in integrity with what you promised yourself you would do. And that’s an uncomfortable truth to handle. So, it’s much easier to buy into this feigned helplessness, in order to escape that and to feel really justified in doing whatever it is that you end up doing, that unintentional action.

It’s much more uncomfortable to be honest with yourself, and to go about honoring the commitments that you make. Right? Think about the food example. You can choose to believe that you just didn’t have a choice, you had to eat that dish at that family function.

Or you can be honest with yourself and say, “Oh, I could have done it this way, this way, or this way. And all of that would have required me to plan, or me to turn something down, for me to miss out on something delicious, for me to feel deprived.” All of which is uncomfortable.

All of that requires more of you than buying your own excuse, feigning helplessness, feeling justified, and then resigning yourself to the path of least resistance, that unintentional action that doesn’t actually serve you. You’re going to feel really okay and accepting of your choices, the choices that aren’t aligned with the results that you want.

So, be onto yourself there. Being honest and honoring your commitments requires you to embrace the discomfort of honoring them. And to be intentional and operate from that place of integrity, in spite of and despite the discomfort, okay? That’s not going to feel warm and fuzzy, you’re going to feel uncomfortable. You’re going to want to vom. It’s not going to be a super pleasant experience, at first.

On the back end, you get the results that you want for your life. So, it is going to be more pleasurable, you are going to feel gratified and accomplished. But that gratification is going to be delayed, and you have to be willing to accept the delayed gratification, rather than requiring instant gratification, that temporary pleasure.

Okay, so the first step is understanding and recognizing your own b.s. From there, once we know that the excuse isn’t true, we want to understand why we’re making it. So, I talked about that a little bit a second ago, because it helps us rationalize our bad decisions and justify our bad decisions.

But we also do it to escape the discomfort of the truth. Being honest about why we do the things that we do, is typically uncomfortable. Normally, because we’re judging ourselves for it, that’s why we make it uncomfortable. We also typically perceive that other people will have a negative opinion about the truth.

So, we have a negative opinion about the truth, and then we think other people are going to have a negative opinion about the truth. So, we make the excuse to avoid all of that judgment; our judgment of ourselves and judgment from other people. Okay?

Think about it. We’ve got three options. You’ve got the option, where you don’t do what you say you’re going to do and you’re going to be honest about it. What your reasons were, why you didn’t do it, why you didn’t stick to the plan, why you didn’t follow through. You’re just going to be honest and not fib, not lie, not make an excuse. That’s uncomfortable as hell.

So is showing up as the version of yourself that you want to be. That’s the second option here. That requires the most of you. Out of all three options that I’m going to talk about, that’s going to be the heaviest lift. To embrace the discomfort of showing up and being intentional, and following through on your plans. And making the decisions that delay that gratification that I talked about a moment ago. That’s going to be the highest level of discomfort.

So, we’ve got being honest, about why you didn’t do what you said you were going to do. Then there’s the option two; instead of needing to be honest about it, you just do what you say you’re going to do in the first place. Avoid the whole scenario where you might feel like you need to make an excuse. Make the whole excuse part irrelevant by just doing what you say you’re going to do. But that’s also uncomfortable, it requires a lot of you.

Your third option is to not follow through, not be intentional, not do what you say you’re going to do, but make an excuse about it. It allows you to avoid the discomfort of showing up as the version of yourself that you want to be. And it allows you to avoid the discomfort of being honest about why you didn’t show up as that version of yourself. Okay?

So, it gets us out of all of this discomfort and lets us feel a little bit better about ourselves. Making an excuse, offering it to another person, allows us to feel a little bit more relieved, a little bit less judged, a little bit less inadequate, a little bit more secure, a little bit more accepted.

When we make excuses, we’re really providing ourselves with this comfort, which makes sense why we pick it over the other two options. Now, if you decide you don’t want to be an excuse maker, you’ve got to change the way that you think. And you’ve got to change your unwillingness to feel these negative emotions. You’ve got to be willing to feel this discomfort in order to operate differently, and to stop making excuses.

Now, one way to change your thinking, that will support you to stop making excuses, is that we make excuses because we assume people are going to have negative thoughts about us if they know the truth. And then, we think that when we give them our excuse, they change their opinion. we assuage our own worry, because we assume they don’t think what they would have originally thought, they think something else instead.

They might have thought you were irresponsible and unreliable, but you give them the excuse of, “Oh, I was really under the weather. I was so sick. This emergency came up. I’m dealing with this family thing.” Even though we both know, that really isn’t the reason that you didn’t do the thing you said you were going to do. But you offer that excuse to them.

And then, you believe that their thoughts about you change. That they feel sympathy or empathy, right? They feel understanding or accepting that they’re not having those judgments. And the truth is, you’re not a mind reader. You’re just making all of this up for yourself. It may or may not be true. It may be true, and great. But believing that it is the case every single time, feeds into this habit of you offering people excuses so you can control their opinion of you.

Now, you can choose to change the way that you think about this. If you want to stop making excuses, I highly recommend you adopt this mindset. One of the thoughts that changed for me, which got me to stop making excuses, because I used to be the queen of doing this…

My life was very dramatic. I was always dealing with an emergency. I always had an excuse. I used this religiously, to cancel dentist appointments or doctor’s appointments at the last minute. There was always something that came up at work; I was perpetually late. And it was always someone else’s fault other than my own.

I would offer some dramatic excuse, and then people would typically respond with, “Oh, I’m sorry,” whether they actually felt that way or not. Who knows? I’m not a mind reader, but it would assuage my worry temporarily. And then, I’d get to feel better about myself, less irresponsible, less inadequate.

One day, I decided I didn’t want to operate this way anymore. I didn’t want to be untruthful. I didn’t want to be a liar. I didn’t want to be someone who was full of excuses. I always had some “good reason” for not doing what I said I was going to do. So, I decided to change the way that I thought about how other people perceived my excuses.

I really think this serves you more, it’s not a super positive thought. But I do think it’s a thought that serves you. It’s definitely one that serves me because it drives me to act more in integrity. I choose to believe that people don’t care at all why I didn’t do what I said I was going to do. They just don’t give a shit. It doesn’t matter to them.

What I choose to believe, is that the only thing that they care about is me not having done the thing. All they want, all they truly care about, is me doing what I said I was going to do. They’d like to know when I’m going to do it, and they’d like to know when it’s done. Everything else, to them, is pretty much irrelevant.

The way that I think about this, and pardon me being crass, but I constantly say to myself, “No one fucking cares. No one fucking cares. They don’t give a shit what my excuses are, they just want it done.” I can communicate the fact that it’s not done, people do want to know that because it provides them with certainty. And then, they want to know when it’s going to be done, when can they expect it. And then, they want to know that I did follow through on that promise that I made. That’s all people really care about.

And when you boil it down to that, you get so much more concise in the communications that you have with people. You strip your communications of all of the excuses. Your life becomes much less dramatic. It becomes much more matter of fact.

You save yourself the time of going through the process of making all of these excuses, and you can just put your head down and get to work. It’s so much more effective, so much more productive, so much more efficient. So, that’s one of the reframes that I’ve had.

The other reframe, is a self-concept reframe. This is really just a decision. You get to decide that you’re a person who doesn’t make excuses. Now, whether you offer someone the truth, or you communicate less information, but honest information, “No, I haven’t done that yet. Haven’t done that yet, I’ll get it to you tomorrow,” rather than offering all this word vomit, apology vomit, itinerary vomiting, excuses, excuse vomiting… Rather than offering that, you can just offer the simple information that’s necessary in that moment.

Now, when you decide to become someone who does this, your path forward becomes very clear. You’re going to have to feel these negative emotions. You’re also going to have to stop being so perfectionistic and give yourself some grace; you’re not going to do everything perfectly. And that’s okay.

You’re going to have to trust yourself to rebound and to improve over time. To take action imperfectly, to audit that action, and to adapt. You’re also going to have to trust that other people are going to be accepting or that you’ll be okay, even if they’re not accepting of the truth. Okay?

You also have to decide to not judge yourself when you miss the mark. When you don’t meet an expectation that you set. When you don’t live up to your word. You’ve got to get curious. If you judge yourself, it’s always going to be very enticing to go back to making excuses, because that is the land of comfort. Rather than being honest about what’s going on, why you didn’t live up to your word.

You’ve got to be willing to come at ‘not living up to your word’ from a place of curiosity. If you judge yourself, you’re going to have a really hard time continuing to be honest. It’s just going to be too uncomfortable, too unpalatable.

When you make this decision to be someone who’s honest and operates from a place of integrity and doesn’t make excuses, once you’re decided, then you get to put that decision into practice. You get to implement it, and you get to practice meeting moments. You’re going to see the fork in the road, you’re going to see the path where you can make an excuse.

Or you can see the path where you’ve become very honest, and you tell the truth, and you don’t make the excuse. And when you live there, when your only two options then become, do what you say you’re going to do or be honest about why you didn’t do it, you get much differently incentivized to follow through and do what you say you’re going to do.

Because between those two options, when you take the most comfortable option, the excuse making, off the table and you’re left with those two types of discomfort, the most uncomfortable version, I believe, is going to be sitting in your inadequacy, and being honest about why you didn’t do what you said you were going to do.

Then, the discomfort avoidance shifts. You associate more discomfort with having to be honest about your failings, your shortcomings, so you choose to show up as the version of yourself that you want to be, when it’s ‘be honest or bust’.

You end up following through. You end up becoming more intentional. You show up as the version of yourself that you strive and aim to become, which in turn increases your competence and has all these other amazing benefits, right? This simple decision, of being someone who doesn’t make excuses, really just pays dividends over and over and over again.

The other thing that I want to highlight here, is you want to be careful. There are some other subtle reasons why we make excuses. And one of the main subtle reasons that I see people do this, is because they get to feel important. It is fun to have a more exciting, dramatic story. It makes us feel significant.

When we tell the story, when we offer our excuse, we know that it’s likely to elicit a certain response. Either concern from someone or shock or surprise or understanding. We get that, “Oh, I’m so sorry. Oh, my goodness!” Right? People commiserate with us. People feel sorry for us. We get their compassion, their empathy, their pity.

And even though that might not be where you want to be, you might prefer to have their admiration and to have them revere you. Right? To have them respect you. Doing the things to get admiration, reverence, and respect. That’s a heavier lift.

It’s easier to default to making the excuse and getting their concern, worry, pity, compassion. Okay? If this is you, if this is one of the reasons that you’re doing this, just check in with yourself.

What needs are you satisfying here? And what would it look like for you to not use making an excuse to satisfy it? To not need other people to respond a certain way for you to feel a particular emotion? What if you were able to just sit in your own discomfort yourself? Or what if you were able to provide that emotion to yourself, without needing to make an excuse and elicit that response from another person?

Okay, I’ve given you a ton of food for thought, when it comes to making excuses. I want you to take a few minutes today, and check in with yourself. Where are you making excuses? Where are you not being honest? Where are you not following through? Where are you not showing up and acting in integrity?

Check in and find those areas in your life where this is happening for you. And then decide, do you want to be someone who makes excuses and does this? Or do you want to be someone who’s honest and shows up as that highest version of themselves?

If you choose the latter, number one, you’ve got to find your excuses. And you’ve got to stop believing your own bullshit. That’s step one. You might need a coach to help you with that. If you do, you know where to find me.

Second, you’ve got to get clear on what you’re going to do instead. There are three options: Follow through and show up as the version of yourself that you want to be. Be honest about why you didn’t show up that way. Or make the excuse, take that third option off the table, and be willing to feel the discomfort of either of the other two options.

There’s not a moral hierarchy on which one’s better. You get to decide whichever one’s right for you, depending on the moment that you’re meeting. But you want to embrace the discomfort of either of those two options, and not settle for the temporary comfort and instant gratification of that making excuses third option, okay?

Go to work, find those excuses, and start eradicating them. You’re really going to love who you become in the process. You’re going to feel so much more authentic and proud of yourself when you become the person who takes excuse making off the table entirely. I can’t wait to see what you get when you decide to implement this for yourself. It’s going to be so exciting.

All right, my friends, that’s what I have for you this week. If you’re sick of making excuses and you want to master the art of not making them, and being someone who shows up in integrity, come inside The Less Stressed Lawyer mastermind. You know how to do that. Go to TheLessStressedLawyer.com/mastermind.

And other than that, I will talk to you in the next episode. I hope you have a beautiful week.

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 60. Today, we’re talking all about making life hard, and not asking for help. 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.

Hi, my friends, how are you today? So much is going on over here. I just moved, And some of you who have been listening for a while might be like, “Again? You moved again?” But yes, I moved again. I am now doing these short-term six-month leases, where I rent different furnished condos. So, my last lease was up, and I moved into a different building.

I have two microphones. One’s a microphone that comes with me when I travel. Because you guys know, sometimes I like to record the podcast when I’m on the road, from the comfort of a beautiful hotel room. And then I always have one in my house, as well. Because that’s typically where I’m at when I record the podcast.

But I accidentally packed both of them. And I had to stay in an Airbnb for a couple of nights, because my place, my new place, wasn’t furnished yet. So, while I was there, I didn’t have access to any of my microphones. I attempted to use my coaching microphone to record this. But I tested the sound and let me tell you, it did not sound good. And I was not going to make you guys suffer through bad audio. I hate listening to bad audio. So, I assume you probably do too.

So, this episode is coming out a little bit later than I typically get them out. But that’s okay, we’re aiming for B+ work over here. I teach my clients that they don’t need to be perfect. And I practice what I preach. I am a product of my own product. So, I am showing up and getting this to you now, rather than not showing up at all and hiding from my imperfection. I’m not going to do that. I’m just going to embrace it.

I’m so excited to talk about today’s episode topic. Because it’s something that I see people do all the time. They make their lives harder than they need to be. And I want to call it out, I want to teach you how to look for this, how to spot it in your own life. And then what are a few of the things that you can do, in order to stop making your life harder than it has to be. Okay? And we’ll also dive into not asking for help, why people don’t ask for help, and then how to do it.

Now, before I get to all that, you know I love a good backstory. So, I wanted to give you the backstory on what inspired this episode topic. Last week, I taught a class on how to thrive as a lawyer. And one of the things that I discussed during the masterclass, at the very beginning, I wanted to talk about some of the limiting beliefs people have about the legal profession generally, and the impact that those limiting beliefs have on their lives.

And over and over and over again, one of the limiting beliefs I see people hold about practicing law, about being an attorney, is that it is inherently hard. And here’s what happens when they choose to believe that. Now, I’m using that word very intentionally here, because remember, we do choose our thoughts. Sometimes they come to us, but once we become aware of them, we get to choose whether or not to continue to think them.

So, if you’ve been listening for a little while you know that you get to choose your thoughts. You want to make yourself aware of what they are. And if you’re raising your hand right now, and you think this thought, that the practice of law is inherently hard, or inherently stressful, you are going to make your life harder.

It is going to be hard. Because our thoughts create our results. Remember, that’s always the case. That’s always going on in the background. Whether you’re aware of it or not, what you’re thinking is creating the results that you have in your life.

So, I wanted to record an episode specifically about this topic, and address the ways that I see people making their life harder than it needs to be. The first way you do this is if you believe this thought, that the practice of law is inherently hard, or that life is hard, or that being a lawyer is hard, or just your job in particular is hard. If you believe that those things are hard, you will make them hard. Your experience will be hard, right? And you can see how that plays out using the model.

When you’re thinking those thoughts, how do you feel? Discouraged, frustrated, defeated, hopeless, annoyed, exasperated, tired, worn down? Things like that, right? And then, think about the action that you take in your life when you feel those emotions. Or maybe you feel out of control. That’s a big one. Or resigned, like you just don’t have any say in the matter.

If that’s what’s happening in your model, then what action do you take when you’re feeling out of control or resigned or any of the other negative emotions that I just listed a moment ago? You’re not going to take positive productive action when you’re thinking those thoughts and experiencing those emotions. You’re going to shut down. You’re going to withdraw. You’re not going to set boundaries and say, no. You’re not going to prioritize yourself and do what makes your life easier.

You’re going to basically resign yourself to things being the way that they are. You’re going to do things the way you’ve always done them, or the way that you were taught to do them by someone else. You’re not going to question the status quo. You’re not going to innovate. You’re just going to settle for what is. You’re going to tolerate a lot of inefficiencies and a lot of things that you don’t particularly enjoy, that aren’t aligned with your preferences.

You’re just going to allow them to be, because you’re thinking that it’s supposed to be a negative experience. And then, in turn, you create a negative experience for yourself. You create things to be harder, right? You’ll also notice in your action line, you’re not asking for help, you’re not delegating, you’re not seeking out additional assistance, you’re over committing yourself. And I’m going to talk about each one of these things in turn.

But this is what it looks like when you believe this limiting belief, that the practice of law is inherently hard, or that life is inherently hard. You’re going to make your life as hard as possible. You’re going to make work as hard as possible. And that’s the result that you end up with, it is hard. Your life will feel hard. It will be hard because you believed it into existence.

And I want to make sure that you’re clear on this; this isn’t manifesting, okay? Your thoughts cause your feelings, and your feelings then drive your actions. So, you’re doing things, the actions that you’re taking are what is making your life difficult, harder than it needs to be. All right? So, you’re producing that result. It’s not just happening to you, you’re creating it.

So, more specifically than just believing that life is hard, or that practicing law is hard, and creating that result, here are other ways that you may be doing this in your own life, making your own life harder than it needs to be. First things first, you’re trying to do it all on your own. And I really relate to this, because I used to be someone who took so much pride in doing it all on my own.

There are sayings like, “It takes a village. If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.” And I used to think that they were kind of hokey and cliche, but there’s value here, okay? Doing everything on your own does eventually slow you down. It will speed you up for a while, but there’s a max capacity that you have. And you’re going to hit an upper limit here sooner or later energetically, and just capacity, as far as time is concerned.

So, if you’re trying to do it all on your own because you’re overworking as a badge of honor. Or you take pride; you think the harder you work, the more worthy you are, the more valuable you are. You’re going to get yourself in trouble here. You’re going to make your life harder than it needs to be. Because what you end up doing is not asking for or receiving help.

I’m going to talk about not asking for help in a second, but I’d love to start by talking about being a gracious recipient of help. Because a lot of times, people around us do actually offer us help without us even needing to ask. People ask if they can help with a project at work. Or maybe, someone in your personal life offers to lend a hand. Maybe they know you’re going through a really busy season in your career, and they want to help pick up the slack. Or they know you’re going through some hardship in your life, and they want to offer some help.

And instead of graciously accepting it, you lean too far into your pride, too far into the radical independence. And I’m all for being resourceful. I’ve talked about that on the podcast before. But we can slip into hyper resourcefulness and really do ourselves a disservice here by turning away help that really would be beneficial. That other people are more than happy to offer.

We actually even prevent people from getting to feel good about themselves by being helpful when we turn away a helping hand. So, check in with yourself. Are you doing this? Are you an ungracious recipient of help? Do you turn it away? Do you kind of shirk it off and refuse someone else’s gratuity, someone else’s generosity, because of your own thoughts about being a recipient of it? You make it mean something negative about you. That is optional.

You can just choose to receive it graciously and openly and willingly, and be very thankful for their help. All of that is available to you, too. Think about it. What would your life be like if you were open to receiving some of the help that’s being offered to you right now? How might your life be easier?

Now, if you’re going to be a gracious recipient, don’t nitpick the help that you get. Okay? And that may be hard for some of you listening. But check in with yourself. That’s probably your perfectionism driving the bus there, thinking that there’s one right way to do things. If you just take a deep breath and come at it from curiosity, with an open-minded perspective, you may realize that there is more than one way to skin a cat, so to speak.

And one of my cats is in the room, while I’m recording this with me, and I’m sure she did not appreciate that comment. Don’t worry, no one’s going to skin you, you’re fine.

Anyways, now let’s talk about not asking for help. I see this so commonly; people don’t ask for the help that would really make their lives so much easier. Would really move the dial on their overwhelm and stress levels. And yet, they don’t put out their hand and ask someone to lend them theirs. Okay?

There’s a whole host of reasons that people don’t do this. For starters, you might feel a lot of embarrassment and shame that you need help in the first place. And that’s only because you’re making asking for help mean something negative about you. And again, you don’t have to do that, that’s optional.

You can make asking for help mean something amazing about you. Meaning, that you’re willing to feel exposed. You’re willing to allow yourself to be vulnerable. You’re willing to know and recognize your limits. All of those things are required in order to ask for help.

Also, I do want to point out, you probably never need help, but it is okay to want help. So, play around with that for a second. How does it change when you switch from thinking that you need help to just telling yourself that you’d like help for X, Y, and Z reasons? It will probably move you out of feeling desperate, or graspy, or needy, or insecure or inadequate in some way. Okay? We want to change your relationship with asking for assistance.

You also might feel guilt around asking for assistance. This happens a ton, especially with my people pleasers. They’re so afraid that other people aren’t going to have the capacity to help them. And they don’t want someone to say yes to them when they want to say no. Because they’re so used to saying yes to people when they want to say no. So, they project that onto other people as well.

They don’t trust other people to make decisions that are right for them. They think that they’re going to lie and do it, but grudgingly, against their better judgment just to appease them. So, they won’t ask for help, because they feel guilty on the front end, thinking that they’re making an imposition. That people aren’t going to want to help them, and that they’re going to do it anyways. All of that feels really terrible.

If this is you, try on thinking about how you feel when you help someone. One of the ways I’ve heard this explain before, and I think this is kind of a nuanced way to describe it. But remember, you are likely not the most generous person on the face of the planet. I’m not saying you’re not generous, but other people are as generous as you. Other people are as helpful as you. Other people are as thoughtful as you.

So, you’re able to be thoughtful, and you enjoy being thoughtful and helpful and lending a hand, other people will too. You’re not the only one who likes to do those things. You’re not a unicorn here, okay? And that’s amazing news.

If we step into being a little bit more trusting, just for a moment, that other people will be honest with us, will communicate their capacity. If they don’t have the ability to lend a hand, they’ll tell us that they don’t. If we trust that people will be honest with us, and that people may actually want to help us, we can create more safety for ourselves in asking for the help that we would like to receive.

You also might be refusing to ask for help because you’re afraid of people judging you for seeking extra assistance. You may think that they’ll believe that you can’t hack it. That you’re not qualified or cut out for the position that you’re holding. They’ll make some negative assumptions or judgments about you, and you’re trying to prevent being judged and having them hold those negative opinions. So, you don’t ask for the help that would really be helpful to you.

One of the specific ways that people don’t ask for help is that they don’t delegate. So, if this is you check in with yourself here. Why are you not delegating? Is it because you’re telling yourself that you don’t have the time? Or you’re telling yourself that other people aren’t going to do it the right way? Or that you don’t have enough people or the right people to help you? Or you mistakenly believe that you should be able to do everything yourself?

Whatever the reason is that you’re not delegating, that’s one of the ways that you could be asking for help. Looking to the people around you, both in your professional life and in your personal life. What could you delegate? Can you pay people to do certain things? Are there favors you can ask?

Whatever the case may be, you can delegate. Identify in your life where those opportunities for delegation are, okay? That’s going to be one of the things that you can do, in order to remedy making your life harder than it needs to be.

As for asking for help and trying to do it all on your own, stop trying to do it all on your own. That’s the recommendation there. Notice that you’re wearing your overworking and your martyrdom as a badge of honor. You’re taking pride in it. You’re making it mean something very significant about you; that you’re valuable, that you’re worthy, that you’re good enough. And all of that’s optional.

You don’t have to think about your value being so tied to your productivity and what you accomplish, and all the things that you do. And you especially don’t have to make your hyper independence part of your value, as well. It is okay to be both resourceful and to ask for help when it makes sense for you to ask for help. Both things can coexist together.

As for refusing to ask for help, the solution there is to ask for it. And in order to do that, you’ve got to do two things. You’ve got to change the way that you’re thinking about asking for help. And then, you’ve got to gag-and-go through any of the remaining, lingering negative emotions that you still experience when you think about asking for help.

Because some of those thoughts are going to be pretty deeply rooted. And that means that some of the negative emotion that you experience because of those thoughts, is also going to be deeply rooted. So, those negative feelings are probably going to be sticky. They’re still going to be there, at least a little bit, even when you change the majority of your thoughts.

So, with that in mind, just identify them very specifically. Name them, list them out, and be clear on what negative emotions are you going to have to be willing to experience, in order to ask for the help that would really make a difference in your life.

Okay, another way that people make their lives harder than they need to be, is trying to be everything to everyone. Which, this one’s really a doozy. Because everyone you know is going to want something different from you. Which means, all those different desires are going to be in conflict with one another.

So, when you’re attempting to appease each and every one of these people, which is just an inherently impossible task, you end up turning yourself into Stretch Armstrong. You end up pulling yourself in a million different pieces, and really burning yourself out in the process. So, check in with yourself here.

Are you trying to please too many people all at the same time? And trying to be different things to each of the people in your lives? Do some people expect you to be one way? And do some other people want you to be a different way? Do you want to be a different way than the other ways that people want you to be?

Do you see where this conflict makes your life more challenging? It’s because you’re constantly bouncing between different ways to operate. You never know exactly how you should show up for a situation, whose priorities are coming first, who are you in that moment. You’re trying to wear multiple hats all at the same time. And if you’ve ever tried that, it’s not very effective, unless they stack right on top of each other.

But that wouldn’t work here, because all of the hats that people want you to wear are different. So, they wouldn’t stack. Silly analogy, but bear with me here, okay? If you are trying to be everything to everyone, it’s not going to work. So, you’ve got to stop doing that and figure out who do you want to be for yourself.

The next one goes hand in hand with this. It’s are you putting other people’s needs ahead of your own? If you’re putting other people’s needs ahead of your own, then no one’s tending to your needs, because it’s your job to attend to your needs and no one else’s.

You’ve essentially fallen asleep at the switch, and we need to put you back behind the driver’s seat, behind the switch, to man and operate your own life and to tend to your needs and desires. Okay? If you’re ignoring them, if you’re neglecting them, your life is going to feel harder because none of your own needs or desires are ever going to be addressed and satisfied. Which makes life uncomfortable.

Another way people make their lives harder than they need to be is that they make extremely unrealistic plans that they’re unable to execute successfully. And what they do is they set themself up to fail. Each and every day people do this.

