Category: CONFIDENCE

PAM: PUT IT ALTOGETHER AND IT SPELLS “SUCCESS”

Purpose, Autonomy and Mastery spells  PAM.  We could make a logo of that and carry it around to remind us each day that if those three elements can be attained , then we will be doing much better in our lives.

I’m thinking that this is the right order. That we need to find the Purpose first.  Is the purpose a biggie like: “What is my purpose on earth?” or something small like:”What is the purpose of my work?” or even smaller as: “What is the purpose of my being in school?”.  Some answers will come quickly, other not so quickly.  Probably the ones that take longer to come up with are more important?

After that we need to look at Autonomy.…learning to do things ourselves. If we define the purpose of our work is to “advocate for people who are in trouble” then we have to find out what that means in each of our daily lives.  Yours is probably very different from mine, even though we say we have the same Purpose.

Having strength to know what YOU alone can do is the key.  That doesn’t mean you don’t need others to help but you are the leader and define the path.

Last, we come to Mastery.  Here once you know your Purpose and have decided how you alone will fulfill that purpose, then you have to venture out in the world and teach yourself how to do it.  As we discussed in previous posts, you will find others who have already Mastered your purpose and can learn from them.  You will explore exactly what Mastery means for you .  Mastery involves learning but at a deeper level than most of us have experienced.  To become a “Master” one must fail and learn from each failure.  Think of how many times you screwed up learning something like how to play Chess, but mastering it became fun, especially when you could beat your parent!

Now I’m going to let you onto a little secret.  If you are having trouble figuring out what purpose goals you have or where to start, begin by writing out your Mission Statements.  One is for your personal life and one for your professional life.  Here you will find out where your values are and how to expand them into your everyday life.

And you will have PAM.

AUTONOMY: WHY ITS IMPORTANT IN YOUR LIFE!

I had to look this one up.  Autonomy, per Webster is “having self-government” or “existing or functioning independently”.  Then I looked at the word just ahead of it in the dictionary which was AUTONOMIC  and noticed they both have the same root.  Autonomic means”of or controlled by that part of the nervous system that regulates the motor functions of the heart. lungs, etc.”

Isn’t it interesting to think that functioning independently could become automatic?  But don’t we really strive to do this as we grow and learn exactly what it takes to become independent from our parents, school, etc.?  The word “rely” seems to pop up when talking about autonomy as the opposite.  If we rely on something or someone we lose some of our autonomy.

Now comes the quagmire.  We have to rely on our parents for many years to get us to adulthood.  Then we rely on the person we partner with and with our friends.  Although to some less decree as we become more independent.  No more do we have to call our girlfriends the night before school to find out what they are wearing!

For most of us, the fear of having to do something totally on our own never leaves us.  The truth is also that you cannot accomplish a lot totally on your own.  So why is Autonomy considered right up there with Mastery and Purpose in being successful?  Because before we can truly find success, we must GROW UP.  This means taking responsibility for our actions, disciplining ourselves to avoid bad habits such as drug taking, helping other people and caring for the environment as examples of grown up behavior.

As we begin these actions, we start towards becoming independent and not influenced by destructive outside forces.  This is all important in building success into our lives.

Now the question is, could we be doing this automatically?  Like breathing?  It seems to me that this takes place only after we reach each plateau in our quest for independence.  Once we walk, we never stop.  Once we venture out and find a friend, we do it again.  Once we leave our parents, most of the time, we don’t go back.  We are becoming independent. If we slip back to a more dependent position such as living again with our parents, we have lost a certain amount of independence.  There are circumstances, of course, that you might return home to a parent to help them but you are strongly aware that this hasn’t diminished your independence, only changed it because now you are caring for a more dependent person.  Its important to recognize this difference.

So the secret to autonomy seems to be to Grow Up.  Many people struggle with this.  They cling to toxic people in their life.  They keep doing childish acts that keep them from facing the perils and rewards of growing up.  Many people and yes, lawyers, don’t even know what it is to live a grown up life…….let’s talk about that next time. In the meantime, where are you in the cycle of getting to GROWN UP (that’s a noun)!

