Latest / The Wellness Esquire Podcast: Happy, Healthy, Successful Lawyers / I Lead the Lawyer Wellbeing Movement, and I Still Won't Rest | with Ariella Cohen Coleman

Transcript

I Lead the Lawyer Wellbeing Movement, and I Still Won't Rest | with Ariella Cohen Coleman · The Wellness Esquire Podcast: Happy, Healthy, Successful Lawyers

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to the first solo episode of the Wellness Esquire podcast.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_00: This is actually a bit nerve-wracking for me, which might surprise some of you.
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_00: Um not so secret, secret.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_00: Um, when I first started the Wellness Esquire back during COVID, I was actually effectively doing a podcast.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_00: I just wasn't publishing it.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_00: I was having all these really amazing conversations with lawyers, and I would record them on Zoom, and then I would transcribe them and publish them as blog posts.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_00: And I did it that way because it seemed less vulnerable.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_00: I was so just nervous and scared and so afraid of imperfection and all the mistakes that I could make.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so the idea of podcasting and being live and sharing all the ways that I'm an imperfect communicator was so daunting.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_00: And so I started with the format I just described.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_00: And now, even though, which by the way, doing it that way is actually a lot more work.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_00: It just seemed less terrifying.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_00: And it's funny to think about it now because especially recently, I've had a lot of people comment to me about how confident I come across.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_00: And they say that in contrast to the way they feel about themselves.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_00: And it's so interesting for me to hear because the confidence that those of you are or maybe picking up on is new.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_00: It's relatively new, and it's taken a whole lot of work to get to this point.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_00: And I, even if you're picking up on confidence, I still have plenty of ways where I feel insecure or get lost in comparison.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_00: I'm just much better at not letting it stop me.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_00: And that said, I've been planning to do uh solo episodes for a while and just kept putting it off, in part because it felt nerve-wracking.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_00: And also it was kind of an easy thing to put off because there are so many amazing conversations to have with lawyers and other experts in our community that it was easy to just say, Well, I've got all these other people to talk to.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_00: Let me do that, and to use that to put off having these solo episodes.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_00: In addition, it's easier to it's been easier to hold myself accountable to having the conversations with somebody else and it's on the schedule rather than forcing myself to sit down alone and have a conversation to a camera.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_00: And that's also kind of funny because I feel like I really could talk to a wall.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_00: And a lot of the time, you know, I have conversations with my husband where I he and I both acknowledge it's not about communicating with him.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_00: I am talking at him, and that's what gets me what I need.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_00: And so I have no difficulty with talking, and yet sitting by myself talking to a camera, uh, it feels daunting, though as I get going, this is it's feeling less daunting than I was anticipating.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_00: And I do have uh my notes over here of some of the points that I want to cover.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_00: And um, and I'm seated right now looking out at the most gorgeous jungle and ocean.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_00: So that's also helping me to not stare awkwardly at the camera and also do the thing that relaxes me the most, which is stare into nature.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm gonna use that as my periodic reminder to slow down.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_00: I tend to be a fast talker, and also when I get excited, whether the excitement is just pure excitement or if it's attached to stress, I tend to that impacts how I breathe.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_00: I have quite a complex history with my breathing, and it's gotten much, much better.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and I I never really find myself having breathing difficulties anymore, but I do find myself um that when I get super excited and or stressed, I the way I I lose track a little bit of breathing before I speak, and so that can then come out in the way I communicate, and it doesn't sound I don't sound the way I want to to.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm also using this as an opportunity to improve the way I breathe and slow down and communicate.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_00: So this is this is really me practicing also just how I want to show up.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_00: And in fact, podcasting has been one of the best tools I've been able to use to improve the way I communicate and to help me become much better at listening just to listen rather than listening to respond.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_00: And with that in mind, I actually think so many of us would really benefit from at least having a season of our own podcast to learn how to have conversations and not think about, well, how am I gonna respond to this with something really thoughtful and and or you know, make it about me.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_00: And I've learned still learning, but I'm much better at letting the person talk and not have to have my own thing to say to prove that I understood or or can relate.