Consistency: Overcoming Obstacles (Part 4)

I'm Melissa Shanahan, and this is The Law Firm Owner Podcast episode number 202.

Welcome to The Law Firm Owner Podcast powered by Velocity Work for owners who want to grow a firm that gives them the life they want. Get crystal clear on where you're going. Take planning seriously and honor your plan like a pro. This is the work that creates velocity.

Hi, everyone. Welcome to the fourth and final in this series all about consistency. We did this series to bridge over episode number 200 and what a joy it has been to put together this series. This series specifically forced me to rack my brain and research and dig in in ways that hopefully to produce something useful for you all as listeners.

This topic is so deep, and it's so meaningful. I know it's not the most fun topic we've probably covered, but I have gotten feedback that it's been really useful for many of you, which makes my heart happy because this is where the rubber meets the road. Nothing else matters if we don't show up for the things that we said we were going to do. Being consistent plays a huge part in that.

Now, there are consistency with things like daily habits, taking our vitamins, drinking enough water, going to bed on time, like things like that. That's just a few really basic ones. But there's other things when it comes to consistency where there's a longer term goal, and you're supposed to do something consistently, show up for that longer term goal consistently. That may mean a different activity every day, but it is the showing up consistently that matters.

We have covered so far, generally speaking just dug in on consistency, what it is, why it matters. On the second in the series, we dug into the order in which to build consistency and to make sure you're paying attention to that and not jumping the gun. You need a great foundation to build upon, build upon, build upon. So we went into that in the second of the series.

The third, which was last week, we dug into this idea of perfect consistency. That we have to show up every day perfectly in order to stay on track. That is simply not the truth. That is a lie that our brain will tell us in order to just take it easy.

Our brain is always looking for the path of least resistance. It's always looking for how to avoid discomfort and conserve energy and seek immediate gratification. That is how it rolls on default. So our brain likes to pretend that it matters when we fall off for a day. You know what? In the grand scheme of things, it doesn't. You know what matters more is that you showed up a lot of the time. It's not about perfection. It's about progress. That's important to remember.

So this week we're talking about other obstacles because I think perfectionism can be an obstacle. But it felt big, so I wanted to knock it out in a whole episode. This episode, I'm going to go into obstacles to consistency that are very common, that we hear all the time, and that we experience. Each person, definitely, the ones I'm going to read off today, you have had an experience with each of these on some level. So we're going to talk about these and how to overcome these barriers and maybe prevent or eliminate some of these barriers today.

I'm going to first list out the barriers that I'm going to cover, and then we'll dig into each one. The first, because it's different than all of the rest of them that I'm going to say, is external circumstances, and really a very short category of external circumstances. Emergencies and or unexpected life events. That is it. That is what I mean by external circumstances that can actually be an obstacle.

There are other external circumstances that we view as obstacles, and they are. They feel like obstacles in our life, but we have more control over those things than what I just listed, which is emergencies, like true emergencies, and unexpected life events. Those could be positive life events, but they can throw a wrench in things sometimes when we didn't see something coming.

So when those happen, my best advice here is to have some grace on yourself and understand that you're probably going to have to push the reset button in a big way once the dust has settled from the emergency or from the life event. That may take time. Whatever you were working towards to be consistent may have just gotten derailed. That's appropriate, right?

So that is one worth mentioning because it does happen, but it is in a category of its own. It is outside of our control. How we deal with it when we are faced those things, good or bad, is of utmost importance. To just have grace for yourself and be ready to push the reset button after some time has passed when it feels really appropriate to enter back into the game that you were in, that you were playing, that you wanted to play.

Okay, continuing on with the list of reasons. Lack of motivation or inspiration, not enough time or money or whatever, not enough something. Overwhelm, procrastination, self-doubt or self-criticism, interruptions or distractions, burnout or exhaustion.

Okay, so let's start with lack of motivation or inspiration. When we set out to do something, to show up consistently for something, we usually have an end result in our mind's eye. A place that we want to get, a mental image in our head of what it will be like once we have done and shown up consistently for this thing over and over and over and over again.

When you are experiencing lack of motivation or inspiration, it means you have lost the plot. You forgot to stay connected to that vision at the end, or you just didn't stay connected to the vision at the end. This is important because staying connected to that vision at the end that you have, that you're working towards.

