#314: Creating Peace in Your Law Practice

Creating Peace in Your Law Practice

(0:00 – 3:33) If you are someone who says you always have to be doing something, you always have to be keeping busy, and that's just who you are, this episode is for you, because we're going to be talking about how that is preventing you from being truly productive and doing your very best work. Imagine this, you are at your desk, you see tons of paper piling up, you see files adding up in your inbox, you see your email inbox piling up, you know you have voice messages, you know you have things to do, but you feel paralyzed, paralyzed, not knowing where to start. And this paralysis can prevent us from doing our best work. The funny thing is, is that even though we feel paralyzed when we think about work, there's also another part of us, that part of us that feels guilty for not doing work. And so what we do is we begin doing things that feel, and I put feel in quotes, productive. Things like checking your email, your personal account, maybe checking your email knowing you need to do other things, maybe doing discovery even though you have an answer due in a day. Maybe you decide if you work from home, I'm going to bake some cookies because that's productive.

Maybe you think, you know, I need to do some laundry because that's productive and it'll clear my head and then I can get to work. But that just becomes harder and harder because you keep putting off what's in front of you and then you just feel worse and you feel worse. But you're busy, you're doing things, you're cleaning the house, you're cleaning the office, you're running around, you're getting things done or are you? And so if you have this experience of life, I want to share with you, you're not alone. I talked to a lot of lawyers who were like that. I was like that for a really long time. Let me tell you, it was not easy breaking out of that, but it is a habit. That's all it is. If you're telling yourself, this is who I am, you've taken on this identity of just being a busy person that somehow you are just always in need of taking action, of always doing something. And it's so funny because I see this so often and it hurts my heart because I have been there and it was not fun.

I felt like I was running all the time and I felt tension in my shoulders when I look back on it. And I want to ask you right now, if you're identifying with what I'm sharing with you right now, how do you feel in your body? Do you feel tension? Do you feel shortness of breath? Do you feel like you're breathing shallow? Does it feel like you are constantly moving? Maybe your heartbeat is racing. Do you feel pressure and tension? Do you feel like your jaw is tightening? Those are the kinds of things to look for in your body. Maybe you can't name it as pressure or tension. Maybe you can name the breath being shallow or feeling something in your stomach that feels heavy. But those are signs that if you see yourself doing these things that it's time to put a stop to this. It's time to do something different. In fact, it's called not doing.

(3:33 – 4:18) And I'm going to share with you what I mean by that and how it's helped me begin really this whole new area of my life years ago where I was better able to problem solve in my business. I was better able to think things through. I felt more confident because I was taking this time to myself. I could think more clearly and I didn't feel like I was running around with my head cut off like a chicken. It's just me learning how to be with me, learning how to clear my head so that then I could refocus. And this takes practice. But if you've been telling yourself for years, that's just who I am. I can't be any different. This is just the way I am.

(4:18 – 4:57) It's time to stop that talk. It's time to release that version of you because you cannot move into the next version of you holding on to that. You've got to release it. And I want to share with you some practices that I have to help you with this. It is something that when I became aware of how I was being in the world, I realized this is why I'm having so many issues. So let me just share with you some signs that maybe you're doing this. Maybe you've said, well, maybe I do that. Let me give you some ideas of how you can see if this is you. One is you're constantly getting sick.

(4:58 – 9:23) You've always got a cold. It just seems like it's a constant thing and you never get a break. You maybe find yourself doing things that seem kind of clumsy. Like you stub your toe on things pretty frequently. Maybe you fall sometimes. Those are some signals that you might be in this position. Maybe you notice yourself breaking dishes or doing things that just don't make sense. For instance, this was something that told me I needed to pay attention here is I actually one day opened up the oven. I was doing something and I was pulling out whatever I had cooked and I didn't even put a mitten on. I was like, what is wrong with you, girl?

Fortunately, my hand was fine. It was a little hot. But let me tell you, those kinds of things, when you start noticing yourself doing that means you've got to slow down. And it can be hard to hear that, especially when you're used to this go, go, go. When I tell this story about how I would go into the elevator at the office and when I would ask somebody, how are you doing? They say, I'm busy. And you can almost see their whole body just look busy. It looked tense. It looked like they were under pressure. And the relationship that we have with our work is so important. Because if we have a relationship with our work that doesn't allow us to step away, that doesn't allow us to really be and to clear our head, then we're constantly going to be in this go, go, go lifestyle.

