Do you consume or do you apply?
Our school system taught us to consume and regurgitate information. It didn't teach us to integrate it.
So if you've growth up with this “in one ear and out the other” habit, you may be spending lots of time consuming and very little applying material you learn here or on other channels.
In this episode, I'm sharing how you can maximize Be a Better Lawyer Podcast to change your life.
HINT: it's not by listening more. It's about reflecting on the materials in a different way.
I've also created “Your Be a Better Lawyer Podcast Treasure Map” to help you hone in on areas of your life and law practice you want to change.
You can get it here:
Listen in to start using Be a Better Lawyer Podcast to it's fullest potential in your life and law practice.
RESOURCES
- Download “Your Be a Better Lawyer Podcast Treasure Map”
- Work with Dina
- Connect on Instagram
- Connect on Linked In
Loving the podcast? Share the love!
- Share it with your friends via text or on social media. Be sure to tag me on social, so I can say thanks!
- Be sure to follow on Spotify and Amazon Music or subscribe on Apple Podcasts and Stitcher.
- Leave a review.
Thanks for listening, and I'll talk to you next week.
How to Use This Podcast
Hello. Hello. How are you doing today? I wanted to create a podcast all about how you can use Be a Better Lawyer podcast to its fullest, use it to its maximum potential in your law practice and in your life. Because I know from speaking to so many lawyers that you're not all using it to its maximum potential. And that's okay. You can have fun listening to an episode. There's nothing wrong with that, but there's a lot of lawyers that come to me and they say, you know, I need a resource, or, I can't afford coaching right now, and I need help. And this podcast, if you use it, can take you a long way if you want help implementing, of course, that's what coaching is for, and you can get a lot out of this podcast and it's absolutely free. So I wanted to create a resource for you to dive into this podcast and to really soak up as much information as you can.
But use that information. Don't just let it sit there and be a repository somewhere in your brain. With all this information about Be a Better Lawyer podcast and how to do all of these things, I want you to really dive into each episode. So today I am going to not only break down how you can begin doing that, but I'm also gonna give you another resource. It's called Your Be a Better Lawyer podcast, treasure Map. And you can download
**@di*********.com
slash 2 9 5. And I'm gonna talk a little bit more about that. But it is basically a step by step of how to use this podcast in sections. So if you're looking for money mindset, or if you're looking for how to grow your law practice or to simplify your law practice or how to better your relationships, I have created this guide to help you find those podcasts and listen to them to really milk them.
So you can download
th**@di*********.com
slash 2 9 5. And I'm gonna just take a few minutes to talk to you about what you can do to maximize this resource, this podcast, it is a labor of love. I will tell you, I spend hours on some of these episodes. Some of them sound like they're just so easy, I can just whip 'em off the top of my head. But you have to think about the years of experience that I have had, whether it has been the 16 years as a criminal prosecutor. It has been me becoming a master certified coach through the life coach school. It has been me spending hours and days and months and, you know, years thinking about different concepts in different ways and coaching so many lawyers on different problems that they've had and really thinking about their problems in a deep way.
And then I take what I learn and then I translate it into an episode. And that's not always an easy thing. A lot of times I really do some deep dive breakdowns and, and I'll talk about some of those in the treasure map, but I'll break these down in a way to help you break it down step by step. And I could think of an episode right now how to take a guilt-free vacation. I talked to so many lawyers who say like, oh my gosh, I'm so stressed out about my vacation coming up. And I say, listen to that episode and just do what it says in the that episode. And then they don't do it. But that episode really breaks down step by step exactly what to do so that you can take a vacation and not feel guilty about taking that vacation and really plan it out in a way where you're not feeling rushed when you come back.
So it's those kinds of episodes that I have that a lot of lawyers are not taking advantage of. Not always that, you know, a lot of them, especially my clients, they'll tell me anyway. You know, I don't know about people who aren't my clients, but my clients will come and tell me like, oh my gosh, I was taking notes. I was, you know, answering the questions that you had in that episode, and I got so many insights I can't wait to talk to you about them in our next session. And that is really maximizing the return that you're going to get for listening to an episode because you can listen to an episode and you can enjoy it, and you can feel good at the end of it. But if you're not answering the questions that I pose in the podcast or you're not really thinking about these issues, those issues are gonna continue to be issues in your practice and in your life.