Whether it's the completion of a project, whether it's to get to a certain weight, whether it is to make that hire, it doesn't matter what the end game is. Whether it's a revenue goal. It doesn't matter what the end game is, but what you had pictured. You have lost the plot. It is important to stay connected to it.

Now, this is why inside of Velocity Work, I focus so hard on reminders. What are you going to do to remind yourself every day? Because when I said you've lost the plot, I find that this happens every single day. We lose the plot, and we start to enter into a rat race. That may sound dramatic, but it's true.

For someone who practices this stuff, there are days where for whatever reason, I end up slamming into work that day. I didn't remind myself of the things I typically do remind myself of at the start of the day. Like what we're shooting for, looking at the goals that we have set as a company, looking at the rocks and the quarterly priorities. There's things I do to keep top of mind what it is that we're working for. If I didn't do that, it's very easy to slip into the rat race and to really spin out and start to feel busy instead of productive.

This can take a toll. Really quickly you could become unmotivated, uninspired. That makes it hard to continue on. So it's important, it's very important to stay connected to why you are doing what you're doing and keep that mental image of what it looks like to be there in your mind throughout the time that you're supposed to be consistent, throughout the days and weeks. So that it keeps you connected to why you're doing this, which will keep your motivation higher.

The other thing I'll say here is that sometimes it means you haven't set goals that are big enough. You don't have a vision big enough that excites you at all. That's a good thing to know because then you can go back to the drawing board and figure out what do I want out of this? What would be thrilling to create? What would be thrilling to do? Sometimes, because it feels impossible, we don't let our minds go there.

Let your mind go. Find a vision that excites you. Find a mental image or this representation of what it would mean, what would success mean to you and to your firm, and get that in your mind's eye and connect to that so that you can figure out are the things you're working on, is that going to get you there or not? Or are the things you're working on really small and piddly and keeping you in this tiny cycle of continuous improvement that is not exciting to you anymore. It's not taking you anywhere new. It's not having you play to your edge. It's just not, right?

So maybe it is that you never had the end game that was exciting to you, that was motivating. Then you need to figure that out and what it is. It doesn't have to be this perfect grand purpose. It's more about just pick something about what it would mean for success to you. What would be a symbol that you are successful in a way that was really thrilling to you? Start there. Just be able to grab onto something really small that's indicative of success that would delight.

So that is lack of motivation or inspiration. You either have lost the plot with the vision that you once had. You don't have that mental image that you are connected to anymore and you need to reconnect with that and keep that top of mind. Which means that's something you should do daily. That should be something that when you sit down before you start work, you remind yourself every day of things that you are working towards and why you're working towards them.

That could be a sentence or a statement, or it could be pictures. It could be anything that you want, but don't slam into your day without understanding why we're doing what we're doing here. Don't slam into the consistency. I guess that's really what it is. Don't expect yourself to stay consistent and stay motivated without reminders of where it is you're going because it's not your current reality.

You're working to create a new reality, but it's not your current reality. So you need to remind yourself of where it is that you are going. Where do you want to go, where do you want to be, and stay connected to that.

The next one is not enough time. We all know, can we just all agree that that is not true? There is the same exact 24 hours for everybody, and there are some people that utilize those better than others. They spend their time. Time is currency. They spend their time in ways that line themselves up smarter with their end game, and those who spend their time poorly. Which camp do you fall in?

If you are saying I don't have enough time, you are definitely in the second camp. Now good news, you can change this. This is all really doable and fixable and adjustable, but that is a lie. Stop allowing yourself to tell yourself a lie. It keeps you spinning. It keeps you stuck. It's an excuse and a justification for why you aren't prioritizing correctly and lining yourself up correctly.

That may mean you need to get more ruthless than you've been willing to get till now, but it may mean you just need to get more intentional. So that needs to be cut out from what you allow yourself to say to yourself. You do have enough time. You have the same amount of time as everybody else has. How are you spending your time? How are you spending that currency? Does it make sense?

The other thing I mentioned at the beginning. Not enough time, not enough money, not enough resources, not enough blah, blah, blah, blah. People will put a word in at the end of that sentence that feels so true to them, and it feels like a fact, and it feels like the reason that they are held back. However, it doesn't matter if it's true or not. What matters is what you're going to do about it.

So take the reins and figure out what you're going to do instead. Get creative. Don't allow not enough of something to hold you back and prevent you from making headways in the way that you want to make headways. So when you think about being consistent, this is about showing up consistently for the thing that you want to work on, that you want to create a new normal for yourself, a new reality.