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_01: And now I'm looking at that really gorgeous comic background.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_00: So part of what led me to decide today was gonna be the day that I do my first solo episode because I totally crashed.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_00: And I think it's important to share that here I am, and I'm the ones, one of the ones leading this whole lawyer well-being, you know, movement.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_00: And um, as Whitney Harper of Advost Legal and Advos Pro said, and I love this, I'm you know, revolutionizing the legal industry.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_00: And because I understand how important our well-being is, and but just because I understand how important it is doesn't mean I'm always good at doing what I know is best.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_00: And in fact, the reason I created the Wellness Esquire is because it does not come naturally to me at all.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_00: I've had to learn the hard way that I have to slow down, that well-being is the key that drives success, sustainable peak performance.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_00: See, that was one of those things I used to be terrified of, stumbling over my words.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_00: As if we don't all do that from time to time.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_00: Um so I I wanted to just share about what I've had going on the last couple of months that led to me getting sick because I didn't listen to my body.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't, I added a lot more to my plate without adjusting what I already had on my plate, and it led to me getting sick.
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_00: And so I'm gonna just put a little bit more shape around that and then talk about some of some of what led to that and also what I'm now doing to adjust based on what I learned from that experience.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_00: And I remember I had such a wonderful conversation with Jordana Confino, who I'm sure so many of you know.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_00: And if you don't already know her, you must know her.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_00: Go back and listen to our conversation.
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_00: I believe she was episode number two.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_00: She is just one of my favorite humans, and she's um was a is a formerly practicing attorney and is now an incredible expert in positive psychology.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_00: And she's bringing all this amazing insight and all these tools to lawyers and law students and law firms and law schools around how to up how to improve the way we show up, how to understand perfectionism and its impact on the way we navigate our professions and our lives, how to align with our values and build the careers and lives that we actually want.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_00: Anyways, she's amazing.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_00: But I remember having this conversation with her on the podcast where we we talked about, I asked her, she had just had her baby, Poppy, and I asked her, you know, what's it like being an expert in the science of well-being and also being a human at the same time where you're struggling to do the things that you know to do?
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_00: Because I knew from our friendship that she was struggling with some of that and also doing a really good job, but not always to the degree that she wanted to, because she knows all of the things.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_00: And so we had this really amazing conversation about it's one thing to know the facts and the science of what our brains need to perform really well.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_00: It's another thing to do all of that.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_00: And our, I think it's fair to say, shared view is just because you understand all of this stuff, it doesn't mean you're naturally just automatically amazing at it.
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_00: It more so means you figure out that you're reaching your limit or you've reached your limit sooner than you used to, and now you have the tools to help you respond better.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_00: And also ideally, and part of why we have the wellness esquire now, is when you have your friends around you who can say, Hey, I think you're starting to fall apart, and maybe you need to add some boundaries and make some adjustments, then you also feel supported to make those adjustments.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_00: And that's also been helpful for me.
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_00: And she was actually one of the people who said, Hey, slow down.
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm working on that.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_00: So what happened with me is I everything that I do now is really exciting for me.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_00: And little kind of recap, we'll I'll I'll share more about this another time.
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_00: I am a digital nomad lawyer.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_00: I travel around the world with my husband, and we're most of the time in just magical places, different forms of paradise around the world, and it's amazing.
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_00: And most of the time we're we're just wherever we want to be, and it fits our vibe, not a hundred percent of the time, and and that's actually part of what led me to kind of crumble a little bit.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but we've really built this life that aligns so well with who we are and what we want, and it's amazing.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_00: I also have a really complex health history that left me feeling really stifled for a long time.
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_00: And even though I was always plowing through and doing stuff, and you know, I went through law school really, really unwell.