HOW MANY OF YOU HAD A FREE LUNCH LAST WEEK?

So this week we’re talking about really wanting to set a goal and why we don’t do them.  Isn’t that right? Because my bet is that anyone reading last week’s blog said to themselves “Hey, that’s a great idea.  I should do that”  but then didn’t follow through.  Maybe some people even wrote it down in their goal list.  But still didn’t follow through. My congratulations to those who did something about that great suggestion for increasing revenue!  Let’s hear from you.

As a coach, this is what I face time and time again.  The attorney and I will plan out the next two or three weeks with real important, well thought out goals that will advance the attorney in the direction he or she wants to go.  Three weeks later, the attorney comes back to me and many times, few or none of the goals have been worked on.

Then we go back to the old trick, that goals have to not only be written down, they need to be put into the attorney’s calendar so they get worked on.  If that is done and the goal is still not moved forward, then it’s time to find out why?  Is it fear of failure? Is it coming out of the attorney’s comfort space?  Is it just because so many more “important” tasks need to be done? Is the goal too big?

I believe that one of the landmines here is that many attorneys have never done consistent goal planning in their careers.  Yes, they passed the Bar and get work done in their practices but there is very little growth or change because of poor strategic planning.  So with  little or no forward growth, lawyers get discouraged and depressed. Of course they find little validity in the idea that good planning can produce the success they want because they have simply never experienced it before. They simply don’t believe in it.

So if you are one of those attorneys who have trouble with planning, goal setting and follow through, what do you do?  You need to prove to yourself that it works! That means you will make a tiny little goal that you can accomplish.  Then you will next make a more difficult goal and keep on until you prove to yourself that this works.  A coach can help in all of this and also with the follow up.  You can commit to email your coach every day, what goal you worked on and how much got done.   Or you can figure out a way that you can do this with your own knowledge of your habits.

So, next week I want to see one small goal that you wrote down and actually did.  Email me the result to my blog! 

YOU, TOO, CAN CHANGE BIG TIME

Last week we talked about small changes.  Now it’s time to talk about BIG, MAJOR CHANGES.  This means changing careers, partners, life style, friends, or just about any scarey, major decision that you are facing.

Everyone who has lived any kind of life has had to face a major change.  Remember how afraid you were to go from grammar school to middle school? then to high school?  We faced each change with some degree of dread and excitement. Now that we are all grown up we would like to face change with more excitement than dread when a change is in order.  But how do we do that?

Well, I certainly don’t have all the answers, but a great part of my job as a coach is to ease lawyers through major changes in their careers and lives.  For instance, one of the most dramatic shifts come when the lawyer has found that they are not practicing the kind of law that makes him or her happy and contented.  It is even harder to face this kind of change when the wrong area of law for that attorney is making good money.

Someone who doesn’t like to speak in public or go to court should not be a trial lawyer.  An attorney that hates detail should not try to fit themselves into tax law or even wills and probate.  So how does the attorney find out about what would need to change to make them more content?

*Taking the Myers-Briggs Temperament tests can tell someone a lot about what is their natural inclination towards the type of work that would make them happy.

  • Or the attorney can look very closely at what classes in law school they loved and what they hated.
  • Taking a close inventory of the present practice can lead to ideas how it might be changed to better suit the attorney.
  • Visualizing is a great technique for this kind of change.  The lawyer can cook up a scene of exactly what he or she would like to be doing every day and see if any other area of law fits this.

Then comes the BIG DECISION. The question becomes how to go about making this change.  Careful planning and marshaling the resources is the next step.

This is only one Big Change that an attorney might encounter.  How about when he or she needs to change their life style?  What is drugs and alcohol are draining his or her energy and creating a life that is not what they imagined.  This is where a great support group of friends can be helpful.  What, then, will make certain that this BIG CHANGE can happen?