But if you are saying these things to yourself, I don't have enough time to actually be consistent with that for whatever reason. I don't have enough resources. I don't have enough help. That isn't true. You aren't thinking creatively enough, and you aren't thinking smart enough about this.

Now, you may not have enough resources, whatever that means to you, to show up for an hour every day, but you do for 15 minutes a day. If you don't have enough help, that basically means you're saying you don't have enough time, probably is what that's leading back to. You have something to give. You can be intentional every day towards this thing.

So how can you cut through the noise and make sure that you are understanding that, and that you are taking the reins? Don't let some powerless statement like that I don't have enough time, I don't have enough money, I don't have enough this, I don't have enough that. Yes, you do. You absolutely do to show up consistently for something.

All right. So cut that out is my advice there. That's after working with hundreds of people on things like this that will never serve you. There's never room for it. It doesn't matter. What matters is what are you going to do with what you do have?

The next one is overwhelm. Overwhelm is subjective. Overwhelm is because you have an opinion about the amount of work in front of you. Whenever our brains are subjective like that, it's very unhelpful. It creates feelings of anxiety. It creates frustration or it sort of paralyzes people at times. We've all been there. But truthfully, and I want you to hear me when I say this, the work that you have on your plate is not creating your anxiety.

Your thoughts and opinions about the work on your plate is what is creating anxiety. So with this one, overwhelm in particular, you have to be careful about what you are telling yourself about the work. I often will catch myself thinking or saying out loud I have so much to do. I have so much on my plate. I'll quickly adjust because whatever comes out of your mouth is very indicative of what is sort of the undercurrent default belief about your situation. So I don't want to run with that narrative in my head.

But what feels better, it's not so dramatic, is to say I have work to do instead of I have so much work to do. I have work to do. I have work. There is work for me to do. Like, I will try to find, and I'll repeat different ways of saying it that rips out the drama. It's just a narrative that your brain is going to throw at you. Your brain is never going to start throwing you these perfect narratives all the time. You're going to have to deal with these narratives that are dramatic and unhelpful.

But if you can understand it, that's all that it is is just the voice inside your brain. It has nothing to do with the work. So separating that out and realizing that there isn't room for your emotion or opinion when it comes to this. It's math. Make it math. Okay, you have work to do. Sit down and get sorted. When are you going to do X, Y and Z and then execute. That may seem overly simplified, but that is the gist.

Also, when you are feeling overwhelmed, you are not executing. That doesn't happen at the same time. Executing on things is focused. You can't be focused on what you're doing and be overwhelmed at the same time. So when you are experiencing overwhelm, and if you experience it a lot, that means you're very unproductive. If you are focused a lot of the time, you will be focused. There'll be more output. It'll be more controlled. You just get to work. That means you're a consistent person.

Instead, if your brain is spinning and overwhelmed by the amount of work, and it doesn't know where to start. It's like your eyes are darting all over the place, and you're not sure where to begin. Okay, no wonder you're not consistent. You're never focused. The fact that you experience overwhelm a lot is very telling of your brain and the state of your brain pretty consistently.

So if you want to be consistent with effort but you're feeling so overwhelmed that it's just not something you feel like you can take on right now, you need to learn to quiet your brain and direct your brain to get to work. Make a map for yourself and go execute on it. Try to keep it out of overwhelm because it just doesn't matter. It doesn't help. It doesn't matter. It doesn't contribute to anything. It's just a useless emotion that takes you away from what you really want.

So if overwhelm is a thing for you, you have to start to recognize that getting your brain focused will get it out of overwhelm. With a focused brain, you can show up better and more consistently for the things that matter to you.

Okay, the next one is procrastination. Procrastination is all about avoiding discomfort. So there's a window of time you're supposed to do this thing, and you push it off, push it off, push it off, and then you don't do it when you said you were going to do it. Then backs up, and then before you know it, the day is gone. Procrastination is just not doing the thing that you said you were going to do when you said you were going to do it is all about avoiding something that you don't want to do, something uncomfortable.

People think it isn't emotional discomfort. Yes, it is. You may not recognize it that way, but the sooner you can get clued into that, the better. When it's time to do it, there is something inside of you that realizes that it's going to take more effort than you want to put forth. There is going to be an urge to not do the thing, to put it off, to escape, abort mission. Your job is to experience that urge to go do something else and sit with it, but don't answer it. Don't go give in to the urge. So procrastination is all about this. You're delaying discomfort. That's all you're doing.

