Episode 71: The F*ck It Point

You’re listening to The Less Stressed Lawyer podcast, Episode 71. Today, we’re talking all about the “fuck it” point. 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 pretty good over here in my neck of the woods. I got back from Nashville. My time in Nashville, with my business coach, was amazing. I also got to teach a Breakout room of 12 other entrepreneurs, which was also amazing. I had such an incredible time doing that. I’ve wanted to do that for a really long time.

So, I was in Nashville for a week, and I made a ton of really exciting decisions about my own business and some things that I’m going to be doing in the future. I can’t wait to roll that out over the course of the next several months, and then the next several years. I really did some long-term planning for my business, which is so exciting.

I got to help other people do the same thing for their businesses, so my time in Nashville was super productive. And now, I’m back home in Detroit, getting ready for the live event of The Less Stressed Lawyer Mastermind in Montana. I absolutely can’t wait for that. I can’t wait to be back in Big Sky.

You guys, when I tell you it is stunningly beautiful, it is stunningly beautiful. I’ve never seen that many pine trees in my entire life. There’s just something really breathtaking about it. It looks exactly like A River Runs Through It. When I was there in June, obviously, all of the snow melts in the spring, so the water in the river is really, really high.

So, it comes up, there’s no riverbank, it’s just grass, and then water. It’s so cool. It looks exactly like fly fishing in A River Runs Through It. So, I can’t wait to be back there and see Big Sky in the summer, it’s going to be so marvelous. I’m so excited to be able to enjoy the outdoors. Some of our dinner events are outdoors, so it’s going to be pretty spectacular.

But I’m just getting all of that stuff together while I’m back in the mitten, and then I’ll be heading to Montana. So, that’s a little life update from me. I hope your summer is… I hate to say this, it’s kind of coming to a close pretty soon… but I hope it is coming to a good close.

I just saw something on Instagram today that was talking about how there are four months left in the year. And this is actually funny, I think I talked about this last August with the podcaster on the podcast. But a friend of mine always says that in August, the year is over. I always crack up when she says that because I never think that way.

But I saw this Instagram posts today that said there were four months left in the year. I started doing the math, and I’m like, that can’t be true. I feel like they were definitely rounding to four because we’ve still got most of August, and then September, October, November, and December. But if you’re rounding, or you’re like my friend Cheri, she always says the year is over in August.

So, if you’re feeling that way, I really want you to check in with yourself and ask yourself, are you creating what you wanted to create this year? Are you accomplishing what you wanted to accomplish this year? This episode today, this topic that I want to talk to you about…

Which, spoiler alert! If you listen to this in the car with your kiddos, and you don’t like the swearing, this is not the episode to have them tuned into. Okay? So, I’ve given everyone advanced warning there. Go listen to any of my other episodes, I tend to keep it pretty clean on the podcast.

I try and do that so the little ears can also be present, and maybe pick up a thing or two while you’re listening to this content. Anyways, if you tend to listen to it with little ears round, this is probably not the episode for that.

But check in with yourself. How are you making progress? Are you making progress? Do you feel like you’ve stalled? Do you feel stuck? What’s going on? And if you don’t like the answer that you come up with to that question, the chances are you’re not following through. You’re not doing what you said you were going to do. You’re not implementing the plan that you maybe made earlier in the year.

Or maybe you didn’t even make a plan, you’re just winging it. But if you’re not following through and doing what you said you’re going to do, this episode is really going to help shift you to become the person that does what they say they’re going to do.

So, today specifically, I want to introduce you to a concept that I teach to my clients. I call it the “fuck it” point. I thought about saying the “eff it” point, but I just hate doing that. I prefer the word fuck, so we’re just going to use it a lot today. If you don’t like swearing, I’m very sorry, if you feel offended. It’s just your thoughts about my swearing that make you feel offended, not the words I’m using. Getting very meta on the coaching today.

Anyways, I want to teach you about the “fuck it” point. This is a concept that I teach to my clients. Because when we work together, I get extremely granular and we do that because there’s so much learning going on, when we get extremely granular… I’m using my hands right now, as I say this to you, as I speak into the microphone.

But I basically want to take tweezers to the problems that you face, and we’ve got to like pick them apart bit by bit, and untangle them to really understand what’s going on, on a very microscopic level. When we do that, solving the problems that we’re facing becomes so much easier. Okay?