So, you start your day with this plan that’s completely impossible to complete. This is one of the ways perfectionism pops up in people’s lives. And then, at the end of the day, when you didn’t complete the plan, because you’re never going to be able to complete the plan, because it was unrealistic.

You tell yourself that you didn’t get through enough of your work. You didn’t accomplish enough. You didn’t get enough done and that you’re behind. Your life is going to feel so overwhelming and so full of pressure, and you’re going to feel so discouraged day in and day out.

Furthermore, your daily plans set the pace for your days. So, if you’re planning more than what you can actually accomplish in your day, your day is going to feel really frenzied, rushed, chaotic, and stressful. Which, all of those emotions end up boiling down to just hard, right? Your day is going to feel hard. And you pile on a lot of unnecessary pressure.

So, the best thing that you can do to avoid making your life harder in this way, is to plan your schedule accurately. And I’ve recorded a whole episode on that in the ‘time management series’, back in, like the late 20s, I think, the episode numbers. So, you can go check that out. I’ll link that in the show notes so you can go listen to that if you haven’t already.

Sort of akin to planning unrealistically, people also over commit themselves by saying yes to too many different things. So, you want to be the person who does everything. Maybe it’s driven by FOMO, or maybe you have a strong desire to be helpful and you’re interested in doing a lot of different things. You are telling yourself that they’re good opportunities for you. That you technically can help, so you should help.

So, you say yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, and you never leave yourself enough time to do the things that are most meaningful in your life, that really move the ball and get you the results that you want. You’re spending your time in a less than intentional way. Your days are just jam packed. You don’t have enough time to breathe and prioritize what really matters most to you. So, your life’s going to feel harder than needs to if you’re doing that.

The solution here is to practice constraint, and only commit to the things that really move the dial and are meaningful, and get you where you want to go. Now, you may have to gag-and-go through a lot of discomfort. You might have to feel guilty or worried about passing on an opportunity, or fear that someone’s going to judge you for your refusal to agree to do something.

All of that might come up, as you decide and follow through on your decision to not over commit. But you can survive those emotions, and you’re going to be so much happier on the other side of making that decision to practice constraint, okay? Your life is going to be a lot simpler, easier, and more sustainable, Which also means it’s going to be more enjoyable.

Okay, last but not least. Actually, I think this might be one of the more important items on the list. But you aren’t providing yourself with the resources that you need to thrive personally and professionally. Okay? What I see in so many of my clients is they actually have a knowledge gap. There are some essential life skills that life happened to not teach them.

Our parents don’t teach us certain skills, mostly because they don’t know them themselves. They didn’t learn this information that would really move the dial in our lives, and make our lives easier. So, they’re doing life hard as well. School also doesn’t teach us these essential skills. And our working environments don’t teach them to us either.

So, we end up lacking certain knowledge that would really help us create easier, more enjoyable, lives. It’s this knowledge gap that we’re left with, from not receiving this education previously, that makes our life hard, harder than they have to be.

Let me give you a couple of examples of this lack of knowledge that I’m talking about, the things that you haven’t learned, the skills that you weren’t taught to develop. So, you might not have learned how to manage your time, how to plan realistically, like I talked about a moment ago. You might not have learned how to understand what your capacity is for work or for other commitments outside of work.

You might not be very clear on what your limits are energetically, emotionally, any of that stuff; your limits on time, or any other resources that you expend. You might not know how to set boundaries. You might have never learned that skill of setting and honoring them. Or how to say no and not people please. How to honor what you want, rather than prioritizing what someone else wants, to your own detriment.

You may have never learned how to actually put yourself first and do that prioritizing of yourself. You might not know what that looks like. You might have only learned how to martyr yourself, and how to put yourself on the back burner. You might not have learned how to ask for help in a really authentic, candid, genuine way. You might not have learned how to delegate. There’s a proper way to do it, and you might not have ever learned what that proper way is.

You might not have learned how to stop caring about what other people think. You might not have learned how to cultivate confidence in your life, in your abilities, and the job that you do. You might not have learned how to cultivate belief in your own worth, in the value that you bring to the table, and what you have to offer the world. And you might not have ever learned how to trust your own judgment and make empowered decisions. Okay?

Another big one here is you probably haven’t learned the art of following through. So, everything that I talked about today, in order to remedy the ways that you’re making your life hard, you’ve got to make decisions, and then you’ve got to implement those decisions. You’ve got to stick to them. You’ve got to commit to your commitments.

And if you didn’t learn the art of following through, you’re going to have a really hard time doing that. And then again, your life is going to be harder than it needs to be, because you’re going to be inconsistent and you’re not going to follow through on doing the things that would actually make your life easier.

So, these are the skills that I’m talking about. Check in with yourself. Have you learned these? It is okay if the answer is no. The answer is no, for practically everyone that I work with. Life, like I said, doesn’t teach us this skill set. But you have two options here, with that in mind.

Now, the one that I really don’t recommend… Actually, there’s three options. The one that I don’t recommend is continuing to argue with reality and thinking that you should have learned them already. That’s just going to cause you a lot of frustration and strife, okay? It’s going to be very energetically and emotionally draining. And it’s not going to change your current situation any.

Now, your other two options are to throw up your hands in exasperation. And basically, just throw in the towel. To say, “I haven’t learned them yet. There’s no point in learning them now.” And you’re going to keep choosing hard if you do that. If you don’t bridge this knowledge gap and invest in an education where you actually learn how to develop these skills.

All right, the other option that you can choose from, instead of throwing up your hands and just thrown in the towel and saying, “That’s it. I quit. I give up. I don’t know this stuff so that means I’m never going to learn it.” You can decide to learn this now, to bridge this knowledge gap yourself.

Now, you can attempt to bridge this knowledge gap on your own. But I want you to think about that meaningfully for a second, okay? It’s like trying to teach yourself algebra, without ever having learned algebra. I really don’t recommend it. You’re going to spend so much time being inefficient, as you go about learning these skills if you try and do it on your own.

You’re not going to see your blind spots. You’re going to waste a ton of time making mistakes. Really failing your way forward when there’s a different route that’s available to you. You can just invest in this education by investing in coaching. And if you do that, you’re going to get so much further faster. Because the trial-and-error part is taken out of the equation for you.

You’re only going to learn what actually works, and you’re going to be able to dive right in to implementing it and practicing in your own life. So, it really shortens your learning curve. And expedites the time between you going from where you are now to going to that easier life that you’d really like to have for yourself.

So, if you’re interested in investing in this education, this is the exact education that you’ll receive inside The Less Stressed Lawyer Mastermind, which is my signature group coaching program. It’s a six-month group coaching program that has two different parts to it. There’s an in-person immersive retreat; it’s 3 ½ days long. It takes place this year in Big Sky Montana, August 23 – 26.

And that’s where we go through and spend three full days together workshopping. I’ll teach you all of the fundamental tools that you’ll need, in order to create an easier life for yourself, in order to stop choosing hard. Okay?

You’re going to learn the foundation for building and developing the skills that I just mentioned; managing your time, planning realistically, knowing your limits, setting boundaries, saying no, not people pleasing, prioritizing yourself, delegating, managing others, asking for help, caring less about what other people think, feeling more confident in yourself, trusting your own judgment making those empowered decisions, and following through.

You’re going to learn how to do all of that inside the mastermind. So, we start with those 3 ½ days in person. The half day is our welcome reception, which happens the night before our first day of the workshop. And then, we spend three full days together coaching, masterminding, workshopping, learning. I’m going to teach you for 18 hours. It’s really incredible what we do in these jam packed three days.

But we’re going to spend 18 hours together, six hours each day, just packed with this learning, in order to give you the tools that you’ve never received before, to make these changes in your life, to create an easier experience day to day for yourself. And then from there, we close it off with an amazing farewell dinner.

And then, we go back into our lives, and we spend the next six months meeting each week, practicing what you learned in person, and putting it in to action. And as we encounter hiccups or obstacles in the road, as you start to go through the learning, and you see what’s working and what’s not working, we’re going to work through it, and overcome the obstacles so you don’t get stuck, so you don’t hold yourself back, so you don’t get slowed down.

This is how you’re going to make really fast progress learning these skills, implementing these tools, and changing your life. Okay? So, like I said, you can choose to argue with reality; highly don’t recommend. You can choose to just give up and continue operating with the current set of skills and tools that you have; that’s making your life, like I said, harder than it has to be.

Or you can choose to close this knowledge gap. Either by yourself, again, not the best option here, just because it’s going to take so long, and there’s no guarantee that you’ll actually be able to do it. Because go back to the algebra or calculus example, it’s really hard to teach yourself what you don’t know.

And there are people out there, like me, coaches, experts in this stuff, that know exactly what you need to learn in order to master this in your own life. So, that’s the last option, you can choose to invest in a program like The Less Stressed Lawyer Mastermind, that will expedite this learning process and make it as fast as possible for you to get yourself to easy, okay?

So, choose to invest in yourself. Choose to invest in this education, choose to invest in an easier life. That easier life it’s waiting for you. I promise you. I know it, because I’ve done this work myself and I am living such an easier life because I stopped glamourizing hard. And I stopped believing that life had to be hard, that work had to be hard. And I made a decision to learn a different way to do life.

You get to make that same decision now. Do you want to do life differently? If you do, join me inside the mastermind. Enrollment is open until May 26. Go to TheLessStressedLawyer.com/mastermind to apply now. Okay?

That’s what I’ve got for you this week. I hope you all have a beautiful week. I hope you stop choosing to do life harder than it has to be. And I will talk to you in the next episode. Have a beautiful week, my friends.

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 59. Today, we’re talking all about broken record conversations. 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.

Hello, my friends. How are you? I hope your week is off to a splendid start. Mine is really good. I just got back from Boston. I went to Boston, actually I went to Maine via Boston, for a friend’s father’s funeral. To go and support a good friend of mine with another good friend of mine.

So, my girlfriend, Halston, and I departed for Boston on Friday, and I got back last evening. It was a really beautiful trip. Despite the unfortunate circumstances that we were making the trip, we had a really wonderful time, and it was great to see a friend of ours.

I also got to scope out another amazing hotel for The Less Stressed Lawyer Mastermind. I don’t know that I will do an event in Boston; I’m a Yankees fan, even though I live in Detroit. But the hotel I stayed at was marvelous enough that I might be persuaded. So, if you have strong opinions and would love to see a future mastermind event in Boston, reach out to me on social media and let me know.

Speaking of the mastermind, early enrollment opens this Friday. Okay? Early enrollment goes from May 12 through May 14, at 11:59pm. And then, the doors open for general enrollment. So, you need to be on the waitlist, which you can sign up for at Mastermind.thelessstressedlawyer.com. You can sign up for the waitlist there. You can also go to my website, TheLessStressedLawyer.com/Mastermind and sign up for the wait-list.

You have to be on the waitlist in order to apply, to join, the mastermind during early enrollment. Spots in the mastermind are limited, so you want to make sure you apply during that early enrollment period before enrollment opens to the general public on May 15. All right, spots get filled on a first-come-first-served basis, so you want to make sure that you apply as early as you can.

Also, fun little bonus here, if you apply on May 12, the first day of early enrollment, you will get a one-hour one-on-one coaching session with me included with your mastermind enrollment, that you can use any time throughout the six months of the mastermind.

Now remember, what’s included in the mastermind: First things first, an incredible live event. The live event is going to be in Big Sky, Montana, from August 23 through the 26. Included in that live event we have an incredible Welcome Reception. You get to come meet all of your peers in the mastermind. It’s going to be a beautiful event, amazing food, tons of great networking, so much fun getting to know everyone.

And then, we’re going to spend the next three days together in an immersive learning environment where we workshop and coach in person: morning, noon, and night essentially. We do six-hour days each day. So, there’s breakfast, and then after breakfast we kick off with three-hour sessions in the morning. Then you get to break for lunch, spend some time with your fellow masterminders.

Then we kick things off again in the afternoon; go from three to six. And then you have your evenings to yourself. Except for the last evening. So, the last day of the mastermind, we conclude with an absolutely mind-blowing farewell dinner. Okay?

It’s extremely decadent. What better way to celebrate three days of breakthrough transformation, growth, bonding, all of the amazing things that we do in person? We want to celebrate all of that achievement, all of that accomplishment, all of our hard work that we’ve done together.

And it’s just really amazing to have a sendoff to commemorate the experience, go out on a high note, and really lock in and solidify the amazing friendships that you’re going to be building over the course of our three and a half days together.

We do that, and then when we get home, we kick off six months of weekly group coaching calls. All right, so we’re going to take what we learned in person and build upon it. You’re going to have all of the support and accountability that you need to achieve the results that you want, the goals that you’re going to set in person with me, in Big Sky, Montana.

We’re going to spend the next six months achieving them. Overcoming obstacles that come up along the way. Working through them, to the point where we’re going to make achieving those results inevitable. And we’re also going to work through the little everyday annoyances and stumbling blocks that come up for you day in and day out. And any unforeseen problems that occur, we work through those too.

So, just dealing with all of life’s challenges; everything personal, everything professional. The mastermind is really a place where we cover everything. It’s a comprehensive coaching program that addresses each and every part of your life, so you can really thrive in every part of your life.

Additionally, you get access to The Less Stressed Lawyer Mastermind Facebook group, where you can go, in between our weekly sessions, and get coaching, celebrate something, ask your peers a question. It’s all of the support that you could possibly imagine.

And you get access to the Member Portal. The Member Portal is an online portal that you get to log into and in it, it has all of our call recordings, in case you miss one and you want to go back and watch the replay. It also has a vault of every webinar I’ve ever done.

There’s over 30 hours of trainings that I’ve done on basically every subject that you could possibly imagine; time management, how to set boundaries, how to make decisions, how to simplify your life, how to get organized, how to improve your relationships, how to become more emotionally intelligent, how to set and achieve goals, how to relax, how to focus, how to have fun, how to make more money, how to develop a book of business. Everything that you could possibly want to work on is available for you to watch and learn on demand, inside the Member Portal.

I’ve seriously given you absolutely everything you need to be successful. Now, the logistics: First things first, the cost of the mastermind is $5,000. That includes attendance to the live event; the 3 ½ day in person event in Big Sky, Montana. And then, the six months of weekly group coaching.

You are responsible for your transportation to Big Sky, Montana. And for your hotel accommodations while you’re in Big Sky. We have an incredible group discount for the hotel that we’ll be staying at for the Mastermind live event. It’s Montage Big Sky. It’s five stars, it’s absolutely exquisite. If you are ready to learn in luxury, you want to make sure that you don’t skip this round of the Mastermind because it is truly next level.

The rooms were originally $1,200 a night, and for our group, they are only $599 a night. Truly a once in a lifetime opportunity to experience five-star luxury at this price, and to come and transform your life in the process. It’s like two birds, one stone. Luxury vacation and life-changing transformational event all in one.

Last but not least, you need to know when you need to make a decision by, okay? So, if you’re going to apply during early enrollment, if you want that one-on-one session with me, you want to make sure you apply on May 12. Early enrollment lasts from May 12 through May 14. And like I said, you have to be on the waitlist to get invited to apply during early enrollment.

General enrollment opens up on May 15. And enrollment closes on May 26, at 11:59pm. If you have questions about the Mastermind that I haven’t answered: You want to know if you’re a good fit? You want to know will it work for you? You want to know is it the right program for you? You want to know, truly, anything that I haven’t yet discussed.

Reach out to me, don’t stay confused. Reach out to me on social media. You can DM me on LinkedIn or on Instagram. Or you can email me at Olivia@thelessstressedlawyer.com. I will answer any questions that you have so you can make sure that you’re making the decision that’s right for you.

Okay, enough about the Mastermind. Let’s dive in to today’s topic. I actually think these two things go pretty handsomely together. Today, we’re talking about broken record conversations. I wanted to share some of my own personal development, that I’ve worked on and worked through, that is actually inspiration for this episode. And teach you how to be on the lookout for this behavior in your own life.

It’s very easy to indulge in the behavior that I’m going to be talking about in this episode. So, today’s topic is broken record conversations. What are broken record conversations? They’re conversations that you keep having over and over and over again. Just like listening to a broken record, it just keeps repeating, okay?

And when you’re having a broken record conversation over and over and over again, there’s no change to the situation in between the times that you’re having the conversation, that you’re discussing whatever the topic at hand is.

I just want to turn you on to the fact, if you don’t already know this, broken record conversations are incredibly indulgent. They don’t serve you. They don’t add value. They’re not beneficial. It’s just something that we do in an indulgent manner, that feels good for a host of different reasons, which I will explain in a second. But I want you to be onto yourself. They’re an indulgence, for sure. They don’t benefit you.

So, you talk about a topic, you talk about something, and then you do nothing to change the situation. But then you revisit the topic again, having done nothing to change the situation, and then you talk about it some more. That’s a broken record conversation.

Broken record conversations typically fall into one of three categories: Broken record planning conversations, broken record confused conversations, and broken record complaining conversations. Now, you can definitely have a broken record conversation that checks more than just one of those boxes. There’s definitely some overlap here, but they don’t always overlap. So, I did want to give you that framework.

There are these three different categories I’ve identified with my clients, and I want you to be aware of them, so you have a good framework to help you identify when you’re indulging in broken record conversations yourself, okay? I want you to be able to identify, is this a broken record planning conversation, a confused conversation, or a complaining conversation? You want to be able to spot it.

Now, we’ll look at each of these in turn, starting with broken record planning conversations. You say you’re going to do something, let’s say you say you’re going to start your own business. Or you’re going to switch jobs, or you’re going to lose weight, or you’re going to get in shape, or you’re going to move, or you’re going to start a renovation project at your house, or you’re going to write a book, or you’re going to take a trip and go see the world, travel somewhere. Those are examples.

You keep talking about this, you say you’re going to do it, but then you never actually do it. You never get to the doing part. You never take action; you just talk about doing it, but you don’t actually do anything in furtherance of that end goal. You don’t actually change a thing. So, every time you have the conversation over again, you’re in exactly the same spot you were in before. Nothing’s changed.

You’ve talked about it, you’ve made plans to do it, but you never actually get around to doing it. This is a broken record planning conversation. Check in with yourself for a second. Are you guilty of this? It’s really easy to plan to do things and then not actually engage in the doing part, because it’s more comfortable.

So, check in with yourself. Is this coming up anywhere in your life right now? Are there any broken record planning conversations that you’re having? You want to start to spot them, you want to be on to yourself.

Now, for broken record confused conversations, this is when you’re thinking about making a decision or doing something, but you’re confused either about which option to choose or what your options even are, or how to proceed. Okay? So, there’s going to be a lot of hemming and hawing, a lot of spinning in indecision, a lot of indulging in ‘I don’t know.’ And you just stay there, stuck. You don’t figure anything out.

So, when you revisit the conversation again, at a later point in time, you have the exact, identical conversation that you had the first time. You’re asking yourself: What should I do? What choice should I choose? What action should I take? How should I proceed? And you still don’t know because you never made a decision in the first place. You examined the situation, but then you abandoned the situation, you abandoned the conversation.

This will look like you spending time thinking about something, weighing your options, trying to identify your options, trying to figure out what should you do next. And then, you just get overwhelmed and confused and you throw your hands up in the air, and you direct your attention to something else as a distraction. And eventually you end up circling back to the topic that you left undecided, that you were originally confused about.

And you rehash this whole thing all over again; the same decision, weighing the same options, spinning in the confusion about what your options even are. And then, you get overwhelmed and a little exasperated again. And again, you shift your attention to something else, until you eventually cycle back to having this exact same conversation.

So, you never make a decision, you never move forward, you never decide, you don’t choose, you just continue to stay confused. And then, you keep talking about it over and over and over again. Okay?

Now, broken record complaining conversations look like constantly complaining about the same things, but not doing anything to change the situation. Remember, we cannot control other people; what they think, what they say, what they do, how they feel. We can’t control other people. We can only control ourselves. So, when I’m talking here about making a change, I’m talking about controlling yourself, not another person.

There are multiple ways to change the situation. You can change your thinking, your mindset, as it relates to the situation. You can change how you’re thinking about it. And that’s going to require work.

Or you can change the situation by doing something different. Like removing yourself from the situation or setting a boundary. But you’re actually taking a different action, not just changing your thinking about it. Your behavior will be altered. You’ll be doing something different than what you’ve done previously. And that requires work too, right?

All of this requires work. And it ends up being easier to just complain and keep complaining and change nothing. Not change your mindset, not change your behavior, to just keep re-having the same conversation over and over and over again. I don’t know if re-having is a term, but let’s go with it.

Okay, so those are the three types of broken record conversations. Like I said earlier, you want to start to take inventory and be onto yourself. Are you engaging in broken record planning conversations? Are you engaging in broken record confusion conversations? Are you engaging in broken record complaining conversations? You want to identify these in your own life because we want to break this pattern.

Having broken record conversations, indulging in them, does not serve you. So, we want to be able to spot them so we can interrupt this habit, and actually get to work on taking action and changing our lives.

Now, I want to tell you the inspiration behind this episode. Some of the most impactful coaching I’ve ever received was in a peer coaching session with a friend of mine. She’s an incredible coach, her name is Kelly Campana. She was coaching me on a situation with a romantic relationship I was involved in at the time.

I was talking about it and talking about it and talking about it in the coaching session, and finally, she just took a deep breath. She was very calm; it wasn’t judgmental at all. It was totally from a clean, grounded, neutral place. She simply said to me, “You know, we’ve been here before.” And it hit me like a ton of bricks.

It really felt like a gut punch, and not in an offensive way but in a really honest way when you know when the truth has hit you. I always think we know when those moments occur. When we touch the truth and we’re like, “Eww, this is so spot on. She’s right.”

When she said this to me, I knew that she was right. We had been there before. I realized I was indulging in rehashing something I’d already addressed in coaching. I just wasn’t applying the previous coaching because it was easier to indulge in talking about the same exact issue, than it was to apply the coaching and do the hard work of implementing it in my life.

Implementing it required me to be uncomfortable. And I was avoiding that discomfort by continuing to have the same conversation over and over and over again. I had been there before. We had been there before. I had brought this up. I had been coached on it. I had received coaching that was really relevant and on point. And I knew the direction that I needed to move in.

Yet, I wasn’t moving in that direction. I was staying stagnant where I had been before. And I really can’t even articulate why this coaching was so impactful. But I really made the decision in that moment, to be the kind of person that gets coached on something once and then applies the coaching. That I only come back for more coaching on that topic when I’ve made it to a different place. After I’ve implemented the coaching that I’ve already received.

I don’t want to be, what one of my coaches calls an “ask-hole”. Where you ask a question, and you get coaching on it. You get guidance on it, you gain clarity and insight about how to proceed, and then you don’t apply or implement any of it, and you come back, and you ask the same question over again.

I do think it is helpful to get coached on issues more than once. But you want to have applied the previous coaching, rather than getting coached on something, not applying it, and coming back to get coached on the same exact thing. It’s really indulgent, it’s really entitled, and you’re really wasting your own time and slowing down your progress.

You want to implement the coaching and then come back for more, if you’re stuck, if it didn’t go the way you expected, if you need to evaluate and figure out what worked, what didn’t work, what you need to do differently. That’s all part of growth, right? We want to take action, audit, and adapt.

But what we don’t want to do is get coached, and then not do anything that we decided to do, and then come back and rehash the whole thing all over again. Reexamine it from exactly the same vantage point that we did originally. Okay?

So, I made this decision to become someone who is very coachable, and who implements instead of indulges. I want to be someone who is implementing, not indulging; that’s my goal. And I invite you to set the same goal. Be someone who implements instead of indulges. Someone who comes, gets the help and support that they need to move them along, and then move yourself along. That’s your part of the equation. That’s your piece of the puzzle.

That’s your obligation to yourself; be the person who works through something, takes action, and then keeps making progress. Don’t be someone who stalls, who gets stuck, who indulges in staying in that stagnant place.

Now, there are a lot of reasons that people indulge in engaging and having broken record conversations. When it comes to broken record planning, typically people stay there out of fear; the fear of moving forward, fear of getting it wrong, the fear of doing it wrong. Fear of whatever you’re working on, whatever you planned to do, not working out. Just fear of making a change, fear of disrupting the status quo, fear of the unknown.

And so long as we’re in the planning phase, we don’t have to put ourselves at risk. At risk of failing, of being exposed, of being judged, or being embarrassed, of being disappointed. We don’t have to feel the discomfort of different. Maintaining the status quo is really a safe place to reside, except for the part where you never actually accomplish anything, right? I mean, that’s the part of this that is really disruptive and destructive, is that you actually never get where you want to go.

We also stay in the planning phase because our brain can’t tell the difference between planning to do something and actually doing it. So, we actually get a reward, we get a dopamine hit, when we engage in the planning phase. And it normally satisfies us enough so that we move on to something else feeling pretty good about ourselves, without ever having actually taken action on the plan that we created. Okay?

So, you get the benefit, you get the dopamine hit, you get the reward, and you get to avoid the discomfort part of the equation. It’s like the best of both worlds, except for the part that you don’t get the life you want. You don’t do the things that you planned to do.

And you’re probably making the plan because it’s something you’d actually like to have in your life. It’s something you’d like to do. It’s something you’d like to accomplish. What we don’t want to do is just indulge in planning without taking any action in furtherance of that plan. We want to bring those plans to fruition.

Now, as for confused conversations, we stay confused for many of the same reasons; fear of making the wrong decision, fear of missing out on the thing that we don’t choose, that FOMO coming up, fear of feeling regretful if you make a “wrong” choice. And I’m using air quotes here, because wrong choice is always your opinion; it’s going to be subjective. There’s no factual thing as a wrong choice.

But you might fear that you’re going to experience regret from making one choice, and then later wishing you had made a different one. You might fear proceeding despite feeling uncertain. Or worried that it won’t work out the way that you want it to. So much fear there.

You just stay undecided, so you don’t have to experience that fear. You don’t have to experience that uncertainty. You don’t have to experience that FOMO or that regret. Or feeling disappointed in yourself or feeling stupid or foolish for whatever it is that you chose.

One of my friends, Melissa Parsons, she’s a brilliant coach. She likes to say that the worst thing that could ever happen when you set a goal or when you make a decision, is how you treat yourself afterwards. And I think that’s so beautiful. It’s so true here.

So, if you’re someone who really indulges in broken record confused conversations, and you like to stay confused, so you don’t have to make a decision, it’s probably because of how you’re used to treating yourself after you’ve made the decision. Especially if it didn’t work out the way that you wanted it to.

