#332: The Mindset of Successful Attorneys

The Mindset of Successful Attorneys

Here's a transcription of this episode:

After coaching lawyers and coaching myself over the years, I have discovered the mindset of successful people, the mindset of successful attorneys. And in this episode of be a better lawyer podcast, I want to share what I have learned so that you can use it to hit any goal that you want to achieve. So listen in to hear more.

Hello. How are you doing today? 

Today's episode is one that has been years in the making because it's one where I'm really distilling for you what it takes. 

To become a more successful attorney. And I don't mean the kind of success where you're busy and you're moving around all the time and you're killing yourself trying to make millions of dollars.

I mean, trying to really take a 10, 000 foot view of your practice. 

See what's working. 

See what's not. 

And what's not so that you can create a life side by side with your business. 

You can still make all the money that you want. I want you to make all the money that you want, but I don't want to see you like so many other lawyers that I have seen and how I used to be to chasing dollars so that you can survive versus really looking for the kind of success that is treating you as a human is looking at you holistically, because in my opinion, you cannot be successful unless you are also cared of caring about your wellbeing. 

You cannot be successful if you are not looking after yourself because you cannot truly serve at your highest level. You cannot do the work that it is that you're here to do on this planet, unless you are paying attention to some of the things that I'm sharing with you here today, because if you're building a practice based on fear, that there's not enough based on fear, that there's not going to be enough money, enough, uh, people enough, whatever it is that you think is going to feed that hungry monster inside of you –that's never going to have enough. 

Then you're going to be very disappointed. You are going to, maybe you'll make tons of money, but you will not be happy. You will be suffering. You will be working 70 plus hours a week, killing yourself like at one point I was, and you will not be creating the kind of success that's sustainable either. And if you're doing this, because in your mind, “it's for the family”, you're doing it for the wellbeing of your family. I want you to ask yourself, Hey, what does my family really want? Do they want the dollars or do they want me?

Because if they want the dollars, what are you doing? Okay. Uh, you can actually have both, you can have wellbeing and you can have a healthy lifestyle full of abundance. And I want to share this with you because I talk to so many lawyers who come to me and they're very successful in terms of they know how to make money.

They know how to create clients. But they're incredibly unhappy because they're exhausted because they're not getting any sleep because they've overextended themselves to a point where they are burned out and they're wondering why they are burning out. You're like, wait a minute. It's so clear. You're working all the time and you're not sleeping.

They don't see a way out. And when you don't see a way out, I can understand how you can feel hopeless about it, right? 

You're just working yourself to the and you're never giving to yourself. 

But in this episode, I want to share with you the mindset that I see that creates both the abundance, the financial success, and the personal wellbeing, and they go hand in hand and you need both of them to be complete.

Because if you are just going after one, you are incomplete. I get it. I've been there, but I don't want to see you go through what I went through. I don't want to see you ignore the human and think that life is all about money. Right. I would much rather live in a shack somewhere and be happy than have a multi million dollar home and be working 80 hours a week, killing myself and not knowing how to get out of it.

I would make choices. But the thing is, is that we get into a mindset where we forget that we have choices and we decide we have the choice at all time of when to And what we do, but we forget, Oh yeah, we have choices and everything that you're experiencing right now. And I say this with so much love is a result of your choices, whether you're enjoying your experience of life or not.

It is based on a series of choices that you made. 

And when we start looking at our lives as a series of choices, it becomes so much more expansive. 

We get an opportunity to change our lives at any time.

In the last episode, I talked about re choosing your life. 

When we take those opportunities to really rethink what it is we have, what it is we want and start to make conscious choices, we get to change everything, my friend.

And a big part of the work that I do with my clients is working on the success mindset that I'm going to share with you here today. Success roadblocks always come in the form of how lawyers think about themselves, their capabilities and their possibilities. And it's incredibly difficult to see the way that we think, right?

Our mindset around our practices and creating solutions to generate success because we're just too close to the problem. The success that I'm talking about, again, it's the whole human being. We're too close to what's creating stress. We're too close to what's creating overwhelm and we're too close to what's creating scarcity in our bodies in that survival mode that so many lawyers are in right now because they think they don't have enough, that they have to work incredibly long hours, killing themselves to get the job done.

And I know that's not true because I have successfully. Made choices to take myself out of that while I was a lawyer, made choices to do that while I was in business, and I've successfully helped other lawyers make the choices that they needed to make to create the lives that they wanted to, that created the success that they wanted, that multidimensional success.