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_00: And the first many years of my career, I was really unwell.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_00: And now, again, more story for another time, I feel so healthy and healthier and more free than I ever thought would be possible for someone like me.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_00: And so now, with this newfound freedom, which is also what allows us to travel this way, I'm so excited about everything that I now can do and all the energy I used to put into trying to not like actively die sometimes every day.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_00: Now I just get to do the things that I want to.
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_00: So the energy that used to go into my medical life, now I get to choose to do something fun and meaningful and exciting.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_00: And so I have my law firm, I have multiple other, I obviously have the wellness esquire, and then I have multiple other businesses, and it's so much fun and it's so exciting, and it's also so a lot.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_00: And none of these things, and I I I adjust from time to time what I'm putting more energy into, but it's it's a lot, and because it's all so meaningful to me, um it in a way that makes it harder to pull pull back, even though I know that I am.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I sometimes forget, but I I try to remind myself that I am still one person.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_00: Um so over the last couple of months, I was doing a lot.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_00: My law firm is growing.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_00: Yay! The Wellness Esquire is growing into what I've wanted it to be.
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_00: And that's also it's really exciting because I I had to I've put it on pause a couple of times for different reasons.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_00: Again, story for another time, and it's now becoming the thing I really want it to be.
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_00: Woohoo! Um, I have chosen, which is a startup I have with my husband.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_00: And if you can think of it as the Jewish LinkedIn, it it was born out of the advocacy I started doing after October 7th.
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_00: And our goal with that is to bring together everyone who loves Jews and loves Israel from around the world to help everybody find who and what they need to thrive.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_00: And we've been building this new platform.
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_00: We just launched it.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_00: It's really exciting.
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_00: It's also a lot of work, very, very exciting stuff and exhausting.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_00: And I also have EDS, etc., where I talk about and have so much planning, so so many plans that I that I want to do with it.
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_00: This is where I share my health journey and the things that have helped me throughout that journey when I was really unwell, and what helped me go from feeling sick as the dog to now feeling healthy and free in ways again that I never thought would be possible.
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_00: And so I share a lot of that, and not nearly as much as I want to, and haven't because of bandwidth.
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and so there's there's everything that I do, it's all tied together and it's all part of me.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_00: So it's hard for me to slow down.
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_00: I do sometimes, again, like with EDS, etc., I haven't been putting as much time into it as I want to because bandwidth.
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but all of this is sort of the background.
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_00: I have all of these businesses and um and things that excite me so much and are so meaningful to me.
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_00: And everything kind of there, there are ebbs and flows to how much I'm putting into one versus the other at different times.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_00: And the last couple of months, ooh, there is a lizard! Anyone who has known me for a long time will be surprised that that is something I'm excited about.
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_00: But there's a cute lizard, and by the way, feeling healthier and freer has allowed me to not be icked out by things like lizards, but instead of to be excited.
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_00: That is a healthier nervous system.
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_00: Ooh, there are two lizards.
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, welcome to my brain.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_00: What is a baby lizard?
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_00: So the last couple of months, more and more started to happen with some of these businesses.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_00: We had some launches, everything really exciting, but it meant that I became even more active with some than I had been.
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_00: And I get a lot of engagement online, which is very exciting, and it's in a way, like it's it's a demonstration of what I'm doing working, but it also becomes exhausting, and I haven't learned yet how to how to manage the interest with the quiet time that I need.
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_00: I have this uh uh sort of conflicting set of feelings where one side of me like wants everybody in the world to know about all the things that I do because they're so meaningful to me, and then the other side of me feels like if everyone could just like stop knowing about me for a little while, so like I could just have some absolute peace and like not have anybody interested in me, that would be great.
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_00: But of course, I don't actually want no one to know about me because I want everyone to know about what I'm doing.
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_00: So these are typical.