And I wanna create, I I really wanted to create this resource to help you with those issues in your life so that you don't struggle so much. And that is something that is personal work, right? It's our own personal responsibility to take on what we want to take on. And if you know there's a resource like this available to you, I encourage you to use it, especially when it comes to time management. You figure, I was building a business on top of a full-time career as a criminal prosecutor. And I tell you exactly how I did it. I tell you exactly how I managed my calendar at work and at home, and how I made myself, gave myself a life. And people will tell me like, well, calendars don't work for me. And I say, no, you've gotta stop that thinking, stop. Just stop.
Don't believe what your brain is telling you. And I I have a whole section in this treasure map that I created for you that gives you tons, like a whole section on time management and how to use your time most effectively. And when people come to me and they say, you know, I'm having these problems. And I said, yeah, they're gonna continue to be problems until you do something differently. And that is what this podcast is about. That's what this treasure map is about. It's about you deciding to do something differently so you can get different results. That's what I needed to do because I was stressed out and overwhelmed too. I was killing myself too. And if you find yourself in that position, what you wanna do is you wanna find somebody who has overcome those obstacles and then can condense their learnings for you into a simple step-by-step process.
And then you just follow that process. That's what I've done for you here. So I really want to encourage you to leave all of that old brain baggage behind that tells you, I can't because I can't simplify my practice because I'm too busy. I can't learn to manage a calendar because calendars just don't work for me. It's just my schedule. The the way that my schedule is, it just doesn't work with a calendar. That's a bunch of baloney. And I, you know, I'm giving you a little bit of tough love here, but that's the truth. And I gave myself those excuses for a long time too. So I don't want you to think that you're alone in this. But when you drop those excuses and you start doing the work, you, your life will change. And that's what this podcast is about. That is what this treasure map is about.
It's about you focusing on a topic of your life that you wanna work on, and then you dive in and you just decide you're not gonna take no for an answer, that you're changing it, period. That's how to use this podcast. You decide, you make a decision that you're done settling for the crap that you've had before, whether it is not being able to manage your time, whether it is not being able to grow your practice the way you want to, whether it's not being able to finance the things that you wanna finance, create what you wanna create in your life. You've just gotta make a decision that you're done. And then you dive in and you get to work. And that's what I wanna share with you here, is when you go and you download this treasure map, you're gonna get so much good stuff.
I actually, like, I printed a copy of it here, it is just like I'm, I'm like gushing over it because I've been wanting to do this for a really long time and I'm really excited that I get to share this with you. So the very first thing that you're gonna get is a start here. I want you to just start with the basic foundational principles. If you haven't listened to these episodes before, listen in. If you have listened to these episodes before, but you haven't really thought about, you haven't really sat down, maybe really contemplated some of these things and how they can impact your life, I want you to listen to them anyway again, because you are gonna hear them in a different way. I will go back to episodes of my favorite podcasts, right? And I will go back, or my favorite coaching examples, right?
I'll go back and I'll listen to them a year or two later and I'll be like, oh my gosh, I just picked up this new thing. This is so amazing. Like, I didn't even hear it. Because what happens is, is that we learn what we can in the moment and we can only absorb certain things. We'll, we'll get a nugget or two and then we'll move on and we'll forget about the training. We'll forget about the episode, but if we go back, we'll listen to it again and we will get so much more out of it. So what I wanna share with you here is that you just wanna start at the very beginning. I give you exactly what you can listen to. It starts with how to use this podcast. So if you're listening to this episode first, you've already checked off one episode, you're done, right?
And you can use this as a checklist. You can use this simply as a way for you to enjoy the, the podcast and like pick and choose what you wanna listen to. You just, you just know what topics there are. And you could just kind of take your finger and you plop it down and you just trust that that's the episode that you need to listen to. That's how you can use this, this. Or you can just go one by one through them, whatever you prefer. There's no right or wrong way to use this treasure map. I do wanna encourage you though, to listen to the foundational episodes, which are our, are all listed under start here. And we talk about mindset essentials. We talk about nervous system dysregulation, bridging cognitive dissonance, pursuing happiness. And the six unusual skills of successful lawyers. Like these are all episodes that maybe you got, if you've never listened to this podcast before, this is the first time you've listened.