We can't see the limiting beliefs that we hang on to, even if we think we're doing tremendous personal development work on ourselves. 

I see it so often where a lawyer will tell me, Oh, I don't have any negative thoughts about myself. 

I'm really confident. 

I really feel really good about myself and my capabilities.

And as soon as we start working together, everything starts coming up and they can see why all of the habits that have created all of the stress, all of the overwhelm are actually linked to so much of what I just mentioned. We can't see it because we're just too darn close. And that's why working with a coach.

Is a such an amazing opportunity is to get to see what's happening in your life so that you can make those choices because you can't make new choices if you don't recognize the choices in front of you. The limiting beliefs that you have could be keeping you working 70 plus hour weeks, believing that you need to work harder to finally catch up.

Or giving up on your revenue goal for the month because it's the 22nd of the month instead of the first of the month and you just don't believe that it's possible. 

Or your limiting belief could keep you continuing to take on cases that you don't even want because you believe you need to take any work that comes through the door or you won't have enough money next month.

Or if you say no, then that person who came with to you with business this time won't come to you with business next time. 

The opportunity always lies in your ability to communicate exactly what you do, what you create. 

And these kinds of reactions are really common. 

These reactionary behaviors and their reactions to strong primal emotions of fear.

So it makes sense if you see yourself in any of the pant, the, the, um, patterns that I just mentioned that you would react in that way.

And part of the work that I do with lawyers is helping them calm their anxiety and their overwhelm so they can problem solve independent of the emotions they feel independent of those limiting beliefs that they have.

So you can actually see, ah, yeah, that belief is actually limiting my capability to create revenue. 

It's limiting my capability to communicate the work that I do and to promote the work that I want to create in my practice. Instead of just taking on any old belief. thing. 

And that work all starts with understanding the mindset that you have and what it's creating in your life.

So I want to do some of that work here with you today. So that outside perspective that you need to get, it needs to be a 10, 000 foot view of what's going on in your mind so that you can see how it's impacting your day to day life. Because every thought you have influences how you are taking action. If you believe it's impossible, you won't take action to make it possible.

If you believe that it's hopeless, you won't take action as if you had hope. 

You will just give up and I want to share with you that if this is where you are right now, you're not like bad or wrong or anything. It's just the mindset that needs to be switched here. 

So think about a goal that you have right now.

I'm going to give you some larger umbrella goals and some smaller supporting goals to give you some ideas here to work with. So larger umbrella goals. Goals like growing the number of clients, hiring you, adding a practice area, leaving your current practice to start your own practice or your own business.

Those are, those are examples of larger umbrella goals. And then there's always goals underneath those umbrellas. So, smaller supporting goals might be hiring or firing an assistant, getting SOPs completed to properly train an assistant or an associate, creating a content strategy to attract your ideal clients.

And right now, for a select few of my clients, I'm working with them around really focusing What it is they want to create so that they can really have the foundation that they want for that larger goal, that larger umbrella goal. 

So those smaller supporting goals are incredibly important. 

So even if you don't have a giant goal right now of building your practice up, if you feel overwhelmed or stressed out in your practice, then some of the smaller supporting goals might be to create some SOPs, those standard operating procedures to really train people on On those SOPs to really make judicious decisions about the people who are in your organization to really think through.

Is the way that I am creating clients, the easiest, simplest way possible. Is there an easier way? And those are things that you can think about in terms of this episode and what goals you might have. That's just to give you some ideas. So now what I want you to do is I want you, this is one of my favorite analogies, so if you've heard it before, sorry, it's my favorite.

I want you to imagine you're a sports car. Let's say you're a bright red Ferrari. That Ferrari is not going anywhere without fuel, but you don't want just any fuel. You want premium high octane fuel. Is it more expensive? Absolutely. But you want to invest in your Ferrari or fuel creates performance issues in a Ferrari.

Just like a poor mindset manifests in performance issues for a human. 

You need to fuel your goals with the right fuel. 

Mindset. 

If you are not going into any endeavor, cleaning up your mindset, you are going to have performance issues, right? 

If you're going into a trial and I work with some of my clients on this, you go into a trial and you think, oh my gosh, I don't know what to say or, oh my gosh, that, you know, opposing counsel, they're just, you know, they, they're just so good.