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_00: So, anyways, I I'm it all of this led to a couple of really busy months with clients needing more and more me starting to adjust some elements of how my firm is operating, hiring for the law firm, uh, adjusting a little bit what my ideal client is adjusting, some of some elements of my pricing model, which by the way, also started taking uh Gwen um Griggs and Whitney Harper's Advos Pro P3 method course, which has been amazing, but was also still another thing that I added to my schedule.
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_00: Wanted to do it, has been amazing, but still it was one more thing.
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_00: And I've made friends from it.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_00: It's been great, highly recommend.
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_00: Um, they're all about using the point system, by the way.
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_00: Bye-bye billable hour model, hello points.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_00: More on that another time, and you can look them up at Admos Pro.
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_00: So all of this just I added a lot to my plate and didn't remove.
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_00: And at the same time, we ended up being in uh spending about a month mostly in cities in Spain, which you might think, oh poor you.
• 17:57
  SPEAKER_00: But I and I don't, I'm not looking for pity, but I I'm such a naturally high strung type A type of person that I I've learned in particular from my years of living in cities that I really thrive most and I feel the healthiest when I'm spending most of my time in very calm, serene environments.
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_00: So I we spent about two months in Greece.
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_00: I felt super calm a lot of that time because of just the nature of being right by the the sea.
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_00: Then we moved into being um in city life, and I felt it.
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_00: I I really felt it in my nervous system, and even with my tools, just struggled to keep up with where I needed my insides to feel, um, in in terms of just being able to kind of calm myself and slow down and set boundaries and align with them.
• 18:57
  SPEAKER_00: And at the same time, where I wasn't always in the place most naturally where my system, nervous system thrives, was when all this I I added more to my plate.
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_00: So that is a long way of explaining what led me to just get sick.
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_00: So I got sick, just regular person sick, and and then it it lasted longer than it really probably needed to because I wasn't really very good at resting.
• 19:23
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I've never been very good at resting.
• 19:25
  SPEAKER_00: I told a couple of people that uh I had gotten sick and I had had some trouble resting.
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_00: I told my neuroperformance trainer, who's like the key reason that I feel that I went from feeling being um really unwell to now feeling so healthy.
• 19:39
  SPEAKER_00: I told him that I really didn't rest very well, and he fairly sarcastically responded with, like, well, that's not surprising.
• 19:47
  SPEAKER_00: So people seem to recognize that I'm not very good at resting as much as I uh maybe would like to be, given how much I understand it is important.
• 19:57
  SPEAKER_00: And and it's not that I don't rest, it's it's that it's I don't want it's not the ways that I it's it's still really hard for me to rest and really, really do nothing.
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_00: So the form that I often take while resting still involves something productive, which is something I'm working on.
• 20:21
  SPEAKER_00: And the places where I really can purely rest and not also add in something productive in a way is in this kind of jungle beach vibe where I am right now.
• 20:35
  SPEAKER_00: And even with that, I will still often, you know, I will sometimes just sit quietly and meditate, breathe, and and not plan.
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_00: But at the same time, often, you know, I'm in that environment and I'm doing some of my training.
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_00: I'll do, you know, my hand exercises or my tongue exercises or something that enhances my performance and enhances how I feel in that moment and and as the day goes on.
• 21:02
  SPEAKER_00: So that's what led to me not feeling great for a couple of weeks.
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, during that time, not surprisingly, my work wasn't my best.
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, nothing catastrophic happened, but I could tell.
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm very fortunate that I have amazing clients, and you know, there there wasn't there were no issues really that came up.
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_00: I just knew that I wasn't operating at my best.
• 21:31
  SPEAKER_00: And I was also fortunate that the during this period of time I was doing some work for a friend.
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_00: Often my clients turn into friends, and sometimes my friends turn into clients.
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_00: And I had an instant with um a friend turned client where what was great for me was I was able to say, like, hey, I'm you know, I'm really white, and I can tell that I I need more time on this, and I'm having trouble wrapping my head around this whole thing.