LET’S TALK ABOUT THAT NEXT WEEK…..CAN YOU THINK OF ANY AREA THAT YOU NEED TO MAKE A BIG CHANGE.  IF SO, SHARE IT OR AT LEAST, WRITE IT DOWN.  WHO KNOWS, YOU MIGHT JUST MAKE THAT DECISION TO CHANGE!

CHANGE: EVERYONE CAN DO IT BUT FEW DO!

Every lawyer wants to change something.  It might be a very small change, like not having to look for their keys every morning.  Or something big, like the area of law that they practice.

When you look at it, the small change seems simple.  Simply put a dish by the door and drop your keys in it when you come in and pick them up when you go out.  If you need to, do the same at your office.  Or always put them in a designated pocket.  It is a wonder that people will continue to spend valuable time looking for keys when 10 minutes of planning would eliminate that time waster.

Also some people like to organize and stop wasting time, other people could care less.  They might moan and whine but don’t have the energy or inclination to take the steps to change.  Some people feel so overwhelmed by the day to day activities that they don’t want to even look at the small annoyances in their lives, let along change them.

Are you one of those?  WHAT SMALL CHANGE WOULD YOU LIKE TO DO TODAY?

Now take this opportunity to decide how you will go about making this change:

  • Begin by writing down the small change you want to make.
  • Can you think of any reasons you have never tackled this problem?
  • Ask yourself, what is the advantage of not tackling this problem? Yes you might find that if you make the change, then you have to look at the big changes in your life.  Or maybe you would have to give up whining and getting other people to give you suggestions….which you never follow.
  • What specific steps do you have to take to make the change? Write those down.
  • Write down the date that you will complete the change.
  • Write down how you will feel after you make the change.

That’s the small change.  We’ll talk about the big change next week.  So stay tuned.

SHOULD A WOMEN LAWYER REALLY BE MORE LIKE A MAN?

This is a question that really bothers me!   Since we now know that 25 years after we were told that Women Lawyers were making only 75% of Male Lawyers and that the statistics are still pretty much the same, we have been inundated with ways to be more like men.  I hate that! It’s not because I don’t like the way men act and don’t feel that they can teach us a lot but I feel like that view discounts what women can bring to the table that men don’t.

I recently heard a speaker say that because women lawyers ask questions after being given an assignment, that they are less likely to be seen as confident.  Men, on the other hand, just accept the assignment without asking for any further clarification or help and are then seen as more confident.  Something is really wrong with that scenario.

So this means if the women doesn’t ask questions in order to complete the assignment quicker and better, she is seen as not confident about her work?  Or is it because men know that they can get the support they need later if they have questions about the work?  More importantly, do men know they won’t be judged if they ask for further help but may be judged if they ask for help right away?  If so, how did they learn this?

This sounds reasonable but I have no answer.  I’m guessing that men don’t really have an answer either because it is such an unconscious known fact to them.  Or maybe they have been taught not to ask for further instruction very early on.

Let’s look at male team sports.  The coach says:”Now we are going to do a forward push right through their middle and wipe them off the map”.  Even if a new player has no idea what a “forward push” means or how to execute it, they certainly wouldn’t hold up the game by asking for a complete description of what to do next.

On the other hand, if a tennis coach says to a female athlete: ” Hit the ball, don’t push it”, the student may ask the coach to demonstrate it or to explain more in depth what pushing is.  Can you imagine a male student doing this?  So the genders are taught how to be confident differently.  Males by not clarifying and females by clarifying.  Adopting  techniques which are not inherent in our natures can only lead to trouble and we need to find a way to value both styles.

   YOUR JOB THIS COMING WEEK IS TO IDENTIFY WHAT STYLE YOU USE WHEN ACCEPTING AN ASSIGNMENT THAT YOU DON’T COMPLETELY UNDERSTAND.  WHAT FEELINGS COME UP WHEN I ASK YOU TO DO THIS?  ARE YOU GOING TO MAKE ANY CHANGE IN YOUR BEHAVIOR AFTER DOING THIS EXERCISE? IF SO, WHAT CHANGE?