And I, I don't know what I'm doing. And of course you're going to stammer. You're not going to be able to perform the way that you want to perform. And in order to create the performance that you want, you're probably going to be working extra hours because you're so worried that you're not going to do well, that you're going to work so many more hours than you need to, to prepare.

And that is something that I, I experienced too, but the more you start to feel true confidence in yourself, the better you are able to perform in any situation, the better you're able to think about your, your performance. Possibilities, your capabilities and yourself, the easier it is going to be going into any situation, no matter whether it's a trial, whether it's a client meeting, whether it is thinking about growing your practice, you're able to strategize better.

You're able to think on your feet better, but you have to get the mindset clean first. I even have to get my mindset podcast, right? Because if I'm thinking, Oh, I don't know what to say, I'm la da da, my brain will go sideways. I need to be focused and I need to be confident and certain that I know exactly what to say, when to say it.

If I start to let myself get in my head and start thinking about, 

Oh my gosh, 

What if this sounds like it's a mess or, um, what if this is disorganized or what are they going to think? 

Then my.

Performance on a podcast is not going to be a plus to me. 

And honestly, it doesn't even have to be a plus. If you're helping somebody that is enough.

If you are able to show up for your job, you are able to perform to the best of your ability and you are helping them get the result that they want. That is an a plus to me, I no longer subscribe to the idea that we have to have perfection in like in the school system where every answer on the questionnaire is an, is an a is right in order to have that a plus, if you are helping people, if you're coming from a place of service, then you are doing exactly what you're meant to be doing.

So let's talk about some of the common thoughts that I have seen that really are stumbling blocks that really, huh, that really. block attorneys from being the most successful in their practice. And they're really simple ones, you know, they're, they're probably ones that you have had any time during the week.

Things like, this is hard. Thoughts like, I don't have time. Or I'll deal with that later, or I'm not going to hit my revenue goal this month, or I'm not going to hit my billing goal this month. My assistant isn't doing what I told them to do, or they're going to be upset with me if I say anything to them.

You could have any kind, any flavor of these types of thoughts, and when you have these You are doing yourself a disservice if you're not questioning them, if you're not turning it around so that they are in your favor, and again, this is not easy to do on your own. I get it. Giving you this awareness is a way for you to begin seeing how you may be preventing yourself from having the success that you want in your practice.

So, let's start talking about how to create thoughts that serve you. 

And here's what I mean by a thought that serves you. 

There's a couple schools of thought on this one, and I'm going to tell you what I believe to be true, that it doesn't really matter which one you use, do the one that works for you.

Okay. So, Let's start with the thought, this is hard. Hey, this is hard. And, and a lot of times we'll think, oh my gosh, this is so hard. I don't know what to do. And we'll start mentally complaining. And then when we do that, we start to notice ourselves closing down. We don't do the work that we said we were going to do.

We start finding busy work to do. We get up, we walk around, you know, we do things that take us away from our most important work. Just because our brain says this is hard and I'm not saying that whatever task you have in front of you is easy. Okay. It's not easy for me to do the things that I do in my business either, but sometimes you got to do things like have difficult conversations with employees or do things in your practice that simply aren't things that are quote unquote fun for you in that moment.

So when we have that thought, this is hard, we block ourselves from creating what we want to create. So we've got to do one of two things. One is shift gears powerfully to just say, hey, This is hard. Let's go. Boom. Like if we can get into that energy of, you know what, this is hard and that's not a problem.

Let's go. 

That's a beautiful thing to do. 

And when we're doing something like that, often we feel very energized. 

That's an easy thought for me to get into because when I think, Hey, yeah, it's hard, but we're going to do it anyway. 

Let's go. 

I feel more powerful and I take action, but that's not available to everybody.

A lot of times it, to them, that seems like a rainbow and daisies thought. And so for you, if that's you, you might just want to shift something very slightly. Like we want to just go 45 degrees instead of 90 degrees, right? So this is hard becomes this is hard and that's okay. That's it. This is hard and that's okay.

And if you believe that, like, it's okay that this is hard, I'm still going to do it, then you can take action. So the difference between the two is one is just a little bit of a talking yourself through the project. Like this is hard. Yeah. But that's okay. And then that will allow you to get just enough opening to say, okay, what do I need to do next?