• 21:59
  SPEAKER_00: And so we Adjusted the timeline and then she was so thrilled with the results.
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_00: So it was it's not that anything disastrous happened, but I knew that I wasn't showing up the way I wanted to.
• 22:11
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, sometimes the way that I understand that I need to make some changes in the way I'm operating is when things go a little subpar.
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_00: So now I'm in this phase of kind of doing a recap of what led me to get sick.
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_00: What was the too much that I took onto my plate?
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_00: Where should I have, should I, could I have, you know, made some adjustments, added some boundaries, communicated differently or at all with clients, um, looked for more support elsewhere.
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and what other systems do I need to add to what I'm doing?
• 22:55
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, sometimes the systems, sometimes you can, I certainly can feel like, oh, I've got all my systems down.
• 23:03
  SPEAKER_00: Like I got this, this is great.
• 23:05
  SPEAKER_00: But then when I'm super exhausted or not feeling very well, that's when you realize that, or when I realize that, oh, the system actually isn't as good as I thought.
• 23:14
  SPEAKER_00: Because a lot of that, the system I thought existed is really just me in my mind knowing what to do.
• 23:20
  SPEAKER_00: And it's not something that will actually go as smoothly when I'm exhausted or if someone else needs to pick up the slack.
• 23:27
  SPEAKER_00: So sometimes I I find it useful to have, you know, I I wish that I hadn't kind of had these couple of really, I feel like I had a couple weeks slash month of just not being quite at the level that I want to be.
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_00: And on the one hand, that's kind of a bummer.
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_00: On the other hand, it's useful information because now I'm thinking about well, what other staffing do I need?
• 23:57
  SPEAKER_00: As I as my businesses are growing, where is it best for me to be putting my energy?
• 24:03
  SPEAKER_00: And what would I rather have someone else doing?
• 24:06
  SPEAKER_00: How can I plan for hiring for those other services?
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_00: How can I use AI to take some of this off of my plate and create some Claude skills to do this more easily or whatever it is?
• 24:17
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and one of the things I'm also thinking about is you know, with with the client work that I I didn't slow down on, it's probably some work that I could have slowed down on.
• 24:45
  SPEAKER_00: And one of the things that I I know that I want with my firm, which is not the case for every firm, but it's what I want, is I I want the firm to be set up in a way and for us to be taking on the kinds of clients where most of the time we're not doing something that's like super duper time sensitive.
• 25:04
  SPEAKER_00: That like, if you need another day or two, most of the time it's gonna be fine.
• 25:08
  SPEAKER_00: If you need to say to a client, you know what, this is more complex and or I'm not feeling well, or combination, like it's just it's okay, and the client understands, and the ability to communicate with the client is totally easy and comfortable, and that is the case with my clients.
• 25:25
  SPEAKER_00: And yet there are things that I look back and I realize I pushed myself to do that, and I didn't have to.
• 25:33
  SPEAKER_00: So what do I need to do for myself to be able to next time say either I need to just tell the client this has to be done later, or I need to see who else can do this, or what else can I put into place so that I'm not forcing myself to do work that actually doesn't need to be done today.
• 25:57
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and that's not just client work that I was doing while I was sick.
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_00: I was also building my platforms.
• 26:02
  SPEAKER_00: I'm also with a lot of excitement building a legal practice management software called Winston that I'm very excited about because I hate everything that's out there.
• 26:14
  SPEAKER_00: And it's exciting to build this thing that's now making my law firm life so much easier.
• 26:20
  SPEAKER_00: And that was also a lot of what I was building while I was while I wasn't feeling well.
• 26:25
  SPEAKER_00: Um so one of the so we're now um I I will be posting this while I am um where I am recording this.
• 26:42
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm not sharing right now where I am because I I it feels weird to like tell the whole world exactly where I am at times.