You didn't even know these titles were available to you. Or maybe you've been listening for a while and you might've missed some of these episodes because there's almost 300 episodes of this podcast available to you. And so I really wanted to distill this into different sections so you can focus your attention on what matters most to you. And you're not just kind of skipping around everywhere. We also break it down in this treasure map into mindset, right? I talk about different mindset principles. I talk about anxiety, and I call it anxiety detox because there's just so much in the legal profession where we can feel a lot of anxiety and it doesn't have to be that way. And so we really break it down in anxiety detox. I give you six episodes where you can start learning some principles, you can start asking yourself some questions and start making some shifts for you to help you in that area.
And then I have a whole section on mastering time. This, as you probably know if you've been listening to this podcast for any length of time, is a big passion to me because there's so many lawyers who have the misconception that calendaring is not for them. That they can't do it, that it's simply not gonna work. And I've seen it with every single one of my clients. When they really understand the principles that I talk about in the podcast and they start applying them diligently, then their life's transform, right? I've, I've talked about so many of my clients, like they're, they're working four day work weeks now. They're working towards getting from four, five days to four days. They're starting podcasts, they're doing things in their p practice they never thought they could do because now they have time. They can work on their business, they can start learning their practice software so that they can better use it more efficiently.
They're able to train their employees better, they're able to take vacations. They're able to start whole businesses on top of their practices because they have these principles under their belt. Before they were feeling overwhelmed and anxious and they thought all the same things that you've probably thought, which are, I can't do this, this is too hard. I'm overwhelmed. But they got over that and they said, no, I am going to do something different. I am changing my life and I'm gonna use these principles. They make sense. They seem like they're working for her. It seems like they're working for her clients, so I'm gonna try them. So I've made a whole section here so that you can start just listening to the podcast and start writing down the steps. 'cause I talk about the steps, what you can do to start really reigning in your time and starting to feel more in control of your practice and calm down the overwhelm in your practice.
And that also brings me to, I have a whole section on client interviews I've done on the podcast. So you can listen to them for yourself. You can get inspiration from them. You can know you're not alone in this. You can understand that there are a lot of things that we're taught in our society that simply aren't helpful for us, and they block us from moving forward and changing our life. And that's something that you can hear for yourself, and you can use that to motivate you. In fact, I would probably star the episodes on this treasure map so that you can say, oh, this is one I wanna come back to. 'cause It really felt good when I listened to it. And when I'm in a slump, I wanna go back and I just wanna listen to it. 'cause That actually helps your mindset when you are struggling in any area.
This is something that, that I have done for myself. I, I recognize it and then I focus on it in a way that helps me dissolve it. So let me give you an example. I will, for instance let's say there's a topic that I'm struggling with in my business and I find a podcast, pats podcast episode, or I hear a phrase or something like that. I will star that podcast so that I can go back to it and I'll listen to it again. Maybe I'll be on a flight and I'll just say, oh, yeah, I wanna listen to these, these episodes again. And when I listen to it, I get a whole new perspective on that topic. Or if I have a particular belief that I am working on because I'm not in full belief, I will actually write that belief down on a little note card and I will put it on my desk so that I can see it.
And it reminds me that my brain tends to focus in a way opposite to that. So I wanna read that card, sit with it for a moment so that my mind learns how to refocus in a different way, in the way that I want it to go. And we really dive into these mindset principles and how to use your brain, like the, the different beliefs and all of that. We talk about that in the, the podcasts I've listed in the treasure roadmap. So know that you're covered, you're totally covered here. I also have a whole section in this treasure map on law practice growth. So whether or not you own your own practice or whether you are a solo practitioner or you're working for somebody else, like just know, like you've got your bases covered here. I talk about all kinds of topics. I put it inside here.
Really sit down with these episodes. I mean, these are meaty episodes where you can bring out a journal, you can listen to 'em on your, you know, Sunday mornings where you're just like by yourself with your cup of coffee, or you can create time for yourself some other time of the day. And you just listen. And you just pick one episode and you say, look, okay, for 20 minutes I'm listening to a podcast tonight, or for 20 minutes, I'm gonna get out my journal and I'm gonna journal on what my thoughts were about that episode. This is life-changing stuff. If you let it be that I really don't want this to be a resource that sits in your phone and doesn't get any airplay. I want it to be something that really connects with you and changes you from the inside out. That's really what this podcast is all about.