LET’S GO BACK TO KINDNESS

I was watching a PBS show on “The Royals” and one of the surprising insights they talked about was the fact that the Royal Family is and was taught how to be interested in each person they spoke with.  This created good feelings in the people and interest in the Royal Family as a whole.

That struck me as a sort of Kindness that the Royal Family found to bring about great results since their reputation is based on how well they are thought of by the people of the United Kingdom (including Scotland!).   All it takes apparently is to listen intently and respond appropriately  one on one to the schoolchild, farmer, blue collar worker or the banker to bring about good feelings.  The Royals are then acting with Kindness which has been inbred.  What an interesting concept!

How can this knowledge help attorneys in their daily lives?

  • This is so simple that attorneys can start doing it immediately
  • It takes no special instruction or long study program to implement it.
  • Showing interest and responding appropriately to everyone the attorney comes in contact with, might will change the person’s view and liking for the attorney.
  • This is an easy way of spreading Kindness on a daily basis.
  • These acts will model a new behavior and hopefully spread the action to other contacts in both of your lives.

We have been talking a lot about Confidence also.  Wouldn’t your confidence be raised by the fact that you were being accepted and appreciated by many more people?  I think so.

So your assignment for this week is to engage a stranger and act like a Royal.  Make a comment about the surroundings or about them and then listen to what they respond.  Be interested in them and what they say.  Finish by showing that you listen to what they said and liked them.

If you are too chicken to do this with a stranger, pick someone who you don’t regularly take an interest in and show them the courtesy and Kindness of engaging them in conversation.  In some manner show that you like them for just who they are and what they have to say…….

WE CAN LEARN A LOT FROM THE ROYALS IF WE WOULD ONLY FOLLOW THIS ONE RULE!

HOW TO BECOME MORE CONFIDENT

So I hope you all read last week’s post.  I’m really interested in your comments.  Should women “buy into” every suggestion as how to become more confident in a “man’s world”.  Or is there some other answer?

Well this week I am going to give some well known HINTS about how you can gain more confidence if you feel you might like to……

  • READ MY BOOK, BE A BETTER LAWYER, A Short Guide to a Long Career. If you were a better lawyer than you are right now, wouldn’t you gain confidence? Of course.  Also I have that 20% off offer for you extended to 12/15.  Just go to the ABA.com website and find the book.  Then order it with the code: BBLES20 and that will give you a 20% discount.

Next you will have to do the exercises.  Unfortunately just reading it and thinking about all the ways you are          going  to improve, won’t do it for you.

  •     * Commit to have a fully filled out calendared with all the times and tasks you will be doing each week, completed by Sunday Night so you can start on it first thing Monday Morning!!!

* Decide one goal right now that will bring you confidence if you completed it.  If you can’t think of anything, then make “Write one article for a Journal for submission by December 1,2014.  When the article is published, send it to your A list and post it on Linkedin” your goal.

  • Call one person who you need to speak with but have been avoiding.
  • Make a BUCKET LIST of all the things you want to do with your life in the next five years.  Put dates of completion by each item and get busy.

It’s pretty apparent from this list that building confidence entails doing something.  You can’t just sit and pray it comes to you.  However, the slightest forward movement will create confidence.  I guarantee it!

MORE ABOUT CONFIDENCE

As I was thinking more about this topic, I remembered something I have been dealing with about Confidence.  It seems that when male attorneys are given assignments, they are reluctant to ask any questions to clarify the work but simply take the assignment without any further to-do.

Women attorneys, on the other hand, will frequently ask questions and get clarification before they start on the assignment.  This is supposed to show lack of Confidence and therefore be detrimental to women in the workplace. Therefore, women were instructed not to ask for clarification or further instructions, to appear more Confident.

WHAT NONSENSE!!!   The truth of the matter is that if clarification is needed, then the work product is going to get out faster and better with questions answered right away.  Less proofing and more positive feedback can be given when a good finished project is handed in the first time. 