And you can just decide on the front end, to have your own back and to not beat yourself up and to not be mean to yourself and to not bully yourself, for making whichever decision you made. You can just honor yourself and to move forward and leverage that learning, that comes from making a decision that maybe turns out in a less than ideal way. Instead of indulging in these broken record confused conversations and staying undecided. Right?

When you’re doing that, you’re not working through the confusion. You’re not taking a guess in spite of the discomfort. You’re not making a decision and then moving forward and implementing it. You’re just staying stuck. So, we don’t want to do that. We want to embrace the discomfort and move forward and decide. Make that choice. Learn from it. Figure out what happens next. Gain that data that comes from making a decision, implementing it, and seeing what happens.

And then, you get to re-decide, did that work? Did it not? Do we want to make a change? Do we want to do something differently? There’s so much value that comes from moving out and through confusion, making a decision and moving forward.

As for complaining conversations, as I mentioned before, it takes work to make a change. Whether it’s your mindset or your behavior, it takes work. And you’re going to have to feel the discomfort of doing things differently. Whether you have to expend energy, by coaching yourself in order to get to a different thought, to change your mindset, to reframe your thinking, to approach it with a different belief system, with a different slew of thoughts than the ones that you’re currently thinking. That’s going to take work.

Or you’re going to have to feel uncomfortable because you’re doing something differently. Maybe you feel worried or guilty or uncertain when it comes to making a change and showing up differently. Instead, you avoid the discomfort and complain rather than making the change, moving forward, in spite of and despite the discomfort.

And we tend to also complain and indulge in these broken record complaining conversations, not only because it feels safe, it maintains that status quo, and it helps us avoid the discomfort of making a change and doing that work. But it also gives us some satisfaction. If you’ve listened to the podcast for a while, you’ve probably heard me talk about how people love to indulge in feeling righteous.

It’s like dark chocolate covered caramel; that’s how I describe it to people. It’s just really, really delicious. It makes us feel so important. And especially when you’re complaining. Complaining comes off and appears to be very cathartic.

So, check in with yourself. Are you a chronic complainer? Do you complain about the same things over and over again? Are you indulging in broken record complaining conversations? If you are, examine why. Do you believe it’s cathartic?

I actually changed my thinking about this. I used to be a chronic complainer, especially about work and the people that I worked for. And what I realized, is that it’s just a big time waster, and it makes me more negative, really all throughout my life. I don’t like to spend my time doing that anymore.

I also recognize that although it pretends to be cathartic, it really just keeps you stagnant. It feels safer, at least in the short term. So, you complain instead of making the change. But I really want you to reframe this. Deep down, this is just a cop out. Okay?

So, if you do this, I want you to be onto yourself. One of the things that I teach my clients how to do is to create lives they’re obsessed with. Not just that they like a little bit, but lives that they are obsessed with. And I promise you, you will never create a life that you’re obsessed with if you spend your time indulging in having broken record conversations. That is a guarantee.

Here are a couple of examples of broken record conversations that you might be having. Maybe you’re complaining about your boss or your salary, and you just complain about it over and over and over and over again. Instead of changing your thoughts about it, or leaving and getting a new job. It’s so much easier just to complain day in and day out.

Easier in the short term, that’s what I want you to remember. It really isn’t easier long term. Living a life you don’t like is never easier. It is easier to build and create a life that you’re obsessed with. That’s what I want for you.

Maybe you’re deciding whether or not to get divorced. Man, do I watch people spend so much of their time deciding whether or not to do this. And they invest years of their lives making this decision, just staying stuck in it. Indulging in that confused conversation, that broken record confused conversation. And you just stay stuck between your choices, and you never end up making one.

I actually did this for a while when it came to moving. I finally caught myself and I recognized what I was doing, and why I was vacillating between whether or not to move and where to move to. I was really spinning instead of moving forward. And it was because I was being driven by confusion, overwhelm, and fear. And when I saw my reasons, I was able to examine them one by one.

I was confused about where to live and how much to spend. I wanted to move into a furnished condo. I wasn’t certain about exactly what I needed in the living space, how many bedrooms, how many bathrooms? What exactly was I looking for? What city did I want to live in? Did I want to stay here? Did I want to move out of state? What was my budget?

I needed to make decisions about all of those issues. When I identified that this was part of what was holding me back, I decided to make those decisions. And it made it so much easier for me to proceed. I made decisions about how many bedrooms I needed, how many bathrooms I needed, about what city I was going to live in, about what my budget was; the maximum amount that I was willing to spend.

And then from there, once I had made those decisions, I was a lot less confused. And I was also less overwhelmed. Because my options had been pretty greatly reduced after making those decisions. I was practicing constraint by deciding those things. So, I had a much smaller universe of options to choose from, which made the decision-making process a lot less overwhelming.

Candidly, I was also a little afraid to increase my overhead expenses. Because the house that I’ve been living in since I was 20, when I bought my house, it was right after the market crashed in ‘09 and my mortgage payment is really, really inexpensive. So, I was a little nervous and apprehensive about increasing my overhead pretty significantly.

In order to work through that I needed to change my mindset and trust myself that I know how to produce money, and that I’d be just fine. Then I had to gag-and-go through the discomfort and move forward. Because there was still going to be some uncertainty that I just didn’t have a way to avoid. When you’re doing something new, there’s typically going to be uncertainty there.

This is how you can see where these two types of conversations overlap. I spent a lot of time talking about moving, which is a broken record planning conversation. And then I spent a lot of time in indecision, having a broken record confused conversation; they went hand in hand.

I also, if I’m being really honest, kept having a broken record complaining conversation, because I kept complaining about how much I didn’t like living in my house anymore. So, the trifecta; this example covers all three.

I want you to identify this in your own life. What goals do you keep planning to achieve, but you don’t actually take any action towards? Is there something in your life that you keep planning to do, but you’re not taking any action? You’re not implementing that plan? Where are you telling yourself that you’re “working on” something, but you really aren’t working on anything? Where are you telling yourself that you’re “trying” to do something, but you really aren’t trying to do it? Because trying really just means not doing.

Be really careful here. Be onto yourself. Do you use those phrases? Do you tell yourself you’re working on it? Do you tell yourself you’re trying? Typically, when I ask my clients who told me they’re working on it or they’re trying, I ask them, “How specifically are you working on it? How are you trying to? Describe it to me,” they come up short. They don’t have a good answer.

Because “working on it” and “trying”, are just really great lies that we love to tell ourselves, that get us believing that we’re making progress or that we’re doing something, even though we really aren’t making progress and we aren’t doing something. So, check in, take inventory. Are you using those phrases?

Is there something in your life that you’re confused about, where you’re staying confused? Are there decisions that you aren’t making? Where in your life are you indulging in ‘I don’t know.’ Take inventory. See what comes up for you. Where are you staying stuck? Not moving forward, not making up your mind, not deciding.

And then, what do you keep complaining about but refuse to do anything about it other than cathartically complain? Again, take inventory. What would you need to do instead? What changes are you not making, whether it’s the mindset changes or the behavior changes? You want to identify these.

What broken record conversations do you keep having, over and over and over and over again? Why are you having them? Ask yourself that. Take some time and really give thought to it. Why are you indulging in these broken record conversations? What are your reasons? Identify those reasons, just like I did with the moving example that I gave you.

And do you like what this indulgent behavior gets you? Remember, what you’re doing is never a problem unless you don’t like the result that it produces. In that case, if you don’t like the result it produces, you need to do something differently. So, we’ve got to stop having broken record conversations if you don’t like the result it gets you. Okay?

Do you want to keep doing this? Do you like what this indulgent behavior gets you? Do you want to keep engaging in it? You get to decide right now, not to stay here. If you’ve been in this place before, make up your mind. You can make up your mind right now. Are you ready to leave it? Are you ready to move forward? Are you ready to do something differently? Are you ready to stop indulging? Are you ready to change your life?

It starts with a decision. The decision to be a doer, not a talker. To be someone who implements, instead of someone who indulges if that’s who you want to be. If you want to be someone, like how I talked about earlier, you want to be someone who isn’t in the same place twice. Who hasn’t been here before when it comes to the conversations that they’ve had, that they’re having. They’re not staying in the same place. If that’s who you want to be.

If you want to be someone who implements instead of indulges, you get to decide that you’re all done with broken record conversations. And you can decide that right now. You can catch yourself when you start to indulge in them, when you start to engage in them, and then you can stop yourself. You can be like, “Nope, we’ve been here before. I remember, this feels familiar. This is well trodden ground. I’ve seen these sites before.”

You can catch yourself and then you can stop. And then you can put your head down and get back to work making actual progress. Instead of pretending to make progress by having the same conversation repeatedly, with nothing to show for it.

If you struggle with getting stuck in broken record conversations, and you want to put a stop to this perpetual cycle, I want to invite you to join the next round of The Less Stressed Lawyer Mastermind; I cannot recommend this highly enough. If you are someone who struggles with this, joining the Mastermind will completely change your life.

You’re going to become someone who cannot stand having the same conversation more than once, without having made progress in between. You’re going to become someone who will not tolerate being stagnant, staying the same, rehashing the same things over and over and over again, without doing anything differently, without moving forward.

You’re going to become someone who craves progress, who craves growth, who craves transformation. You’re going to become someone who creates all of those things for themself, who pursues it relentlessly. This is how you create that life that you’re obsessed with. Okay?

It will not come, like I said earlier, it will not come from having the same conversation over and over and over again, without making any progress, without taking any action. It comes from having a conversation once, putting your head down, going out and implementing, learning, making progress, moving the dial, getting further than you were before.

And then, coming back and reexamining, moving forward, making decisions, putting a plan into action, doing more stuff. Then coming back again, evaluating, assessing, if you want to become someone who takes action and follows through and doesn’t just talk about taking action. If you want to be a doer, not a talker, you’ve got to get in the Mastermind, okay?

We will address all of the reasons that you hold yourself back. All of the reasons that you stay stuck. All of the reasons that you freeze. And I’m going to give you the skill set. You’re going to learn this deeply. You’re going to master it inside the Mastermind. You’re going to learn how to overcome the discomfort that comes with moving forward.

You’re not going to let it shut you down anymore. You’re not going to let it freeze you, keep you stuck maintaining the status quo that you really don’t love. You’re going to learn how to work through it, overcome it, and take action, in spite of and despite it, in order to get to the results you want, to make the progress you want to make.

And to have the transformation in your life that you’ve really been longing for. You’re going to be a completely different person on the other side of joining. And something people always say to me, they’re like, “I kind of like who I am.” We’re going to keep the good parts, okay? Don’t worry about that. We’re going to keep the good parts.

But we’re going to get rid of the parts that you don’t love. That’s what we’re going to transform. That’s what we’re going to change. We’re going to take a microscope and look at all the habits that you have that don’t serve you. And we’re going to get rid of them. We’re going to break them apart, we’re going to dismantle them, we’re going to extinguish them, so to speak. So, you really are getting out of your own way and making all of the progress that you were meant to make in your life.

It’s completely transformative, and it’s a hell of a lot of fun. We have a good time. I hope you will join me in Big Sky. It’s going to be one hell of an experience. I know how to throw an immersive in-person retreat, and then we’re going to spend the following six months really taking everything that you learned to the next level.

Enrollment for the next round of the Mastermind, like I said earlier, opens this Friday, May 12. Early enrollment goes until midnight, May 14. And then, general enrollment opens up on May 15. You have until May 26, when enrollment closes at midnight. Okay?

So, if you want to snag those first spots; spots are limited. If you want to make sure that you’re in the next round, and you’re with me in Big Sky, Montana, in August, apply early. Apply on May 12, that way you take advantage of that one-on-one call that you get with me, along with your enrollment in the Mastermind.

It’s going to change your life. It’s going to be so good.

All right, my friends, I will see you inside the Mastermind, hopefully. I can’t wait to coach you in there. And I also can’t wait to talk to you next week, in the next episode of the podcast. Until then, 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 58. Today, we’re talking all about false third options. 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.

Hi, my friends, how are you? I hope all is well. I am going to do my best to not drive you guys crazy with my voice, but I came down with a case of laryngitis. I am just now getting my voice back. It’s loud enough and audible enough to be able to record a podcast, but I may eventually have to, when this is an archived episode, have to rerecord it just so it sounds a little bit better. But I wanted to make sure I got an episode out to you this week. So, hopefully you will bear with me and deal with the little frog in my throat.

But I’m excited to talk about today’s topic, so let’s dive in. The idea for this episode, which is all about false third options, actually came out of one of our weekly coaching sessions. The group calls that we do inside The Less Stressed Lawyer mastermind. And the context was, that one of the mastermind members was getting coached; she’s in charge of overseeing and implementing a change within her team.

Her team met her with some resistance when she announced the change, they weren’t super receptive to it. She was trying to figure out how to navigate that situation. And someone asked me, in conjunction with the coaching that I gave to this one member of the mastermind, another one of my students asked about whether or not you need your direct reports to approve of the change that you’re implementing?

In order to ensure your success as a leader, as a supervisor. In order to effectively implement the change. And whether or not their lack of support and their displeasure with the change implementation was a problem.

And if you’ve experienced this in your own life, you’re probably familiar with the fact that not everyone loves change, right? A lot of people have negative thoughts about change. I could probably do a whole episode just on that. But not everyone loves change, and that’s just the primitive part of our brain trying to protect us and maintain the status quo.

So, of course, they were not super receptive at first. They went into what I call that knee-jerk ‘no’ reaction, where they were just opposing it because it’s different from what they’re familiar with. It’s to be expected. So, the question is, is it a problem?

What I explained is that in these situations, where you announce a change and you’re met with resistance. You’re met with your team’s displeasure. And their dissatisfaction with the fact that change is coming, and change is about to be implemented, really, you only have two options.

One option is to continue to proceed with the change that you announced. And to just work through and navigate their displeasure, right? They don’t like it, they’re resistant to it. You can’t control how they think, what they feel, and what they do. I mean, you can control what they do to a certain extent. Because if they refuse to follow directions as a direct report, you can give them some type of negative consequence; terminate them, write them up. There are things that are within your power as a supervisor.

But ultimately, it’s just a consequence that you can implement, you actually can’t control their behavior. So, you can’t control what they think, how they feel, what they do. And the only thing you can control is whether or not you proceed. And just let them warm up and come around to the idea after some time has passed. That’s option one.

Option two, is you can appease them and cancel your plans to implement this change. That’s another option that’s available to you, to people please your team members, to give them what they want, and for you to not make the forward moving progress that you would like to make, by implementing the change that you decided upon.

Also, we can explore whether this calls into question your role as a leader. Or going back on what you said you were going to do, and not making the progress that you might have promised higher-ups that you would make in your position. So, there are other negative consequences to that, but those are really the two options.

I explained on our coaching call that the false third option is that you announce the change, and you get to control everyone’s response to the news of the change, make sure that they all are happy about it and like it and are excited to move forward with it, right? That’s typically what we want. And I get it, it is ideal. It sounds super sexy; much unlike my voice today.

But it is understandable why we would desire that outcome. It’s just not actually an option that’s available to you in this moment. Once your team’s already expressed displeasure, you’re only left with the first two options. And I always tell people, they always have a choice, I just can’t guarantee you’re always going to like either of the options that you have, or any of the options that you have. So, this is an example of this.

And where people get themselves in trouble is they’re hoping for and thinking and expecting that they should be living within that false third option, the option that’s not really available to them. So, then it makes picking either of the other two options really unpalatable.

When you recognize that the false third option isn’t available to you, that it’s a pipe dream, and that your only two viable options are either option one or option two, it makes it much more palatable for you to move forward and select one of those two available options, and then proceed accordingly.

So, following this coaching call, one of my other students posted in our Facebook group for the mastermind, and she started a thread; which I thought was so genius; to have other people give examples of false third option situations that they’ve encountered in their own lives. This is something that I talk to my students about all the time, but I hadn’t come up with a name for this framework.

But now that it came up on our coaching call and the group, we’ve kind of coined a term, within the mastermind, that this is called a “false third option”. I wanted to record a podcast episode about it, because it is something that I see causes a ton of people a ton of strife, because they’re pining after the false third option that doesn’t really exist.

So, I wanted to give you some examples of other false third options, situations that maybe you’ve seen in your own life. And hopefully, through giving you examples, you’ll be better equipped to identify when you’re longing for or thinking that you should be able to have that false third option, that’s not really available to you.

That will help you stomach picking either option one or option two. And moving forward, not getting stuck and thinking that it should be different than it is. That it shouldn’t be going the way that it has been going. Any of all that ‘should’ thinking that really doesn’t serve you.

One example would be if you were getting bombarded with work, right? Your supervisors just keep giving you more and more assignments. They keep taking on more and more cases, more and more matters, and they just keep pushing the work off to you. And there really doesn’t seem to be any limit in sight. All right?

So, option number one, when you are faced with that situation, and you’re working way more than you want to be working; you’re working late nights, you’re working weekends, and it feels like you’re just drinking from a firehose. Option number one is to set boundaries, and say ‘no’ to more work. And as you do that, you’re going to expose yourself to your supervisor’s disapproval, and potential consequences from you setting boundaries and saying ‘no’. That’s option number one.

Now, most people hate option number one, because they think that they shouldn’t suffer any negative consequences from setting boundaries and saying no. They also think that their supervisors should be the ones to withhold work, stop the flow of work to them, and take care and manage their boundaries for them so that they don’t even need boundaries in the first place.

Now, I tell my clients this all the time, would that be ideal and amazing if supervisors closely monitored your workload, paid attention to and recognized when you were overworked so that you didn’t have to set boundaries and say, no? Yes, that would be outstanding.

However, it’s just not what happens in practice. Especially under a for-profit, capitalistic model. As far as firms are concerned, they profit from you doing the most amount of work possible, and then paying the fewest number of salaries possible.

Do I think this is short-term thinking on the firm’s part? Yes, absolutely. Because I think it leads to burnout. But that’s neither here nor there. Most law firms that I encounter are focused on the short-term gains and the short-term ROI, rather than the long-term impact of having their attorneys be overworked.

So, option number one is to set boundaries and say no to more work, and to expose yourself to your supervisors disapproval and any potential consequences that result from it.

Option number two, is to people please and to keep taking work to appease your supervisors, and thereby work more than you want to, work more than what’s healthy for you to work, right? To disrupt the work/life balance that you’re striving for. That’s option number two.

The false third option is to set boundaries and say no, and to control your supervisor’s opinion; to ensure that they like it, that they approve of it, that they’re fine with it. That is not something that’s within your control. So, that’s going to be the false third option here.

I also think another false third option is what I talked about a moment ago, of requesting or expecting your supervisors to be the ones who monitor and ensure that you’re not overworked, for you, in your place. That’s also not going to happen, more than likely. So, that’s another false third option.

Now, another example that I have, that I’ve lived in my own life. As my student posted this thread in our Facebook group, I jumped in and I gave a bunch of examples that I could think of, and then a bunch of other people in the mastermind also added their examples.

I did notice a really interesting trend, which I thought was fun; I’m going to talk about that in a second. I’m going to give you two of the examples that I used from my own life, where I was able to recognize the false third option. The first one is in dating. All right, now, as you date, and as I have dated, I have encountered people who have different ideologies, different belief systems than me.

I used to date someone who had different political views than I did. I spent so much time being frustrated about his political leanings, his political opinions, his political beliefs, that I’d get angry about it. We’d argue about it. I’d want him to change his opinions and see things my way. He would also want me to do the same thing, but in his direction.

What I’ve since come to realize is that I can date this person, this particular individual, with his certain political beliefs that I don’t agree with; it’s part of a package deal. I’m not changing him, he’s not going to change his opinions, more than likely. So, I can date him and also date his political beliefs because they come together. Or option number two, is I can date someone other than that person, whose political beliefs I agree with. Someone, where we’re aligned on how we see politics.

And then the false third option, which is the one that when I was experiencing the situation I kept pushing for, because I didn’t have this framework at the time. But the false third option is to date this specific individual, and to get them to change their political beliefs; that’s not going to happen.

When you recognize that the false third option isn’t going to come to fruition, you can turn back and focus your attention on options one and two. Decide between the two of them. Which do you prefer?

I also see people encounter false third options a ton when it comes to delegating. So, option number one when you’re thinking about delegating, would be to delegate with patience and expect it to require trial and error and learning to happen over time, in order for you to arrive at a good endpoint, a result that you’re happy with, right?

It’s not going to happen overnight. It’s not going to be entirely seamless. There’s going to be a learning curve, as you teach someone how you think how you work, what you like, what you don’t like. All of your preferences, as they’re learning a new skill set; all of the above, right?

Option number two, if you don’t like the amount of effort that that takes and you’re of the mindset, “It should be going faster than this. I shouldn’t have to put this much work into it. They should just know what I like. They should know how to do this already.” If you expect that you shouldn’t have to train someone, option number two would be for you to not delegate and for you to always do everything yourself. Right?

Now, the false third option is this false expectation that you delegate and right off the get-go everything goes perfectly from the start. In my experience, and seeing how many people I coach and what their experience is like with delegating, option number three is the false third option, because it just doesn’t happen.

There’s a learning curve when it comes to delegating. And if you want to reap the benefits of delegating, by freeing you up to do more important work, to do work that is more within your zone of genius, is more aligned with your expertise, you’re going to have to train someone else wants to do the other things that you don’t want to do. And they’re probably not going to get it right, at first. So, you get to pick between option one and option two.

All right, now this next example I’ve talked about on the podcast before. But this is definitely another example that’s come up from my life, and it’s around the holidays. My parents are not holiday people. I am a holiday person, I love them. I grew up with big Italian holiday gatherings, and I miss them very much.

We stopped doing them after my paternal grandfather passed away. And I long for them. I love a big, loud family get-together. Now, my parents are not like that. And for years, since my grandfather passed, I was really resentful about how my family celebrates holidays. They’re very small, I really don’t like them.

And I used to really ruin my own holiday by being so frustrated with how we celebrated holidays. I’d constantly want my parents to do it differently than they were doing it. And I’d really take issue with them not listening to me, not prioritizing my needs or my desires, and all that stuff. So, very much in a state of emotional childhood and victimhood, at the time that I was indulging in this behavior and this belief system.

Since then, I’ve realized, here are my two options: Option one is for my parents to host the holidays. And for them to only invite a few people, which is their preference, right? It’s their house, that’s how they want to do it. They get to do it that way.

Option number two is that I can host and invite whoever I want at my own house, and I can do the whole shebang all by myself and take on all that work. Then, I get to decide the guest list and I get to invite ‘the more the merrier’. All right?

Now, the false third option would be getting my parents to host and inviting our whole extended family, all the people that I want to be there. Which is never going to happen because that is not their preference. What I realized is that I’m not willing to host yet for a variety of reasons. I don’t think I have the right space to host. And I am just not ready to step into that role quite yet.

So, what that means is that I need to tolerate and make peace with the fact that my parents are going to do holidays the way that they want to do holidays. I get to choose between option one or option two, instead of longing for that false third option, which is never going to happen, it doesn’t exist.

And here’s what I wanted to say about the trend that I noticed inside The Less Stressed Lawyer mastermind Facebook group. I noticed a big trend with people talking about how their family members expected them to show up, and how they want to show up instead. They’re not being a “want match”; that the two wants on each side of this issue don’t line up.

Okay, so my clients want to act one way and their family members expect them or want them to act another way. And neither party is happy with what the other party expects. The consistency that I saw in this Facebook thread, was that the first option is for you to show up the way you want to show up, in your relationship with your family member or your friend.

And for you to show up that way and have them not like it. Like, they’ve expressed their preferences to you, you’re crystal clear on what they are, and you’re unwilling to do those things. All right? So. they’re not going to like it because you already know what they want you to do, and you’re not doing it.

That’s option number one. You show up the way you want to show up in your relationship with them, whatever that looks like for you, and they don’t like it.

Option number two is for you to appease them and show up the way that they want you to show up and abandon yourself and do it, even though it’s not what you want. To show up this way, even though it’s not aligned with your preference. Okay?

And the false third option, is to show up the way that you want to show up in this relationship and have the person on the receiving end of your behavior like it, right? So, let’s get a specific example here. If your mom wants you to call her every day, and that’s way too much communication for you.

Option number one is for you to call her at the frequency that you’re comfortable calling her, and she cannot like it; she can have negative thoughts and opinions about the frequency with which you call her. Option number two would be for you to call her every single day even though you don’t want to, and to people please her and to put her desires before your own. And the false third option would be for you to call her as much as you actually want to call her, and to make sure she likes it, to make her like it.

Okay, I’m so curious to know if this last example resonates with you? Because so many people in this Facebook group thread had examples of relationships where people want them to show up differently than they want to show up. And they expressed that there’s tension between these two options: option one and option two. And that in the past, they’ve been searching for the false third option or holding out and longing for that false third option.

There’s a lot of freedom that comes to you when you recognize that false third option doesn’t actually exist, and you just get to pick between options one and two. That that’s the only choice that you’re making here. And I want you to just take a second and identify in your life where is there a relationship where you’re showing up in a way where maybe you’re appeasing someone, and you don’t want to be?

And there’s definitely a different way that you’d prefer to show up, but you’re afraid of their opinion about your behavior. You’re afraid for them to judge you. You’re afraid to be subject to their disapproval. I just want you to question if this situation is causing you a lot of strife?

If you’re experiencing a lot of emotional turmoil and discomfort, it’s because you’re likely longing for that false third option. And if you recognize that that door doesn’t exist, you can’t knock on it, you can’t walk through it, you’re just left with picking between doing what’s right for you and having them not like it, or appeasing them and sacrificing what’s right for you, what’s important to you.

Then you get to make a much more realistic decision, and it’s going to move you closer towards a result that feels more intentional. That feels less frustrating. Where you’re going to feel a lot less stuck. Okay?

So, that’s what I have for you this week. I want you to take a look at this in your own life. Where are you experiencing a lot of frustration, a lot of resentment, a lot of disappointment? Let that be a cue for you to identify:

Are you longing for and holding out for a false third option that doesn’t actually exist? And then, do your part to identify the two options that actually do exist. And then, make a decision on which one you prefer. And be sure that you know and like your reasons for choosing whichever option you choose. Okay? That’s the recipe to moving forward.