And then you start taking action step by step by step. The other one that I gave you, which is, this is hard, but you know what? Boom. That's okay. Let's go. We're doing this. It's fine too, but that not might not be accessible to you. It might not, that might be a rainbow and daisies thought. It gets us to the same place.

It gets us to taking some action. One may or may not be slower than the other, but it doesn't matter how slow you are if you're getting yourself started because you're still moving faster than if you kept that old thought, this is hard. Let's talk about another one. Um, Yeah. Oh, and another one I want to mention, because I know that this is hard thought comes up a lot, is shifting into service.

Because when we think this is hard, we're focused on us and how we feel. We're focused on horror, me, and how hard this is. Versus, oh my gosh, this could help people. Like, this is actually something that's really helpful for my client. And when we shift ourselves from thinking about ourselves to someone else, this Everything starts to move forward.

We start to loosen up all of those things that have created that stuckness inside. And we start to think about other people. And there's something about that, that really helps us move forward. So if you find yourself thinking. This is hard a lot. I want you to shift into service if that's something that works for you.

So those are three options for you to try on, just like you're, you know, going shopping and you're trying on an outfit. You want to try them on. You don't want to just say, Oh, that one doesn't work. You want to keep trying on outfits until you find the one that works for you. Find a thought that's going to get you into action.

Okay. 

That's what mindset work is all about. 

When I'm working with a client one on one, sometimes we're playing with this a little bit, right?

I help them tap into their intuition and help them tap into that inner knowing, but sometimes we're playing a little bit and we're just like, Hey, how does this feel in your body?

Does this feel lighter?

Does this feel like it's coming from a place of love? 

Because honestly, if you're shifting from self pity, you know, sometimes you'll think this is hard and you feel self pity for yourself. 

Then And you shift to service and you're like, wait a minute, it actually feels really good when I think about how happy my client's going to be when I create the solution for them.

And then you're shifting into service. And that is from love. So those are the kinds of things we do in one on one coaching. And so when you start doing that, you get to this. 

This practice in like you're building reps. Cause remember mindset is about reps. So trying on these different thoughts is one thing to start, but I want to offer you something else here.

Cause it's not just trying on the thought it's trying on the thought and then practicing it. So an example of this is let's try another one here. I don't have time is a thought that I hear a lot, or I'll deal with that later. I don't have time or I'll deal with that later. So. You might think, okay, I don't have time and it feels a hundred percent true.

A hundred percent of the time I get it. It'd been there. But that is a thought that you don't have time. I know you think it's reality, where it's not. It's simply not, because the belief that you can also point to is I make time for what's important to me. And if those two thoughts can exist in the same world, then we know it's an opinion and not a fact.

I don't have time versus I make time for what's important to me. Those two thoughts, because they exist in the world at the same time, you know that these two things are just thoughts. And then you're just making a decision about what you want to believe. So I decided years ago that I don't want to think the thought, I don't have time.

I just didn't want to think it. 

Every time I thought that thought, I created so much suffering for myself. 

I would get into road rage. 

I would be upset and frustrated. 

I would find myself feeling frazzled and panicked. 

And every time I thought that thought, I found all kinds of junk in my life and I was done.

And so then I just started asking myself, you know, Why don't I just pretend that I have plenty of time?

I actually just started saying, like, what if I just had time? 

Like, what if I have plenty of time?

And so I started just to tell myself, like a mantra, I have plenty of time. 

I have plenty of time. 

And a lot of people give mantras a bad rap, but I will tell you, it calmed me down considerably.

And then when I started seeing this in action, I was amazed because I started noticing everywhere I said. I don't have time. And then I started pausing and saying, hold on, I have time, breathe. And so I would, I would practice this everywhere on my drive to work, when I was going to court, when I was writing a brief, I mean, anything that I was doing where I felt rushed and panicked, I would pause and I say, okay, it's okay.

You have time. Everything's okay. You have time. And I practice this over and over again. And I would breathe when I would have this thought, cause I was regulating my nervous system so that I wouldn't be in that panic mode. The more I practice that, the more that I started to see shifts in my life. The more I began to see, Oh, wait a minute.

That thought that I have, that I don't have time is actually what's creating the panic. Because when I actually I take the time to look at the facts and I tell myself I do have time. I get to the office. I have time. I go to court. I have time. Everything's okay. Nothing's going wrong. I have plenty of time.