So, I guess the important  question here is: Why does questioning create an indication that there is a lack of confidence?

Is there a more subtle truth that the person giving the instructions does not want to feel that they haven’t done a good job? That they were unclear?  That they are being challenged?  That questioning is uncomfortable? That questioning is a waste of their valuable time?

OR Does it just boil down to the fact that our culture supports the fact that questioning is weak and shows lack of knowledge and Confidence in abilities to do a good job when taking instructions?  Maybe we feel fear that the project won’t get done or done correctly if questioned. If a false sense of security can be demonstrated by men in this situation, is that more comforting to the person giving the assignment.  If so how did little boys learn this?

Are young men taught how important the APPEARANCE OF CONFIDENCE is and young women are not?  Maybe this is close to the right answer.  Let’s think about coaches that young boys experience early in life.  They are usually positive figures that tell the youngsters that they can do it! That they can work as a teamto win the game! That the coach “has Confidence in their abilities”.

Girls don’t get as much of this and as early in life as boys do.  Yes, a limited number of young women who are athletic can come across coaches who are very positive in building Confidence but most girls don’t have this opportunity in same manner that young boys do.  Girls in the classroom get points for raising their hands and asking questions. That can be intimidating for the boys.  They would rather keep quiet than make an error or look foolish.

I’m not sure this is the answer to this strange quandary but I do know that asking women lawyers to not ask for clarification when needed is just WRONG!  The answer is probably somewhere in between asking questions and not asking foolish questions…...WHAT DO YOU THINK?

WHAT MAKES CONFIDENCE?

CONFIDENCE:   “belief in one’s own abilities” . At least that what Webster says.

We talk about Lack of Confidence.  That Confidence is so important in business as well as social situations.  That Confidence is what allows us to do outstanding work.  Everyone would certainly say that it is a good thing to have Confidence.

SO WHAT MAKES CONFIDENCE?

  • Some would say that it is the way we were brought up that either gives us a sense of belief in our abilities  or hampers that belief by negative feedback.
  • This can come from a home environment or from a later social or school environment which either encourages Confidence or hinders it.
  • Do all babies have Confidence?  I would say yes, until they are proven wrong. Thus the child that cries and get feed gains the ability to know that needs are met if asked for. If not, then Confidence dwindles.
  • Parents who encourage children to do tasks which they are suited for, allows the child to gain confidence in their abilities.
  • What about the teacher that shames the student in class and diminishes his or her Confidence in ever making a future statement in class.  So we see that Confidence can be shut off even later in life.
  • Socially, we hear endless songs about the lovers who get betrayed and turned down.  Confidence to even reach out to further social situations is lost when our hearts get broken. Having one good relationship early in life can build confidence in later social situations…..and so it goes.

WE ALL KNOW THIS, SO WHAT IS NEXT?

We would guess that the next discussion should be how to gain Confidence when you find you lack it.  But is that the place to start?  Maybe Confidence building is not that simple.   Take, for instance the person who relies on others for his or her Confidence.  Or the person who isolates so that no one knows they don’t have the confidence to face the world. Or the person that the outside world would never know lacks Confidence only in certain areas?

So the world of Confidence is much more complex than just giving hints about how to gain MORE CONFIDENCE.

 

LET’S TALK ABOUT YOUR CONFIDENCE

     Getting right down to the important thing for all of us is to discuss how Confident are you about your abilities to get what you need and deserve?

  • Do you feel you can get a new job or career if necessary?
  • Can you get and maintain a long term relationship?
  • Can you identify the things that make you happy?
  • Can you make a sufficient living to obtain the wealth you need to live at a reasonable standard?
  • Do you have a support system including really good friends and other casual friends?
  • Can you support and encourage your spouse, children and other family members in their lives and goals?
  • And on and on……

NEXT WEEK THINK ABOUT YOUR OWN LEVEL OF CONFIDENCE AS WE CONTINUE TO EXPLORE THIS FASCINATING SUBJECT…. I PROMISE MORE “GOOD STUFF” IS TO COME!!!!