All right, my friends, I hope you have a beautiful week. Stop choosing those false third options, they don’t exist. 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 57. Today, we’re talking all about your thoughts about people. 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 doing today? I hope your week is off to a marvelous start, mine is. I had quite the week last week. I had four different speaking engagements, all in one week. And I don’t know that that has ever happened to me. I do speak pretty frequently to different organizations, but that many all in one week was definitely a first.

Speaking of another first, I got to cross off of my list one of the most incredible things that I’ve been dying to do, which is speak to a law school class. I actually got invited by a former colleague of mine that I worked with when I did criminal defense work. She’s now a law professor. I ran into her at another speaking engagement I did to a Women Lawyers Association, in March. And she invited me to come speak to her class. I got to do that last Thursday night, and it was incredible.

The students were amazing. They were so engaged in the conversation. I coached them live and they really participated. They were really transparent in front of their classmates; it was just absolutely incredible. I can’t wait to do more of that.

One of my goals… I’ve never mentioned this on the podcast before, but I’ll mention it now. One of my goals is to actually teach the coaching concepts that I teach my clients in the form of a law school class. I really believe that we could make such a meaningful impact on the legal profession if we taught this stuff in law school. To better equip students before they enter the practice of law with all of the tools they need, with the mindset resources that they need, in order to navigate practicing law.

That’s definitely a bucket list goal for me, to be Professor Olivia Vizachero. So, keep your fingers crossed for me. And if you work at a law school, reach out. Jokes aside, though, seriously, if you work at a law school reach out.

Last week was super exciting and this week is also off to a good start. I have a lot of speaking lined up for both this month and next month, especially in conjunction with open enrollment for The Less Stressed Lawyer Mastermind. So, I’ve got a bunch of upcoming events that I’m going to be doing.

One is a two-hour workshop on How to Thrive as a Lawyer. That is going to be on May 12, at noon. And then on May 19, also at noon, I’m doing a two-hour open coaching call. So, if you have never had a chance to get coached by me, and you want to see what it’s like, definitely come to that.

And then on May 26, the last day of enrollment for The Less Stressed Lawyer Mastermind, I do this incredible call. It’s a ‘meet and greet’ and info session. You can come and meet everyone that’s going to be in the next round of the mastermind.

And if you haven’t joined yet, and you’re on the fence, you can come and get any questions that you have answered by me. So, make sure that you sign up for those events. The best way for you to do that is to head to my Linktree. And the URL for that is: linktr.ee/thelessstressedlawyer. I’m going to give it to you one more time: linktr.ee/the less stressed lawyer. If you go there, you can register for each one of those events that I just mentioned. Okay?

You can also sign up for the waitlist for the next round of the Mastermind, which you absolutely want to do because that is how you get the first opportunity to enroll. Early enrollment is open from May 12 – May 14 and only people on the waitlist get the opportunity to enroll during that time before general enrollment opens up to the public. Spots in the Mastermind are limited. So, if you want to make sure that you snag your spot, and you don’t want to have to compete with the general public in order to do that, get on the waitlist so you can sign up as soon as doors open.

There’s also going to be a special bonus if you sign up day one of open enrollment, of early enrollment, on May 12. You get a bonus one-on-one private coaching session with me. So, if you’ve been dying to coach with me in a one-on-one setting and you also don’t want to miss out on all of the amazingness of the Mastermind, you get the best of both worlds if you join that first day. All right?

So, that’s enough about me, let’s dive into today’s topic. I have been dying to have a conversation with you about what we’re going to be talking about today. And it’s a little outside the box, it doesn’t have so much to do with the practice of law. But it is just an observation that I’ve had when talking with people in the world, when talking to some of my clients.

It’s been living rent free in my head for the longest time, so I finally decided to record an episode on this sort of ancillary topic. I want to specifically talk to you about the thoughts that you have about people. And specifically, the focus of this episode is the thoughts that you have about people generally, so, not individual people in your lives. Okay? Not like your mom or your husband or your wife or your client, a specific client. But, what are the generalizations that you have made about people in the world?

So, one of the most common thoughts, that’s negative, that I hear people say, and they say it so flippantly, just like so off the cuff. It’s such a negative thought it makes me cringe every time I hear it. I get taken aback by it. The thought is, “I hate people.” People will say this, just in passing through, like, “Oh, my God, I hate people.” And it’s such a negative thought, right?

How do you feel when you think this thought? This isn’t meant as a call out, but I want you to check in with yourself. Do you think this thought about people? If you do, check in with yourself. How does this thought make you feel? And then, how do you show up in the world when you feel that way? When you’re experiencing that emotion what do you do? What don’t you do, better yet, right? What results does it create in your life when you’re thinking the thought, “I hate people,” when you’re choosing to believe that?

Other variations of this, are thoughts like, “People are the worst.” Or maybe it’s more specific than this. “People are fake. People are disappointing. People are selfish. People are cruel. People are ungrateful. People are exhausting. People are horrible. People are mean.” What are the thoughts that you think about people, about society?

One of the other thoughts that I hear parroted pretty frequently now is, “The world is going to hell in a handbasket.” Or, “The state of the world is really terrible.” This is akin to judgments about our society or about people generally, right? If the world is a bad place, or if the world is getting progressively worse, in turn, we essentially think people are getting progressively worse. Because people are what determine the direction of the world, our future, and the quality of it.

So, you want to check in with yourself and ask yourself: What judgments do I make about people generally? And do these judgments serve me? If this is you, if you’re like sheepishly or shyly raising your hand, and feel seen by me explaining some of this, if you’re like, “Olivia, I think some of these thoughts,” I don’t want you to judge yourself. I just want you to get curious and be honest.

Why do you think this? Why do you think these thoughts? How do they pretend to serve you? What do they pretend to protect you from? One of the reasons that I am actually so bothered when I hear people talk like this is, the first thing that comes to my mind is, “What a painful way to go through life.” Because being a human in the world, you are going to interact with other people. You just are.

It’s practically impossible, unless you’re like Emile Hirsch, or whoever he plays in the movie Into the Wild. I think that’s it. Where he goes to Alaska and lives off the land. Also, spoiler alert, he dies in that movie, very young, so I highly don’t recommend doing that. But if you are a person in the world, you are going to come into contact with other people, probably on a daily basis, or something close to that.

If one of your most practiced thoughts is, “I hate people. People are the worst. People are horrible,” or terrible, or some variation of these very negative thoughts, how is your experience going to be in the world? What is it going to be like? It’s going to be negative.

Every time you bring that thought, you bring that lens with you to your interactions with other people, you’re going to taint it with negativity. You’re going to really tarnish your experience interacting with others as you’re thinking this thought if it’s one of your most practice thoughts.

So, if this is one of your most practiced thoughts, you want to be really honest with yourself; does it serve you at all? How is it not serving you? How is it negatively impacting your life? I’d love for you to get really clear on that.

If you’re in control of how you feel, if every negative emotion that you feel is caused by your thinking, and you’re thinking this negative thought, “I hate people. People are the worst,” and you feel disgusted or frustrated or angry or annoyed or irritated because you’re thinking these types of thoughts; disappointed, discouraged, underwhelmed maybe. If you’re thinking these thoughts and feeling these feelings, you’re doing this to yourself.

You’re creating this emotional experience for yourself. Other people and their behavior, that is not what’s causing your negative emotions. It’s your thinking about people. So, if you’re thinking these thoughts, “I hate people. People are the worst,” and you’re experiencing these negative emotions as a result of it, ask yourself is that the experience you want to create for yourself? Or do you want to feel differently? Do you want to feel better on a daily basis? If so, you have to be willing to give up this thought.

You also want to ask yourself, when you’re feeling disgusted or frustrated or angry or underwhelmed or disappointed or discouraged or irritated: How do you act? What do you do? Do you judge other people? Do you look for their faults? Do you look for more evidence that people are the worst? That’s what we do when we think negative thoughts like this.

Our brains are so capable and competent, that when we give it a negative thought like this, when we rehearse it in our mind, when we repeat it to ourselves, our brains say, “Not a problem. I’m going to go look for more evidence to confirm that this belief is true,” so that’s what they do. They go out on a mission, and they search for evidence to confirm that belief.

You’re going to be on the lookout, you’re going to be hunting, for more proof that people are awful, that people are horrible, that people are the worst. You’re going to look for more of a substantial reason to hate people. You’re going to look for supporting evidence to bolster your belief that you are right to hate people, that that’s an accurate way to look at the world, that it’s justified. Okay?

And then when you do that, you’re just going to hate people more, and you’re probably not going to show up great in your interactions with them. You’re going to have more negative interactions. There’s going to be more conflict in your life. You’ll probably argue more, maybe you’ll withdraw.

So, you’ll have less positive experiences to counterbalance the negative ones. It’s just going to be so much easier for you to indulge in believing this thought that, “People are the worst.” So, you’re going to have greater reasons to hate them.

Now, if you don’t love the results that this creates, and you don’t think that thinking, “I hate people. People are the worst,” serves you and you want to operate differently, I have a couple of suggestions for you. First, I’m going to talk about the strategy, and then we’re going to address the mindset.

But one thing I want you to do, is really catch yourself when you’re indulging in all-or-nothing thinking; “Hey, this is a little perfectionistic;” so I want you to be on the lookout for this.

When you think a group of people is either all or nothing of something; all bad, 100% bad, 100% cruel, 100% selfish, 100% fake, 100% disappointing, 100% horrible or mean. When we think like that, it’s so extreme, and it’s so unrealistic, right? People aren’t ever 100% anything. So, you want to be on the lookout for this. This is normally pretty bombastic, pretty dramatic thinking, and it’s definitely optional. So, you want to highlight it for yourself, so you can snap out of it.

I’m going to give you some thoughts in a second to replace it. So, be on the lookout for all-or-nothing thinking. You also want to avoid generalizing. Try not to slap labels on humanity as a whole, on people as a whole. Can you be more specific? Can you narrow in on maybe it’s just the one person that you’re interacting with, and not people generally, right?

Maybe you can have different assessments of every individual person that you meet, rather than needing to bundle everyone all together and judge them as a whole. I also want you to practice operating from curiosity instead of judgment.

If, whenever you’re interacting with people, instead of judging them, you worked on operating from curiosity, thinking thoughts like, “I wonder why they’re behaving like this? I wonder what’s driving their behavior? I wonder why they’re doing this? I wonder why they said what they said? I wonder why they’re being this way?”

If you get curious, and you assume positive intent… This is a favorite hack of mine from my friend, Maggie Reyes; she’s a marriage coach. She always tells people, “If you just assume positive intent, and then ask yourself why did someone do something, you’re going to come up with such a different answer than if you’re operating from our default negativity bias.” Okay?

So, get curious and think, “What are some other reasons people might be doing what they’re doing?” Rather than thinking of the worst-case scenario, and the worst reasoning that would be driving them. Okay?

Also, I’ve talked about this a lot on the podcast, but see if you can get yourself to understanding or accepting what would you need to think about their behavior to feel understanding? What would you need to think about what they’ve said or what they’ve done in order to feel accepting of it, instead of being in judgment of it? Okay? Those are a handful of tactics that you can employ when you’re interacting with other people.

You also want to change the way that you’re thinking about people collectively, instead. And you can do this along a spectrum. I’ve talked about spectrum thoughts before; when we’re creating a bridge of different thoughts that we can think, rather than going from, “People are the worst, and I hate people,” to, “People are amazing, and I love people.”

Which those are two thoughts that are totally available to you, and you can start practicing them now. You can start building your belief in those thoughts now, even if they feel like a little bit of a stretch, like a little bit of a bridge too far at the present moment. That’s okay. But you could think something as positive as, “People are amazing. People are wonderful. I love people,” or even just, “I like people.”

You could think something that’s more middle of the road, just to start to move you out of that negative space, that negative mindset. So, you could choose to think something like, “People are doing the best they can with what they’ve got.” That’s one of my favorite thoughts to think. “People are generally good.” Or you could think something like, “People are nuanced. People are dynamic. People are complicated,” even.

That’s not the most positive thought, but that is more positive than, “People are the worst, and I hate people.” You can also think, “People are different. People are complex.” Ask yourself, what do you want to choose to think about people, instead of some of the more negative thoughts you may have been thinking in the past?

Another good way to think about this is: How do you want to feel when you think about people, when you interact with people? Make a list of some of the positive emotions you want to experience. What would you need to think about people in order to feel those feelings? Do you want to feel connected? Do you want to feel trusting? Do you want to feel loving? Do you want to feel understanding and accepting? Do you want to feel appreciative? Do you want to feel encouraged? Do you want to feel enriched or supported?

These are great emotions to create for yourself. And remember, you do create them for yourself. Other people don’t make you feel these positive feelings. You make yourself feel them by choosing thoughts that create those emotions for you. You’re in complete control of your emotional experience. You always want to make sure you remember that.

When you know that you’re in control of your emotional experience, you’re going to curate a much different emotional experience than you otherwise would when you’re blaming your emotional experience on external forces. When you’re outsourcing control over your emotional experience to other people; to what they say, to what they do.

So, I want you to reclaim control of your emotional experience. Put yourself in the driver’s seat for how you feel when it comes to thinking about other people. What do you want to think? How do you want to feel? How do you want to show up? What do you want to do? What don’t you want to do? What result do you want to create? What lens do you want to wear, do you want to have on, do you want to bring with you, into all of your encounters with other people?

As you are part of society, you’re going to be interacting with others. Whether it’s in your work life or your personal life, you’re going to be engaging in situations with other people. It gets to be as positive of an experience as you allow it to be. And that’s going to be determined by how you think about those people that you’re engaging with, that you’re interacting with.

So, you can’t think, “I hate people,” and expect a positive outcome, it’s never going to happen. If you’re thinking a positive thought, you’ll get a positive result. If you’re thinking a negative thought, you’ll get a negative result.

I know it’s easy to brush this off, and to tell yourself, “I’m just kidding. I’m just making light of it. I’m being a little facetious.” But the thoughts that we think matter. The way that we speak to ourself matters.

And I see stuff like this in like pop culture. There are T-shirts that say things like, “I like my TV shows, and maybe three people. I like wine, and maybe three people. I like my cat, and maybe three people.” And it’s a joke on really not liking most people in the world. So, we say this really callously and casually. And when we do that, we demean and belittle and make light of how important our thinking is on cultivating the experience that we have.

So, I want you to not diminish the importance of the thoughts that you think, of the impact they have on your life. They make all the difference in the world. Make sure you choose them carefully. You can choose to think that you hate people, and that people are the worst. Or you can choose to think different thoughts.

Thoughts that make you feel much more connected, much more supported, much more enriched. It will make all the difference in the world, and the experiences that you have as you engage with others. Okay? So, take this tidbit with you into your life. And if you’re guilty of this, come up with your list of thoughts you want to think instead, of feelings you want to feel instead, and go to work practicing.

If you tell your brain what you want it to think, it will find evidence to support it. You will start looking for the best in people instead of looking for the worst in them, and that will make all the difference in the world; I promise you. It’s a completely different experience that is available if you choose to make the switch. I’m so excited for you to make it.

Alright my friends, that is what I have for you this week. 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.

You’re listening to The Less Stressed Lawyer podcast, Episode 56. Today, we’re talking all about the hard truth. Are 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, greetings from Punta Mita, Mexico. I am soaking up the sun down here. I’m attending the Women in Trial Travel Summit hosted by Lauren Wood. And this is my first time attending this conference. It’s been really, really incredible. First of all I’m loving the break from the cold weather, which funny enough, it’s actually really nice in Detroit. Of course the week that I come to the beach it ends up being 80 degrees and sunny where I live, but I’ll take 80 degrees and sunny anywhere. It’s been absolutely amazing here, the weather’s phenomenal, the pool’s been just marvelous.

And the women have been next level. So there’s over 100 women attending this conference. Like I said, it’s my first time being here. And I love being in person with so many incredible women lawyers. It’s been so much fun. One of the things that has constantly been coming up in the conversations that I’ve been having here by the pool or throughout the days, attending the speeches, at night with the dinners and the happy hours and all of the different things. Women keep talking to me about how refreshing it is to be in person with other like-minded people.

And I keep hearing them tell me that there’s nothing else like this in the legal industry. And I just get so giddy and excited because that’s not true. I host an event just like this, a conference in person multiple days where you’re immersing yourself in a personal development environment. So you’re learning and growing and transforming but you’re also creating community and making new friends and really creating deep, meaningful relationships with people who are really similar to you.

So it’s been so exciting for me to talk to them about it and be like, “Oh my goodness, I do something so similar to this.” And it’s just made me even more excited. I’m already excited, but it’s made me even more excited for the next live event that I’m hosting which is going to be in Montana in August for The Less Stressed Lawyer Mastermind. So if you are like me and you’re a conference person maybe you even attended this one that I’m at right now, you are at Women and Trial Travel Summit, you are in luck, there actually are a handful of conferences like this one.

So if you’re hungry for community and connection and personal growth there are multiple opportunities throughout the year to be able to invest in yourself and put yourself in those types of containers which is what we call them in kind of the coaching industry, different group programs where you’re able to be exposed to that kind of environment and that kind of community building.

I have an inkling that I’m going to see some of the familiar faces that I saw in Punta Mita in Big Sky, Montana for my upcoming event. And I can’t wait to get to connect with some of the amazing women that I met here for the first time in Big Sky. I’m really looking forward to that.

Alright, now on to today’s topic, you guys know I love to give you a little life update before I dive in, but let’s dive in. So sort of like I did in the last episode, today’s episode is inspired by some recent conversations that I’ve been having with people, specifically clients of mine. So in the last episode I talked about watering your own grass first and really prioritizing yourself, making yourself your top priority. And that was inspired by a recent conversation that I had had with a client.

Now, we’re doing the same thing today but the topic’s a little bit different. Today we’re talking about the ‘hard truth.’ And that is a little bit of a play on words. Obviously, that’s a phrase that we use like we have to give the hard truth to someone. I don’t mean that. I mean the truth about something being hard. So one of the things that I notice when I talk to my clients and just people in general, I’m able to spot their go to sentences. One of the things that I see that’s very common is that people have certain beliefs patterns that are repeat thought patterns that are just default in that brain of theirs.

So it’s sort of like saying, um or like when you’re speaking, maybe when you’re public speaking. It’s like they’re your go to crutch words, they’re fillers. And we do the same thing with sentences or phrases that we use day in and day out. Now, it would be amazing if these go to sentences or these filler sentences were positive sentences, positive thoughts that you practice thinking all the time, that would be incredible. But often that really isn’t the case. Usually these go to thoughts, these negative statements that are fillers for us, they’re negative thoughts.

And because our thoughts create our results, thinking these negative thoughts on repeat negatively impact our lives. So if you’ve got these filler statements, these filler phrases that you use as crutch statements in your life and they’re negative, they’re going to have a negative impact on your day-to-day life, on the results that you create throughout your life. So we want to create awareness as to what these negative filler thoughts are so you can start to see how they’re impacting your life, how they’re creating some of the results that you currently have.

And then from that awareness we can decide, do we want to keep thinking these common filler statements, these go to thoughts that we think on repeat that are a pattern for us or do we want to switch it up and replace them with thoughts that better serve us instead? So I could probably do a whole mini-series just on these common go to sentences. I see people have different ones in their lives. And not everyone has the same common go to thoughts. But if you have a sentence that you think on repeat you probably apply it in almost every area of your life.

One of the sayings that we have in coaching is, how you do one thing is how you do everything. and not everyone agrees with that, but at the bare minimum, how you do one thing is how you probably do most things. And when you have these common filler phrases you typically tend to apply them to most areas of your life. So they’re going to come up a lot for you. And as a coach, I hear sentences that people say out loud and I know how to spot, that’s a thought and that’s a thought that’s really not serving someone.

And when people repeat them over and over and over again, typically they’re not aware that they’re repeating a thought so frequently. But I’m able to catch it as their coach and highlight it for them. I’m able to point out the impact of thinking that thought repetitively and the effect it has on their life day in and day out and the result that it’s creating in their life. So I could, like I said, do a whole series on all of the different go to sentences that I see my clients think repetitively?

But today I want to talk about one sentence in particular and the thought that people often have as a go to thought as a filler thought in their lives is the thought, the belief that something is hard. So this thought is very simple. It’s just the thought, ‘it’s hard.’ Now, the word ‘it’s’ and I’m using air quotes here, you can’t see me, but I’m using air quotes. The word ‘it’s’ in that sentence is obviously interchangeable. It will vary. You’re going to use, it’s hard to refer to a lot of different scenarios and situations in your life.

But if you use this filler thought, this go to repetitive thought, ‘it’s hard,’ you’re going to use this to describe a lot of situations you encounter. So I wanted to give you some examples of things that my clients describe as being ‘hard.’ They use the phrase, it’s hard to describe these different scenarios.

So you might tell yourself that it’s hard to stick to your schedule or that it’s hard to say no or that it’s hard to set boundaries or that it’s hard to work out or that it’s hard to lose weight or that it’s hard to ask for a raise. Or that it’s hard to not check your email every 10 minutes or that it’s hard to not answer the phone when someone calls you even though you’re in the middle of doing something else.

Another very common area where I see people tell themselves that something is hard is specifically related to thought work, to coaching. So people will tell themselves that it’s hard to change their thoughts. That’s actually probably one of the areas that I hear people say it’s hard most often. It comes up in a lot of my clients’ sessions, it comes up when I’m coaching in the mastermind group.

It actually just came up in Punta Mita. I was at the pool yesterday and someone was saying this to me, they were saying, “It’s really hard to change my thoughts and to think about that differently.” Now, here’s why it’s such a problem to tell yourself that something is hard. Remember the self-coaching model that I use in my coaching, I did a complete episode teaching you the model and I reference it a lot in these different episodes that I do. But it’s made up, the model’s made up of five interrelated components, circumstances, thoughts, feelings, actions, and results.

And our brain serves us up thoughts about circumstances that we encounter. So it’s hard isn’t a circumstance, it’s an opinion which makes it a thought, not a fact. Circumstances are facts, our thoughts aren’t. Our thoughts are opinion statements. So we encounter a situation, and we tell ourselves it’s hard. We think the thought, it’s hard. And then when we think the thought, and remember our thoughts aren’t true, when we tell ourselves that something is hard and we’re thinking that thought, here’s what happens next.

You end up creating an emotion with that thought. So you think something’s hard, and you will typically feel a feeling like tired or discouraged or exasperated or challenged, but typically in a negative way, not in a positive way. And then when you feel those feelings, our natural inclination is to avoid them or to negatively react to them. So most often what I see as a coach is that people will feel these feelings and then they avoid that emotion that’s coming up for them with inaction. They don’t do the activity, the action that they perceive to be hard.

So they tell themselves that something’s going to be hard then they feel the negative feeling, almost anticipatorily. They begin to start to feel that negative emotion and just like a game of hot potato, they run away from it. They catch it and then they toss it back. They try to escape it as quickly as possible. And then they don’t do the thing that they perceive to be hard. So then what happens, because thoughts create results, they cause a feeling, the feeling drives the action and then the action produces the result that you have in your life.

So you don’t create any evidence to the contrary, that’s part of the result that you create. So it’s very easy to continue to buy into the belief that what you perceive to be hard actually is hard because you don’t prove to yourself that actually it’s easier than you think it would be. And then when you don’t take any action and furtherance of something, it is hard to create the result that you want. It is hard to do that thing when you’re not doing it.

So let me use the example of setting boundaries or saying no. If you think it’s hard to set boundaries and say no, and then you feel discouraged or exasperated or challenged because you’re thinking that it’s going to be hard, you’re going to take no action. You’re not going to set a boundary. You’re not going to say no. And then you’re still going to have all of this resistance. It’s going to feel very hard to do something that you’re not practiced at doing.

So it’s going to be easy to buy into the belief to continue to tell yourself that it’s hard to set boundaries and say no. And then you make it harder on yourself. The same thing with losing weight, if you tell yourself that it’s hard to lose weight and you feel challenged or exasperated or exhausted ahead of time and then you don’t do anything to lose weight, you keep eating the same thing, guess what, you do make it hard to lose weight because you don’t alter your behavior at all. You keep doing what you’ve been doing which hasn’t been working.

And when you do things that don’t work to produce the result you make it harder on yourself. The same thing with sticking to a schedule. When you tell yourself that it’s really hard to stick to a schedule and you feel discouraged or frustrated or challenged ahead of time, you don’t stick to it. You don’t make a plan, so you make it really easy to stick to a schedule when you don’t have a schedule to even follow in the first place. And then you do other things instead.

So even if you do create a plan, you probably make the plan and then the plan goes out the window almost immediately and you do other things instead of the activities that you planned to do for the day. And when you do other things instead of what you’ve planned, it’s very hard to stick to your schedule because you’re not sticking to it. I know this reasoning sounds sort of circular, but again it really is a little circular and that’s okay. Sometimes our thinking produces results that create that circular loop that we just get trapped inside of.

So when you think something’s hard, you don’t do it and then it becomes harder when you don’t do the thing that you would need to do in order to produce the result that you want. Now, if our thoughts aren’t true, which there’re not and we can control what we think, because everything that we’re thinking we’re actually choosing to think. So if we can choose what we think, why would we choose to think that something’s hard? That’s a question that we want to start to explore and ask ourselves.

And I want to let you know that even though it might seem confusing or counterintuitive, it actually makes perfect sense. So remember, your brain is always seeking an escape route. It’s always looking for a way to avoid doing the more challenging activity. It always wants to seek immediate pleasure, avoid instant discomfort, the most immediate discomfort that you perceive to be on the horizon. And it always wants to conserve energy. This is a survival mechanism. It keeps you safe.

It allows you to maintain the status quo, which even if the status quo isn’t the result that you want for your life, your brain has decided that the status quo was safe enough to be beneficial and preferable than a perceived change because change is scary to the primitive part of our brain. So it wants to maintain what’s comfortable, what’s familiar to us even if it’s not ideal, it’s safe.

So one of the most effective ways for your brain to achieve these three goals, to seek pleasure, avoid discomfort and conserve energy. Is to tell yourself that whatever you’re thinking about doing, whatever action you’re contemplating taking, for your brain to serve you up the belief that what you’re thinking about doing is hard, that it’s going to be really challenging. Because when you think something’s going to be hard you end up not doing it.

If you think it’s hard to ask for a raise and you feel scared because you’re thinking that it’s hard or really challenged or really defeated and then you don’t ask for a raise, you’re not going to become more practiced at asking for more money. And then having those conversations talking about salary increases, having discussions around your income and making more, it’s going to continue to feel hard to you. It’s going to seem like more of a challenge than it might otherwise be if you were more practiced and more seasoned having those types of discussions.