So, I think people really overcomplicate the problems that they face when they’re not following through, when they’re not honoring the decisions that they’ve made, and when they’re not sticking to their plan and implementing it. And people love to indulge in ‘I don’t know’ thinking here.

They’re like, “I don’t know why I don’t follow through. I don’t know why I don’t stick to my plan. I don’t know why I don’t do the things that I tell myself that I’m going to do.” But if you get really granular and you zoom in on the exact point in time where it comes to you having a decision to follow through or not follow through, then we can gain so much awareness.

And it becomes easier to shift how we respond in this specific, exact moment, to start to make a different decision and be able to actually be consistent and follow through.

So, first things first, you have to make a decision in the first place to do a thing. All right? The next episode on the podcast will be all about entering your billable time, but let’s use that as one of the examples today. So, let’s say you work in a job where you have to enter your billable time.

Now, if you don’t make a decision about when you do this, you’re always going to be deciding in real time, in the moment and that’s going to lead to a disaster, a complete clusterfuck. Because in the moment you’re using your primitive brain, and the primitive brain is always going to seek instant gratification, avoid temporary discomfort, and conserve energy.

So, it’s always going to tell you to enter your time later, that you don’t need to do it right now, that you can do it tomorrow or later in the day, or at the end of the month or whatever. It’s just going to tell you not to do it right now. So, you can’t be using the primitive part of your brain for this exercise, you really need to make a decision ahead of time about what you’re going to do.

In this example, you need to make the decision ahead of time about when you’re going to enter your time. Now, I suggest it be one of two things. Either you enter your time at the end of each day, or you enter it after you complete each task, so contemporaneously throughout the day as you’re working.

Now, I’ll start with the first example. If you decided to enter your time every single day, okay, that means before you rest your head on the pillow at night and you fall asleep, your time would need to be in. Okay? You could also do this so midnight is the cut off, or whatever, if you want to do that. But just whenever your day ends, is when you would need to have your time entered by.

So, before you rest your head on your pillow and close your eyes and tuck yourself in, your time would need to be in. In this example, you’ve made the first decision, which is the frequency and the point at which you’ll do this. Every day before you go to bed. And of course, you can do it at the end of your workday. I just mean that it has to literally be done before you go to bed each day; that’s the last possible moment. Okay?

At that moment, you’ve already made this decision, the first decision of when to enter your time. And now, you’re faced with a new decision. It’s your secondary decision, and it’s whether or not you’re going to stick to the first decision. So, am I going to follow through? Am I going to do what I said I was going to do?

With the second decision that you’re being faced with, you reach this point where you get to choose one of two things. You can either do it and honor your word to yourself and follow through. Or you can say fuck it, and do it later, blow it off, go to bed, ignore the original decision.

You make it a tomorrow you problem, or future you problem, or first day of the month or last day of the month you problem. But you specifically… this is the internal dialogue that’s actually going on in your head. It might be conscious, but it might also be subconscious. You might not use these exact words, but I want to give you this language so you can watch yourself as you make the first decision to do something.

And then, you reach the second decision, which is to follow through with what you decided. You have this internal conflict going on in your head, do I follow through or do I not? Do I follow through or do I say fuck it and break my promise to myself? It’s at this moment, at the fuck it point, which is what I call it, that you want to resist the urge to say fuck it, and you want to follow through. Okay?

So, you want to know that that’s what the urge is going to be for you to do, is to say fuck it, and not honor your original decision. You’ve got to interrupt yourself in that moment and choose to commit and follow the original decision that you made and follow through.

Now, part of that, I’ve talked about this a ton on the podcast, is going to require you to feel certain feelings. So, what I mean by this is, if you have made the decision ahead of time to put your time in every single day, then at 12:06am, when you’re climbing into bed… Maybe you don’t go to bed that late, maybe it’s 10pm.

But whatever time it is that you go to bed, and you haven’t done it yet, you should be lying in bed, thinking, “Oh, I didn’t enter my time. I forgot to do that. I said I was going to do that. I made the decision to do that, and I haven’t done it yet.”