• 26:50
  SPEAKER_00: Um but you know, there's there's jungle and beach and you know and it feels amazing.
• 26:56
  SPEAKER_00: And and part of why we are now exactly where we are is because I knew that this is what my nervous system needed to force me to slow down and to readjust some things about the way I was operating and to force me to do some things that I've started to do already.
• 27:18
  SPEAKER_00: I've started to have some conversations with clients about needing to adjust some of our boundaries.
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_00: I love my clients, and fortunately they also love me, and sometimes that means just really lengthy conversations longer than are actually necessary.
• 27:33
  SPEAKER_00: It's the way I do like to do things often because it allows us to develop really great relationships and helps me understand everything that's going on, but sometimes it becomes a lot.
• 27:44
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm I'm having some conversations very openly with clients to just make sure that I'm not putting more of myself in than I can always manage.
• 27:56
  SPEAKER_00: And this is actually something that I've loved discovering that I can do this like boundary setting with clients, because it used to seem so terrifying, the idea of setting boundaries with a client.
• 28:11
  SPEAKER_00: Like, well, what if they don't like the boundary?
• 28:13
  SPEAKER_00: And what if they think that means like I'm, I don't know, fill in the blank with whatever like crazy concerns we can have.
• 28:20
  SPEAKER_00: And I started setting boundaries with clients pretty early on after launching my firm, and I actually love it.
• 28:25
  SPEAKER_00: I've never had it go poorly, never, and I've done a lot of boundary setting.
• 28:30
  SPEAKER_00: And I I find that I think clients actually appreciate the boundaries because it it gives them rules and some structure.
• 28:41
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't want to work with a client that isn't respectful of my boundaries.
• 28:45
  SPEAKER_00: So if there were to be an occasion where a client like didn't wasn't okay with the boundary that I was setting, they don't have to be my client.
• 28:52
  SPEAKER_00: Um and learning to have those conversations that feel challenging and discovering that they're actually super easy, at least with the right clients, which is the only kind you want to have.
• 29:05
  SPEAKER_00: Um I feel like this word gets overused, but it feels empowering.
• 29:10
  SPEAKER_00: And it it also like at this point, it feels easy.
• 29:13
  SPEAKER_00: Once the conversation itself feels easy, the the harder part for me often, sometimes it's easy, sometimes it's hard, is to actually understand, well, what is the boundary that I now need to set?
• 29:24
  SPEAKER_00: Because it's not always clear, and sometimes the the need changes.
• 29:30
  SPEAKER_00: So the the hard part for me is often figuring out what do I actually need so that both I and and the client can thrive.
• 29:38
  SPEAKER_00: And what, if anything, do we need to actually restructure about our engagement?
• 29:42
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes, sometimes there's no need for, you know, for a real change, and sometimes there is, and I'm comfortable with with both.
• 30:10
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm I'm I'm realizing that this was actually not as hard as I thought it was gonna be.
• 30:17
  SPEAKER_00: Just talking to myself, and now um okay.
• 30:24
  SPEAKER_00: Stay tuned for some more solo episodes.
• 30:29
  SPEAKER_00: And I I have a lot of people asking me questions all the time um about how I live, how I practice, what I'm doing with the law firm, what the goals are with the wellness esquire, which I have many, and so many ways for people to over time get involved in different ways that I'm really excited about.
• 30:49
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and and it's also been a great exercise for me.
• 30:57
  SPEAKER_00: Um for me to just start to get comfortable with sitting here talking to the camera, um, but also talking to all of you.
• 31:07
  SPEAKER_00: Um it's actually kind of wild for me to think about like there really is a wellness esquire community, and that's exciting.
• 31:27
  SPEAKER_00: And what's funny about it is I was so insecure when I started The Wellness Esquire, and I was so afraid of talking about myself and my journey and my health and what I needed to do differently, and it felt so daunting at the time.
