#339: Stop Battling and Change Faster

#339: Stop Battling. How to Change Faster

If you want an expansive business and life, you must be constantly willing to upgrade it. This requires taking a look at your current ways of thinking, your current ways of being in the world, and challenging them. It's not always easy to do. We often fight the process, making it harder for ourselves, and creating a lot of struggle. Today you're gonna learn the signs that you are battling change right now, and how to begin overcoming that battle. Listen in. Hi, I'm Dina Cataldo, a master coach and ex criminal prosecutor. I created. Be a Better Lawyer Podcast for driven lawyers like you who want more from life than sitting behind a desk. You've been playing by other people's rules. Those rules have left you overwhelmed. Unfulfilled, and feeling like a hamster on a wheel. I've been there. I was doing everything people told me to do to be successful, working late nights, weekends, and trying to make everyone happy. Today I'll show you how to change faster.

 

So why wasn't I happy and I wanted more in life? When was I going to find time to find and pursue that? Well, I did. And I'm sharing with you my secrets to living a happier and more fulfilling life. This podcast gives you a lifetime of wisdom, mindset, principles, and bedrock strategies to give you unshakeable confidence, more time to pursue your goals, a powerful sense of purpose to uplevel your life and law practice and so much more. These are things we were never taught in law school. This podcast bridges the gap between law, school and life. I'm so glad you're here. Let's get started. Hello, how are you doing today? It is a fabulous October morning right now here in Sacramento. It is getting a bit chilly. So when I walk my dog, Frankie, my hands are starting to freeze <laugh>, but it's refreshing because it's been so warm here.

 

And all of that really represents the change that we experience no matter what phase of life that we're in, no matter fa what phase of business that we're in every year, we expect that the seasons are going to change. We know it's gonna happen, and sometimes we battle it a little bit, right? Like right now, I'm battling it. I don't wanna wear my gloves, I just wanna like go outside and just have my walk like it was in the summer, but it's not summer anymore, it's fall. So that brings me into what I wanna share with you here today, which is a problem I see with a lot of lawyers that I talk to. It's that they're battling change. They wanna grow their practice, but they're battling how to do it in a way that makes sense for them. They feel overwhelmed thinking about making change.

 

So they don't do anything at all. They want to have a life. They want to have freedom, but they keep putting off, making the decisions that they need to make in order to create that. And because they're facing these battles and they keep battling and battling and battling without allowing for the change, they stay stagnant and they struggle and maybe they make a change, but it feels like they're fighting tooth and nail for everything. Why is that? Well, it's not because they don't wanna change, or even know how to change faster. It's not because they're incapable of change. It's not because they need more discipline or because they're lazy, which is a lot of reasons, as you know, if you've been listening to this podcast that lawyers will give me for not making that change, it's because they're fighting an internal battle and they don't know how to overcome it. They don't have the tools to overcome it.

 

And this shows up in more places than just our businesses. It shows up in every aspect of our lives. Whether it's battling the discomfort of sitting down and having a tough conversation with your partner, whether it's battling investing in yourself to develop yourself into the person that you know you need to become, to create the business that you want. It's battling your brain as it goes back and forth and back and forth like a tennis match to make a simple decision. And those battles can look like arguments with your partner instead of the heart to heart, where you're honest about how you feel and you ask for what you want, even though you wanna get sick, even thinking about asking for what you want, those battles look like not investing in yourself because you're afraid you're not going to change or afraid that you're gonna make a mistake.

 

You have a battle and it looks like putting off, making decisions, hoping things are just gonna get better on their own. That things are just gonna change that, that things are just gonna happen. And here's what you need to understand about these battles for change. You will change. It's a simple matter of how hard you wanna make it on yourself. I know this from personal experience because I have struggled and I have made it hard for myself, and I have allowed the battle to just release. I have allowed the change. And I will tell you that the struggling is so much harder and you can either struggle or you can allow the process and the process looks like having discomfort, being uncomfortable, wanting to throw up, making decisions, wanting to throw up, having a difficult conversation, and then doing it anyway, and then making a powerful decision for yourself anyway, to have the conversation, to make the investment, to do the thing that you're putting off.

 

I'm gonna call that thing X 'cause we're gonna talk more about it. And it could be raising rates, it could be charging for consults, it could be, you know, bringing more people into your practice. It could be changing practice areas, hiring help, you name it. Anything that is difficult that you, you can name, we're gonna call it X because you're gonna have battles unless you begin to allow for the change. So I had a lot of battles that I needed to face to get to the place where I am now. So it's not that battles are a bad thing, but they are. They are things that you can avoid when you have the proper tools. And I didn't have the tools. I needed coaching. I needed help. I needed somebody to give me tools to understand what I was going through. Maybe that tool for you is simply listening to this episode and being now understanding what's going on with you.