So we want to create opportunities where we’re gagging and going through the initial discomfort that comes up when you think something’s hard. And you also want to be telling yourself, “Hey, how might it be not true that it’s hard, how might the opposite be true?” How might it actually be easy to ask for more money, to be easy to set a boundary or say no, to be easy to lose weight? How might it be easy to not pick up my phone when someone calls me unexpectedly or when a call is unscheduled?

What if it’s actually easier? What if hard is actually in maintaining the status quo and continuing to live with the results that you don’t love currently in your life? What if that’s what’s hard? When we recognize that ‘it’s hard’ is just a thought, it’s just an opinion that we can choose to think or we can choose to not think, we start to get access to other thoughts to replace thinking it’s hard. You can start to see how it might be easier than you thought it would be otherwise.

You also can start to see how your brain loves to conflate thinking that something is hard with something just being uncomfortable. So I always like to remind myself that whatever I’m thinking is hard, probably isn’t actually hard. It’s probably a lot easier than I think. It just isn’t always comfortable and that’s okay. We could embrace discomfort. You’ve survived every flavor of discomfort you’ve ever experienced.

So when we get more accurate about how we describe situations or the potential activity that we would need to take to produce the results that we want to have in our lives, we’re able to start to see the specific flavors of discomfort that we might be currently unwilling to feel, that we simply just need to embrace in order to produce different results. Specifically when it comes to thinking that it’s hard to change your thoughts, this is such a common thought that my clients think. And it’s not a thought that I thought when I was initially introduced to coaching.

People ask me pretty often, “How long did it take you to master these concepts that you teach and to apply them in your own life and to start to see results?” And frankly, it didn’t take me all that long. If I’m being honest, I was so hungry and eager to learn a new way to look at the world, to embrace a new perspective that I didn’t bring any preconceived resistance to thought work, to coaching. I was so hungry for a different way to look at the world, to process situations that I encountered. So I didn’t think that it was hard to change my thoughts. I actually thought that it was easy.

And when I learned that you could change your thoughts, I didn’t fight that. I embraced it fully. I basically thought, hey, if you’ve got a better way to navigate life, I’m all ears, I’ll adopt this. I didn’t fight it at all. So I was able to get really quick results and to make really rapid changes in my own life because I embraced it without any resistance. Now, that doesn’t need to be the case for everyone. Everyone comes at coaching and these concepts that I teach at a different pace and that’s okay.

Some of my clients are like me and they embrace the coaching concepts that I teach very quickly. They’re like, “Hey, if you’ve got a better way or a different way to do life, one that makes me feel a lot better, I’m all ears, let me embrace it fully without any resistance.” But some people are a little bit more skeptical and that’s okay. They come at this work believing that it’s hard or believing that it’s not as simple as I think that it is.

And if that’s how you view this work, if that’s how you view the model or your capability to change your thoughts, that you think that it’s hard or it’s easier said than done. I just want to offer you that that is just your opinion and it’s optional to continue to think it. When you think that it’s hard to change your thoughts and you feel challenged or exasperated or defeated or discouraged you don’t put in any effort to changing your thoughts. You don’t create awareness as to what you’re currently thinking.

And when you don’t have awareness as to what you’re currently thinking it’s much harder to gain access to thinking different thoughts. You just keep thinking the same ones that you’ve been thinking because your thoughts appear to be much more true to you than just an opinion, just a subjective statement that you are actually choosing, that you have control over changing. So we want to start to create awareness but when you’re telling yourself that it’s hard to change your thoughts, you never gain access to that initial awareness that you need.

So we just want to start to entertain the concept that it’s not actually hard to change your thoughts. When you think that it’s hard you don’t gain that awareness and then you don’t identify new thoughts to think. And when you’re not engaged in the exercise of asking and answering what else could I choose to think instead, you don’t end up finding new thoughts to practice, new thoughts to believe. And then it is actually hard to change your thoughts because you don’t find new ones to switch to so then you don’t change them.

And when you don’t change them you keep thinking the same stuff that you’ve always been thinking because you’re just going to think what’s been familiar to you. You’re going to keep repeating the same thought patterns over and over and over again. And when you do that the neural pathways that you have in your brain get deeper and deeper and deeper and more well-trodden. So it actually does become harder for you to think something new instead.

So what we want to do instead is to just simply start to entertain the possibility that it could be easy to change your thoughts because when you’re thinking that it could be easy to change your thoughts, you’re going to feel encouraged. You’re going to feel capable. You’re going to feel confident or compelled to do it, motivated and energized to put in just a little bit of effort. It doesn’t take that much work, you guys, I promise. But you’re going to feel encouraged and energized to put in some effort to debunk and dismantle some of the current negative thinking that you’ve been really attached to.

And then you’re going to start to ask that question, what might I be able to think instead? What could I choose to think instead of the negative thoughts that I have been thinking up to this point? And you’re going to start gaining access to new replacement thoughts, thoughts that serve you a whole lot more than the negative thoughts that have been repetitively going through your brain over and over and over again.

So you’re going to gain access to new beliefs and then you’re going to start, your brain is so clever when it identifies a new belief to think it goes to work gathering new evidence to support that new belief. So it makes it easier and easier and easier for you to build belief and to continue to believe that new thought, that thought that serves you a whole lot more. The same thing is true for the other examples that I gave you.

When you believe that it’s easy to stick to your schedule you’re going to feel really confident and capable and energized and empowered to stick to your schedule. And you’re going to start looking for evidence that it actually is easy to stick to your schedule. You’re going to start to recognize how much agency you have over the decisions that you make all day long when it comes to your schedule. You actually get to choose whether you attend a meeting or not or whether you answer a call or not or whether you open up and respond to an email right this second.

Or do you stick to what you planned to do for the day instead? And you can turn to those items later at the time you allotted to devote to those tasks. That’s how you stick to your schedule, you have to believe that you can. You have to believe that it’s easier than you might have otherwise thought it would be. The same thing with setting boundaries. When you believe that it’s easy to set boundaries and say no, your brain is going to go to work finding all the evidence that it actually is easy to set boundaries and say no.

You literally just have to say no, that’s not that hard to utter those words out of your mouth. Now, like I said earlier, you might be conflating ease with comfort here. And it may be uncomfortable to set boundaries. You may have to feel a little guilty, a little worried, a little scared that someone isn’t going to love the fact that you just set a boundary, but it is easy to do. You just do it, kind of like Nike. Just do it.

The same thing with losing weight, I used to tell myself that it was so hard to lose weight. But when I recognized that it’s hard is just a thought and it’s an option to think it, that I could choose to think something else instead. I started to ask myself, how might it actually be easy? What if it is easy to lose weight? And then my brain went to work solving for that. It started to search for all the evidence that it actually is easy to lose weight.

And what I realized is that it’s pretty easy to just figure out what I need to eat in order to support my weight loss goals. And to just eat that every single day. In fact, that’s easier than coming up with new things to eat every single day. It requires less mental energy. It requires less decision making. You just make decisions one time and then you honor them consistently as time passes. That is what is actually easier.

If you tell yourself, how might it be easy to ask for a raise? You just ask for it. You just sit down, but schedule a meeting with your supervisor, with your boss and you ask for the raise. How might it be even easier to make that possible, to make that happen? You come up with all the reasons why you’re deserving of one. When you make a really compelling argument that you’re deserving of a raise, it’s going to be a lot easier to ask for one than when you tell yourself that it’s hard and that you don’t deserve it and that it’s going to be a really hard ask, a really hard thing to get an employer to get behind.

So I want you to take a second and do an inventory. Do you think the thought it’s hard? Is this a go to repetitive thought in your life? If so, where might you be thinking it? Where does this thought come up for you? I bet it comes up in at least one area but probably more than just one. And I want you to find the areas that you use this thought, that this is a go to thought for you. Where in your life are you telling yourself that something is hard? How is that impacting the results that you have in that area of your life? How is that thought making you feel?

What do you do when you feel that one word emotion? Do you feel discouraged or defeated ahead of time? Do you feel challenged or out of control or exasperated or exhausted and tired? Do you feel let down? Figure out how you feel in that area of your life when you think the thought, it’s hard. And then ask yourself, get very clear, what do you do when you feel that way? How do you show up in this area of your life? Do you make it harder for yourself to get the results in this area of your life that you want?

Chances are you do, you do make it harder on yourself when you tell yourself that it’s hard. We want to make this area of your life easier. And the fastest way to do that is by telling yourself that it’s easy, whatever action you need to take, try telling yourself that it’s easier to take than you think that it is. And your brain is going to go to work solving for that. Searching for evidence that it is in fact easier to do the thing that you’ve typically had resistance to doing.

What would become possible for you, what becomes available to you when you stop telling yourself that taking the intentional action you need to take is hard? Your resistance to doing that activity is going to melt away and you are going to make your life so much easier. You’re going to make creating the intentional results you want so much easier. Becoming the person that you want to become is going to get easier so long as you stop telling yourself that it’s hard.

Thinking something’s hard is optional and you get to stop choosing that thought right now. Recognize that your brain’s serving it up to you as a defense mechanism, as a protective measure to conserve energy, avoid discomfort and seek temporary pleasure. But you can handle the discomfort that comes with creating a life you’re obsessed with. That’s what we’re here to do together. That starts, embracing discomfort begins by you no longer telling yourself that taking that action is hard.

Go out there, keep telling yourself that it’s easier than you think it is and you’ll be amazed with what you do next. That’s what I have for you this week, my friends. 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 55. Today, we’re talking all about watering your own grass and the importance of prioritizing yourself. 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.

Hello, how are you today? I hope your day is off to a marvelous start. Mine is not off to a start, because I’ve been up all day and I have the earliest flight ever, probably, that I’ve ever taken. I’ve decided just to stay up and record this episode for you, to finish packing, and to head to the airport super early. That way I don’t have to scramble, and I don’t have to worry about oversleeping.

So, things are just cranking away over here. I’m getting ready to head to Punta de Mita, Mexico to speak at the Women In Trial Travel Summit. I’ve never spoken at that before. I’ve never attended that event before, either. So, I’m really excited to attend it and meet a whole new group of women attorneys, specifically women trial attorneys.

A lot of the attorneys that attend are from the West Coast, and it’s a bunch of people that I’ve never really met before. There are a few familiar faces there, but a ton of new ones.

I’m just really excited to get to go and introduce myself, and to speak about personal development. I’m going to talk about the three P’s: People pleasing, perfectionism, and procrastination. And how it impacts people’s stress levels and how to manage your stress. So, I’m really excited to be able to do that in a couple days.

Before I head out of town, though, I want to talk about today’s topic. I’m super excited to record this episode. Something happened to me recently, that inspired this episode specifically, and it kind of sparked an idea in my head. I realized, when I was on the receiving end of this experience, that I actually used to do this myself all the time. And it was really detrimental to my own well-being, to what I accomplished at work, to what I accomplished outside of work. I see it to be such a common thread between the clients that I work with that I really wanted to be able to talk about it.

So, today’s topic is all about watering your own grass. And a more professional way to talk about that, or to reference that, so to speak, would be to talk about the importance of prioritizing yourself. When I say water your own grass, here’s what I mean. I mean, if you’re watering your own grass, you’re prioritizing yourself and your goals.

You’re not prioritizing someone else and their goals ahead of your own. I want you to be focusing on what you want to accomplish and achieve, instead of tending to what someone else wants to achieve. Okay?

You know I love a good backstory, so let’s get into the backstory. I recently had a client, who’s become a good friend of mine, reach out to me, and they graciously offered to help me with a project. The project actually wasn’t my idea. It’s a project that some of my clients have started conjuring up in their head that they really want me to do.

I actually think it’s a great idea. It is on my agenda, like my future agenda. It’s not something that I’m going to tackle this year, because I have plenty of projects on my plate already with the mastermind and where my business is going. So, I’m not going to get to it this year. But it is a project that is marinating in my brain and something that I eventually want to do.

So, this client reached out to me and pitched this idea to me, and then offered to help me with the project. And while I was so honored and grateful that this client cared enough to offer their assistance, here’s what really jumped out at me. My overwhelming first thought was, why isn’t this client watering their own grass first?

This client has goals of their own goals that require their attention and focus. Goals that require their time and devotion, and helping me with this project will not help them achieve their goals. Not one bit, right? It’s a distraction from what they want to accomplish, what they’re working towards.

I see people do this all the time; they prioritize another person’s stuff before they tend to their own stuff. And I wanted to give you some examples of what this looks like, specifically some of the things that I used to do. Some of the ways that this used to show up for me. Because I was such a people pleaser and I loved prioritizing other people’s needs over myself.

This really isn’t textbook people pleasing because you’re not doing it out of fear, or guilt. You do have a genuine desire to help other people with what it is they’re working on, or what it is that they’re struggling with. So, one of the ways that I used to do this, even when I was super overwhelmed and behind on my work, if a coworker was struggling with a task, I would drop what I was doing, and I would help them.

A lot of that would stem from my thinking of, “Well, I technically can help them. I know what they need to do. So, it would be rude of me to not help. It’s kind of wasteful for me to not help.” And I would deprioritize my own work, my own to-do list. I would help them complete the tasks that they had on their plate.

And ultimately, I left myself at a deficit, right? I’d be behind on what I was supposed to accomplish, what I had promised to other people. Even though I had the time to work on it, I just didn’t spend the time that I had to work on it because I was spending the time helping other people. We do this at work. And we do this outside of work, too.

Actually, a man that I used to date, he used to do this all the time. He loves how it feels to be helpful to another person. And this is how I used to be, too. It feels really good to be helpful, right? So, friends of his would call him up and ask him like, “Hey, do you have time? Could you help me with this?” Or they wouldn’t even ask, he would just volunteer because he would know that they were working on a project, and that he would be able to help with it. So, he would volunteer and help.

He had plenty of his own projects, stuff that he wanted to accomplish at his house, other things that he wanted to do in his business, and he wouldn’t focus on those tasks, on those goals, on those projects. Instead, he would drop whatever he was doing, and he would tend to his friends’ stuff. He would help them with their projects.

So, their projects would ultimately get completed, and his wouldn’t; because at the end of the day, time is finite. And if you’re using up all of your time to help your friends achieve what they want to achieve, you don’t have any time left over for yourself.

Another instance where I see this happen a ton, is spending a lot of time on the phone with people. Listening to them, what they’re struggling with, giving life advice to them, maybe it’s to a friend, or a family member, but they’re having a really hard time. And you technically don’t have the time to spare. You’re behind on things, you have a full enough plate already, but instead, just like the coworker situation, with friends and family, you spend all this time listening and giving advice.

Now, I see people do this all the time, especially when the people that they’re giving advice to don’t even follow the advice. So, I don’t like to think of a lot of things as a waste of time, but this really is something that is kind of indulgent and a waste of time.

Because people just like to cathartically complain and vent, and you’re spending all of this time investing in them, watering their grass instead of your own. And really, they’re not even getting anything out of it, because they’re not applying the advice that you’re giving them.

I also see people volunteer to help others with projects instead of prioritizing their own projects. So, that’s sort of similar to that instance that I was talking about a second ago, with the man that I used to date, where he used to do that.

But think of any projects that you volunteer for, maybe it’s not a house project, but something else. Maybe it’s preparing for the holidays, or someone’s fundraising for a charity event, and you volunteer to give your time or to give money, right? Maybe you’re saving money and you’re planning to use it to really further your own goals, further your own projects, your own dreams.

And instead of devoting that money to the stuff that you want to be achieving, you give it to someone else instead. I see this happen a lot. I actually have a couple of clients who give money to family, even when they’re really in pretty significant debt.

It would make such a world of difference if they didn’t give the money away, but they used it in order to get a better handle on their finances. To pay off their debt and really relieve stress because they’d be in a better financial situation, they’d have greater savings, all of the above.

So, those are some examples where we water our own grass first. And like I said, I was definitely guilty, more than any other instance, of helping coworkers with tasks when I was behind on my own work.

But I also spent tons of time helping other friends and entrepreneurs with their businesses, when it was more comfortable for me to do that and stay in my expert energy, than it was for me to focus on the hard parts of my own business. Solving problems where maybe I felt stuck or really challenged or confused about how to proceed.

I actually once had a friend who was an entrepreneur, and I would spend so much time on the phone with her talking about different issues that she was struggling with. We would spend hours and hours at a time talking about business. But a lot of it was one-sided, where I was giving advice and giving guidance, and I wasn’t getting a ton back.

One day, she came to me, and she said, “Hey, I appreciate everything you’ve done for me. But I really think I’m spending too much time on the phone. I think that the best thing for my business at this point, would be for me to prioritize just taking action rather than talking with you about taking action.”

I remember being a little off put about that in the beginning, when she said that to me. I eventually sat with it, I coached myself on it, and it actually made a lot of sense. I could see how I was indulging in spending a lot of time watering her grass instead of watering my own. And when she brought my attention to that, although it was a little hard for me to swallow in the beginning, it actually turned out to be a blessing in disguise.

We were, for a while, talking every single day, so I was investing a ton of time that I could have been using and leveraging to build my own business. I’m so grateful that she pointed this out to me, because since then, I’ve really made it a point, and this was years ago that this happened, but since then I’ve made it a point to constrain the amount that I counsel other people or connect with friends on the phone.

I have another really, really great friend; we spend hours on the phone together. But we’re really intentional about it. We normally only do it on Fridays. And when we’re going through busier seasons of our lives, we make sure we’re watering your own grass first, and we’re not indulging, spending that time on the phone together.

We’ve both been really busy lately, and that’s been something that has kind of, not fallen to the wayside, but dialed down a little bit, as we both work through these really busy seasons. Because we’re both so focused on watering our own grass first, as we both should be.

Which I think is really beautiful when you can find friends that really understand that, “Of course, it’s your job to water your own grass first. I’ll catch you on the flip side, when you get through watering your own grass and you get to a point where you can kind of come up for air.” I’m definitely mixing metaphors here. But you get what I’m saying. Right?

Okay. I wanted to give you those examples. And I also wanted to confess that this is something that I’ve definitely had a hard time with myself in the past. And a lot of my work has been here, by recognizing when I am doing this. Why am I doing this? And I wanted to talk about a couple of the different reasons that we do this, as humans in the world.

First, feeling helpful feels so great in the moment, right? I want you, if you do this, if you’re guilty of this habit, watering other people’s grass before you water your own, I just want you to have some compassion and give yourself some grace.

We do this because it feels really good to do this in the moment. We get to feel helpful; we get to feel like experts, we get to feel productive. It’s a false productivity because we’re not getting any further on what we want to accomplish. It’s sort of like making a to-do list, when all you do is make the to-do list or you make a plan, and you don’t actually implement the plan.

You just make the plan, it feels really productive, but you haven’t actually accomplished anything. So, watering your own grass versus watering someone else’s grass is also like this; it feels good and feels productive to focus on someone else and to prioritize their goals and to be helpful towards them.

But you want to make sure you’re being helpful towards yourself first, and I’m going to talk about why in a second. But in the meantime, give yourself some grace if you’re doing this. It does feel delicious and fake productive, to be prioritizing someone else and to be helping them with their goals.

Okay, second, when you neglect the grass on your side of the fence in favor of watering someone else’s grass, you get to avoid all the discomfort that comes from pursuing your own dreams. Pursuing your own dreams normally requires you to feel all sorts of different flavors of discomfort.

You probably will have to feel unsure, nervous, worried about whether or not what you’re doing is going to work, whether you’re going to be successful or not. You might have to feel confused because you’re not really sure where to start. Or you feel overwhelmed because you think there’s so much to do. You might have to feel exposed.

When I started my business and I was putting myself out there for the first time, I had to allow myself to feel exposed. It was extremely uncomfortable. I also had to allow myself to feel embarrassed. So, if embarrassed is an emotion that you don’t like to feel, that’s going to probably be another big one, too, as it comes to watering your own grass and prioritizing your own goals.

Another big one for people who were raised a particular way, and I’ll talk more about that in a second. But when it comes to prioritizing yourself and your goals over other people’s goals, you might feel quite a bit of guilt, right? You might feel selfish, you might feel rude, you might feel unhelpful. And those are going to be some of the negative emotions that you’re going to have to allow and wade through, in order to make progress on your own goals.

So, when you’re prioritizing someone else’s goals, and you’re watering their grass instead of your own, this is really an escape route for you. All of the discomfort that comes from pursuing your own dreams, you get to avoid that when you’re not pursuing your dreams, and you’re helping someone else achieve theirs.

And like I said a moment ago, you get to stay in your expert energy when you’re being really helpful towards other people. We typically don’t offer to help people with things that we’re not good at, right? We offer help in the areas where we already know what we’re doing. So, we get to feel really accomplished, really certain, really capable, really competent, instead of all of the negative emotions that I just listed a moment ago.

Now, the problem with this, when you don’t prioritize your goals and you don’t water your grass, your grass dies, right? Your dreams are the dreams that don’t come true, not the other person’s. And your life ultimately doesn’t become what it could be, what you want it to be. So, even though you get some temporary benefit because you get to avoid temporary discomfort, in the long term, really, there’s discomfort both ways.

Because there’s the discomfort that comes from embracing those negative emotions on the front end and watering your own grass, and prioritizing the goals that you want to achieve. And then, there’s the discomfort that comes from not watering your own grass first and not making yourself and your goals a priority.

It’s that regret, that disappointment, that your life doesn’t end up becoming what you plan for yourself, what you hope for yourself. So, we want to make sure even though it is easier in the short term to avoid all that immediate discomfort that comes from focusing on your own goals, that you recognize the truth of the matter is that there’s discomfort both ways.

We always want to embrace the discomfort that gets us closer to the life we want to be living. Which in this instance is going to be all those negative emotions that come from pursuing your own dreams. Feeling unsure, feeling nervous, feeling worried, feeling exposed, feeling confused, feeling overwhelmed, all that stuff. Okay?

The third reason that people water someone else’s grass over their own, is because they’re not comfortable putting themselves first, based on how they were raised. It’s really because of their upbringing and how they were socialized. Now, this is especially true for women.

I don’t want to create an overgeneralization here, but women especially, they’re socialized to put other people’s needs before their own. So, they really struggle. Not everyone, but a lot of women really struggle with prioritizing themselves and watering their grass before they tend to everyone else.

Now, I want you to think for a second, how were you raised? What did you learn growing up about putting yourself before other people? About tending to your own grass first? The other kind of cliche or cheesy way that people talk about this, is by making sure your oxygen mask goes on first.

I want you to think about what you were taught. Were you taught to embrace this and water your own grass? Or were you taught to avoid it and prioritize the needs, desires, and goals that other people have? Were you taught that it was selfish to focus on yourself and to prioritize yourself and your goals and your needs and your dreams? Were you taught that it’s rude or inconsiderate? Were you taught that it’s something that only arrogant people do?

I really want you to take a second here and think about what did you learn as you were being raised, as you were growing up, about watering your own grass versus watering someone else’s? And then ask yourself, does that thinking, does whatever you were taught growing up, serve you now?

Do you want to keep choosing to think those beliefs? Or do you want to choose to think something completely different about prioritizing your own goals, your own dreams, your own wants, and desires? Do you want to choose to believe something different about watering your own grass first?

You actually get to decide anew, right now. Anything that you were taught when you were younger, it’s just someone else’s belief system. It’s not truths of the world. Okay? It’s just someone else’s opinion about you prioritizing yourself over other people.

And the thing that I always love to look at here is, who benefits from you believing whatever it is you believe about prioritizing yourself? Who benefits from you believing that it’s selfish to prioritize yourself and water your own grass first?

See, if you like that answer or not. Typically, if you believe that it’s selfish to prioritize yourself, other people are benefiting from you believing that, right? You don’t benefit from believing that. So, take a second and decide: Do you want to choose to keep what you’re thinking right now about watering your own grass first?

If you don’t, you get to change your opinion right now, and you never have to believe that stuff again. It really is that simple. Now, why is it so important to water your own grass first? I really want you to answer that question for yourself. You can even pause this episode, and come up with your own answer to that question before I give you my answer.

Because I want you to be in the habit of selling yourself on why this is so important for you to do. Why it’s imperative for you to start focusing on your side of the fence. Why it is crucial for you to begin to water your own grass before you water someone else’s.

Now, the reason that I think this is so important is because as I see it, it is literally no one else’s responsibility to make sure that you achieve what you want to achieve in this lifetime of yours. Okay? The only person’s responsibility to make sure that you achieve what you want to achieve is your responsibility. That’s whose responsibility it is.

It’s no one else’s. It’s up to you. You have to be the one that makes your goals the most important thing to you. Everyone else is going to be focusing on themselves, as they should be. You can be resentful of that or frustrated by that, but again, that’s not going to serve you here. Because other people are best positioned to focus on themselves and you’re best positioned to focus on yourself, okay?

Now, when you make peace with that, A- you’re going to feel so much less resentful on a day-to-day basis, because you’re not going to be expecting other people to water your grass just because you’re watering theirs. You stop expecting yourself from other people.

You start to see that everyone is responsible for watering their own grass first, because it’s only their responsibility to make sure that their grass doesn’t die. And it’s your responsibility to make sure your grass doesn’t die, no one else’s.

From here, you get to decide today, to commit to watering your own grass. You get to decide to focus on your side of the fence first, always. You get to decide to make yourself your top priority. And if you decide to accept that challenge, if you decide to accept that responsibility, you get to start identifying when you have the urge to help someone else before you help yourself.

You want to opt out and resist that urge, right? You want to notice it and then you want to not indulge and answer the urge by helping other people instead of prioritizing yourself. So, as you’re doing that, as you’re noticing those urges come up for you, you just want to ask yourself, why.

Why do I feel pulled to help someone else? To prioritize someone else’s stuff over my own, right now? What’s going on? What am I thinking about focusing and accomplishing and working on my own goals, right now, that’s creating this resistance to me prioritizing my goals? And driving me and creating cultivating this urge to prioritize someone else’s stuff instead?

Figure out what’s going on there beneath the surface. When you do, when you start to gain awareness, what’s the discomfort that’s coming up for me, as I focus on my own goals, that I’m looking to avoid? What positive emotions am I craving, that I get temporarily, by prioritizing someone else’s stuff over my own? What positive emotions am I foregoing by watering someone else’s grass over my own?