You’re going to have this moment where you can just choose to go to bed, or you can flip back the covers, get out of bed… Maybe you have an app on your phone, so you don’t even have to get out of bed. But however it is that you enter your time… Maybe you have to go grab your laptop, go to your work desktop in your office at home, whatever the case may be, but you’ve got to put in your time.

And when you resist the urge to say fuck it, you actually go do those things. You might have to feel inconvenienced. You might have to feel annoyed because you’re getting out of bed, out of your comfy spot. You’re having to exert energy, embrace temporary discomfort, and not seek that instant pleasure that you’re enjoying.

You have to do all of those things in order to work through and move through the fuck it point without quitting on yourself. Without failing to honor your original decision and commitment, okay? Now, if you make the different decision to enter your time contemporaneously throughout the day, at the end of every task, you’re going to have a lot more fuck it points throughout the day, right?

So, every time you finish doing something, you’re going to have that opportunity to say fuck it, or resist the urge to say fuck it, and follow through, regardless of how it feels.

If you’re thinking about this, in practice, what would this look like? You make the decision to enter your time after you complete every task. You finish typing an email, and you’re supposed to enter your time right then and there for that email. But instead of honoring that, you have a phone call that’s supposed to start in 30 seconds.

Let’s say it’s 1:29, and you have a phone call that’s going to start at 1:30. Do you say fuck it and just start the next call without entering your time? Or do you honor the previous commitment that you made to enter your time contemporaneously, and put in that time entry right then and there, and then start the call?

Do you complete the task, and when you’re so worked up and overwhelmed and trying to rush to get through as much of your to-do list as possible, at the end of the task do you say fuck it, and you just move right on to the next thing before entering your time?

Or do you resist the urge to say fuck it and you calm yourself down, ground yourself, you slow yourself down, and you allow yourself to feel pressured and rushed, you let that discomfort be there, and you enter your time regardless? You honor your original decision, regardless?

I see this come up all the time with decisions about when to get back to people, too. So, think about how you communicate with people. Maybe you’ve listened to my podcast episode about defining enough, and you’ve decided that responsive enough to you means getting back to people within 24 hours. I’m not saying that’s the right rule, you get to decide on whatever feels right for you.

But let’s say that’s the rule that you’ve instituted. So, that’s the initial decision. Decision number one is, “I respond to everyone within 24 hours.” And then, when it comes time to actually implement that decision, it’ll be you on a Tuesday. You’ve got emails from Monday that you need to respond to, before you end work for the day.

It’ll be five o’clock, or maybe it’s six, and you’re kind of tired. It’s been a long day, and you’ve got a choice. You reach the fuck it point, for this decision, for the communication within 24 hours decision. And you have the choice to close your laptop and not send any more emails, and go sit on the sofa, lounge, go get dinner, grab a drink, whatever.

Maybe just pick up your phone and start scrolling on Instagram, or whatever other social media platform you prefer. Or you can hunker down, not say fuck it, resist that urge, and send the emails. Communicate within the time that you previously promised yourself you would communicate with your clients in.

Or it looks like deciding at the beginning of the day, or the day before, “Hey, tomorrow, I’m going to call this person, this person, and this person. I’m going to make these three calls. I’m going to reach out to these three clients, to touch base with them.” And you get to the end of the day, or close to the end of the day, and you haven’t made those three calls yet.

So, you’ve reached the fuck it point for that original decision. What will you do? Will you give in to the urge to say fuck it, or will you resist it? I want you to take a second and think about all the ways that you do this at work.

I also see this come up a ton for people with big projects. Let’s say you’ve got a motion that has been hanging over your head for a while, and you keep pushing it off because you keep handling the shorter, bite-sized tasks first. You’re always going to have a ton of shorter, bite-sized tasks available to you. The more you knock them off the to-do list, the more they keep coming back; the more new ones arise.

So, it’s like Whack-a-Mole; it never ends. If you keep waiting to be through all of the small stuff, before you work on the big stuff, you’re never going to work on the big stuff. And if you do this… You’re probably nodding along as you’re listening to this. “How does she know this?” This is super common. People do this all the time.

They’ll make the plan. They’ll make the original decision, decision number one, “Hey, I’m going to start working on this big project tomorrow.” Now, I recommend not calling it a big project. Because when you call it a big project, you just increase your resistance to starting it.