 

Right? So I needed to understand how do I make money as an entrepreneur versus getting a paycheck every two weeks, right? Because if you get used to getting a paycheck every two weeks, you get pretty entitled to having that money just come right into your bank. So one of the things that I needed to understand is that I am now in charge of how much money I make. That was a struggle for me because I had never had that experience before. I'd always had jobs where I was an employee for somebody else versus the creator of a business. They're very different mindsets. And I didn't understand that going into business. I thought, oh yeah, I'll just, you know, you put up your shingle and people will come. That's not how to change faster. No, that's not how it works. You actually are in charge of how much money you make. You might have some people come to you, but if you wanna make more money in your business, you better know the skills that you need to know to help you gain that business and do it.

 

For me, this was imperative. Do it without feeling overwhelmed or you're gonna hate your life. You're gonna struggle and you're gonna have more battles, right? I also struggled with letting go of people who were bad for me in my life, right? I just kept, I kept going back and I kept, you know, spending time with these people. And I knew internally this was not the right decision for me, based on what I was observing was the impact on my life. And yet, I kept struggling when I released the struggle, and I allowed myself just to feel bad, right? Just to feel bad about, you know, letting this person go about not talking to this person about just like walking away and doing what was best for myself. Everything became easier because I was allowing, instead of battling, I also struggled with giving up habits that didn't serve me.

 

Like waiting until the last minute to get up out of bed, to go to the office, right? When I had my snooze button hit 10, 15 times in the morning, and feeling rushed and overwhelmed, immediately kicking off my day. I struggled with, you know, drinking, you know, more than I needed to on a weekend and try to overcompensate for the stress I felt during the week. I struggled with all of these things until I decided I was done. And those things that I battled with became so much easier when I allowed the change to occur. I allowed myself to go through the pains and the discomforts of letting those habits go, of letting those people go. And I let myself just feel any feeling. And I started to gain this confidence in myself, this confidence that I could handle anything. Oh, I didn't have the money coming in.

 

Not a problem. I could figure out how to make it happen. Oh, I'm noticing that there's something that that doesn't feel right in this relationship. What do I need to address? And let's have a conversation about it. No matter how uncomfortable I was in it, you know, oh, I don't like how I feel when I do this habit. Well, let's take a look at it and let's feel what comes up versus trying to numb myself out with those habits. So as I grew that confidence, I started to be able to build better habits. I started to create better relationships with myself, especially. That was a huge one, because we can't have great relationships with other people until we have a great relationship with ourself. So these were things that I needed to gain awareness of and start allowing the discomfort, allowing the changes to happen instead of fighting them every step of the way.

 

Instead of saying, oh no, I'm gonna ignore that feeling and I'm gonna go ahead and spend time with this person anyway, or, or spend time with this person out of a feeling of obligation, or I'm not gonna in invest in myself because it's scary. No. In fact, when I saw that, I was really scared. I knew there was something for me and I had to check in on that. And when I invested in the coaching program, that really helped me solidify knowing that this is what I wanted to do, moving forward, helping lawyers. I spent $18,000 on that program, and it was not an easy decision, right? It, it is not an easy decision to, to when you're in a battle with yourself to change, it's not an easy decision, but it's going to bring up all of the feelings. And when you allow yourself to feel those feelings and not make them mean that you're making a bad decision or a wrong decision, but there's something there for you to sit with.

 

And that's what I did when I found out it was $18,000. I sat with that feeling. I allowed myself to feel the feeling. And then I was able to calm myself enough to say, is this something I want to do? And I was able to say, yes, this is what I wanna do. Is it scary? Absolutely. That's how to change faster. Do I know what's gonna come of it? I have no idea. You don't know until it's done. And so I invested in myself and I said, okay, well, we're gonna do this. We're gonna do it, and I'm gonna, I'm gonna be okay no matter what. And so it was really, it's really interesting when we have these kinds of things come up for us, no matter the area, are you allowing yourself to feel the uncomfortable feelings? Or are you reacting to them and making them mean as if something's gone wrong?

 

So I wanna give you some fundamental truths here that will help you distinguish this for yourself. So I will hear lawyers tell me, I'm not sure I should do X scary thing right now. And remember, X is could be anything. Raising rates, charging for consults, investing in yourself, changing practice areas, hiring help, having a difficult conversation, whatever X is for you, I want you to fill in the blank. So they'll come to me telling me, I'm not sure I should do X scary thing right now. Well, it's not a matter of when you should do it, whether you should do it right now or not. It's a matter of how long you wanna keep struggling being where you are. How long do you wanna keep battling? Because if you wanna stay in the battle, if you wanna stay in the struggle, then keep doing what you're doing.

 

But if you want to allow all of the negative emotion, allow all of the discomfort and you want a different result than do the scary thing, I'll also hear this. They'll tell me, I don't know if I'm ready to do X scary thing right now. It is not a matter of whether or not you are ready to change. It's about whether you are committed to being willing to change, willing to feel the uncomfortable emotions, willing to wanna throw up a little bit, willing to do things that might feel embarrassing in the moment, might make you feel vulnerable in the moment. That's how you create change. It's not by being quote unquote ready. It's about the willingness to be with this uncomfortable feeling and changing anyway, doing the scary thing. Anyway, I'll also hear that they wanna think about doing X scary thing and wait until they feel good about it.