I'm getting it done. And it didn't feel true at first. I really needed to practice this thought a lot. And when I started practicing it. The better my life became. So those are two different examples that I wanted to share with you. One is just having like a thought that feels a little bit better, right?

Going from this is hard to, you know, this is hard and it's okay. And then another one that's more extreme that requires a lot of practice, which is I don't have time to, I have, I have time. It's okay. I have plenty of time. It's okay. Right, and treating that as a mantra. And I hear, I hear you. So many people say like, Oh, mantras don't work.

Well, if you are connecting with the emotion of the thought you're having, it's not just you saying words out loud. You actually have to connect with that emotion. If you're saying, I don't have time and you're feeling panic in your body and overwhelm, then you're going to be out of breath. You're going to be running around.

You're going to be stressed. You're going to be maybe a little bit. Short with people, all of those things that we've talked about on this podcast. If you are, when you notice that thought, pausing and saying, wait a minute, hold on. I have time. Breathe. It's okay. Breathe. It's okay. I have plenty of time. You are connecting with a more calm nervous system.

So the more you practice, you can't just say, I have time. I have time. 

I have time. 

No, you've got to calm it down and you've got to connect with that emotion of calm, even if it's just for a moment. 

And that is practicing a thought And an emotion that are going to get you more success because when you believe you have time, when you believe you have time, you will be able to make time more effectively to work on your practice, to do hard things.

Even if you don't want to do them in your practice, you make time to Do them. And so the most successful attorneys that I see have these thoughts that I've been talking about. So, so far we've talked about, yeah, it's hard and that's okay. And they shift into service when they want to really get themselves on board with a project that they know is in service of their clients and in their, their interests.

And they have thoughts like I make time for what's important to me and I have plenty of time. Those are two of the thoughts. And let's go on to the next one. So one of the thoughts I see so often is, Oh my gosh, I'm not going to hit my revenue goals. I'm not going to hit my billing goals this month. And that leads to a lot of worry and a lot of stress.

And of course, when we're worried and we're stressed, we cannot problem solve. We can't think straight. We just go straight into ruminations and thinking about all the worst case scenarios and not thinking about how to problem solve. So this is what I do, right? Because I'm a human being too. And of course my brain goes there.

It's not as if my brain is robotic, it has its own patterns. And this is what the most successful lawyers I see do when they come up against a thought like this, they notice the thought and they say things to themselves, like, wait a minute. I can figure out how to hit my revenue goals. Let's just think about it.

Let's figure this out. I can do this. Notice those thoughts create a very different feeling in your body when you believe them. I can figure this out. It's very calm. It's very committed. It's certain. Let's figure this out. I can do this. When you believe those thoughts in your body, they feel very calm and committed.

Now I understand not everybody can get into that mindset immediately, but let me bring this to you. If you're thinking, I'm not going to hit my revenue goals this month, and you're feeling worried, Then you're basically thinking to yourself, this is hopeless. That's the equivalent of the thought that you're thinking.

So if you are giving yourself that kind of fuel, if you're fueling yourself with, this is hopeless, I can't do it. You definitely won't be able to do it. Period. But what if you started to just open yourself up to possibility just a little bit, even if you can't get to, I can figure this out, I can do this.

You could just get to the idea that, okay, well, what if it was possible? 

What if it was possible for me to hit my goal this month? 

What would I do? 

What would I be doing differently? 

And then you can open your brain up to creative solutions, but you've got to be able to open yourself up to that. 

That's the mindset of a successful attorney is somebody who can really think through a problem and not let the problem be it.

It's like looking at a problem and saying, that's the brick wall. That's it. I can't go any further. Versus how do I knock down this brick wall? Because there's so many options. I was watching this show the other night and this was actually one of the things that was going on is that there was this giant brick wall and there they tried like everything in the kitchen sink to bust down this wall and finally they busted out like a grenade launcher or something.

It was pretty hilarious. But that's what you have to do as a successful attorney is you have to see the walls and you've got to be able to knock them down as any entrepreneur. You've got to see the walls and you've got to knock them down because if you're not going to eat that month, then you got to figure out how to make revenue.

It's up to you. 

Nobody's going to come in and save you. 

You have to figure it out.

So if your brain is saying, I'm not going to hit my revenue goals this month, it's up to you to figure it out. 

Right. 

And that is what the mindset of somebody who is really, okay. Yes. Taking responsibility, taking control of their practice is, is somebody who says, It's okay.

