Lawlady's Divorce Blog

Mondays

I belong to TecOnLine.com. It's a CEO support group.   We meet once a month for a half day to support each other become the best we can be professionally.  I paid my money to join because I was tired of making costly business mistakes.  The idea is that a group of savvy professionals can help you see around corners you have never taken before in your career. 

One of the activities in a Tec meeting is to do a 20 minute presentation on your life and work.  The caliber of presentation is stunning.  Powerpoints, handouts.  The real gift of this exercise is to get busy professionals to take stock of where they have come and to inventory prior achievements. 

Have you done that lately?  Ever?  What are you greatest milestones as a professional?  Do you measure your success only in dollars or were other achievements valuable to you as well?

I've been working on my September presentation.  The background inventory is important to answering the next set of questions which is Where do you want to go next?  What is a must-achieve goal in your life?  What are your guiding principles and core values?

I think it is important that we all get as clear as we can about our life agenda.  That helps us maneuver into right work, and when we are in right work, the world runs smoother.   We've got the right people doing the right job at the right time. 

One of my particular life fantasies is the idea of quick career rotations.  I'd love to see people do a consuming, satisfying stint at one profession, then be able to easily pick up and move over to another person's profession.  "I'm tired of being a CEO, I'd like to be a house painter for the summer."  "I know I'm CFO material.  If they'd  let me do that job for three years, I swear I woudl do a good job."

Too often we hog our jobs and don't move on soon enough.  Life is about adventure and play. If we aren't playing enough at work, we aren't really giving our best. If we can't get into an "easy" pace, we are probably taking work much too seriously and don't achieve that relaxed state of natural best performance.  Over-gripping can occur just as much on the job as it can on the golf course. 

Summer is a gorgious time to enjoy and relax.  From this mellow good spot, can you discern something important about where you have been and what you might be best at next in your work?

Make it a good week.  Your life could turn a corner this week if you let it.

Stefani

Get Life Styled

I recommend Darcey Howard at GetLifeStyled.com.  She's a fashion consultant with the  tag line:   because sometimes style is substance. 

As a recovering fashionista and anti-fashionista (I've spent time on both sides of the fence), I've currently been searching for the middle road where consciousness permeates clothing choices.  I decided my Walmart specials weren't professional enough for my current clientel, or the clientel I wish to attract.  But I was worried about returning to my opulent days where I'd spent hours and hundreds of dollars-  just on hair; and hours indulging in retail therapy decompressing after a stressful work week.  In those years, I prided myself on having a rainbows worth of  peter-pan collared silk blouses.  I even crossed over into custom suits.  Can you say "ouch?"

My current clothes question is what can a professional woman buy and wear that isn't a complete rejection of style, nor a compulsive addiction either?  I went to the book store looking for some guidance, say perhaps a book called  "Dressing with Feng Shui," or "The Deeper Meaning of Fashion."  I didn't find much.  Fashion takes up only half a shelf at my local bookstore.  I did learn how a well-fitting bra can take years off your figure !

Since I wasn't able to find the illuminating book on professional attire as I had hoped, I started to make my own mini-list. 

Dressing on Principle.

1) Convey a message with your dress.  People need information in this fast-paced society.  It helps if you help them discern.  Think of it as an act of self-honesty to reveal your agenda the best you can through your attire.  At work, if you want to convery a brand message, think about developing a  work uniform for yourself.  Faith Popcorn does this with a color requirement at the office, plus a yearly company pin that all staff wear.   A local realtor here wears a pink blazer everyday which happens to be the same blazer she's wearing in her business card picture.  I asked her about the outfit. She says she doesn't really care about clothes.  She developes her appropriate uniform and then she doesn't have to worry about clothes anymore.  It's handled-- and she is reinforcing her personal brand.   

2)  Clothes are to enhance your life, not detract from your life.  If shopping, wearing and care take too large a chunk from your week, you may be cheating yourself out of time for other higher priority activities.  Is there a way to streamline your clothing choices so as to minimize the impact of "attire" on your true goals and purpose?

3)  We all have a best feature or features.  What are yours?  Are you highlighting them everyday?  If not, why not?   

4)  Be kind to yourself. Allow yourself to fall in love at the store and then act on that love.  Don't shop out of parsimony or contempt for yourself.  Here is my particular form of self-cruelty with shopping.  For years,  I'd go shopped at a fancy store and then slap my hand as I went to grab some yummy fashion item, like a suade jacket.  "You can't afford that."   I wouldn't even try the thing on.  Then finally I did. Guess what happened?  The Native American fringe jacket I had been coveting for years  looked bad on my 5'1" frame.  All these years I felt deprived from something I didn't even want once I allowed myself to indulge the fantasy. 

