#353: Self Management

Read this episode: Self Management

Today you will learn what self-management is and is not. I'm also gonna give you some helpful tips to help you manage yourself better. Keep listening for more.

Hello, how are you doing today?

So I wanted to talk to you about self-management because it is the number one thing that is going to determine your success at anything that you do. Whether it is being a lawyer that gets work completed instead of procrastinates. Whether it is really diving into the health plan that you want to create for yourself, whether it is finally making the time to be present with your family. It doesn't matter what it is, it is the key for you to have the life of your dreams. And I have seen that throughout my life. I see it with every single one of my clients.

I can tell the ones who are excellent at managing themselves and the results that they get and they, their results are very different from the people who are not managing themselves well.

And I am gonna share with you not only what self-management is, but how you can become better at self-managing yourself so that you can create a life that you love. And this is something that every single one of us needs and not many people talk about. And we definitely don't get this kind of information from the people around us who are usually very bad at self managing themselves. <laugh>. So listen in for what you need here and where you might see a gap between where you are now and managing yourself effectively to have the life that you want.

So self-management is noticing when your behavior is not moving you in the direction you want. And then redirecting yourself. Sounds super simple, right?

But why can't more people do this?

Why don't more people do this? It's because most of us are severely disconnected from ourselves, are severely disconnected from a future goal and do not have the tools to merge them to align themselves. And when we don't have those tools, it feels like we're swimming or we're not even swimming, we're like grasping for the water.

Like we're drowning and we need to like keep grasping for the top. 'cause we feel like we have to keep paddling harder and harder to keep our head above the water. And I wanna share with you that if that's how you feel right now, there's nothing wrong with you, it's that you haven't learned the skills that you need to

Align yourself, align your behaviors, self manage yourself and make things easier for yourself. And so when I work with clients, whether it's privately or in my timepiece program, what we are doing is learning the skill, right? They're learning the skill of self-management.

Yes, you get all the strategies and all of that, but you're learning the skill of managing yourself so you can implement those strategies. Another part of self-management is following your inner guidance system.

We all have an inner guidance system.

And when we know when something is or isn't good for us. So I want you to think about any relationship that you've had over the years where you knew you stayed in it just way too long. And you did that despite having this feeling that this isn't working. Like there's something not right here. And then you realized, oh wait, I have been allowing myself to be treated badly.

I haven't been respecting myself. I've been, you know, all those things that you notice and your inner guidance system has been going off like crazy but you did nothing different. And so that's an example of ignoring your inner guidance system. But you have one, another example of this inner guidance system is noticing the feelings you get when you engage in different activities.

The one that's probably the easiest to notice is when you watch the news and when you watch the news, they don't talk about anything good, right?

And the reason they do that is because they have their own agenda. They're, you know, doing it for profit. So of course they know how the brain works and the primal brain is attracted to bad news. So what do they publish most of bad news. And even if it is neutral news, they're gonna publish it with a slant depending on which channel you're watching.

So I want you to just be aware, when you watch the news, how you feel in your body, do you feel anxious? Do you feel angry? Right?

Notice your brain and your feelings start to go down the toilet when you watch these things and you start to really engage with them and then watch your behavior afterwards.

This is what I see, this is what I hear from the people around me. What they do is they take what they've watched during the day and then at some point during the day or maybe right after, they start complaining about how someone is doing this or that, talking about how someone is or isn't helping, you know, how they're messing things up, how this is bad and that's bad. And then they waste hours doom scrolling or commiserating with a colleague or a friend. And that kind of behavior just leads to this whirlpool of repeatedly feeling bad.

And it's not getting you closer to creating what the world that you want. All it's doing is creating more of what the media has put out there. So if you think about like, here's an example that I heard last night where um, someone was talking about, well this person is just so divisive and you know, it wouldn't be so bad if they weren't doing this, this, this, this and this. And I just kind of left it at what it was because I don't engage in that kind of, um, conversation. It just doesn't interest me and it doesn't serve a purpose except for complaining. So if you are talking about divisiveness like this person was, you're not actually keeping your focus on what you really want, which is unity, right? Which is really thinking about how you can behave in the world to create unity. How you have conversations with people, how you engage in the world, whether it's with somebody at the grocery store or how you're driving down the street.

Do you let somebody get you upset because you are not paying attention and instead you decide to become angry with them? Versus calming things down, slowing things down within yourself and just taking care of you and maybe having a little compassion for the person who drove in front of you because you don't know what's going on in their life. You don't know what kind of emergency they might be going through or some kind of hardship they're going through in their life.