If you’re watering someone else’s grass over your own, you’re delaying the gratification that comes from achieving your own goals, from creating the results that you want in your own life. So, there is some discomfort there too, as well, right? You’re prolonging feeling accomplished, feeling proud of yourself, feeling really competent and capable, feeling sufficient because you’re finally making progress and getting where you want to go.

Be on to yourself, what could you, instead of getting the instant gratification that comes from being helpful towards another person, what’s the delayed gratification that you can get when you prioritize yourself and water your own grass first? I really want you to sit with this question.

What would be different about your life if you made this change, starting today, and started watering your own grass first? Started making yourself your top priority? It is a game changer, I promise you. You will start getting so much further faster.

When it comes to achieving the goals that you set for yourself, when it comes to creating the life that you’ve been really desperate to start living, it becomes so much closer within your reach when you start watering your own grass first.

That’s what I want you to do be on the lookout for when you want to prioritize other people over yourself, when you want to neglect your own grass. All right? And then don’t neglect your own grass. Water your own grass first. That’s your job in this world. You’re going to be so thankful that you did.

Okay, that’s what I’ve got for you this week. I’m so excited for you to take this and really start to implement it. You’re going to blow your own mind with what you accomplish when you start focusing on what you want to achieve first and foremost. And then, with whatever you have remaining, if you have anything remaining, and it’s okay if you don’t, but then, whatever you have left over, you can pour that into other people if you still feel really called to do so. But we start with you.

As my mom likes to say, “Charity starts at home,” so we start with our own grass. We start by prioritizing our own stuff, and then you can move on to other people. Okay. I can’t wait to see what you create when you start doing this. Report back to me.

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.

You’re listening to The Less Stressed Lawyer podcast, Episode 54. Today, we’re continuing to talk all about how to delegate. Specifically, the process you want to follow to do it effectively. 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? Can you believe it’s April already? I really can’t get over it, this year is flying by. I ended Q1, of 2023, one of the best ways I know how. I spent it up north with friends of mine. And now, I’m back in Detroit, and ready for an exciting week before I head to Mexico next week, for the Women in Trial Travel Summit. Which I’m super excited to be at. I get to speak with an amazing panel of women.

So, if you’re going to be there, reach out to me so we can meet up. Hopefully you are going to be there, I would love to see you. And if you’re not going to be, you can always come to my next live event, which is going to be in Montana, in August, for the next round of The Less Stressed Lawyer Mastermind.

Hopefully your Q1 was as exciting and as wonderful as mine. I had a great Q1. I normally don’t think in quarters, that’s more of a business industry thing than a legal industry thing, at least on the litigation side, which is what I used to practice. I think my transactional attorney clients think more in terms of quarters than I do.

But my Q1 was excellent, pretty frenzied, and very full. And my Q2 is lining up to look the exact same way, in fact, probably even a little bit busier, if I can believe that. I’m having a hard time believing that. But I do think that is going to be how it pans out.

Now, if you feel busy busier than you’d like to be, then today’s episode is for you. Remember, we are continuing the conversation that we started last week in the first of a two-part series on how to delegate. So, last week, I talked all about the mistakes that people commonly make when it comes to delegating; I went through 12 of them. And today, we’re going to talk about the process you want to follow instead, in order to avoid those pitfalls, avoid those mistakes, and to be able to delegate really effectively.

Because once you master the skill set of how to delegate effectively, it’s such a game changer for your practice. It’s going to make your work life more enjoyable. You’re going to be much more productive and efficient with what you work on. And you’re really going to be able to focus on the work that is most meaningful for you to do. Rather than the small tasks that don’t make sense, it’s not in your zone of genius for you to be working on those items. We want to free you up to do your best, most meaningful work.

So, I’m going to give you the process that you can follow in order to do that, in order to create those results for yourself on the back end or on the other side of delegating. Now, step one, and this should come as no surprise to you. Step one is about cultivating the right mindset from which you take action and delegate.

You want to check in with yourself and really identify the negative emotions that you’re currently feeling right now when it comes to delegating. Do you feel frustrated when you think about it? Do you feel annoyed? Maybe a huge sense of disappointment or defeat comes up for you? Maybe you feel resentful or angry? Or this is a common one too, common emotions, feeling very entitled or feeling very righteous.

If those are emotions that you commonly experience when it comes to delegating work to other people, I want you to check in with yourself. What thoughts are you thinking that are making you feel those emotions? We always have to start by creating awareness first, so we understand what we’re currently thinking and how it’s causing us to feel.

Remember, we want to be operating within a state of emotional adulthood. And emotional adulthood is where we claim responsibility for our own emotions. We acknowledge that we are creating them with our thinking. We’re never blaming other people for how we feel. When we blame other people for how we feel we’re in a state of emotional childhood, not emotional adulthood. And we want to make sure, as adults, we’re operating from emotional adulthood, we’re owning our emotional experience. We’re taking response ability for it; we’re never operating from that state of blame.

Now, this is a challenge for a lot of people. When it comes to delegating, they’ve really bought into the concept that other people are the cause of their negative emotions, and that is never the case. So, I want you to remember, never blame your team members for how you’re feeling. You always own that you’re creating your own emotional experience, because of the thoughts you’re choosing to think.

I know that’s a tough one for people. It doesn’t feel like you’re choosing your thoughts, but I promise you, you are choosing them. You get to choose better ones, ones that serve you more than what you’re currently thinking. So, we want to create awareness. What are you currently thinking?

I want you to break this down into two different buckets of thoughts. First, there’s your thinking about delegating itself, the activity of delegating work to other people. Do a quick thought download; what are all the thoughts you think about delegating? And then, once you’ve identified those thoughts, you can ask yourself: When I think each thought, what’s the one-word emotion that I feel?

You should start to identify the negative feelings that correspond to the negative thoughts that you’re currently thinking. And if you’re already thinking positive thoughts about delegating, amazing. Keep those thoughts, we want to use those to fuel you forward as you embark on this process.

But if you aren’t in a positive state of mind yet, when it comes to delegating, that’s not a problem, we just need to get you there. We want to first create awareness as to what you’re currently thinking about delegating, so we can cultivate the mindset that serves you instead.

In addition to identifying the thoughts that you’re thinking about delegating itself, I also want you to do a thought download about the person you’re delegating the work to, whoever that person is for you. Maybe it’s an associate, maybe it’s a particular associate of the several that you work with, maybe it’s an assistant, maybe it’s a paralegal, maybe it’s a contractor outside of your organization.

Whoever it is, I just want you to do a thought download and identify what are all of the thoughts that you think about this person. See where your negative thoughts about them come into play and figure out how you feel when you think each one of those thoughts. Now, you should have two thought downloads. And if you need to pause the episode in order to complete that exercise, go ahead and do that right now. I’ll be right here waiting for you when you come back.

All right, you’ve got your thought downloads, and you should have created some awareness as to why you feel the feelings that you feel when it comes to delegating generally or delegating to this specific person. Now, I want you to be honest with yourself, do these thoughts serve you?

Remember, how we feel determines how we act. So, if you’re feeling a negative feeling, you’re going to take no action or a negative action. If you tend to not delegate, it’s because you’re feeling these feelings, and you’re either avoiding them or you’re reacting to them in some way. What we want to do instead, is we want to cultivate the mindset and the emotional state that supports you delegating to this person.

So, we want to start to think, what do you need to be thinking instead? The best way to identify the thoughts that you need to be thinking is by starting with the feelings that you need to feel. What are some of the positive emotions that you want to feel in order to delegate effectively?

Remember, your feelings are going to fuel you forward. So, maybe you want to feel competent, or committed, or capable. Maybe you want to feel determined, or trusting is a big one here. Maybe you want to feel certain or abundant, especially when it comes to time; that you have enough of it. Maybe you want to feel grounded or calm or in control.

And the big one that I think definitely ties in here, is feeling resolved. Right? And not being wishy-washy about whether or not you’re going to embark on the journey of delegating work to other people. But being really resolved that this is something that you’re going to do no matter what.

As you start to identify the feelings that you want to feel, that you need to feel, in order to delegate effectively and to stick with this process, and troubleshoot it, evaluate, and take action, audit, and adapt, over and over and over again until you’re doing this very effectively.

Once you identify those feelings, we can then work backwards and identify the thoughts you would need to think in order to feel those emotions. So, maybe instead of all the negative thoughts that you’re currently thinking, negative thoughts like, “I don’t have time. It’s going to be a waste of my time. This will never work. This person’s incompetent. They’ll never be able to figure it out. They’re lazy. They don’t care about doing a good job. It’s easier if I just do this myself.”

All of those thoughts are not going to serve you, right? You’re definitely going to feel all those negative emotions I listed a moment ago. And then you’re not going to follow through with delegating, you’re going to continue to do the work yourself, you’re not going to pass it off, you’re not going to embark on this process, you’re going to either not get started at all, or you’re going to start and then get frustrated and quit halfway through.

So, instead of that line of thinking, you need to replace those thoughts with thoughts that serve you, and fuel you forward, to get you to delegate effectively. You need to be thinking thoughts like, “It’s worth my time. This will work.” Even if you don’t think it’ll be easy, you can choose to believe that it will be worth it. You could also choose to believe it’s not going to be as hard as I think it is. You can think that your team member is competent.

That they care that they’re in this with you, that they’re committed to figuring this out, that you just have to lead them, and that you’re capable of leading them effectively. You can choose to believe that they’ll figure it out, that they’re more than capable. You can choose to believe that you have the time to delegate. I also, this would make me feel resolved, but really deciding ahead of time that this is where your growth is.

One of the quotes that I love from a preacher, T.D. Jakes, he says, “New levels bring new devils.” For my people who are continuing to excel and succeed within their work environment, as you start to supervise other people, this is where your growth is. It’s not growing to just continue to do everything yourself, you’ve already mastered the skill set of doing the work yourself.

So, your next level of growth is learning how to delegate it and give instruction to other people, and to train them and to supervise them in order to get them to be successful at doing that work instead of you. You get to choose to feel resolved by thinking, “This is where my growth is.” If you’re thinking these thoughts, you’re going to cultivate a completely different list of emotions; they’re going to be much more positive.

And they’re going to drive you to delegate to commit to this process. To commit to figuring it out, even if it’s bumpy in the beginning. But to ultimately get to a place where you’re able to effectively assign work to other people, supervise the completion of it, and free yourself up to do other things with your time.

All right, that’s step one, we want to cultivate the mindset that you need to have in order to delegate. We want those thoughts to be fueling you forward.

Step two, you have to make time for delegating. And this breaks into two separate categories. First, you need to make time to plan your delegation for the week. I want you to pick time each week, and you can do this every night if that’s what works for you, or just once a week. But I want you to carve out time where you think about the work that you have on your plate, and you identify the tasks that you want to delegate.

We have to build the planning into your schedule, because if you don’t plan for this time, you’re never going to make this time. You’re just going to be running around spinning the plates, playing Whack-a-Mole, putting out fires, and triaging everything rather than being really intentional with your time and setting yourself up to delegate effectively. All right? So, carve out time for you to do this planning.

I also want to encourage you to review the past week. Look at what you could have delegated. Review all the different ways that you spent your time. And if I forced you to delegate half of the work that you did, which half would you delegate? What would you do? What would you not do?

The reason that I give this instruction is so many people only carve out a sliver of the work that’s on their plate. And they never really learn how to delegate in a really comprehensive manner. They’re always just giving crumbs to whoever is assisting them.

I want to encourage you to be much more open minded with the work that you have and thinking about; how can I delegate it? Who would I delegate it to? So, carve out time where you’re able to think about the work you have on your plate. and plan what you’re going to delegate ahead of time.

Step number three is the second part of this planning phase, which is scheduling standing meetings. I want you to schedule meetings with your team members to assign the work to them. I want you to schedule standing meetings that create a time and place for those team members to ask you questions about the work. And then, I want you to schedule standing meetings for the review of their work product.

So, this will be twofold, scheduling time for you to review the work product. You want to make sure that’s built into your schedule. And then to schedule  time to review their work product with them. Where you’re giving them feedback, and you’re giving them additional instructions so they’re able to go off and make changes, tweak their work product, and flip it back to you. Again, you will also need time to review the finished product and decide, do we need to make any additional changes or is this finalized and good to go?

So, step number three is making sure you’ve got that time carved out on your calendar and protected so you’ve set yourself up to have enough time to delegate and address all the different phases of delegating a project. All right?

Now step four, you want to get clear on what you want before you assign the project. And in order to do this, I want you to think about the project. I want you to walk through every single step in your mind, and list out all the things that you would do if you were the one to do it.

So often, I see people believe that they’re being clear, and they actually aren’t being clear when they’re assigning work to another person. They’re leaving out all the things that we just assume other people know to do, that people actually don’t know to do. So, I want to encourage you and challenge you, this is where you can really improve here.

If you’re taking radical ownership over what’s not working when it comes to delegating, this is an area where you can substantially improve. You can become so much more clear about what it is that you’re expecting. So, take your time, be thoughtful, figure out exactly what you want.

A good rule of thumb that I practice, and I teach this to my clients as well, you should be able to have another person come in and replace you, and they should be able to deliver the work product exactly how you want. They should be able to communicate what you want and make sure that you receive the work product that you desire.

So, if I come into your life, I should be able to look at your instructions and make sure that I communicate those instructions to the person who the work is being delegated to. Your instructions should be so clear and so specific, that I can come in and delegate this task for you, and you should be able to get the work product back that you want. All right?

It should be to the point where we could come in, basically with a clipboard, and check off, did this person do this? “Yes.” Did this person do that? “Yes.” Did this person do this too? “Yes.” It should be very specific and measurable.

Now, once you’ve gotten clear on what you want, you know exactly what your expectations are for the project, you’ve walked through every step, you have clear instructions, to the point where a monkey would be able to do it, for lack of a better way to explain it, then I want you to find the right team member for the job.

So many people skip this step. This is step number five. You want to find the right team member for the job. Here’s how you do that. I don’t want you to just assume it’s the person that you’ve been delegating to in the past. You have to start by figuring out whether the person that you want to assign the work to has capacity to do the work. And the best way to figure this out is to ask them.

And you have to be on to the people that work for you, or who work with you. Are they people pleasing you? Are they just telling you what you want to hear? That’s not going to serve you, and that’s not going to serve them if they don’t actually have the capacity to do the work. So, I want you to ask someone if they have capacity.

And then I also want you to ask them what else are they working on, and when are those deadlines for those other projects that they have on their plate. I want you to help them determine if they have capacity to do the work.

Now, not everyone agrees on what capacity means or what “enough” work is. I want you to trust the people that work for you or with you. If they say they don’t have capacity, believe them. Even if you disagree, and you think they could be doing more, we want to make sure we take people at their no.

If someone says no to you, you have no idea what they have going on. You don’t know what their life is like outside of work. You don’t know what they’re struggling with at work. You don’t know what’s coming around the bend for them, on upcoming projects that they have on their plate. I want you to trust, if they tell you that they don’t have capacity.

Again, this is also why you want to be asking these more meaningful, deeper questions about what else are they working on. Because, especially with new associates or other new employees, they might believe they have the capacity. Because people horrifically underestimate how long projects will take them. And this is where you can leverage your own expertise to figure out that they actually don’t have capacity, because they’re thinking they can finish this other work in a fraction of the time that it is actually going to take them.

If that’s the case, you can help them identify where their planning is deficient, and you can help them course correct, so they’re actually making much more informed decisions about the commitments they make and the work that they take on.

All right, the next step is super simple. You’re going to delegate the task, and you want to use those very specific, clear instructions that you identified in the previous step. You want to communicate those very clearly to the person you’re delegating the work to.

Now, there are ways that you can ensure everyone’s on the same page. So, you might want to give out written instructions, in addition to meeting with someone in person or over the phone. A task might be communicated most effectively over the phone, though. Think about how you read emails and instructions, right? One of the things that I teach is that emails have no tone. But people bring their messy minds into their inboxes. So, people read tone into emails.

It may be much more effective for you to talk about projects and assignments over the phone or face-to-face. You can eliminate a lot of the confusion, and make sure everyone’s on the same page. I want you to think about what are the best practices that you can implement when it comes to actually delegating the task.

Now, the next step, you want to build time in for questions and review. People always cut themselves too short and don’t leave enough time for this, and it makes the delegation process extremely unpleasant because you end up being rushed on the back end.

This is when you don’t follow through and you don’t commit to the process. You end up jumping in, taking it back, finishing the project yourself. You don’t communicate the feedback. You don’t give them another opportunity to change and correct their mistakes in order for them to learn and really improve. You end up doing the bulk of the work, especially the heavy lifting at the end.

We don’t want that to be what happens, it’s going to make for a really unpleasant delegation experience, both for you and for the person that you delegated the initial tasks to. They’re going to feel badly because they’re likely going to be thinking negative thoughts, both about the experience and themselves. We want to avoid all of that.

So, build in time for questions and review. I like to think about, when is the task or assignment due? And work backwards from there. I want to make sure that you assume that it’s not going to go perfectly. It’s so easy for people to indulge in perfectionistic planning when it comes to this. And we don’t give ourselves enough time because we plan in a way where everything has to go best-case scenario in order for our timeline to work.

I want you to resist the urge to do that. You want to almost plan worst-case scenario, so you build in plenty of buffer time. Assume that people are going to have questions. Also, force them to ask you questions. Create those standing meetings, where you make it very clear that the expectation is that they come with questions. And if they don’t come with questions, ask them questions in order to illuminate where they might be confused, where they’re getting stuck.

Really create some structure here so people know how to navigate having worked delegated to them from you. So, build in time for questions, and then build in time for review, both for you to review the work product and then for you to communicate feedback after you’ve done that review.

This is probably going to, or it should, include additional assignments to this person. I don’t want you fixing their mistakes, I want them fixing their mistakes, so they learn from their mistakes. Also, this teaches people to be more careful on the front end. If they know they’re going to be forced to fix their own mistakes, they’re going to make less of them. Maybe not at first, but over time.

If they know you’re going to hold them accountable for the work products that they turn into you, they’re going to be more diligent about proofreading. I have a belief that people don’t like to waste their own time, so they’re going to be more careful if they know that they’re going to have to deal with the consequences of deficient work, they’re much less likely to turn into efficient work product.

If you constantly solve their problems for them, they’re going to bank on the fact that you will continue to do that. So, if you want client-ready work product delivered to you, and every time you don’t get client-ready work product, flip it back to them and be clear. What do you want them to change? What do you want them to do differently?

You can use and learn, from getting work product that you don’t love back, you can learn from that and say, “Where wasn’t I clear? What else could I have communicated in my instructions, in order to prevent this from happening the next time? And you can build that into the assigning phase of the delegation process.

All right, step eight, is you want to empower team members to answer their own questions so you can teach them your analysis. You’ve built in time for them to ask questions, and when they do have questions, rather than spoon feeding them the answers, you want to force them to answer their own questions.

First, I mentioned this in the last episode, this is going to be very uncomfortable for the people that you delegate work to. I don’t care, let them be uncomfortable. Let them feel uncomfortable, it is going to help them become so much more confident in their abilities in the long run. You have to teach your thought process and the only way to do that is for you to see their thought processes.

When they answer their own questions first, they have to be resourceful, figure things out, and problem-solve rather than being completely reliant and dependent on you. And then, you can see where their thinking, where their analysis goes off the rails, and you can teach them how you think about it, and how you come to a different conclusion instead.

You teach them your analysis, so over time people can start to think like you, so you can delegate more stuff to them. And they’ll have fewer questions because they’ll know and be less reliant on you. They’ll know how you think, they’ll know how you address these issues when they arise, and they’ll know how you approach these problems. That’s what we want.

That’s the long game of delegating. We’re building your dream team that can really stand in for you rather than depending on you to answer their questions and solve problems for them.

Okay, the next step is you want to follow through, both individually on each task and in the long term. It’s going to be really tempting, especially at first, when you don’t get work product back that you love, to quit halfway through an assignment or halfway through the delegation journey. You decide that you’re going to embark on it, you’re going to start delegating, it’s really going to make a difference, and then it doesn’t go smoothly, so you quit.

You end up feeling very impatient and frustrated, and it creates a negative result, because you give up, you don’t stay committed to the process. I want to make sure that you follow through. So, you really want to reframe your thinking, “This isn’t something we’re doing for a short-term benefit.” It’s something that you’re doing for your long-term benefit, for the rewards that come from delegating over time.

In order to reap those benefits, you have to commit to following through on the individual assignments that you delegate, start to finish, allowing the person that you’re delegating the work to, to finish the task rather than you finishing it. And committing to sticking with this process over and over and over again, over time. So, continuing to delegate work to this person and to troubleshooting.

Which brings me to the next step, which is evaluating. But you want to make sure that you’re committed to this; you’re not quitting, you’re not giving up, you’re not throwing in the towel; just because it doesn’t go smoothly in the beginning. That you’re going to keep doing this with the person that you’re assigning the work to, in order to make consistent improvements and get better and better. To create the team that can really support you.

All right, the next step is evaluating, like I just said. You want to do a couple things here. Number one, you want to use my really simple evaluation process, only three questions: What worked? What didn’t work? And what would you do differently? I want you to have a consistent framework for how you evaluate.

So, what is it that you look for? Come up with some standard measurements or criteria that you use in these evaluations. Otherwise, you’re going to evaluate very arbitrarily, very subjectively. And it’s going to lead to really inconsistent judgments, viewpoints, and evaluations; we don’t want that. We want to make sure that you stay unbiased.

If you’re not using a consistent framework for your evaluations, and you’re not looking at certain metrics, across all evaluations, if you have a negative opinion of one person, you’re going to be much more likely to let that negative opinion of them impact your evaluation. We don’t want that. We want you to be really unbiased in the evaluations that you conduct. So, come up with the consistent framework that you want to use in your evaluations.

This is going to help keep you really honest about, both someone’s progress and about someone’s struggle, and be consistent in your evaluation from team member to team member. I also want to make sure that you measure progress. It can be really easy to just focus on what’s not working and continue to be frustrated, but we want to make sure that we celebrate the improvements as we experience them. So, make sure you’re measuring progress, too.

All right, once you’ve conducted an evaluation, the next step for delegating is that you want to communicate feedback. And you want to make sure you’re communicating feedback from a clean place. You want to, again, check in with yourself and how are you feeling. What emotions are coming up for you? Are they positive? Are they negative?

If they’re negative, you don’t want to give feedback from that emotional state. You want to make sure you get yourself to a much cleaner place before you have that conversation. So, can you get to curious? Can you get to understanding? Can you get to grounded? Can you get to calm? Can you get to accepting? Those are some of the emotions that you want to make sure you cultivate before you give feedback.

Now, once you’re there, you can communicate your feedback. What worked? You always start with that to help encourage people. And then, what didn’t work? And what would you need to do differently? I’m going to talk a little bit more about that in a second.

As you’re giving feedback, in order to make sure you’re giving it from a clean place, I want to make sure that you’re not making assumptions. If you don’t have enough information to come up with the reason that someone did what they did or didn’t do what they were supposed to do, don’t make an assumption. I want you to ask questions and figure out what went wrong. What led to the problem in the first place?

I see so commonly; people make an assumption that the person that they delegated the work to simply doesn’t care. And I promise you, that’s not it. Most people give a fuck, all right? And most people are competent, they’re smart, they can figure things out. They just need the proper instruction. So, if it’s not that they don’t care, and it’s not that they’re stupid, what else might it be?

If it’s not that they’re lazy, what else might it be? I want you to operate from that assumption. That it’s not those negative things, it’s something else. What else might it be? And you can bring that mindset, that curiosity, with you into problem solving with them.

I also want to just call out, you’re going to have a desire to avoid these uncomfortable conversations, that’s normal. We just want to resist the urge to avoid them. We want to make sure that you’re engaging in these “uncomfortable” conversations. Now, they’re only uncomfortable because of how you’re thinking about them. But if it’s challenging for you to think about these conversations in a different way, that’s okay. You can just feel uncomfortable and have them anyways.

So, you want to make sure that you have an honest, candid conversation, giving helpful feedback. Remember, shaming someone doesn’t work. I also just had this conversation with a client recently, we were talking about how unhelpful it is for someone to give the feedback, “Do better. You need to do a better job.” If people knew how to do a better job, they’d be doing it right now.

Assume that they don’t know how to do a better job. What needs to change? What else needs to happen? What else does someone need? What kind of support do they need? What learning do they need to do in order for them to do a better job? We want to make sure the feedback that we’re giving is helpful, not unhelpful.

If someone’s likely to walk away from a conversation with a negative emotion, it’s not going to create a positive result. So, we want to make sure that people feel encouraged, they feel supported. Now, we cannot control whether another person feels a particular feeling, but you can control your energy and how you show up to a conversation.

You want to be showing up in the cleanest way possible, in the most collaborative way possible, in the most curious way possible. It’s totally going to change the nature of these conversations; where you’re giving feedback, where you’re working with a team member in order to get them to improve.

All right, and the last step, you want to get curious, and problem solve with the person that you’re delegating the work to. If you want to solve the problem, and you should want to solve the problem… If you’re working with someone and you’re on this delegation journey, you don’t want to quit, like I said a moment ago. You want to solve this problem, and you want to be working with your team member to solve it.

So, check in with yourself again. How are you feeling? You may, at this point in the process, still be feeling a little entitled, and feeling judgmental over the person that you’re working with. I need you to drop those negative emotions. The entitlement and the judgment have to go, and I want you to tune in to an emotion that serves you in this moment. So, understanding, accepting, helpful, supportive, curious, committed, convicted. Resourceful is another really good one here.

And I need you to cultivate a sense of caring. I need you to actually give a fuck about the outcome of this delegation journey with the staff member, with the team member that you’re working with. I want you to have some skin in the game. I want you to care about the outcome. I want you to be committed to them getting it. All right?

From there, it’s very easy to stay in entitlement and judgment, and just lean back, opt out of rolling up your sleeves and getting your hands dirty. But that is not going to create the result that you ultimately want to create when it comes to delegation. So, I need you to actually care from that place of actually caring. Whether or not someone figures this out or not.

Whether they make it to the other side, whether they get it, whether it clicks, I want you to get curious and ask them what’s going on. Identify the underlying problems. You know, there are a lot of different problems that come up when it comes to delegating. Some big ones that I see; missed deadlines, not following directions, not coming to talk to you when people are stuck, a lack of attention to detail; lots of errors in the work product.