• 31:48
  SPEAKER_00: And now the thing that I'm nervous about is like, ah, how do I sit by myself and talk to a camera?
• 31:52
  SPEAKER_00: And what if I what if it doesn't flow perfectly, and what if I stumble, and what if I'm a little disorganized, which I'm sure has happened.
• 31:58
  SPEAKER_00: Um and you know, right now I sort of feel like I don't have the perfect ending.
• 32:04
  SPEAKER_00: Oh well, who cares?
• 32:06
  SPEAKER_00: And I'll learn how to do that the way I want to.
• 32:09
  SPEAKER_00: And what's exciting to me as I look up at the ceiling and see this lizard crawling across it is when I first started the Wellness Esquire community, the Wellness Esquire, it was because during COVID I started to connect with so many lawyers who the only way that they had finally found the way that they could start thriving, and what led them to figure out how to practice in a way that felt good and to live in a way that felt good and to build their practices in a way that really fit into the lives that they wanted was a vast majority of them first had to have a shit hitting the fan experience.
• 32:58
  SPEAKER_00: And I just thought, there's gotta be a better way.
• 33:01
  SPEAKER_00: What if we don't all have to have a shit hitting the fan experience?
• 33:04
  SPEAKER_00: What if we just talk about everything first openly with vulnerability and and just you know show up really truly authentically and with kindness?
• 33:19
  SPEAKER_00: And like, what if what if we just like did it together and made the legal industry a better place?
• 33:25
  SPEAKER_00: And at the time, I was not at all practicing the way I wanted to, and my life was not at all what I like.
• 33:32
  SPEAKER_00: There was so I was not there yet at all.
• 33:35
  SPEAKER_00: I just had this vision and started showing up.
• 33:39
  SPEAKER_00: My first LinkedIn post was so terrifying, and now I post all the time like it's a journal and it's no big deal.
• 33:49
  SPEAKER_00: And there's this growing global community of the Walnuts Esquire, of lawyers who are committed to doing things differently and who are actively transforming the way we practice and live.
• 34:03
  SPEAKER_00: And that's so cool.
• 34:04
  SPEAKER_00: And it's kind of wild to me that there are actually people who will listen to me having this conversation with you, with all of you.
• 34:16
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and and I I now I can say confidently, like I know you'll get value out of it, and I it's it feels weird.
• 34:25
  SPEAKER_00: It like kind of takes a lot for me to say that because it's not the way I usually communicate.
• 34:30
  SPEAKER_00: There's um I'm still learning to own the value that I put into the world.
• 34:37
  SPEAKER_00: I sometimes am still, not sometimes, often I'm still surprised to get the feedback that I get.
• 34:42
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, oh, you you you do get the value.
• 34:44
  SPEAKER_00: That's so exciting.
• 34:45
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm so grateful for all the messages because it tells me that I'm reaching people.
• 34:49
  SPEAKER_00: Um I'm excited.
• 34:57
  SPEAKER_00: I'm excited about what we're all building together.
• 35:00
  SPEAKER_00: I'm so grateful for all the lawyers and the other experts in the legal community who show up in the really amazing ways to support this revolution.
• 35:13
  SPEAKER_00: And we've got so much really fun and good work to do together.
• 35:20
  SPEAKER_00: And I think we're gonna have a blast.
• 35:22
  SPEAKER_00: And now, with this first run of me just having a solo, I think this has like gotten me to my own next level of of confidence.
• 35:33
  SPEAKER_00: I'm excited.
• 35:34
  SPEAKER_00: I'm really excited.
• 35:36
  SPEAKER_00: So with all of that said, thank you, thank you so much for hanging around.
• 35:41
  SPEAKER_00: I'm I'm excited for you to see what we've got coming up and for you to be part of things.
• 35:47
  SPEAKER_00: And thank you.
• 35:50
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for being here.
• 35:52
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for being part of this, and uh, thank you for being part of this conversation.