I mean, this is really what it comes down to because self-management, when it comes to self-management in our lives, we've gotta pay attention to everything. And if you don't know what you want, it makes it really difficult to self-manage yourself. And if you're focused on what you don't want, then you're always going to be a poor manager of yourself. So going back to that, uh, example of divisiveness, if you're focused on the divisiveness, you're just gonna create more divisiveness.

You're gonna talk badly about people.

You're going to, you know, maybe have some kind of superficial connection with someone via gossip, whatever it is at the office, right?

Or any other kind of behaviors that you notice where you are making somebody else the other, then you are contributing to the divisiveness. But if you're focused on unity, you don't have to like the behavior of another person, but you don't have to go down the toilet with that kind of behavior. You can self manage and you can recognize where am I contributing to what I want, which is unity, which is, you know, people having compassion for one another, people really loving one another. And that can be really difficult when you're focused on all of the negative that's being perpetuated in the media. So that's one example of self-management.

Where I come in with lawyers is really looking at how are they managing themselves with time?

How are they managing themselves with their workload? How are they managing themselves when it comes to their employees, if they have employees or to grow their practice? Are they even working on growing their practice or is all their time spent on case management and creating a balance there? So if you don't have self-management, you can't really do the things that you want to do to make yourself successful, whether it's in life or in your law practice, you've gotta be able to self-manage yourself. A

nd one of the beautiful, um, science, um, experiments that was done, it was, it's really cute, you've probably heard of it, which is the marshmallow experiment where you know, researchers put, you know, kids in a room and said, Hey, if you don't eat this marshmallow then we'll give you another one if you can hold off for, I don't know how long it was, 15, 30 minutes, whatever it was.

And so some of them ate the marshmallow right away 'cause they didn't have any self-management. And then those that did wait, they received the next marshmallow, they followed up with those children later and they were leading lives that were very successful. So I just wanna offer to you that this self-management, while yes, there are people who are really good at it at first, you also can learn this tool. And I definitely have learned it over the years and I've seen all of my clients take on better self-management, being able to really do the things that are gonna move the needle in their practice, that are gonna move the needle in their lives so that they feel better and they like their lives better. So let's talk about what self-management is not okay, because this is what I see people do. Lawyers come to me and they will be beating themselves up for not doing the thing that they said they were gonna do.

Or they tell themselves they should know better and that they're really bad for not doing the thing. But I want to share with you that those things are not self-management. In fact, they are the opposite of self-management. And the reason that is, is because we have to give ourselves grace. We will shut down the learning centers in our brain when we are mean to ourselves. And so you will not be able to learn this skill if you can't begin to show yourself compassion and grace because you will not be able to self-manage perfectly. You will have days that you are exhausted and your energy levels are so low that you don't have the capacity to self-manage sometimes. So I want you to recognize that you can do the things without beating yourself up. In fact, you'll be better at them. You can manage your time better when you are compassionate with yourself.

You can manage emergencies better in your practice and in life when you are compassionate to yourself. And this is incredibly important. I really, if you don't hear anything else in this episode, I want you to just hear don't beat yourself up for not being perfect at self-managing. Don't tell yourself that you should know better. And I speak from lots of experience saying these things to myself. And when I stopped doing that, my self-management skyrocketed and I saw the results in my life skyrocket as well. So this is a process. And when you practice it every single day, 'cause it is a practice, you are gonna notice compound results over time. You're gonna notice that you get better using your time. You're gonna notice that you get better managing your employees, you're gonna notice that you get better building your business. But self self-management is required, but so is compassion and grace.

So here is a, a concrete example of not having self-management that's outside of the legal practice because this example of not honoring your inner guidance system comes in. So you know that if you're in the middle of a workday, that you might have an urge to pick up your phone and scroll. And so when you're scrolling, you may even be in the middle of watching videos and you're like, oh my gosh, I should really get to work. And then you keep scrolling videos, you're not self-managing yourself in that moment, right? You're telling yourself you should be self-managing, which is a form of beating yourself up, but you're not conscious in that moment. So when you're not self-managing yourself, you're not conscious of the present moment, you're just skipping right through it. So if you notice yourself in the present moment scrolling and you want to actually be working on a project that's due, then you've gotta stop and pause for a moment. <laugh>,

You gotta actually pause and say, wait a minute, put the phone down. That is self-management. Noticing the urges, noticing that you're scrolling, noticing that you're in the middle of a bad relationship. Whatever it is, pause and redirect yourself because it's the not directing yourself. That's not self-management, right? You can notice all day long that it, it doesn't contribute to the self-management and it's not gonna contribute to the overall result that you want to create in your life or your practice. So let me share with you a tool I use with my clients to really help them with self-management. It's called the five-year plan. And this is how I've been really using it with them to help them self manage, is I ask them to put their life. I want them to think about their life five years out from today, what kind of life do you wanna be living?