I want you to have a curious, honest, and open caring conversation with the person that you’re delegating the work to. “What’s going on? What happened here? Why did this happen?” Identify the underlying problems. You want to really understand your team. Why did they do what they do?

One trick that I utilize here is by getting clients of mine to answer the question “why” five times. When you ask the question “why” and you answer it, and then whatever your answer is, you ask “why” again, and you do that five different times, you’re normally able to come up with so much awareness and so much insight that you wouldn’t have originally received just from answering the question once. Okay?

You can do this with your team. You can ask and answer the question “why,” and you can have them ask and answer the question “why”. So, if someone made a mistake, you can ask them, “Why did you make the mistake?” They’re going to say, “Oh, I was just, you know, I was careless.” “Okay, well, why? Why were you careless?” “Oh, well, I felt rushed.”

“Okay, well, why did you feel rushed?” “Because I overcommitted myself.” “Okay, well, why did you overcommit yourself to doing more work in a given period of time than you had time to do?” “Well, because I was afraid to say no.” “Okay, well, why were you afraid to say no?” Because of whatever reason, right?

When you go down that rabbit hole of “why” times five, you’re able to get so much more insight that you can leverage to solve some of these problems. Maybe the person needs to work on not people pleasing and communicating their capacity to the people that they’re working with, better than they currently are.

Or maybe the person just needs to slow down and remember that what actually is true is that the faster they go, the longer a task takes them. Because they make mistakes, and they have to go back and fix those mistakes. Rather than going slow and steady the first time and getting through it in a much more accurate way, right from the get-go.

You want to make sure you’re understanding your team. Operate from that curiosity. Figure out what’s going on, and then come up with a solution together. I want you to get their buy-in. If you just tell them what they need to do to improve, without their buy-in, it’s probably going to go in one ear and out the other, or they’re not going to think that that’s actually going to make the difference.

So, you want this to be a collaborative process. What are they going to do? Ask them. Help them come up with their own plan for how they’re going to remedy the problems that are existing at that time. And then from there, implement the solutions. Maybe it’s something you need to do differently. Maybe it’s something they need to do differently. Maybe it’s something that y’all both need to do differently. Okay?

Whatever that is, I want you to come up with those solutions together, and then implement them, follow up, and track progress. And then ultimately, if you attempt to remedy the situation and your efforts are ineffective, I want you to have a policy on what you do. Make the decision ahead of time and follow it.

Otherwise, you end up making exceptions and things get really emotional. I want to make sure that you don’t get into that territory, into that hot water. So, decide how many chances do you give someone to figure it out. When they don’t figure it out, how many times do you problem solve with them? And then, if they still don’t figure it out, what do you do? Do you terminate the person? Do you report them? Do you give them a negative review?

I want you to have a clear policy on what you do, and you just get to follow it every single time. This is a great area for you to make decisions ahead of time and honor them, rather than having a hodgepodge way that you approach these situations. Where it’s really inconsistent and very challenging for you, and it taxes you immensely by you having to devote much more mental capacity than is necessary each time one of these situations arises. Okay?

So, those are the steps. Once you work through them, you just rinse and repeat. You go back again. Cultivate the right mindset. Make sure that you’re making time. Plan each week. And then schedule standing meetings, in order for you to assign, allow for questions, review the work, all of that.

Make sure you get clear on what you want before you assign the project. And then you can find the right team member for that task. Go ahead and delegate it. Once you found the right team member, build in time for questions and review. Go through that process, assuming it won’t go perfectly. Empower team members to answer their own questions, so you can teach your analysis.

Be sure you follow through and commit to this process, both on each individual task and over the long term one. Evaluate what’s working? What’s not working? What would you do differently? Make sure you give feedback from a very clean place and get curious, and problem solve with your team members when things go differently than you’d like them to go.

In order to consistently make improvements over time, for you to reap the benefits that delegating can provide you when you really commit to doing this over the course of some time, rather than being focused on the short term.

All right, I hope that helps you. You’ve got a 12-step process. I talked about 12 mistakes that you were making, in the last episode. Now, you have a 12-step process for how to delegate moving forward. Work this process, it will be such a game changer for you. It’s going to free you up to do your most important work in the world. And it’s going to empower your team members to support you, which I promise you they truly want to do.

All right. Go have fun delegating. 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.

You’re listening to The Less Stressed Lawyer podcast, Episode 53. Today, we’re talking all about how to delegate and the common mistakes to avoid when you’re doing it. 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 your week is going well. Mine is off to an amazing start. Got a few things that I’m excited about today. And I’m going to share with you before I dive into today’s episode. So, number one, I am getting ready to go up north with two of my dearest friends Halston and Alex. Alex is actually my videographer.

So, if you were in the first round of the mastermind, you already know him. But they are married, and they have a place of north in northern Michigan. I get to go up with them a couple times a year. And I’m getting ready to go up on Thursday night. So, I’m really looking forward to that.

We do a ton of cooking. I love a good jigsaw puzzle, so we get to do jigsaw puzzles together and play board games and I read books; Halston likes to read, too. So, we do that. We have a champagne toast every evening at 7pm where we savor champagne on the deck. I’ve taught all of my friends how to do that. So, it’s just a really fun, relaxing time.

I have been clipping along at a pretty good pace between going to Cabo for my business mastermind with my coach, then being in Charleston for The Less Stressed Lawyer Mastermind. And then coming back and hitting the ground running with work, and then being in Miami. And then getting a lot of details sorted out for the next live event of The Less Stressed Lawyer Mastermind in August. Which is what I’ve been up to all March. I have been clipping along, so I’m really excited for a relaxing weekend.

I hope you all have something that you’re looking forward to that brings you a little bit of relaxation and rejuvenation. I can’t wait to drive up north. I love driving in the car. I have a call scheduled with one of my dearest coaching friends for my ride up there. I’m just really looking forward to it. So, I hope you’re in the same boat as me and you’re really looking forward to something too.

The second thing that I wanted to share with you is I finally finalized the venue and location for the next round of The Less Stressed Lawyer Mastermind, specifically the live event that we are going to do August 23 through the 26 later this year, in 2023. So, if you’ve been anxiously awaiting the announcement for where we’re going, and how amazing it’s going to be, prepare yourself. I need a drumroll here: We are going to Big Sky, Montana. I know! I cannot even wait.

I think lawyers need a little outdoors action, and what more could you ask for when it comes to being outdoorsy than being in Big Sky, Montana. We are staying at the most phenomenal resort. I got an insane discount on it. We’re staying at the Montage Resort in Big Sky. And if you’ve ever stayed at a Montage property, let me tell you, they’re incredible, and you already know that. And if you haven’t, you are in for an absolute treat.

I got an insane discount for our group. So, you’re going to get to enjoy five-star resort luxury for a fraction of the price, if you join The Less Stressed Lawyer Mastermind, the next cohort of it. So, if you like to be outdoors, or you think you’d like to be outdoors, but you don’t get to spend enough time outdoors, you’re in luck. We’re going to be in the clean Montana air come August. I can’t wait. The event is going to be spectacular.

The location is amazing. The weather will be beautiful. The venue is just next level. It’s a brand-new hotel. So, everything’s going to be in tip-top shape, it’s really going to blow your mind. So, make sure you head to my website, TheLessStressedLawyer.com/mastermind, and get your name on the waitlist. That’s going to allow you to enroll as soon as enrollment opens, on May 12. You have to be on the waitlist in order to enroll the first weekend enrollment opens, so make sure you go and do that. All right?

Now, let’s dive into today’s topic. We’re talking about delegation, and I want to talk about delegation in two parts. So, this is going to be a two-part episode. Today, we’re talking all about the common mistakes that I see people make when it comes to delegating. And then in the next episode, I’m going to walk you through a very specific process that I want you to follow in order to delegate. It’s like a best practice guide for delegation.

I’m really excited to talk about today’s topic. Because this has been coming up a ton in my coaching sessions lately, both in the mastermind and in my one-on-one work with my clients that I work with in that capacity. We’ve been talking frequently about delegating, and where they get hung up. The problems that they encounter when it comes to delegating. Them recognizing that they’re creating issues for themselves because they’re not delegating effectively, or they’re not doing it at all.

So, I’m super excited to cover this topic. I think it’s going to really make a difference for you. It’s very relevant in order to dial down your stress levels, reduce your workloads; not immediately, and I’m going to talk about that today. But over the course of some time, as you get better and better and better at delegating, it’s going to make your life a lot easier and free you up to do your most meaningful work.

So, let’s dive in. I’m going to talk to you about the 12 specific mistakes that I see people make. So, as you know, if you’ve listened to episodes before, I typically always start by going in and talking about the mindset you need to have in order to take a particular action and take it intentionally and effectively. But for the sake of time, because I don’t want this episode to turn into like a two-hour long episode, I’m going to go through the 12 mistakes today. A lot of the 12 mistakes are mindset mistakes.

And then, in the next episode, before I get into the process that you need to follow in order to delegate, I’ll go through the mindset that you need to cultivate in order to do it effectively. Okay? So, without further ado, let’s talk about mistake number one.

Now, mistake number one is when you think, “If I want to get it done right, I have to do it myself.” It’s a very common thought that people think when it comes to delegating. Now, the underlying issue here is that you’re also expecting people to do it as good as you would do it.

And I always start by explaining to my clients, that you have to give up that requirement. All right? A lot of people won’t do it as well as you can do it. But that’s not a reason to not delegate the task. If someone can do something 80% as good as you can do it, that is an appropriate task to delegate. And it is okay for them to do it only 80% as well.

And your work is to stomach the discomfort that comes from it not being “perfect” or not as good as it would be if you had done it. The other thing that I really want to talk about here is, instead of thinking, “If I want it done right, I have to do it myself,” that is a short-sighted way to look at delegation.

And it also fails to recognize that part of your growth as a manager, as a supervisor, is learning how to delegate, be comfortable with the discomfort, and helping people slowly but surely improve. So, instead of thinking this thought, I like to teach people to think that new levels bring new devils, and that this is your next step of growth. Okay?

Learning how to delegate, learning how to give out instructions, and problem-solve with people if you don’t get back what you want from them. Figuring out what needs to change in order for the work product to be closer to what you envisioned. So, this is where your work is if you’ve got this mindset.

Mistake number two is telling yourself, “I don’t know what to delegate.” This is super common, because our brains love to keep us maintaining the status quo, in our comfort zones, by throwing up ‘I don’t know’. They see if it will stick to the wall. So, instead of thinking, “I don’t know what to delegate,” I want you to slow yourself down and come up with a strategy in order to figure out what to delegate.

So, every week, I want you to do an audit. Assess each week: What did I do that I could have delegated? And I actually give this instruction to people. If you had to go through your week, the past week, and cut out half of the work you did and delegate it, what portions would you cut? What tasks would you delegate to someone?

Because, typically, what people do is they go in with like tweezers essentially, to their week. And they only pick out one or two very small things that they would delegate to someone. But when you give them the parameters, the instructions to go back and assess their week and delegate half of what they did, they get much more creative. And they start to see the possibilities of all of the things that they could delegate.

So, do that audit and assess each week. Find the tasks that you can delegate. You might also want to conduct some research. This might be a great thing to type into Google or ask other people that you work with, friends of yours, colleagues, mentors. What are some of the things that they delegate?

Start to get some inspiration for tasks that maybe you don’t want to do anymore, that you didn’t even think that you could give to someone else. But when you talk to other people, you learn what’s possible. So, don’t indulge in ‘I don’t know’ thinking here, okay?

Mistake number three; hoarding work because you don’t trust other people. Instead of hoarding work because you don’t trust other people, the thing that’s really happening here is that you’re tolerating other people being untrustworthy. So, I want you to stop tolerating and stop avoiding. There’s a lot of discomfort avoidance here.

And instead, I want you to embrace the discomfort. You might have to have some hard conversations, and I’m going to talk about that in a second. But I want you to really commit to the end results. All right? And again, this goes back to expecting people to do it just as good or if not better than you would do it. We need to adjust our expectations.

And also, be willing to work with the person and have those uncomfortable conversations in order to help them improve. It’s going to be a clunky process, probably. That’s not a good enough reason to not do it; you want to commit to the end result. I also want you to humble yourself here. All right? Sometimes people do things better than you expect them to do them. Someone might even be better at doing something than you are.

So, start to look for the positives. Start to see your team members as assets. What might they be able to take off your plate and do even better? I don’t want your expectation to be that they must do it better, but I do want you to humble yourself and just open yourself up to the possibility that they might do it just as well, if not better than you.

All right, mistake number four is when people get stuck on the short term instead of focusing on the long-term goal, when it comes to delegating. And what I mean by this is you’re focused on getting work off of your plate immediately.

You come into delegating, and the only reason you’re doing it is to free up your time in this instance. And I promise you, if you’re doing this, you’re going to encounter so much frustration because it’s not going to get more work off your plate in the short term. In fact, it’s probably going to add more work to your plate in the short term.

Delegating isn’t a short-term solution to overwhelm. Delegating is a long-term solution to not just overwhelm but also to freeing you up so you’re able to do your most meaningful work. So, you’re able to operate in that zone of genius, free up your mental capacity to do the work that only you can do and leave that other work, that other people can do almost as well as you can do it, for them.

So, instead of focusing on the short term, I want you to focus on the long-term goal here, which is building your dream team. And I need you to settle into the fact that it may make your shoes pinch a little tighter in the interim, as you work out the kinks and learn how to delegate and learn how to work with the person that you’re assigning work to.

Now, mistake number five is a big one for my time pressed people. It’s when you tell yourself that you don’t have the time to delegate. Instead of telling yourself this, again, this is a thought, just like, “I don’t know what to delegate.” It’s a thought that your brain is going to serve up to you.

It’s going to seem really logical, and it’s going to continue to have you tolerate the status quo. Where you don’t delegate your work, you do everything yourself, and you never get any relief. There’s never any reprieve from all of the things that you’re currently doing, all the stuff that you currently have on your plate.

So, instead of telling yourself that you don’t have the time, which is just an excuse; it is not true. Instead, I want you to make the time. We all have the same 24 hours in a day, so I want you to make the time both for auditing and assessing, so you can figure out what you’re going to delegate.

And then also, for assigning the tasks that you’re going to delegate. Giving those instructions, reviewing someone’s work product, and then making yourself available to answer questions in order to get work products that you actually want to receive; that’s actually good, that’s actually meeting your needs. So, you want to make sure you carve out time for all of that.

For auditing and assessing, you’re going to plan out your week and figure out a portion of your week, it doesn’t have to be lengthy. Even if you spend 15 to 30 minutes doing this, it doesn’t have to be a huge chunk of time. But you want to make sure you carve out specific time to do that audit and assessment of, what could I have delegated from last week? What will I delegate going forward over the course of this next week?

And then, you might need to plan out specifically, what you’re going to assign before you actually assign it. Then you’re going to have to plan meeting with the person that you’re going to assign the work to. And make sure you build in time to review their work product. So, there’s going to be a couple different chunks on your calendar so you can ensure that you have the time set aside to properly delegate.

Which brings me to mistake number six. So many people make the mistake of waiting till the last minute to delegate and they don’t leave themselves enough time. Then they don’t end up delegating, because they don’t leave enough time to properly assign the work or to review it or to make themselves available for questions.

So, they’re on such a tight time crunch that at the very last minute they decide, “I don’t even have time to delegate this. I need to do it myself. It makes the most sense for me to do it myself.” And in those instances, it probably, again, does make sense for you to do it yourself because it’s going to be easier.

You already know what you want to be done. You know how you want to do it. You know how to do it, right? So, it’s going to be easier for you to do it in those last-minute moments instead of waiting to the last minute and putting yourself in that double bind, in that time crunch.

I want you to be really realistic, and work backwards from the deadline. And include enough time to plan how you’re going to assign it, to actually assign it, give the person enough time to work on it, and then give yourself time to review it. And then to flip it back to them in order for them to make revisions.

I don’t want you making the revisions. If you make the revisions, they’re not going to get any better at giving you work product that meets your requirements, that meets your standards. So, you want to review their work and then flip it back to them. Okay? But you want to make sure that you give yourself enough time by working backwards from the deadline.

And focusing on the math whenever we’re working with time management. We always want to be clear on what the math requirement is, the time commitment is, with anything that we’re doing. Delegating is no different here. You want to make sure you get the ‘math of delegating’ down. Okay?

All right. Mistake number seven is not getting clear on the result you want, and hastily giving out instructions. You don’t take time on the front end to actually figure out what it is you’re asking for. So many people make the mistake of thinking that they’re really clear when they’re assigning work to other people.

And I see this time and time again with my clients. They’re actually not being nearly as clear as they think they are. And a lot of times, this is the result of hastily giving out instructions, rather than taking some time and being thoughtful on the front end.

So, there’s a couple different ways that you can do this. Number one, you can focus on the end result that you want and work backwards. Get really clear on all the steps that someone would need to take in order to follow the yellow brick road to get to that ultimate end result.

Another thing you can do is walk through assignments from the start. You can even do it yourself one time, to identify all the different steps that you would take if you were the one completing this work, and create a process for someone to follow. And if you do that, you identify all the steps, then you can send someone that process and it will walk them through the assignment step by step.

But you’re going to be so clear on exactly what it is you want and exactly what you’re asking for. And you’re going to be able to clearly communicate that to the person that you’re delegating the work to. Rather than waiting to the last minute, delegating in a rush, not being clear, giving confusing instructions, and really not having any clue what it is you’re looking for on the front end yourself.

It’s like you think you have an idea, but you don’t really know. So, we want to make sure that you’re thoughtful instead of rushing through this process.

Another area, with delegating, that people start to rush is with after they’ve assigned the work. So, Mistake number eight is when you end up being impatient, you get discouraged, and you give up halfway through the delegation process. So, maybe you delegated the task to begin with. All right? You identified the work that you wanted to assign to someone, you assign it, and then when they flip it back to you, you’re really dissatisfied with the work product that you received.

And instead of being patient and continuing to work with them, figuring out where they went wrong, where weren’t you clear, helping problem solve, giving more clear instructions, flipping it back to them, giving them another stab at the assignment to figure it out and work through the kinks.

Instead of doing that, you get really discouraged and really frustrated and you give up halfway through and you take it back and you say, “Screw it. I’m going to do this instead. I’ll just take it from here. It’s going to be a lot faster if I do it myself.”

Instead of doing that, I want you to recommit to your desired result. Pay attention. Notice if you start to get frustrated or discouraged, and just allow those emotions to be there. Take a deep breath, recognize them, sit with them for a second, but don’t let them drive the bus and be reacting to them. That’s what’s going to cause you to give up halfway through and take the work back yourself.

Instead, I want you to remember, we’re focused not on the short-term goal here, but on the long-term result of you building a team that can truly support you in a meaningful way going forward. And that’s going to take a little bit of time to iron out all of the issues and to really help someone understand what it is you’re looking for.

So, I want you to recommit to your desired result and make sure you follow through and stay the course. If you don’t do this, if you don’t follow through and stay the course, you’re never going to be in a position where you have a team that can actually support you.

Because every time, you’re going to assign something, get work product back that you don’t like, get frustrated and fed up, and then you’re going to do it. And you’re going to get smarter and better at completing the task the way you want it completed, rather than the person you’re assigning the work to, getting smarter and better at completing the task that you assigned to them. All right?

So, we definitely want to make sure that you stay the course and work through this process, even if it’s a little painful and frustrating.

All right, mistake number nine that I see people make is that they make a ton of assumptions about why people did the things that they did. So, when you get work product back that you don’t love; when someone either doesn’t follow your instructions, or maybe they think they followed your instructions, but you disagree with them.

Whatever the case may be, my clients will start to make assumptions about why the people that they’re supervising did the things that they did. And normally, I’ve talked about this in other episodes, normally people’s assumptions are very negative. We tend to assume the worst-case scenario.

So, a lot of people, when they’re assigning work to others and they get work product back that they don’t love, they assume a couple things. Number one, that the person just didn’t care. That is almost never the reason that you get back work product that doesn’t meet your standards. Okay? Another assumption that people will make is that people just aren’t smart enough or capable of figuring it out.

And these are two thoughts that are really close minded, short-sighted, and really pessimistic, that are not going to serve you creating the team that you want to have at the end of the day. Instead, I want you to remember that you have no idea why someone did the things that they did, or why they didn’t do what they didn’t do. You’re not a mind reader, so stop making assumptions.

If you really want to know, get curious and ask them. Why did you do this? How did you get here? What didn’t I explain clearly enough? And I love starting with the assumption that it’s actually something that you did. Not that it’s something that’s wrong with them, but that you could have explained it better.

If you operate from a place of curiosity, rather than from frustration or from a place where you’re beating yourself up, you just remain curious. You can tap into that wealth of information where you can start to see, “Oh, I could have done this differently. I could have been clear about this. I could have explained this in a different way, and maybe that would have helped.”

It’s how you’re going to get better at assigning work to other people, if you stay curious and understand what went wrong here. What could I have done differently? How can I improve next time? I also want you to ask questions to help problem-solve with your team member, rather than assuming that they’re just not competent or that they don’t care.

If it wasn’t either of those things, what else might it be? All right? Try and think of a positive motive. Maybe they didn’t understand something. This isn’t super positive, but it’s a little bit more of a compassionate explanation. Maybe they didn’t understand something, and they didn’t want to bother you. Or they were trying to figure it out and took their best guess themselves, or they felt inadequate and insecure about speaking up and raising their hand.

A lot of people get frustrated when their team members behave like that, but it’s a really relatable occurrence because most of us are all operating under that discomfort avoidance model. We’re all trying to avoid the most immediate discomfort. And for the members of your team that you’re supervising, it’s probably going to be uncomfortable for them to raise their hand and ask for help or ask for clarification with something.

So, you just want to be cognizant of that. If you are going to make an assumption, make a more positive one. Make one that allows you to feel understanding and accepting rather than feeling really frustrated, resentful, and annoyed, okay? But ultimately, problem solve with them. Try and get to the bottom of it. Really figure out what went wrong. What would you do differently next time, in order to remedy the situation?

All right, now on to mistake number 10, which is when you ignore the importance of analysis by telling someone instead of teaching the why. So, whoever you’re supervising, whoever you delegate it to, they’re going to come back and they’re going to ask you some questions. Also, sub-little mistake here, not leaving time for people to ask you questions or not making yourself available for people to ask you questions.

I talked about that earlier a little bit, with waiting to the last minute and making sure that you make time. But you always want to leave room specifically for questions and make yourself available to questions. If people don’t reach out to you to ask questions, I highly encourage you to go to them and force them to ask you questions, because I’m sure they probably have them.

So, set up a standing meeting with your team if necessary, and make it known that the expectation is that they come with questions, and that you’re not going to end the meeting until they ask them. Now, when it comes to question asking and answering, when the person that you’re delegating to asks you a question, it’s going to be really easy and really comfortable for you to just give them the answer.

But instead of doing that, I want you to require them to answer their own questions first. All right? So, they’re going to come with a question, and instead of just giving them the answer, you’re going to say, “What’s your answer to your own question first?” And you’re going to hold them accountable for giving you an answer.

And the reason this is so important, is because when you answer the question, your brain is the one that gets smarter. All right? You get more skilled at solving these problems. What we want is their brain to get more skilled at solving these problems. And the only way that that’s going to happen is if they get more at-bats of solving these problems themselves.

Now, you’re not leaving them to their own devices to have to figure out everything unsupported, you’re going to be there to guide them. But what you want to do is teach them your analysis. You want to teach them your why. And if you ask them to answer their own question first, you’re going to be able to see how they think. And then you’re going to see where their analysis goes haywire, where it goes off the rails, where they’re right and where they’re wrong.

And when you see where they’re going off script or they’re going off track, you’re going to be able to explain your own analysis to them, so they can start to think like you. That’s really what we want. When we’re delegating, over time we want people to anticipate your needs and to analyze problems, just like you analyze them.

So, we want to teach your analysis. And the only way that we can do that is if you get clear on what their analysis is initially, and then you can teach them yours if the two don’t match. All right? Now, this is going to be uncomfortable for you because they’re not going to want to answer their own questions. They’re going to want you to spoon feed them the answers. Because that’s way more comfortable than them having to go out on a limb and answer their own question first.

I know this firsthand, because one of the coaches that I do contract work for, it was my first coaching gig after I got certified, even before I started my own business. I was working for another coach, and she forced us to do this, and I hated it. And in the beginning, I would try and sneak one by her and get away with asking a question, hoping that she would just give me the answer.

But every time I did this, she would hold me accountable. And she would force me to come up with my own answer first. And I hated it. It made me super uncomfortable to go out on a limb and take my best guess because I was afraid of being wrong.

My perfectionism was really coming up in full force. I wanted to be able to feel smart and intelligent and not have to feel exposed or vulnerable because I was taking an educated guess. But what happened through this process is, number one, it helps me build my confidence, because sometimes I was just right.

And she would tell me, “Yes, that’s exactly right. That’s the answer. Go do that.” And other times, I would learn, I would get clear and come up with my own theory, she would show me where I went off the tracks, and then she would help steer me towards the right answer. And she would teach me her reasoning so then I could start to think like her and approach problems and come up with solutions from a similar vantage point with a similar ideology, a similar mindset.

So, it made me feel more capable, in time, as I was learning things on the go, as we encountered each of these questions and worked through each of these problems. It also had the benefit of helping me build my confidence. Because sometimes I would have a question, but I would know that I would have to go through this process.

I would have to come up with my own answer and have her review it. And that sometimes felt like a lot of work. And when I was 80% sure, or 90% sure of my answer, rather than go through all that rigmarole, I would just trust myself. I would come up with my own answer, and I would implement that answer without running it by her first.

What that taught me was to rely on my own opinion. To treat myself like an expert. To figure things out. To tap into my own resourcefulness. To trust myself. And almost always, my answer was sufficient, nothing went wrong, I answered it perfectly fine. And I was just able to move on and keep going.

That helped me really increase my self-confidence, to believe in myself and feel so much more capable as I went through the day-to-day of this position. So, your people are going to get the same benefit when you have them do this. Make your team answer their own questions. Don’t spoon feed them the answers. See how they think and explain your analysis after they’ve given you their own best guess. All right?

No more spoon feeding. You’re going to go through this process, even though they’re going to tell you, “I don’t know what the answer is.” Don’t let them get away with that. Make them give you an actual answer, not an ‘I don’t know’.

