Episode 59: Broken Record Conversations

The Less Stressed Lawyer with Olivia Vizachero | Broken Record Conversations

Have you ever had the same conversation over and over again? Maybe you’re talking about something you don’t like out in the world, but after the conversation, you do nothing to actually change the situation. Then, before you know it, you’re talking about the same problem again without having made any progress. This is a broken record conversation.

Broken record conversations are incredibly indulgent. They don’t serve you or add any value, they’re just something that that feels good for a moment. So whatever you’re dealing with, if you’re ready to stop having broken record conversations and actually do something about your predicament, this episode is for you.

Tune in this week to identify where you’re stuck in broken record conversations. I share some of my own personal development that is the inspiration for this episode, and show you how to be on the lookout for this behavior in your own life so you can ultimately avoid it for yourself.

Early Enrollment for the next round of The Less Stressed Lawyer Mastermind opens May 12th, 2023, with the next live event running from August 23rd through 26th 2023. Spots are limited, so if you don’t want to miss out, I highly recommend you sign up for the waitlist here!

I have a bunch of events coming up. The next one is all about How to Thrive as a Lawyer on May 12th, 2023. I also have an open coaching call On May 19th, 2023. And on May 26th, 2023, I’m doing a meet and Greet Info Session. To register for any of my upcoming events, click here!

 

What You’ll Learn from this Episode:

  • 3 categories of broken record conversations.
  • Why broken record conversations are indulgent and offer zero value.
  • What broken record conversations look like and how to identify them.
  • Why you get stuck in a loop of broken record conversations without ever changing anything.
  • The lies we tell ourselves when we aren’t making progress.
  • How to stop taking part in stagnant broken record conversations.

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Listen to the Full Episode:

Featured on the Show:

Full Episode Transcript:

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.

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