And if you are in a place where you think you can't change, but you know, you don't feel good doing what you're doing and something needs to change, keep listening. So one thing I want to offer to you, I share why this happens in the masterclass that I did called the proven path to law practice piece. You can sign up for it and get instant access at dinacataldo.com forward slash proven path. That's dinacataldo.com forward slash proven path. And in that masterclass, I share the structures that have been built up around us over time that really put us in this place where we're constantly feeling overwhelmed, where we feel like we have to keep going. Otherwise we're going to fall further and further behind. But what's really happening here is we're putting ourselves at a disadvantage and we're hurting ourselves when we don't get focused on what really matters. And that's us, that's us. That's how we are being in the world and how the mindset is different. So go, I really encourage you to go and watch that masterclass because our mindset is everything about this. Cause the mindset is what determines our relationship with work.

I go in detail with the mindset piece of this. And so that's why this masterclass is so essential. Go to dinacataldo.com forward slash proven path. And you can see exactly what I'm talking about to help you go from where you are now into the lawyer that you want to be. Okay. So let's start talking a little bit about what is creating this hard relationship between ourselves and work. This idea that work needs to be done and everything needs to be done all at once. Because when you're looking at those piles of papers, when you're thinking about your email, your brain is going into overdrive, which means your body, your nervous system is also going into overdrive. It is dysregulated. So what we need to do is we need to get the body regulated so that we can then start doing work again. But what we do instead is we don't pause, we grind, we try to get everything done that we can. And we push, push, push through the pain, through the dread, through the stress, through the pressure. And we don't pause. We don't regroup. We don't take a moment for ourselves to clear our head.

(9:24 – 10:32) Have you ever taken a shower and you come up with this amazing idea and you wonder why the heck did I come up with this amazing idea? But it's magic. This is brilliant. Well, that's because your brain got on a different path. You were no longer thinking about whatever it was that might have been preventing progress in that particular area. Now you're able to clear your head and get a different perspective. You're able to think a different thought, which creates this different idea that you never would have had before. And that's what happens when you begin doing this work, when you begin practicing not doing. So I wanted to find what doing is first. Doing is always having to check an email, always needing to be doing something, quote, productive. Baking something, cleaning the house, cleaning the office, doing something within the office. Well, it has to be done. So let's just do it because I don't want to do the harder project that's on my because I feel overwhelmed when I think about checking my emails, whatever it is. (10:33 – 10:45) That's doing. And that's what puts us in this constant state of doing, doing, doing. I have a neighbor. I love him to death. He is always doing something. He's got like four jobs.

(10:46 – 12:59) And he doesn't need four jobs, but he has four jobs. And he's amazing. He's an amazing human being. He is always there for you. He is like a rock, but he's always active. And I was talking to his wife about it. We were joking around and she said, yeah, I can never get him to sit down. He doesn't sit down. And so over time, that has just been his MO and what he has become accustomed to. I have no idea how he is, how he feels or anything like that. I've never coached him, but I have coached lawyers like you and I have been a lawyer. So I know that when I was constantly doing something, what was going on in my body did not feel good, but I didn't know there was another way. I didn't know that there was a way to be other than how I felt, which was stressed out and overwhelmed and pressured and feeling dread all the time. I didn't know there was another way until I had breast cancer and I did chemo and I sat on the couch and I was like, wow, there's another way of being besides that. Oh, that's why I always say chemo felt like a vacation is because I never knew I could feel so good. So I just want to share with you, you don't have to do chemo in order to make this work. You just need to get a new perspective. So let me share this with you. A few things that you can do to not do. Well, before I even talk to you about that, let's talk about what not doing is. Not doing is being. It's just being with yourself. And this can be so hard for us because a lot of us don't feel so great about ourselves. I know I didn't. And a lot of the lawyers I talked to don't. They don't feel like they're doing their very best job. They don't feel very confident. They second guess themselves a lot. They feel like they should be working harder, that there's something wrong with them. And so to ask someone to be with themselves and to not do is a big ask when then you're left with these thoughts of I'm not good enough. (13:00 – 13:05) I don't like myself. I should be working harder. I'm not the person I think I should be.