If my brain says that, it's not a problem. I'm going to see that and I'm going to question it. And I'm going to ask myself, well, what if it is possible? What would I do differently? Or I just decide I can figure this out. Let's do it. Right. You can have those two options. You can have that little peak to open you up if you're having a hard time getting there, or you can just switch over into if you believe it in your body, let's do this.

Let's figure this out. This is not a problem. I am going to make this work. And that committed energy will help move you forward too. Okay, so here's another one I hear a lot about is my assistant isn't doing what I told them to do. And then that's a brick wall for them. A lot of times that's the brick wall that lawyers come up against in their practice, which is, okay, well, I guess I can't do anything differently because my assistant isn't doing what I told them to do.

So that must mean that they should be fired, or that must mean that they don't respect me. Neither of those is necessarily true, but we have to recognize that that thought Is just a thought because we have to understand that assistants are trained the way we train them. So what I do is I look at, well, how did I create this situation?

What do I need to rectify it? Right, so if you have a situation like this where you have an assistant or an associate who isn't doing what you quote unquote told them to do, I want you before you just decide you want to fire them or before you like get super frustrated with them, pause and say, how did I create this situation?

Because when you start looking at your practice through the eyes of a powerful creator, which I encourage all of my clients to do, I have a whole episode on it. I'll link in the show notes to you on it. But when you start thinking of yourself as the powerful creator in your practice, you start to clean up all the little messes that you see.

And if you see a little mess, like my associate didn't do what I wanted them to do. You start to look at how did this person get hired in the first place is one direction to go, right? And you start to see, wait a minute, what is exactly the training that I gave this person? Did I give them written training?

Did I give them SOPs? Have we done trainings on this? Am I giving my associate an opportunity to talk to me every single week and ask me those questions that they need to ask me and for me to give me, give them the guidance that I need to guide guide them. So those are the things that, okay. I think about when I see a problem in my business, I don't just immediately say, Oh, well, they're not doing their job.

I say, no, there's someplace where I didn't do my job. And that's something that some of the most successful attorneys do. I would argue all of them is say, wait a minute, how is this my responsibility? What did I create here? How did I create this, this situation? Cause when you start doing that, you start to be able to problem solve, not just for this situation, but for any situation in the future.

And when you start doing this, it's going to feel so much more empowering because you're going to start recognizing the patterns that created the situation you have now, and you're going to be able to loosen up those patterns and break those patterns. So you're not blocked from having the practice that you want because of the people who you currently have in place.

Another thought, this is the last one I really want to talk about here, is they're going to be upset with me if I fill in the blank, if I go out on my own, if I tell them what I really think, if I raise my rates, if I tell them no to an assignment, like they're going to be upset with me. That is a thought I see come up so often with the lawyers that I work with.

And. The thought that I always see start to come up for the lawyers that I work with over time is what I want matters. That is the thought that really helps burst that bubble of what if they say, Something bad about me. What if they think something negative about me? Because when they believe truly in their hearts, that what I want matters, then it's okay.

Like they know how to fix anything. 

They feel confident going into a conversation. And even if a client doesn't understand initially, the attorney is okay being with the discomfort and having an uncomfortable conversation about. Raising rates or why they're saying no to certain work, right? Or if they're in a conversation about with an assistant and they're critiquing an assistant and the assistant, you know, is somebody who's quote unquote sensitive.

I hear this so often from people. It's like, I don't know. They're too sensitive. I don't want to tell them anything. I feel really bad. It's like when you believe that what you want matters. You will be able to sit in the discomfort and you will be able to sit with that person and let them know, Hey, this is what I'm seeing.

That is not the work product that I expect. 

This is the work product I expect. And if their feelings are hurt, you let them be hurt. 

And you just say, Hey, this isn't personal. 

This is simply about how I want to run my practice and how I want to serve the people inside my practice. 

And this level of work isn't going to cut it.

So let's talk about creating some solutions here. And then you open up a conversation and you have communication and then you improve your practice. But if you're thinking, I'm worried that I'm going to hurt their feelings. I'm worried about what they're going to think of me. If I fill in the blank, then you're not going to get the results.

A better life. You're not going to be more successful either financially or emotionally, right? Because you're going to get what you tolerate. Anytime you're tolerating something in your life, I want you to know that that's just an aspect of mindset that hasn't been addressed. That's all it is. It's just something to look at.