But when you’re telling yourself, “I’m going to start on this tomorrow,” and then tomorrow comes, now you’ve reached the point again; you’ve reached the fuck it point. Do I actually follow through and get started on this? Or do I say fuck it, and kick the can down the road for another day or another week?

And that’s how weeks go by, when you’re like, “I can’t believe I haven’t worked on that yet. I can’t believe I haven’t started on that yet. I can’t believe I haven’t made any progress.” It’s because you keep reaching the fuck it point. And then, you indulge in saying fuck it rather than allowing that discomfort to be there, resisting the urge to say that, and following through.

Now, I think, also for this, it’s very helpful if you commit to what exactly you’re going to do on the “big” project. So, how will you start? What will that look like? The more specific you can get, and the more you can break it down to those smaller, incremental tasks, you’re going to have a much easier time getting started.

One of the things that I teach people all the time is, can you start for five minutes? Can you start for 30 seconds on something? Just getting that initial resistance out of the way, by allowing yourself to start for a very short period of time, allows you to get into the work and then you catch your rhythm. Then you catch the flow, and you can continue to work with much less resistance. You’ve just got to start.

But in order to start, you have to resist the urge to say fuck it when you reach the fuck it point. So, how does this show up for you at work? What fuck it points are you reaching? And what decisions are you making for that second decision? Are you saying fuck it and canceling on your commitment to yourself? Or are you resisting the urge to say fuck it?

And the way that you resist the urge is that you embrace the discomfort that comes from doing the thing that you said you would do. You’ve got to gag-and-go, as I like to say, through that discomfort, feel it on purpose, and take the action that you already, previously, decided, in decision number one, to take.

Now, as you’re coming up with the different ways that you do this at work, you know I love to talk about all things personal and professional, because you’ve got one whole life, work is just a part of it. So, I also want you to give some thought to where you do this in your personal life. All right?

I’ve talked about this on the podcast before. One of the decisions that I’ve made ahead of time is that I plug my cell phone in every single night before I go to bed. And every single night, actually I shouldn’t say every single night; a lot of nights…

I reach the fuck it point, where I’m in bed, I was on my phone, and I’m ready to go to bed. I don’t want to lean over to grab the cord and plug it in. I really just want to say fuck it; I’ll deal with having a phone that’s not charged tomorrow. That’s tomorrow Olivia’s problem.

But I resist the urge, I allow my discomfort, which is just like mild annoyance and inconvenienced, and I lean over, maybe I flip back the covers, I grabbed the cord, and I plugged my phone in. That’s one small way that this happens.

This also happens for people when it comes to working out or sticking to a certain food plan if you’re trying to reach certain health goals or weight goals. Right? Let’s say you decide to work out three times a week. Now, I don’t love that as the initial decision, the decision made ahead of time, because it’s like, “Well, what days? Is it Monday, Wednesday, Friday? Is it Friday, Saturday, Sunday?”

I like to decide more clearly than that. So, you’re not using that primitive brain each day, where you’re like, “Is today the day that I’m going to work out? Or is it tomorrow,” and kicking the can down the road? So, you want to have a better first decision than that.

Now, let’s say, you say, “I’m going to work out Monday, Wednesday and Friday.” That means, before you rest your head on the pillow and close your eyes to go to sleep, you need to have gotten a workout in that day. Or maybe your decision is you want to work out every day, you want to move your body every day. I would get clear on what does that look like.

How will you work out, so you’re not spending time making that decision. You’ve already made it once, to make it really easy for yourself, easier to implement. But then, each day it comes time to do the workout… I’ve talked about this before. I have an episode all about dread.

You’re not going to feel like doing it. You’re not going to feel like going for a walk. You’re not going to feel like lifting weights. You’re not going to feel like doing whatever it is that you do for exercise. There’s going to be a million other things that are more comfortable and more enjoyable and more gratifying than exerting the energy and effort to work out.

And you’re going to reach that fuck it point, that second decision. Am I going to do what I said I was going to do? Or am I going to say fuck it and quit on myself and go grab the nacho cheese Doritos and a beer, or a glass of wine, and watch TV, or scroll on YouTube or scroll on Tik Tok or Instagram or whatever? Am I going to do that instead? Am I going to call one of my friends and gossip and complain instead of doing the thing that I said I was going to do?

