Month: April 2023

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.