(13:05 – 13:33) And so it's a big ask. It's a big ask to be quiet and to sit with yourself. But this is where the beauty is. This is such a beautiful opportunity for you to get to know yourself and understand, ah, I have some thoughts about myself. I have some thoughts that don't feel so great. And what might it be like to let it be okay? And that these feelings aren't going to kill me. (13:34 – 14:49) They're going to just be there maybe, maybe not. And it's okay. If I have these thoughts, that's okay too. It doesn't mean anything about me. My thoughts are separate from me. I highly recommend you go and listen to the Mindset Essentials so that you have that really embedded in your system. One of the things that I want to share with you is that this doesn't take a lot of work, but it does take practice. It does take allowing yourself to be with yourself, even when maybe you have thoughts like that in your head that don't feel so nice. But when you do it, you give yourself that perspective. You give yourself that more of a 10,000 foot view of what's going on, not even because you're actively trying to do it, but because you're allowing your brain a break. You're allowing your brain a break from the thoughts that are creating the pressure, the tension, the overwhelm, all of those things. I want to be really clear here. It's not the work that's creating the tension, the pressure, and so on. The work is just there. It's like the wind, right? You just have thoughts about it. (14:49 – 15:07) Those thoughts are creating the pressure and the tension. That's what's happening in your body. To help us get away from that, because maybe you aren't familiar with mindset work or maybe you haven't had a coach before, to get away from those thoughts, we got to get a little distance. (15:08 – 15:38) I want to give you some of the not doings that allow me peace. This is kind of funny because I'm going to be sharing some things with you that maybe you do that you use to actually numb out. There's a fine line. Let me share what that line is. If you feel pressure or tension or anything like that in your body while you're doing something, that is a doing. It is not a not doing.

(15:39 – 16:07) For instance, let's say you love to garden and you work from home and you're thinking to yourself, okay, well, I have this answer that's due by tomorrow, but I really need to pull some weeds. I can wait on this. I should pull some weeds. Then you go out and you're pulling weeds and you're really tugging on them. It doesn't feel super relaxing. It actually feels like more work. (16:08 – 16:57) If you notice that, the gardening has become a doing. Now, if you enjoy gardening and you are at your desk and you're frustrated and you're thinking, oh my gosh, I don't know what to do. I don't know where to start. Take a breath and then just ask yourself, okay, what do I need right now? If your brain says, let's just go outside for a little bit. Let's go outside. You go outside and you see some weeds and you're like, I'll pick some weeds. You pick some weeds and you're like, yeah, that's good. Okay. Let's go back inside. That's a not doing. You're better able to quiet your mind. You're not feeling stressed. You're not feeling overwhelmed. You're just like, I'm just going to give myself something that I need, which is a breath of fresh air, a little time outside. Then I'm going to have a do-over.

(16:57 – 20:47) It's just like taking a shower. You're just having a moment to clear your head where you don't have think about work. Then you can get back to it and focus. I always like to ask myself a question like, okay, what next? What do I need? What's next for me? I just say it. When I say that to myself, I'm calm because I know that my brain is going to give me an answer no matter what. That has taken me years of cultivation. I don't want to, if you're not doing that or you're not able to access that right now, I don't feel bad. It took me a really long time to access that. I had a lot of coaching and a lot of self-coaching. When you start doing this, start noticing the subtleties in your body. I talk about that a lot in this podcast because feelings are the key to the universe. I truly believe that. When you get in touch with how your body feels, when you get in touch with the emotions and you really start understanding what's going on in your body, understanding the chemical reactions happening in your brain causing those chemical reactions in your body, then you can start saying, ah, yes, it's not me. My feelings are not me. The shame I'm feeling, not me. I'm just having some thoughts. We can disconnect from that. This is just some physical practices I want to give you. One of the things that I do is like this morning, I felt like, oh, and I had a thought. My thought was, I don't know what I'm going to write for this podcast. My brain just said, I'm going to shut off right now. I could feel overwhelmed and stress in my body. I said, no, I don't want this. I took a breath and I said, all right, what do I need? Well, I need to put on my makeup. I'm just going to do my makeup and breathe. It'll come to me. And so I was putting on my makeup. I got my clothes out. I picked out my jewelry. And I was like, okay, I'm ready. And I sat down on my desk and I had had an idea as I was doing that because I was in this calm state, just taking breaths.