Maybe you decide what you’re going to eat each day, and when it comes time to either prepare that meal or order that meal or go get that meal, however it is that you get your food, you say fuck it. Instead, you reach that point of, am I going to honor the commitment? Am I going to stick to my plan? Or am I going to go off plan and do something completely different that doesn’t support my goals?

In these moments, again, you’ve just got to make the decision, the second decision. Do I say fuck it? Or do I follow through? And if you can pinpoint this specific point in time, you’re going to have so much more success allowing the discomfort.

Because you can ask yourself, at this critical fuck it point, what are the feelings right now, if I make the decision to follow through, that I’m going to be forced to feel? And you can list them. You want to make sure you enumerate them and get very clear on what those specific flavors of discomfort are.

Because by identifying them, you make it easier to embrace them. You’re like, “Oh, I feel annoyed. This is what annoyed feels like when I do this thing that I said I was going to do, when it comes time to do it. Oh, I have to feel deprived. I want to eat a cheeseburger for lunch, but I planned to eat a salad. So, I’ve got to feel deprived in this very moment. That’s the feeling, at the fuck it point, that I’m going to have to embrace.”

For a lot of people, they have to embrace feeling tired. Think if you’ve made a decision, “I want to do one load of laundry a day. I do laundry on Thursday nights,” whatever your decision made ahead of time is. Then it comes time to do that activity that you plan to do, and you’re like, “I’m so tired. I couldn’t possibly.”

It is amazing how much stuff you can accomplish tired. Okay? I’m not telling you to work yourself into the ground and hurt yourself, to do any harm long term. But a lot of people are using tired as an excuse to not do things. You can do a lot of shit tired. Okay?

So, in this moment, when it comes time to go throw a load of laundry in, you reach the fuck it point where you can say to yourself, “I’m going to do the thing and follow through, even though I’m tired.” Or you say, “Fuck it, I’ll worry about that tomorrow. I don’t need clean clothes anyways.”

Maybe, if you work from home, that feels very true and relatable to you. But it’s not about whether you have clean clothes. I mean, you want clean clothes, I get that. But that’s not what this is about. It’s about becoming someone who does what they say they’re going to do, regardless of the results that you’re creating on the back end of the decision.

Clean clothes are great. Weight loss is great if that’s what you’re working towards. Being healthy and exercising for your health is great. But more than the result that comes from any of this, I want you to become the person who describes themselves as someone that follows through with doing what they say they’re going to do.

There is an unshakable confidence that comes from being a person who follows through. The trust that you have with yourself. The pride you have with yourself. The sense of accomplishment that you feel, when you do what you say you’re going to do, is immeasurable, and there’s truly no other way to match it.

So, I want you to give that gift to yourself. And the only way to create it, is to come up and meet that fuck it point, then resist the urge to say fuck it and make it a later you, future you problem. Okay? So, take this concept and bring it into your own life.

Use this terminology to describe that point where you’re making that secondary decision, the decision to follow through with your original decision, and then when you name it, you’re like, “I’m at the fuck it point. Now I’ve got a choice to make, do I say fuck it? Or do I follow through?”

Choose to follow through, gag-and-go, feel the feelings, feel the discomfort, and move forward in spite of it. Resist the urge to kick the can down the road and to quit on yourself. Honor your original decision. You’re going to be so proud of yourself for doing this. Okay?

And when you pinpoint this point in time, the fuck it point, it makes it so much easier to do all of that.

Alright, that’s what I have for you this week, my friends. I was so excited to introduce you to this concept. Hopefully, you’re like me, and you don’t mind a little cursing. If you did, I’m sorry. I used to, when I was a kid, whenever my parents would swear, I would always put my hands over my ears and I would say, “I have ears.”

So, if you’re like that, and you have ears and you didn’t love it, I love you and I trust that you will be okay. And that you can manage your mind, with the tools I’ve given you throughout this podcast, to choose a thought that serves you. And to be able to overcome whatever offense you might be feeling, in order to tune into next week’s episode. All right? It’s going to be a good one. I can’t wait to dive into that topic.

In the meantime, I hope you have a beautiful week. I’ll talk to you all 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.