The Best Advice

Early on in my practice, I had a mentor who told me, “Never forget that it’s all about relationships.” He was trying to explain to me that there was no magic bullet to marketing—if the relationship wasn’t there, if the other person didn’t like and respect you on some level, you would never work together.

But it’s not just about the clients. The same thing holds true for my relationship with fellow attorneys and bosses.

Rules for playing well with other lawyers and co-workers…

The Standards We Keep

With New Year’s Eve and new resolutions fast approaching, I have been thinking a lot about the challenges that often accompany new year’s resolutions. We can be our best advocate or our worst enemy. For many of my clients, they unwittingly choose to break themselves down instead of building themselves up. We place all sorts of expectations on ourselves and keep “manuals” on how we are supposed to go through this life but we don’t confront those manuals.

Too often we subscribe to the notion that there is a right way to “do life.”

Triage versus Prioritizing

For better or worse, most days spent in corporate legal practice start off with good intentions and big plans about all the things we will accomplish that day. Then the train derails and we spend most of the day “putting out fires” and ignoring all of those best laid plans. While some of this may be the result of real client emergencies, more often than not, there is no real emergency.

Failing Hard

Have you ever asked yourself why you aren’t doing something or why you aren’t taking action toward your goals? What I have found is that most people simply are afraid to fail. If you are going on a diet and plan to lose 50 pounds, do you tell your friends? Do you put it on Facebook and declare it to the world? Probably not and here’s why: no one wants their failure to be up for public scrutiny. As humans, we prefer to fail quietly and privately or not fail at all. If we succeed, great, THAT we will shout from the rooftops. But if we keep our failures privately, it’s like it never happened. No unmet expectations of others and no disappointments other than your own. But what is so bad about failure after all?

Want More. Fail More

If I had a magic wand and told you that I could give you the career of your dreams, would you be interested? What if I told you I would give it to you only if you first promised to fail 10 times trying to do it on your own? Big fails. EPIC fails. All I ask of you is that you try to figure it out on your own 10 times, and fail 10 times. After those 10 tries, it’s yours. Fail ten times and I will waive my magic wand and I will make it so. Would you do that?

Why You Aren’t Taking Action

Have you ever considered why you aren’t taking action? You want to write that book you always imagined, you want to break out and start your own practice or change practice areas, you want to tell your spouse that you aren’t happy.

Why is it that we don’t do those things? The real reason might surprise you.

How to be happier

Do you want to be happier in your life? Do you want to find your purpose?

We all do. Let’s be honest, no one has ever declined the possibility for more happiness. The problem is that most of the people I work with are looking for something to make themselves happier, something to bring “purpose” to their life. Usually this search is tied to something concrete and measurable…a job or relationship that will finally make them happy.