Because the reason I created a podcast in the first place is because podcast helped me so much. When I was first learning to start a business, like I think it was eight or nine years ago, I had no clue what I was doing. And the only resource that I had at that time that I knew about was a podcast. And I thought, okay, well let me, let me go online. I'll see what I can learn about starting a business online. I found a business podcast. I listened to that and it was amazing and it was life changing, and it helped me think about things so differently. I I had no clue some of these things existed. I had no clue about it. And I, I've had clients tell me like, I've never even thought about having a relationship with time before that. It blew my mind when I heard that, because we just can't think of everything.
First of all, we're busy human beings. We've got a lot going on in this, in this world, right? There's a lot of things that we have going on in our world. There's a lot of distractions in our world. And if we're not really focusing on what matters most to us, then it makes it difficult. I mean, that's, it makes it difficult to grow a practice. It makes it difficult to have really quality relationships. And that's really what I want to help you with here, with this roadmap. I also have a section on how to get it done so that you can really move past all of those self criticisms, all of those thoughts about procrastination and really like get things done, follow through. This is kind of a, it's not kind of a, it is so essential because we can learn all the things, but if we're not taking action, there's no point in learning those things.
It's kind of like the news. We can listen to the news all day long and we get all of this junk in our head and we can feel bad and we can just like be down on the world and we can think all of these things, but if we we're not actually taking action on it, what's the point of putting all that stuff in our head? What is the point of it? And it's really not just about taking in information when you're into personal growth, and if you found this podcast, you're into personal growth. You are into making change for yourself. You want something different for yourself. So if you want that, it's time to do something about it. And that is what this section on how to get it done is gonna help you with.
All right. I also have another section on relationship essentials. Okay? This is something that I never really thought too much about until I started getting into personal development. And so I put a, a lot of episodes in there, not only about relationships with clients and your employees, but about everybody in your life, everybody that you have contact with. I think this is a, a really big section because there's just so much nuance to relationships and how we react in those relationships when we're triggered. And that's such a, a great area to focus our attention on if that's an area you wanna work on. I know that for me personally, I worked a lot on my tendency to be in a rush and snap at people to be in a rush and not really consider what other people were going through or, or the fact that they had a different perspective.
It was very difficult for me, right? I, I just was always busy, right? And when you're always busy, you're always in that fight or flight mode. You cannot really calm your nervous system enough to pay attention to how other people might be res responding in a way to you and what you are doing. And this is, this is just a great section for you to focus on if that is something that you resonate with, because you're gonna find a lot in there to help you. I also have a section on simplifying your practice. 'cause So often we get stuck in the busy work. I know I did for a really long time and I wasn't focusing my tension the way that I wanted to. There's a whole section in here on focus as well. I have another sec section on confidence boosters to really help you if you think you are struggling with imposter syndrome or anything like that, that will help you there.
And I have another section all about reconnecting with yourself. This is something that I needed to have. It was foundational for me. It's foundational for each and every one of us. If we want to create more peace and prosperity and connection in our lives. We've got to focus on reconnecting with ourselves. And that is a whole section in there that I encourage you to listen to. So you can download your Be a Better Lawyer podcast, treasure
ma*@di*********.com
slash 2 9 5. And I encourage you to sit down and really just go through this and find that section that you're like, yes, I wanna do that. I wanna, I want to, to do this section. There's another section I do <laugh> on every goal, right? Like, this is such a meaty section too. We really dive in deep around this and it's perfect for the beginning of the year as we're going in.
You can jump into that and you can really focus in and hone in on what you wanna create for the next year. So everything's covered in here. Like this is just like, there's so much in here. I really love it. I I know you're gonna love it too, and it will give you a place to focus your attention. Again, there's no right or wrong way to use this treasure map. You can just take your finger, you can pick a page, you can like zoom in and just flop down on what it is that you see on your treasure map, and you just listen to that episode, or you just take it one section at a time. You choose one title that sounds interesting, and then you sit down and you really digest it, right? You very much work with the material. You don't just let the material kind of just be in your brain.