I have things in my life too. I noticed I'm like, wow, that's been going on a long time. I really want to take a look at that. And then I take a look at it and I clean it up and I clean it up. Right. That's, that is how life works. We're never perfect. We're always a work in progress. So these different thoughts, these different mindsets that I've brought to you in this episode, I really want you to take them to heart and see where they're showing up in your practice one way or the other, either in the category of not, you know, not being super productive, right?

If you're thinking it's, it's too hard, I don't have enough time and all of those thoughts. Or where do you notice where you are thinking things like, you know what, I do have plenty of time. I am able to, you know, make what I want matter. And I, I, I don't tolerate those kinds of things because I want things a certain way.

And I don't mean that in kind of a militaristic kind of way, but in a way that's, that makes sense for your practice and the way you want to live. Right. How do you want to live? In your life. And what are you willing to tolerate and what do you want to change? I also like this one thought. I'm going to add this one in real quick here.

I guess a bonus thought here, but another thought that I really like to have is that every path I take can lead to success because I think that so many of us, especially if we're in this personal development field or we're doing, you know, entrepreneurship. We see a lot of people doing a lot of different things.

And we, because we have this background in the educational system, we think, okay, there's gotta be like this formula and we've got to follow this formula. And that's going to give me success. And I learned that that just doesn't really matter how you do it. Everybody does it a different way. Yes, there's lots of people selling you on do it this way and it works for people.

You know, they just follow it step by step. I think that's beautiful, but not all of us want that kind of path. Not all of us have that kind of path. And so what I like to tell myself is every path I take can lead to success. Right? Because just because everyone else is doing it one way doesn't mean that I can't do it the way that I want to do it.

Everything is an experiment. And the things that I try, those things might be just as successful or more, and then those are things I can help other people with, if they want to learn that way. You've got to do what I do. That feels right to you and it may not be following somebody else's cookie cutter path.

It definitely has not been for me. I have definitely not had a cookie cutter path and I've tried to fit myself into all of those little boxes and tried to like check all the boxes and do all the things and that does not work for me. It doesn't feel good to me. So my path is very different from other people's paths and that's okay.

And I remind myself. Every path I take can lead to success and I learn from everything I do. Every single thing that I do, I take learnings from, I evaluate and I see, ah, yes, what's, what do I want to do next time? What do I want to change next time? And those are two more things that I wanted to just mention to you.

That mindset of successful attorneys is really understanding that you get to choose your path and the path you choose It will give you success no matter what. I love that thought. And that as you're going along your path, you're going to learn things, you're going to evaluate things, and then you're going to iterate.

That is what a successful entrepreneur does. So those are the thoughts that I really. Believe that you should practice that you should take to heart when it comes to creating a successful practice to being the most successful attorney in the, in the way that I am talking to you about it in both abundance and wellness.

So let's go through them really quick. Yeah, it's hard. And that's okay. And shift yourself to service. I'm in service of the people that I love to serve. I make time for what's important to me. I can figure out how to hit my revenue goals. Let's figure it out. I can do this. How did I create the situation?

Right? Ask yourself those kinds of questions. What do I need to do to rectify it? What I want matters and it's okay. If people are upset with me, right? I get what I tolerate. So what do I want to tolerate here? Every path I take can lead to success and I learn from everything that I do. These are the thoughts that I believe help attorneys really tap into their highest self, to that part of them that is the problem solver, the part of them that is the one who shows up in their life bigger and brighter and more of service to the people they want to serve.

And if this is work that you want to do, if you want to really start to work on your mindset, to create your life intentionally, to think clearly about what it is you're doing in your practice. Do you enjoy the way that you've structured your practice? What are things that you can do in order to begin?

Shifting your practice in a way that feels good. So you're not working 70 hours a week. I want to encourage you to book a strategy session with me. You can book a strategy session at Dina Cataldo. com forward slash strategy session. And during our call, we're going to get a thumbnail sketch of where you are right now and where you want to be.

And we'll talk about the path. That will take you from where you are right now to that new place, to that place where you're feeling more calm, more organized, more confident, more sure of yourself in every single area where you're the problem solver in your practice and you feel more empowered in everything that you do.

So you can book that strategy session at Dina Cataldo dot com forward slash strategy session. All right, my friend, I hope you have a wonderful rest of your week and I will talk to you next week.