5)  Restraint.  Focus on developing a closet filled with" just enough," right at the border where you could use something new. That way, the next time you are traveling and want to buy something, you can. Guilt free.  Just enough also means you have the right amount of clothes for your closet and storage sites.  Putting away and maintainging your closet becomes joyful when you aren't cramming things into a too-small of a space.    

That's what I learned this week in my quest to control my closet and overcome from frump habit in fashion.  Call Darcey, she's a professional.  She can come over and talk you out of your last style habits, and into your new style future. 

Blessings. Make it a great day.   "You are a miracle of nature. Take care of yourself!"

Stefani

My Story

I've been facing an item on my to-do list for 9 weeks now.  Nine weeks of repetition gets old.  Almost worst than sitting down and doing the nasty task.

Here is the nasty task:  for my website (that is being revised), I am supposed to add a "What is Holistic Law" section which is to include my personal story.  The only problem is I'm tired of telling my personal story. 

In brief, here it is:

In college,  I was too chicken, or poorly advised to pursue fashion design, acting, writing, computers, psychology, or marketing/business.  So I studied economics instead. I thought a creative, liberal arts education  wouldn't be marketable.  I went to law school as a back-up plan and because I wanted to make good money and always have a job.

Hah, hah, hah. 

Many soul-sqeezing hours of labor later, I was out of a law job and having a fun holiday season at the Bon Marche.   Then back into the boiling pot for more intense work hours of litigation.  At one point, fed up with litigation, I quit the practice of law altogether.  I took me 75 new-agey seminars and countless self-help books to get there. 

Quitting with no back-up job a leap- right off the cliff of life.  I became very acquainted with the concept of  fear.   To get through the rough passage, I relied on a  mantra. Every day I'd get up and tell myself:

Today I will apply my talents, skills and interests, and I trust that eventually the Universe will put me to work doing something that others are willing to pay me for.

It took about six months before I realized I could take a private client.  With this realization, I jumped into solo law practice.  The first few years were lean.  I remember calling my friend from work that first summer.   "Please come give me a ride home from work. I don't have bus money, I have no money in my account, and no credit available on my credit card."  She said, "I'll do better than that.  I'll take you out.  You can have anything on the menu."  We went to the Olive Garden.  The rest of the weekend I ate from all those cans on the second to the top-shelf of the kitchen.  You know, the ones you usually take to Northwest Harvest around Thanksgiving as a donation to the poor.  That year, I ate my Northwest Harvest donations. But I survived to talk about it.  It turns out, sacrificing for a greater career objective isn't that awful when you are in the thick of it. 

What I did in those early years of self-employment was to be a fanatic in selecting clients.  I gave away 75% of the cases that came my way.  I gave away one divorce case that generated $110,000 in legal fees the year I netted $24,000. I preferred to eat really shitty food than compromise my integrity doing work that felt shitty.  I was a legal-purist. 

Actually, those early clients were really lucky. They were hand-picked.  Money could not buy me.  And I loved them!  I would plant flowers in my garden so that by the time their divorce was complete I would have a bouquet ready.  I'd buy them gifts even before I had met them.  I would spend the final 5 minutes of my work day praying for a happy outcome for them and asking for divine guidance as to how I could be of better service.

I was not perfect, however.  My office procedures were lax.  After years of being inprisioned by law firm protocols, I couldn't subject myself to much discipline. 

But ohhhhhh, I loved my first batches of clients.  I would sit in a client session, thinking to myself:   "I love this work. This is so great.  I can't believe I get to do this work and paid."

It was good.  Then I got bored, and added more complex cases.  I later learned about collaborative law and started a non-profit.  I read Rich Dad Poor Dad and learned about the importance of wealth building, and bought myself a rental property. 

Along the way to building a private practice, it feels that I made at least 139 major mistakes. The really big blunders that you read about in Business 101.   Things like Listening to Experts.  I didn't.  But, in the end so what?  Careers are a growth process, not a destination vacation. 

After a series of cycles, I'm curiously right back at that confluence point again, scratching my head and wondering,  "Hum, where to next?"   I've got my preliminary plan but I'm wise to the fact that I have many options and can revise the plan as events unfold. 

So where to next? 

I think that is the critical question that develops when you tell your story. 

Most people's lives are not like a kid's book, with a beginning, middle and end.   We are more like Huck Finn.  Lots of chapters and adventures.  Tell one story, and we want another. 

What is your story?  But more curiously,.... what is your next story?