Like, you know, like when we were in school, the whole thing was about consuming as much information as possible and memorizing it and regurgitating it. This is not about regurgitation, this is about involving yourself. In the process that I take you through in each and every episode, it's about connecting with the material in a way that you get curious about and you really start thinking more deeply about. This is about you taking your life and using this podcast as a resource to uplevel everything. But you can only do that if you create a relationship with the material, if you put as much energy in right as you want to take out, because life is about reciprocity. If you are passively hearing information, you're not going to get anything from it. But if you engage with the material, if you write down the questions, if you answer the questions, if you go through and you ask yourself, how does this apply to me?
And what can I do with this material? What do, where can I apply this in my practice or in my life? When you start doing that, you're actively engaging in the material and you're creating reciprocity. You're putting equal energy out into the universe. You know, whether or not you agree with, you know, however, you know, if that sounds woowoo to you, whatever. I mean, Einstein's like, you cannot create or destroy energy. It just exists in the world. And if you wanna engage with energy, you've got to actually come with an equal source of energy output. Okay? So if you wanna engage with that energy, you've gotta really just sit and say, okay, I'm gonna, I'm gonna intentionally sit here, I'm gonna listen to this episode, I'm gonna listen to the questions, I'm gonna answer those questions, and then I'm gonna apply it in my practice diligently.
It's not just one or done, right? This is really about thinking about this consistently. I mean, that's why my clients get results is because they're thinking about this material consistently. They've actually set aside 50 minutes every week with me to think about what's relevant in their practice, and then they diligently apply it in their practice. That's how they get results, okay? So if you want those results, that's the kind of energy that you'll need to put into it so that you can get that energy back, right? It's like you implement the time management tools. This is just the most practical example I can think of for you. You implement the time management tools, you get your time back, you use that time you do something else that's gonna create more energy for you, right? You work on your practice, you learn your practice management software, you create a training so that your employees can take over aspects of your practice.
You think about how you wanna make your life easier at home. It's like all of those things are only things you can do when you take your energy and you put it into this process. So go to dina cataldo.com/ 2 9 5 and download your Be a Better Lawyer podcast, treasure Roadmap. You're gonna love it is really fun. I have some really fun little pictures on here too. I had a really good time putting it together. And I oh, one other thing that I want you to know, you can listen to be a Better Lawyer podcast anywhere you listen to podcasts, but what I've done is in this PDF that you'll download is I've hyperlinked every single episode. So you can listen to these episodes straight in your computer. Like you don't have to do any extra work. You can do it at home, you could do it at the office, right?
But what I want you to be able to do is have easy access to these so that you can do the work on them. All right, my friend, I hope you have a beautiful rest of your week. And if you want to implement these now, if you're done waiting, book a strategy session with me. Go to dina cataldo.com/a strategy session to book a call with me. A lot of times I'll hear from lawyers, oh, you know, I just wanted to do more in the podcast before I booked a call with you and started working with you. But then they're not actually working, doing the work on the podcast, right? They're just listening to the podcast passively. So I don't want you to make that mistake. If you're just passively listening to this podcast and you're like, gosh, this makes a lot of sense. I really like this, I just don't have time to implement it right now.
Book a strategy session with me because you and I are gonna make the time. In fact, if you go to that strategy session page, one of my clients, Andrea, actually says, I wish somebody had told me just to like that. If I started getting coaching, I would actually just make more time and then I could do all the things that I wanted to do. Like I, I would've just signed up faster. She has that on a, one of the testimonials I have on my strategy session page. I am gonna tell you that right now, if you book a call with me, if you start working with me, you're gonna get your time back, and then you're gonna get to do all the things you wanna do. So do it. This is this. If you're not actively implementing what's in this podcast on your own, if you're just listening to it passively, book a strategy session with me because that's how you're gonna get results.
It's okay if you don't, like not all my clients listen to all my episodes. They don't. They don't need to because they have me. So know that you don't need to keep listening to every single episode. You can just work with me if you want that fast track. So a lot of lawyers just want the fast track. They don't want to waste time, you know, doing all the things. They just want somebody to help them get the results that they want. And that's what I'm here for. So go to dina cataldo.com/strategy session and we can start working together now. Alright, my friend, talk to you soon. Bye.