Now, the thing about this is that can be helpful is realizing, I come back to this a lot for myself, and I remind clients and members of this all the time is that it is going to suck at some point. Whether you do the thing, you follow through with it, or whether if you don't follow through with it and you flake out on yourself.

The difference is if you experience the discomfort on the front end and really allow the urge to do something different, to be there, but you don't flee. You sit with it. You sit with the discomfort. You do not get up. You will not do something different. You're going to take a breath. You're going to allow that frustration, resistance, discomfort, whatever it is inside of you, that tension, you're going to allow it to rise and totally take you over.

It doesn't take you over for good. It'll probably take you over. If it's really intense for like 90 seconds max. You breathe through it. You allow it all the way to come to the surface. Then once it starts to lessen and subside, then you do the thing anyway.

I have had points, and I kid you not, where I have had tears in my eyes because I so don't want to do the thing in front of me. I would so rather go sit on the couch with my husband, for example, or I would so rather do \ whatever is pulling at me at that moment. To sit with that emotion sucks. I'm telling you. I can't describe to you enough what it feels like inside. You know if you've done this work. If you haven't done this work, you don't know what I'm talking about yet, but you can. It's available to you. It sounds terrible. I'm really selling it here, aren't I?

But really, when you are supposed to do something that matters to you, for me, it almost comes up as anger. Like, I'm so mad. I don't want to go do this thing. I want to go do this other thing that is meaningful to me. But if it's important enough to you then you do. You train yourself to experience the anger, if that's what it is for you. It definitely, definitely gets there for me. Not often, but it does. Or just the tension. To me, it just feels like tension inside.

I just breathe, and I sit there, and I know I'm not moving. So I will sit there. I will let this thing fully rise, this anger, this discomfort, whatever, fully rise. I'll just keep breathing. About 90 seconds in or so, it starts to not feel as strong. Then a couple of minutes after that, I feel a little bit more balanced and centered. I'm like all right, let's freaking go. I usually don't say freaking.

So that is how you deal with those moments. Procrastination is putting that off, that discomfort, it's putting it off. Because, this is the thing I was getting to earlier, you either feel that discomfort then, and then you follow through after you've experienced the discomfort. Or you blow it off, you don't do it. Then at the end, the next day when you didn't fulfill what you said you were going to do, and the next day and the next day and the next day. You don't fulfill what you said you were going to do because you keep procrastinating and then you keep not doing it. You feel like crap.

There is a lot of regret, deflation, self-disappointment, self-criticism, hopelessness that you're never going to get your stuff together so that you can actually see this thing through. It blows. So you don't get away from the discomfort is my point. You are either going to feel it on the front end and then have something to show for it because you followed through, or you're not going to follow through. You're going to flake out on yourself, and you're going to experience that crappy discomfort, that crappy feeling on the back end.

You might as well have something to show for the discomfort that you're going to experience. You might as well be on your way if you're going to have to experience that discomfort. You might as well make sure that you're putting yourself on a forward path if you're going to have to experience that kind of discomfort, emotional discomfort. Rather than be spinning in a cycle, a perpetuating cycle.

So you just have to think about what you're doing because you aren't getting away from something. You aren't actually escaping negative emotion. You are temporarily, but it's going to suck even further. You have nothing to show for it if you don't follow through, and then you're going to feel like crap. So anyway, you get my point. Procrastination is all about avoiding discomfort. That is what it is.

Now, the only other thing here, the only other exception to this that I'm going to say here, is that you might not have broken down small enough the thing that you're supposed to do. It feels too complex to just drop into and be able to execute on.

An example that feels really appropriate for this series of episodes is with the podcast. So I record episodes so that one can drop every single week. Now, in the beginning when I first set out on this journey, and remember, this is consistency, right? Like, I have to do this work consistently. I would put on my calendar record podcast. I felt so responsible. I got it on my calendar. I'm going to do it.

Then I would sit down to do it, and it's like well, okay, before I record it, I had other things to do. I had to create an outline. There may be a little bit of research that I wanted to do, whatever. I have to prepare for recording. I didn't have that broken down small enough.

So record podcast in air quotes I have started to become a thing that I would procrastinate on because if I had it down for 11:00 a.m. on a Tuesday, I would sit down and I would think okay, record podcast. It'd be like well, what am I going to do? What am I going to talk about? What should I do? I had ideas.