And I said, you know what? You might actually want to know this. So when we can quiet our minds, we can get ideas. When you mind long enough, you will have ideas about how to structure an answer, how to approach a problem in your practice, how to have a conversation with somebody. Those kinds of things just come to you just like you were taking a shower and those things come to you. So a couple other practices that I have, I go on a walk. I have a client who realized that she was feeling pressure and tension, especially in the morning because she was doing, doing, doing, and then she wasn't giving herself that pause that she needed and wanted so that she could move throughout the day and feel good. So she decided she wanted 25 minutes in the morning to just do nothing, where she would go to this spot. It was this beautiful spot she had outside where she could just sit and do nothing. And what she's noticed over, I think it's been many weeks that she's been doing this, is that she feels better during her day. She feels like she's doing better work. But she also notices she has more energy. She has more energy throughout the day to do her work. And then when she goes home to her husband, she's noticing she has more energy to just be with him and be present with him. So it's really interesting how just giving ourselves what we need, asking ourselves what we need, first of all, because that's one of the hardest things. Hardly any of us ask ourselves, what do we need? And when you ask yourself what you need, answer that question. And when she answered it, that's what she came up with. And she's noticed a big difference. (20:47 – 21:04) So that's a key question to ask yourself. What is it that you need? Whenever I feel pressure or tension or anything like that, I take a moment and I say, what do you need? What do you want? And then I just make it happen. Because when I do that, it puts me in a better state of being.

(21:05 – 21:24) I am in a better state to focus when I give myself what I need in that moment. You can also do things like go on a run, take a yoga class. You can have those little, they're so cute, those little bonsai gardens or those little sand gardens with the rocks. (21:24 – 22:58) You can do something like that or zen coloring book. I've never done any of those things, but they look relaxing. And they also serve a similar concept, which is, let's clear my mind for a few minutes. Let's walk away from the computer. That's always a good idea because the most disconnecting things we have in our lives right now is a phone and a computer and a TV. I think those are the most disconnecting things that we can have in our life. And the funny thing about it is that it also allows me to connect with you. It allows us to connect with a lot of people. And if we were just using it for that, that would be one thing, but there's so many things, and this is by design, by the people who have designed these products online that disconnect us to. So I just want to share that with you is that stepping away from electronics is huge. Scrolling Instagram is not re-energizing, right? Scrolling Instagram can be fun, but it's not re-energizing. So just notice, we want to clear your head. We don't want to fill it with more stuff. So if you're tempted to, let's go online shopping, that's a numbing thing, right? The computer, it's numbing. The phone, it's numbing. If you're going, hey, well, I'll take 10 minutes to scroll Instagram. Okay. But are you giving yourself another 10 minutes just to be quiet and to be with yourself? That's what I want to offer to you is if you are doing something like that, you're like, okay, I'm going to take 10 minutes and do Instagram or online shopping. (22:58 – 25:43) Give yourself 10 minutes to just be and walk away and walk outside, whatever it is that you need to do to just walk outside and not put more information in your brain, right?

We could go into an office and talk to somebody, but then we're getting all their negative energy maybe, or we're getting their thoughts about something. And so then we're thinking thoughts. What if we could just connect with ourselves, disconnect in that way from the electronics or outside stimuli, and just be with ourselves? That really helps us clear our head so we can refocus and do what we want to do. One other thing I want to share with you is meditation. And I know I'll hear this from a lot of lawyers. I can't meditate. My brain's always thinking. That's okay. The point of meditation isn't that you stop thinking. It's that you notice your thoughts. It's that you notice your thoughts and you start to learn the practice of moving your thoughts, shifting your thoughts. And then you can see that we are not our thoughts. Our thoughts are just happening in our brain. We actually have two parts of ourselves. We have a part of ourselves that's this higher knowing. It's almost like this powerful creature. And we can redirect our thoughts. If you think about it, if you're sitting down and you're meditating and you're taking some breaths, and you notice your brain is thinking about your to-do list, and then it's thinking about what you're going to have for dinner tonight, and then you're just like, okay, stop. Let's just focus on our breath. Breathe. Breathe. And then your brain goes on and it's thinking about what you're going to have for dinner tonight. And then you just bring your brain back. And it's this beautiful back and forth. Well, that wouldn't be possible if there wasn't a higher part of ourselves that knew that, hey, we can bring ourselves here. Let's just practice that. And so if you're telling yourself, hey, I'm just a busy person all the time. That's just who I am. Actually, it's just a habit your brain has gotten into.