How do you feel? How do you, you know, interact with your family, your partner? Um, how do you show up at the office? What are you doing in the office? What kind of practice areas are you in? What kind of work are you doing? Do you have employees? What are they doing right? We just get them into this space where they're dreaming five years out. We very rarely do this. That's why this tool is so effective, especially when you have someone guiding you through it because it forces your brain to get out of the daily, get out of the daily to-do list, get out of the daily, you know, case management, really pushing your brain to think further ahead than what's in front of your face. And when they do that, they get in touch with this dream that they've had and maybe they've never verbalized before.

And they start to recognize whether or not the actions that they're currently taking are in alignment with what they are gonna create in five years. And most of the time they're not. And what they come to realize is that they haven't been self-managing themselves. They've been letting their lives just kind of lead them wherever the wind blows. Fly by the seat of your pants versus recognizing what you want and then moving yourself consciously closer to that. And it doesn't have to be overnight. That's why I put it out five years, because you would be amazed at the progress that can be made when you make a dream and then every day you just watch yourself. Is this decision, is this action moving me closer to what I want? Is it moving me further away from what I want? It really helps you to navigate what you're doing and it also gives you that little extra inspiration to self-manage yourself.

So when I see this going on in myself, I can just say, oh, wait a minute, is this action that I'm taking in my business, does this make sense for where I want to be in five years? Does this make sense for where I want to be in three years, one year, whatever focal point I have? And that kind of focus allows me to shift, allows me to manage myself better. Or if I'm working with someone in timepiece, then if they're looking at just their week ahead, it's a lot easier for them. When you have your week planned, you get to look at your behavior and self-manage yourself and say, oh, wait a minute, I'm scrolling. Wait a minute, I have the Thompson project. Do at the end of the week, like, is this, this is not helpful. I'm not gonna be able to get this done if I keep scrolling.

So you can put your phone down and it's a lot easier to self-manage because now you have a focal point. I like the five-year plan for people who own businesses. Like if you have a law practice, I think it's a beautiful way to think about what you want. And I structure it in a way where they're thinking specifics. Like how many people do they want to be helping? Where do they want their law practice centered? All of those kinds of questions that they likely aren't asking themselves because they're so busy in the day-to-day tasks. So that's something that you can do to really help you focus. And if you want a shorter timeframe, then a weekly planning session is going to help you focus, right? So that's what I'm teaching in time pieces. How do you wanna focus your attention this week? And when you do that, it makes it so much easier to self-manage.

So let me give you some tips outside of what I've just shared with you that also help you self-manage. And let me just briefly go over a couple just so that you, you can have them all in one spot. So one is when you're self-managing yourself, you've gotta pay attention to how you feel. Do you feel like you are kind of going down this toilet of emotion where like if you're reading the news, if you are in a a gossip or complaint session with people around you, if you are in social media and you're doom scrolling and you just kind of notice your emotions sink, like I just kind of get this gross feeling in my body. That's a moment where I can pause and say, ah, yeah, I see what I'm doing. What am I doing in this moment? I'm doom scrolling, I'm doing this.

Whatever it is you're doing, that's your key to notice what you're doing. And then self-management is saying, okay, put the phone down, disengage from the conversation, right? That is one example of how to self-manage yourself. Another thing that helps is noticing that is having that five year plan or having that weekly plan so that you are able to focus your attention where it needs to go. And notice in the moment slowing it down internally what you are doing and pausing and redirecting your behavior. Those are other tools that you can use to self-manage yourself. And I wanna share with you a few others. So the first one that I wanna share in addition to that is coaching. It is the most effective tool at self-management period. Because if you are getting coached every single week, you have accountability, you have somebody who you know is gonna have a conversation with you about whatever topic it is that you're focused on, and you are gonna have somebody to help you redirect your mind.

So if that week you weren't great at self-managing yourself, that's okay. You come to a coaching call to help you reorient, to regroup and begin to self-manage yourself again. And then you come back. And if even if you've fallen off the self-management and during the week, that's okay because the coaching helps you redirect and brings you moving forward towards what you want to create in your life. That's as close to a magic bullet as I can think of. And I know for me personally, having a coach every single week to help me manage my brain gets me closer to my goals faster period. So not only do I get that, but you also get positive reinforcement, right? Well, at least I <laugh>, I do positive reinforcement baked into my coaching. I don't know what other coaches do, but I do that because I know that most lawyers, right?