Okay, mistake number 11 is when you avoid uncomfortable conversations. This one is especially for my people pleasers who don’t like to hurt people’s feelings. Now, remember, I’ve already talked about this on the podcast before, but you actually don’t hurt another person’s feelings. We hurt our own feelings by the thoughts that we think about a neutral circumstance.

So, if someone’s feelings are hurt, that’s because of their thinking about whatever you say or do. Okay? You just want to be aware of that. You don’t have to take on responsibility for how they’re feeling. Now, that being said, that’s no reason for you to operate as a jerk in the world. You want to make sure that you’re giving feedback from a clean space.

And I’ve recorded episodes on that, as a guide for you to give feedback in a really positive, productive, intentional manner, rather than from a negative emotion being fueled by frustration, resentment, anger, disappointment, any of those emotions, which isn’t going to lead to anything good. But if you’re a people pleaser, and you’re worried about upsetting someone, and you’re uncomfortable with someone else’s discomfort, you’re probably not going to speak up and have a really candid conversation.

Which is going to do one of two things, it’s either going to drive you to continue to tolerate subpar work, or you’re not going to delegate because of this, you’re not going to get the work product that you want. And then this whole process is going to be really futile. You’re just going to keep doing everything yourself, which does not solve the problem that we’re trying to remedy by learning to delegate and doing it effectively.

So, instead of avoiding the uncomfortable conversations because of guilt, worry, or fear, I want you to practice radical candor. You want to be really honest with the person. Now, this does not mean you want to be judgmental, we got to curb the judgment. But you want to be honest, from a curious place, from an understanding place, from an accepting place, from a supportive place.

And I want you to focus, again, on that long-term goal of building the team of your dreams. And from a place where you’re believing that getting the end result that you want is possible. If you think it’s not possible, you’re going to throw in the towel. So, you have to make sure that you’re cultivating the mindset and you’re operating from a place of strong belief that you can get the result that you want, through the process of delegating.

Now, it may be uncomfortable for you to practice radical candor, that is okay. Gagging-and-go through that discomfort, you will survive it. It’s not going to be the most fun conversation of your life, but it’s going to be worthwhile. And that’s really all that we’re focused on here: Taking meaningful action in order to create the result you want when it comes to delegating, and freeing yourself up to do your most meaningful work in the world.

Okay, last but not least, mistake number 12. It’s when you don’t diversify your delegation. A lot of people are really myopic when it comes to delegating. They don’t diversify, they don’t use different avenues. So, I want you to put your thinking cap on and think of different ways that you’re able to delegate.

So, there may be different team members that you’re not currently utilizing. Maybe you’re only thinking of your assistant or a subordinate attorney, right? Maybe an associate or a junior partner, if you’re a partner. I want you to think of other team members that you may not be utilizing. Then, I want you to think about ways that you may not be utilizing them.

Again, this goes back to talking to other colleagues, doing some research, the lost art of dictation really has gone away. And I think that’s an area that would really make a lot of people more effective and more productive, if you were delegating rather than spending so much time typing things and doing everything yourself. But I want you to use different avenues.

Also ask yourself: Are there tech solutions that I can implement here? Can I let tech do some of the work for me? You don’t just have to delegate to a live person, right? We’ve got a lot of AI solutions that are being invented and coming out and being released in the legal space. Are there any of those solutions that you might be able to implement?

I also want you to think outside of the workplace. Are there areas and tasks that you can delegate in your personal life. And you can think about different services? Are there single tasks you want to delegate? Are there ongoing tasks that you do frequently that you want to delegate? Are there some subscription services that you might be able to pay for, sign up for, in order to offload some of that responsibility and free up some of your time?

There are so many different options at your disposal, so many different avenues that are available to you, if you just give yourself some time to brainstorm those solutions. To give some thought to what would make a difference for you; what you hate doing, what you’d love to get rid of, what you’d love to delegate certain tasks that you’d love to take off of your plate. As you start to identify those, you can start to look for different nuanced ways, diversified ways, to get rid of those tasks. Okay?

All right. These are the 12 most common mistakes that I see people make when it comes to delegating. If you’re making them, I don’t want you to beat yourself up. I just want you to be onto yourself. I gave you, for each one, some quick suggestions of what to do instead. Okay, those are quick suggestions. In the next episode, I’m going to break it down much more specifically, and I’m going to give you a process to follow.

We’re going to talk about the mindset that you need to cultivate in order to delegate effectively. And then, I’m going to teach you the process of how to do it effectively, alright? The step-by-step, follow-the-yellow-brick-road plan to get you from where you’re not delegating to where you are delegating, and how to do it in the most effective efficient manner.

Okay, this is going to be a game changer for you. We’re going to free you up to do your most meaningful work; get the stuff off your plate that you hate doing, that you don’t really have time to do. It’s going to give you so much of your time back, so much of your mental energy back. And it’s going to allow you to have more time outside of work because you’re not going to be buried doing all these things that it really doesn’t make sense for you to do.

I can’t wait for you to be on the other side of this delegation issue. Where you’re doing it effectively and you’re really reaping the benefits of having done it. It’s going to be so good.

All right, my friends. That’s 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 52. Today, we’re talking all about mismatched expectations. 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 this week? Before we dive into today’s topic, we have to celebrate. It is the official one-year anniversary of The Less Stressed Lawyer podcast. How exciting is that? I have been coming to you through your speakers for a whole year, teaching you how to live a life with less stress, and far more fulfillment.

Teaching you how to implement thought work into your daily life in order to have a better lived experience. In order to harness the awareness that you get from coaching and implementing the tools that I teach you on the podcast. In order to make meaningful, lasting changes in your life.

Changing how you think, changing how you feel, changing how you show up, and ultimately changing the results that you produce. So, I hope you will join me in celebrating this milestone. I’m super excited about it.

I am not always the best at celebrating my accomplishments and really taking pride in the things that I do; I tend to be pretty future-focused. So, I’m always looking, what’s the next thing on the horizon? What’s coming next? Which is one of the reasons that I spend so much time teaching you about how to define ‘enough’ in order to be able to celebrate the milestones when you achieve them.

But even though I’m not the best at celebrating some of those moments, I am really proud of this accomplishment. This has been quite an undertaking if I’m being honest. Creating a weekly podcast is a tight turnaround time and I have a very full schedule. So, it has truly been an exercise in discipline, and in commitment to produce this for you every week. But I love that I get to come through your speakers and talk to you and teach you all these things. It’s so much fun.

I’m very proud that I’ve been doing it for a year, and I can’t wait to be talking to you this time next year, celebrating two years of the podcast. I was thinking about this, and I knew that I was going to talk about this little tidbit in the beginning of the episode, and I just wanted you to take a second and join me. What is something that you are proud of yourself for accomplishing right now? Take a minute and join me; celebrate yourself, take pride, allow yourself to feel accomplished. It feels so good.

Alright, now that you’ve thought of that, we can shift gears and talk about today’s topic: Mismatched expectations. I see so many people struggle with constantly feeling frustrated and disappointed. Those are probably two of the most common emotions that I see my clients experience, that I see other people in the world experience. And typically, they feel this way because they have expectations that go unmet.

Their expectations don’t match the reality that they experience so there’s a mismatched expectation. Now, most people also don’t realize that this is what’s going on. Most people blame the circumstances that they’re encountering in their lives for how they’re feeling. They think that what’s going on in the world around them or other people’s actions are causing how they feel. But that’s actually not what’s to blame.

Remember, our thinking is what creates every emotion that we experience. And ultimately, our expectations are just thoughts. We have opinions, we have beliefs, we think things should go a certain way or should be a certain way. And that’s just our thinking. So, when we think a thought in the form of an expectation, and then we encounter a reality that doesn’t match it, we end up experiencing frustration and disappointment because we think that it should be different than it is. Right?

You expected one thing and you got another. The point of today’s episode, I’m going to walk you through a couple examples, but I want to give you a framework for what to do when you notice yourself experiencing frustration or disappointment. I want you to be able to take inventory of what’s going on, to identify and articulate your own expectations, and then decide if you want to keep them or not.

You always get to choose to feel negative emotions if you want to. But I want you to become aware of exactly why you feel the way that you feel. Why you feel frustrated or disappointed in any given moment. Provide you with a way to create a lot of awareness for yourself.

And then, if you choose to want to feel differently, how to shift out of that negative emotion into, probably not the rosiest of emotions, but if we can get you to understanding and accepting that would be great. So, I’m going to teach you how to do that today.

Here’s the framework I want you to follow. When you notice yourself experiencing one of these emotions, frustration, or disappointment, I want you to ask yourself these questions. First, ask yourself: What did I expect? And get really clear on what your expectation was. Pretty quickly, you’re going to see that your expectation was different from the reality that you’re experiencing. So, you want to get clear on what that expectation is.

Then, the second question you’re going to answer is: Why was that your expectation? Why did you expect that? Now, this question is important, because what you’ll see, sometimes your expectations are based on something; either a past experience, or something that you’ve been taught over the years, what society gets us to start to expect. So, you’ll see what it’s based on, and then you can question: Does it make sense for me to keep this or not?

Other times, though, you’ll notice that your expectation really isn’t based on anything. It’s like your brain just invented, what it expected, an experience to be like, and it won’t be based on anything at all. So, it’s kind of funny when you start to question this. It’s like, “Well, why was I expecting that? I don’t even know why I was expecting that. My brain just offered this to me.” And I think that’s something that we do to make sense and predict the future because we love certainty.

So, rather than not having an expectation, as human creatures, we’re used to coming up with an expectation in order to create a relatively false sense of security for ourselves. If that’s what’s happening, you just want to notice it. And then it’s really easy to shift your expectation if you notice, “Oh, I just invented that idea. It wasn’t supposed to be like that at all. I didn’t know what to expect. But I was expecting it to be different than it was.” And you can shift out of that.

Now, the next question, the third question that I want you to ask only works if it’s a situation where you’re dealing with someone else’s actions. The question is: Did you communicate your expectation to the person that you’re interacting with? I want you to assume that you didn’t communicate it, at least not clearly enough.

So, I want you to get curious and learn from this incident, and figure out how you could have explained it differently, how you could have communicated your expectation differently, in order to create a situation that’s different from the current one that you’re in. What would you have done differently, in order to get reality to more closely align with your expectation?

Always assume responsibility for this. Take radical ownership; that you could have explained it in a way that would have gotten you closer to the reality that you wanted. Alright?

Question number four: Do you want to adjust your expectation? Once you’ve gotten clear on what you expected and why you expect that, do you want to adjust your expectation? There’s no requirement for you to adjust your expectation. You absolutely get to keep it if you want to, you just have to take the frustration and disappointment that comes with having the expectation when it’s unmet, okay? When there’s a mismatch between reality and the expectation you had for reality.

If you do want to change your expectation, what do you want to change it to? What’s your new expectation? Do you want your expectation to match your current experience? That’s up to you if that’s what you want.

And the last question that I want you to answer, and this is going to help cultivate that sense of understanding, that feeling of acceptance, instead of being at war with reality. I want you to ask and answer: How does the reality you’re currently experiencing make sense? Make it make sense to yourself, don’t allow yourself to indulge in ‘I don’t know’.

Your brain might want to serve up to you that you don’t know why it makes sense or that it doesn’t make sense. I want you to get creative and force yourself to answer this question. How does the current reality make sense?

Alright, now let’s talk about some specific examples. The first one that I wanted to talk about, where I see people commonly experience frustration or disappointment, is with delegating work. I’m getting ready to do a two-part episode on delegating specifically, because it’s been coming up so frequently with my clients.

It’s one of the things we work on a ton together; managing expectations with delegating, how to do it effectively. People make so many mistakes when it comes to delegating, so I’m going to do a two-part episode on that really soon.

But here, I want to talk about the mismatched expectations that we experience and encounter with delegating. So, you assign something to someone, and then you get work product back and you’re disappointed by it. Or maybe, it’s not work product that you get back, but they did something and the result of whatever they did isn’t what you expected.

Now, people mistakenly believe that the work product itself is what causes their feelings of frustration and disappointment. But that’s not true. Remember, your thoughts cause your feelings. So, it’s how you think about the work product that you received, that causes you to experience those emotions. And like I said earlier, our expectations are just thoughts.

So, you expected something different than what you’ve got. And it’s the mismatched expectation here that your expectation did not match reality that is actually the problem. When this happens, I want you to ask yourself: What did you expect? Get really clear on what the expectation was.

One of my favorite examples of this… I worked with a transactional attorney, and he was really frustrated that the associate, he was a partner, the associate that he was working with, she wasn’t responsive enough. That was his opinion of her. I asked him, “Well, what does ‘responsive enough’ mean to you?”

They were working on a deal. I generally had a sense he was from big law. He had worked at an Am Law 20 firm for a really long time. He’s still at an Am Law firm. I generally had a pretty good idea of what I thought his expectation was, but I asked him what the expectation was, and he really wasn’t clear on it.

I finally offered him my best guess, and I said, “My guess is that you would like the associate to respond to your email within 30 minutes, if it’s between the hours of 6am and 11pm.” Now, you might hear that, and you might think that that expectation is unreasonable. That’s not what this episode is about. You are entitled to expect whatever you want. Whether or not your expectation serves you, is a completely different story.

For this attorney, when he’s working on a deal closing and it’s close to the closing date, that was actually was his expectation. So, when I communicated it to him, he was like, “Yep, that actually is what I’m expecting.”

And then I got to ask the next question, which is, “Why are you expecting that?” We got clear on his reasons. That, in part, that’s how he was trained when he was coming up as a new associate. Also, based on the type of work that they were doing, it made sense for him and the associate to be in frequent communication.

Then I asked the next question, “Did you communicate this expectation to the associate?” And, of course, he said no. Because oftentimes people don’t communicate that specific of instructions or expectations to the people that they’re working with. Right? So, he wasn’t getting that in response.

Now, this isn’t to say, just because you communicate an expectation that people have to comply with it. You can communicate an expectation, and the associate here would have free will and agency to make a decision; am I going to comply and meet the expectation? Am I going to not meet the expectation? Do I want to set a boundary instead? It’s totally up to her, she gets to make that decision.

Once we discovered that he hadn’t communicated the expectation, you get to decide, do I want to adjust the expectation? Or do I want to keep it and probably communicate it, to at least empower someone to make a more informed decision?

One of the things that I explained to him was, the associate probably doesn’t know she’s not meeting your expectations because there is a lack of clarity around what the expectation is. She might think she’s being perfectly responsive, and you aren’t satisfied with her level of responsiveness. So, communicating the expectation empowers everyone in that situation.

Now, turns out, he didn’t want to communicate it because he actually thought that the expectation sounded a little ridiculous. Again, this isn’t a judgment on the expectation. But if you realize that you aren’t comfortable communicating your expectation, I highly suggest that you change what your expectation is.

Because if you’re not going to change the expectation, but you’re unwilling to communicate it, chances are your expectation’s going to continue to go unmet. You’re just going to ensure future frustration and disappointment for yourself if you don’t change the expectation. So, check in with yourself: Do you want to change the expectation?

Now, you could do it to where you get to an expectation that you actually feel comfortable communicating. Maybe you want the person to respond every hour, and within a different timeframe, if you’re delegating work and you’re not getting it as fast as you want it. Ask yourself: What did you expect? Actually, get clear on when you expect to receive the work product. And then: Why was that your expectation? Was it based on anything or is that just the amount of time that sounded really reasonable to you?

And then: Did you communicate that expectation to the person you delegated the work to? Do you want to keep that expectation? If you don’t, what do you want to change it to instead, going forward?

I also had a client, he was also a transactional attorney, and he assigned someone to put together deal binders. There was a specific way he wanted them done. When the associate that he delegated the assignment to returned the binders, they weren’t what he wanted. So again, he was frustrated and disappointed with the work product that he received.

You want to go through these steps. What did you expect? Why did you expect that? Did you communicate the expectation? And here, he said he did communicate the expectation. But like I said a moment ago, I want you to go through that question and assume that the answer is no, that you didn’t clearly communicate the expectation. Because that pushes you into curiosity, to problem solve for why you didn’t get back work product that you were satisfied with.

What could you have explained differently? Did you need to give an example, a template, for someone to go off of? How could you have been more clear? What didn’t you explain? That’s where you want to bring your focus and attention to. And then, do you want to keep your expectation here? You probably do want to keep your expectation that you get binders back the exact way that you want them done.

Now, that last question is also so important. Why does it make sense? Why does the current reality make sense? That’s going to help shift you into understanding and accepting, feeling those feelings, instead of frustrated and disappointed.

Similar to the delegating arena, another place where I see people experience a ton of frustration and disappointment, is when it comes to encountering other people’s actions, most specifically, when you expect yourself from other people.

So, I would classify this as unreciprocated behavior; when you expect someone to act in a situation, how you would act in that situation. Or at least, how you think you would act. When the person does something differently, you feel frustrated and disappointed as a result. Because you had an expectation that someone behave differently than the way that they ended up behaving.

Maybe you are known for dropping everything and helping someone when someone asks for your help, whether it’s a colleague, a client, or a friend or a family member, okay? Then when you ask for help, they say no instead. And you feel really frustrated and disappointed being on the receiving end of their ‘no.’

It’s not because they said no, that’s not why you feel these feelings. You feel these feelings because you expected them to not say no; your expectation doesn’t match the reality that you’re experiencing. So, check in with yourself. What specifically did you expect from them? You expected their behavior to be different.

But how different did you expect it to be? What did you expect their behavior to be instead? I want you to get really clear on that. Don’t just say you expected it to be different than what it was. How, exactly, did you expect it to be? What did you expect to happen?

You want to get clear on that because it’s going to help you answer the second question: Why did you expect that? And again, your reason’s probably going to be, “Because that’s what I would have done.” This is going to be a situation where you’re probably going to want to adjust your expectation.

When we expect ourselves from other people, we really set ourselves up to experience so much frustration and disappointment. Now, ask yourself, you’ve got to check in here again: Did you communicate your expectation? If the answer’s no: Do you want to communicate it?

This is really good when it comes to gift-giving. I learned this from a marriage coach friend of mine; her name is Maggie Reyes. She always teaches the concept “would you rather be surprised or satisfied?” It’s awesome if you could be both, but that doesn’t always happen. Reality doesn’t always provide us with the opportunity to be both surprised and satisfied.

So, if you have to choose between the two, which would you prefer? Some people might choose to be surprised and that’s totally fine. Chances of you being unsatisfied if you allow yourself to be surprised? Much more likely. If you’re like me and you’d rather be satisfied, you probably want to communicate the gift that you want, prior to the gift-giving event, right? Whether it’s your birthday or another holiday.

Did you communicate it? Do you want to communicate it, in order to increase the likelihood, not guarantee, but at least increase the likelihood that your expectations are met?

Alright. When it comes to another person’s behavior, you ask yourself: What did I expect specifically? Why did I expect that? And then: Did you communicate it or not? Do you want to communicate it? Or, do you want to adjust your expectation? And chances are, especially when you’re expecting yourself from other people, you probably will want to adjust your expectation.

Because you are going to experience so much more frustration and disappointment in your life, when you have that expectation, and other people invariably don’t meet it. So, get clear: What do you want to expect instead?

One of the things that I’ve come to expect instead, is for people to just show up as themselves. I expect people to just be who they are. And I am going to accept them for who they are, in their most authentic version. And then, in order to get myself to that place of understanding and acceptance, I’m going to answer the question: How does the reality that I’m currently experiencing make sense?

One of the things that I have done for myself, is that I notice when people are acting in conformity with the way that they typically act. That always allows me to get to that understanding and place of acceptance. So, if someone’s acting “on brand”, it will make a lot of sense to me that they’re acting in conformity with the way that they always act. So, of course, this is how they’re acting. Of course, they’re not behaving differently than the way that they typically behave.

I also will think about why someone is acting the way that they’re acting. And normally, I can figure out what their motive is, and that it makes sense to me. I may not like it, but I can at least get myself to the place where it makes sense. And when I get myself to the place where it makes sense, I feel very accepting and understanding.

I also remind myself that people get to do whatever they want to do, and that people have free will. That really opens me up to those two emotions, as well. You can walk yourself through that same exercise in order to get to those emotions for yourself.

The third big area that I see people really struggle with feeling disappointed or dissatisfied or frustrated, is their satisfaction with the current results they have in their life. I’m going to use the example of a career, but it could really be anything. It could be your relationship status, it could be where you live, all of these things.

But specifically, when it comes to your career, do you feel frustrated and disappointed with what you have right now, with what your current experience is like right now? If you are experiencing those feelings, I want you to ask yourself: What did you expect? What did you expect your day-to-day experience to be like? How is it currently different from the reality that you’re experiencing? How did you expect your career, on a whole, to be different than what you’re currently experiencing?

The area where I see a ton of frustration, very commonly, is with compensation. What did you expect? A lot of people have mismatched expectations; their expectations, the compensation that they’re currently receiving. What did you expect? That’s where we want to start. Get really clear on what you expected your life to look like instead.

Then from there, ask yourself: Why did you expect that? Why did you expect your day-to-day to be different than it is? Why did you expect to maybe be further along than you are? Why did you expect your compensation to be different than it is?

This is really one of those areas where your brain just creates an expectation for you sort of based on nothing. It came up with an idea. The reality would be different than it currently is. It doesn’t really come from anywhere, it’s just what you thought it was going to be like. Your brain just serves you up some idea, and then we’re constantly measuring reality against that idea that we formulated based on nothing, right?

A lot of people I work with expect to be making a lot more money than what they’re making. And when I dig into this, what did you expect instead, a lot of times, they can’t articulate what they expected. They just want to be making more. But I’m like, “Okay, how much more?”

And then when we finally put a number on it, I’m like, “Why do you expect to be making that? You accepted this job offer. You were making X amount, and the compensation structure is a specific way,” right? That you’re going to get raises in this increment. Or you can expect to receive salary increases in this amount based on what you’ve received in the past. Or you expected to receive a much bigger bonus.

When I ask about that, “What’s the bonus structure like? What’s it based on? How do they calculate that amount?” When we do this, what we start to see is that they expected something that’s really detached from reality. It doesn’t make sense how they would ever get to that number, based on the current compensation model that they’re operating within.

So, this brings us to that next question: Do you want to change your expectation? If you’re unwilling to change your job and you’re unwilling to develop business or do the things that would allow you to increase your compensation in the way that you want, then you should adjust your expectation. Otherwise, you’re just going to constantly be operating in a state of frustration, disappointment, and dissatisfaction.

If you can get to the number where you’re at without changing jobs, amazing. Do the work that you need to do in order to get and qualify for that compensation that you’d like to have.

Your other option is to change the circumstance. So, you can keep your expectation that you make a certain amount, but you would change where you work in order to make it more likely that you’re operating within a compensation framework that allows you to meet your expectations.

You would want to switch to someplace where you are compensated for the business you develop, and the origination credit you get aligns with your income expectations, or the salary is just higher, right? Those are your options there.

Same thing with your expectations about your day-to-day: What do you expect it to be like? How is the current expectation not meeting your current reality? What did you expect instead? What did you expect your day-to-day life to be like? Get really clear on that.

For me, I’ve had to do a ton of work on allowing myself to experience boredom. Because what I have learned, is that life on a day-to-day basis is a little bit more boring than I expected life to be. I used to think that that was such a problem, and I would solve for it by buffering and engaging in instant gratification activities that allowed me to feel more entertained, than dealing with the boredom that I was experiencing.

If that’s you and you’re not great at experiencing boredom, what I want you to do is get really clear on what are you expecting instead. For me, what I realized was that I was expecting to feel really exhilarated on a day-to-day basis. And ultimately, I decided to change that expectation, because the pace of a very exhilarating life is actually pretty exhausting.

So, as I’ve shifted my expectation, I’ve come to expect life to be a little bit boring. One of the things that I teach my clients, is that life is 50/50. I talked about this on a recent podcast episode. And not only is it 50% good, 50% bad, we’re going to think 50% of things are good and 50% of things are bad, on average, I also like to split it into the specific emotion.

So, 50% of life is not boring, and 50% of life is boring; I’ve just come to terms with that. And when I came to terms with that and I adjusted my expectations, now my expectations aren’t mismatched, they are much more closely aligned with reality.

For you, if you feel dissatisfied, frustrated, or disappointed with your current life, with the results that you currently have, go through this process. What did you expect? Why did you expect that? Do you want to change or keep your expectation? Do you want to make an adjustment? If you do, what do you want your expectation to be instead? And then, this question is so powerful here: How does the reality you’re currently encountering make sense?

It makes sense that you’re making the amount of money that you’re currently making, based on where you’re working, what you agreed to, and what you’re currently doing. It makes sense that your day-to-day experience is the way that it is, because of the choices that you’re making. Same thing with where you live or your relationship status or your weight, any of those things, how you spend your time.

If you’re dissatisfied with that, if you’re really underwhelmed by different aspects of your life, get clear. What did you expect? Why did you expect it? How does your current reality make sense?

You’re going to see that you should be exactly where you are. Your current experience should be exactly what it is, based on what you’re doing and what you’re not doing, based on the choices that you’re making. When you take radical ownership over those decisions that you make day in and day out, you’re going to a feel way more understanding and accepting of your current reality.

It’s going to really dial down that frustration and that disappointment. It’s also going to empower you to make changes. So, if you realize that you’re the one creating your current results and you want different results, you’re going to start making different decisions. You’re going to start choosing different actions. You’re going to show up differently than the way that you have been showing up, in order to create a different result for yourself.

Alright, that’s what I have for you this week, my friends. I want you to go through and identify, really take inventory of your life. Where are you experiencing frustration? Where are you experiencing disappointment?

And walk through this framework. Get very clear on what your expectation is. What did you expect? Understand why that is your expectation, why did you expect that. Did you communicate it? If it makes sense for you to have communicated an expectation here. Because the expectation is involving someone else’s behavior.

And then from there, do you want to adjust your expectation? Or do you want to keep it? Why or why not? If you want to adjust it, what do you want to adjust it to? You want to be very specific, and then create understanding and acceptance for yourself. How does the current reality make sense?

That’s going to make a huge difference in how you feel on a daily basis. How you feel in conjunction with the results that you have in your life. It’s really going to free up and eliminate so much of the heavy emotional weight that you encounter because of your mismatched expectations. Alright? Have fun taking inventory and going through that exercise. I think it will really help you feel better.

Alright, my friends. That’s what I have for you this 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.