 

And I'm gonna put feel good in quotes. Okay? It's not about feeling good. It's about whether or not you're willing to feel uncomfortable, to feel kind of barfy, to feel vulnerable, to feel scared. You've gotta feel those things. You've gotta be willing to do that in order to get the result you want in order to create the change you want in your life. Otherwise, you're just battling it. Discomfort is the currency to change. One of my coaches says that it's absolute truth. I, and I've discovered that over and over and over again. If you wanna change, you've gotta give up the battle that you have within yourself. You need to be willing to undergo the transition. I want you to think about a butterfly, okay? This is kind of like the, the example I hear all the time. But I want you to really picture this in your head where you're just strolling along, you're caterpillar, you're just inching around.

 

You're like, this is pretty cool. I like this. This feels comfortable, this is good. I like life. Life's good. And then one day you have this urge to just plant your anchor and create this cocoon around yourself. You're like, you don't really understand why you wanna do this. You're just doing it 'cause that just feels like the right thing to do. And then you start creating this cocoon, and pretty soon you realize, wait a minute, what did I just sign up for? And you start, your insides start turning inside out. You start becoming this gelatinous goo. And you are just in this cocoon of goo. You're uncomfortable. You're totally different than you were before, and you're not even sure if this was the right decision. You're thinking to yourself, oh my gosh, what did I get myself into? This is totally foreign to me. And then a little by little, the cocoon starts to crack open.

 

And you come out of the cocoon and you have wings and you're colorful and you're able to fly in the air. You've never been able to do this before. Before you were a caterpillar and you were just minding your own business. And all of a sudden now you're flying around like, what is this? It's a totally new world. But that butterfly wouldn't have been able to become a butterfly unless it was willing to do something different, maybe something it didn't even understand at first, and begin to allow the transition. Didn't fight it, didn't struggle with it, it just allowed it. And then on the other side, they created an experience that was beautiful, even though the middle part, that confusing experience, the part where they were disoriented and didn't really know what was going on that had to happen, that absolutely had to happen in order to get the result that they wanted.

 

So I want you to really think about this. Our body undergoes a physiological change when things are different around us. And it's scary. It's normal. It's natural to feel that fear. Right now, I'm getting my home prepared for selling it. And I have a cat along with my dog, Frankie, and along the way, I've been watching my cat Rocco because he's undergoing physiological changes. As I move things around, he doesn't feel comfortable. And so, you know, I, I watch and I, you know, I support and I, you know, make sure that I'm, you know, not changing too many things too quickly because we don't want his behavioral, his, his physiological changes that he's noticing as he's smelling new things like paints and <laugh>, he's noticing things are moving that were really familiar to him before. As that starts to agitate him, because he'll become more agitated with me, he might throw up more, right?

 

He might have some different habits that aren't things I really like around the house. So I'm watching him because I understand that it is normal to feel uncomfortable during the process of change. I feel it too, because things aren't quote nice and neat throughout the house exactly the way I want them, because I need to let go of that. I need to allow for that in order for me to go through the transition. I need to sell the home, to create the life that I want. On the other side of things change no matter what it looks like is going to feel uncomfortable. But when we stop battling that change and we start allowing it and understanding that this is normal and this is part of the process, and this is going to help me get to where I want to go, life becomes so much easier.

 

If you're tired of battling, give into the change, give into the discomfort, allow it and know that it's normal. But you can learn how to change faster. Know that it's part of the process of becoming the version of you, of becoming the person who has what you want. And that is exactly what you're supposed to be going through. You would not be here right now listening to this if that were not completely true and you didn't at some level know you wanted something more for yourself. You wanted a more fulfilling life, one where you're bigger in your life. That's certainly where I came from when I started down this path, is I wanted to be bigger in this life. I wanted to use this life to its fullest. I wanted to use it all up in the very best way possible. And if you want my support to help you with your current transition, I want to encourage you to book a strategy session with me.

 

I help lawyers like you, big hearted lawyers who want to grow their practices and do it in a way that feels supportive, that feels like it is the natural step for you that allows you to experience these transitions without battling so much. That is what I will help you do to create a more fulfilling life. One where you actually like going to work, one where you actually enjoy growing your practice. This is the work that we need to do in order to create ourselves into the person that we want to become. And you can book that strategy session with me at dina cataldo.com/strategy session. You absolutely can do this work and stop battling the change. You absolutely can. I really want you to sit with this message because it's so important that you understand that you are meant to be even greater than where you are right now.

 

You are meant for a bigger life. You are meant for that power that you might have been battling all of this time. Just like that Caterpillar didn't even recognize. He was never really a caterpillar. It was a butterfly all along, right? You had to go through that transition. And maybe that's where you are right now, and if you are, I can help you. You can book a strategy session with me and we can talk more about that. All right, my friend, I hope you have a beautiful rest of your day, and I will talk to you next week. Bye.