Just ask yourself this question right now. Are you giving yourself positive reinforcement? Are you telling yourself what a good job you're doing? Are you acknowledging the wins that you had during the week? And I'll, I'll give you 99%, you're probably not doing that. So you have to have that in order to keep yourself self-regulating, self-managing yourself, because you need to show your brain that there's progress, that it's working. And having me there with you every single week helps you keep track of your goals. So if we're doing a five year plan together and you know exactly what you want, it doesn't even matter that you know what you want, it matters that I know what you want. Because when you come to a call, I am then there to be able to check in and say, Hey, how is this going? What is the, have you raised your rates yet?

Tell me why. Why not? What's going on there? Have you hired that new employee? Why? Why not? What's going on there? You know, how was that conversation? You know, how are you feeling this week about your workload? Like what's, what's the block between you and planning your week? What's happening there? And then we start to really unravel these things. And I help you get closer to where you want to be faster. Because if we don't have an somebody who can see that outside perspective, we end up spinning our wheels. We end up taking so much time trying to get and like effort our way to do things. And along the way, we're often beating ourselves up and telling ourselves that we should know better, but I'm there to see if that's what you're doing. So I can make sure that you release that and you're not stymieing your pro your progress.

I also help you slow things down internally. A lot of times I will see lawyers make snap decisions that are in opposition to everything that they want. I had one client who wanted to grow an area of her practice that she had told me that she hated. And I had asked her, why do you want to grow this area of your practice? And she said, well, it's just the easiest because you know, money just comes in easily that way. And I said, but you told me you hate that area of your practice is then this other area you absolutely love. Why aren't you focusing more attention on this other area that you want to grow? I'm really curious about that. And she hadn't even recognized that her brain's default was to just do the stuff she hated because she knew the money would be there versus she knew that she could also focus her attention on a practice area that she absolutely loved and start to make money there when she focused her attention there.

Because where your attention is, is what you are gonna grow. If you want to focus on growing an area of your practice that you love, you can focus your attention there and it will grow. But if you focus your attention on areas of your practice that you hate, you're gonna grow those areas. So I want you to just sit with that for a moment. Are you taking action, making decisions that are in alignment with the life and the practice that you want? And if you are not, it's time to self-regulate. It's time to pause and it's time to do some of the things that you're learning in this podcast and start to take the actions and make the decisions that are in alignment with what you want. Another thing that you can do is you can write out a five-year plan for yourself and place your plan on your nightstand or on your coffee table and just read it every single day.

And you can put it with your calendar if you're already really good with a calendar. And you can say, what action am I taking today in alignment with this? Are there any actions that I'm taking this week that are not in alignment with this? So that way you always have that goal in mind and you're able to refocus yourself. That's really important. And another thing that you can do is give yourself that positive reinforcement. So at the end of the day, you can ask yourself, let's just do it a day in review. Well, did I take any actions consistent with or inconsistent with my five-year plan? Then you can say, oh, I see what's going on. I wasn't self-regulating, or whatever it is that you saw so that the next day you could come back and say, oh, okay, look, I see what happened. And now I have an example today of an action that I took, like I had a conversation with someone, I had a difficult conversation with an employee.

I let an employee go even though it was hard because they weren't serving the best interest of my business. I, you know, had a meeting with somebody that I think is gonna align me with something that I want. You know, a year down the road. Those kinds of positive reinforcements allow your brain to see progress. And then it's easier to self-regulate. It's easier to self manage. I know that it can be difficult to see the positive because our brains skew negative. It's, that's just the way it is. I mean, that's why the media is the way it is. That's why, you know, so many of us have a difficult time making progress in our lives, and it's why so many of us beat ourselves up and we get into this habit of negativity. So the positive reinforcement lightens the load, so to speak. It allows you to see the light at the end of the tunnel.

It allows you to get that inspiration to keep going because if you are just seeing the negative, if you are just seeing the hard parts and not the parts where you're actually making progress, then self management becomes more difficult. And self-management, again, is the key to everything that you want in life. It is the absolute key. So I recommend listening to this podcast again. I recommend you implementing what I share with you here. And if you want to take all of this and put it into practice, book a strategy session with me, go to dinacataldo.com/strategysession.

We will talk about what working together will look like, how we can help you learn the skills that you need to achieve what you wanna achieve. All right, my friend, I hope you have a beautiful rest of your day. Bye.