And so now the game is to practice bringing yourself into a new habit, listening to that higher part of you, that part of you that wants the quiet, that part of you that wants to just breathe, the part of you that wants you to access that information, that problem-solving ability, that part of you that feels really good when you're there. But it does take practice because you've got to strengthen it just like any muscle, right? You go to the gym, you got to lift weights. And that's what meditation is. It is an exercise.

(25:44 – 27:48) It's just an exercise to show you your brain and what it's doing. And you learn how to redirect the thoughts over and over again. That's when I'm working with my clients in coaching, we are always working on mindset, right? It's in a different way, but what we're doing essentially is looking at what they believe, what they feel, how they are being in the world, and then what are the results that they're getting from that? And do they like those results? And if they don't, then we look at the root problem. We look at, okay, well, you know, the way you're thinking about the world right now, isn't getting you the result that you want.

So let's look at what is going to help you create the life that you want, the result that you want. How are you going to hire the employees that you want? How are you going to create a calendar that works for you? Let's talk through it. And it always comes down about how we think about things. So if you notice, when my brain told me, I don't know what to write on this podcast today. I don't know what to write on this podcast today. I don't know what to write on this podcast today. And then I felt overwhelmed and tension in my body. And so I took a breath and I asked myself, what do I need? And I did what I needed to do. And I calmed myself. And during that time, when I was calm, when I quieted my thoughts, creating the overwhelm, creating the tension, then I could say, ah, okay, I have an idea. That's all it is. It's a practice of seeing and releasing, seeing and releasing. See that you're feeling tension, right? You're just noticing it. And then you find a way to release it. It's a very simple practice, but it is a practice. And if you're used to go, go, go all the time, you're not able to just, hey, take a moment, take a breath, ask yourself what you need, and then give it to yourself. But that's a practice.

(27:48 – 30:25) We got to tap into that. So I want to offer to you, if you are in this go, go, go mentality right now, all it is is a habit and you can choose to release it. You can choose to build the muscle of being more quiet. And when you do, you're going to find yourself feeling more confident. You're going to stop second guessing yourself. You're going to stop stubbing your toe, feeling like a chicken with your head cut off. You are going to feel more connected to yourself. You're going to be better able to handle problems that walk through the door. You're not going to be so reactive. You're not going to snap. You're not going to be angry. You're going to just, okay, we're going to let my brain do what it's going to do. And I'm going to give myself what I need. And then we're going to regroup and we're going to refocus and we're going to get things done. It has changed my life doing this. And when I see what my clients are doing with this, it blows my mind. My clients are blowing my mind. They're doing crazy things, right? Like they're taking extra days off. They're taking vacation without thinking about work. They're starting podcasts. They're starting blogs. They're starting up these marketing for their business that they never thought they would do before. They're buying buildings for their practice that they have created this abundance in their life so that they could actually build a bigger firm and in an office that just blew their mind. So I just want to offer to you that when we start calming our nervous system and doing these practices and recognizing our mindset and starting to really connect with ourselves and that higher part of ourselves, that it can feel really challenging to connect to, especially when there's so much going on in the world. There's so much news happening, so much negativity happening. A lot of other people are really having a hard time right now. And we just kind of get caught up in it, but I want to share with you, you don't need to be caught up in it. Not if you're doing these practices, not if you're being diligent with them and reminding yourself that how you are isn't just how you are. You make yourself who you are. You make yourself into the person you want to be. And if you want to make yourself into the kind of person who feels more calm and more confident, then just keep going. Keep doing these practices. And if you want to accelerate your progress during this, you can also book a strategy session with me. (30:25 – 30:49) We can work together one-on-one and I can tell you exactly how we'll do it for your specific situation. You can book a strategy session with me at dinacataldo.com forward slash strategy session. That's dinacataldo.com forward slash strategy session. And these practices seriously will change your life. I know you can do it because I did it. And if I can do it, anybody can do it. (30:49 – 30:55) Let me tell you. All right. I hope you have a beautiful rest of your week and I'll talk to you soon. Bye.