Then quickly you're up in other windows and then I see my email. I don't really want to do it. I don't want to stick with it because it feels hard. I don't exactly know what I'm supposed to record. That hopefully serves as some example that I just didn't have it broken down small enough. Really, there should be a window on my calendar to prepare for next podcast episode and then to record.

Sometimes I have a window for research before I sit down to prepare. So breaking it down small enough my brain is directed. I know exactly what I'm supposed to do. It's easy to show up so I'm less likely to procrastinate. It's like that part is out of the way so my brain can sit down and focus.

Now sometimes though, even when I am really specific with what I'm supposed to do, I still deal with what I just talked about earlier, which is usually the main thing with procrastination, is that I just don't want to do it right then for some reason. Learning how to overcome that and not give in to immediate satisfaction and actually delay gratification is the key. That is a meta skill worth cultivating.

The next one is self-doubt, self-criticism. This gets in the way especially when we are in new terrain. We are doing things we haven't done before. We are forging ahead in ways to get ourselves and our firms or whatever we're focused on to this new normal. If we knew how to do it, we'd already have it done right. So this is really new terrain where you're exercising new skills and abilities, and that can bring a lot of impostor syndrome and self-doubt and self-criticism.

So what I want to say about this is not only that it's normal because it is. So is each one of the things that I'm covering today. But one thing you can do is strip down and just focus on, which is sort of what we were talking about a moment ago. Focus your view just in front of you, just with the next step.

Earlier I was saying you have to stay connected to the big vision. You do because otherwise you start to feel like why am I doing this? Why am I showing up consistently and working so hard for the things that I care about?

But this, in particular, when you start to feel doubt and criticism and impostor syndrome, instead of looking, yes, you're connected to why you're going for what you're going for, but you're looking at the mountain, and you need to look at the step in front of you. That can help immensely because then it's easy to get your brain on board with well, I can take that step. I don't know how I'm going to climb the mountain, but I can take this step.

The next one is interruptions and distractions. When you're working towards something big, you should know what you're supposed to get accomplished or done pretty soon. So for instance, when I lead strategic planning retreats, I have them focus on the quarter in front of them that aligns with the ultimate vision.

When they do that, one of the questions I ask them after they decide on their goals and they decide on key quarterly priorities are going to get accomplished. I ask them at that point to look at the barriers that they foresee running into or hitting along the path to get to where they want to go, to get these key quarterly priorities accomplished.

The reason I asked them that is because just by asking that question you can identify things that you are about to run into blindly, and you didn't need to. You just needed to ask the question. One of the things that comes up often is interruptions from teammates, or depending on their work situation, maybe they're at home. So maybe those interruptions are at home. Maybe they're allowing interruptions from clients.

So interruptions, which are distractions, is a thing that you need to think through if you don't have good guardrails up for yourself to be able to focus for any length of time on the things that matter to you. So how can you set expectations with those around you so that they understand that there are boundaries in place that are necessary for you to be able to make the headway that's important to be made?

This may be, depending on what you're trying to be consistent with, let's just say you're trying to be consistent with showing up for your rocks that you said you were going to get done every quarter. Which is something that master group members, especially new master group members, it's new to them. They have not, up to this point, ever consistently set aside time that they were supposed to show up to get projects complete.

They make headway here and there as they can, and maybe they do put events on their calendars to make headway on the stuff, but it gets blown out by other things, by distractions, interruptions, things that pop up. So this is new. To hold that and to not let that be disrupted, the consistent time that they have on their calendar where they're supposed to show up for this, they have got to set expectations with people around them or else it's going to be very difficult for them to stick with it.

This comes up a lot when we think about the barriers throughout the quarter that people are going to face is interruptions. So whether it's with your team or whether it's with your family or your loved ones, it matters. You need to address it and do it in a way that everyone feels supported and like they've got what they need.

So, for instance, with your team, if they typically come in and ask you questions about a client file or about something different when you're in the middle of working, how can you make sure that they still have the space to access you for questions and to be able to get what they need and to support them in their efforts but not where they can just come and poke their head in, poke their head in, poke their head in so that they can get their answers in the moment when they thought of it.

Oftentimes clients will put in office hours where people can come to them, and either they can sign up for a window where they can come and get a bunch of questions. They can batch their questions and come and get them answered, or it's just a free for all. That two hour window, for example. Anyone on the team can come and talk through some things.

Or sometimes people don't do office hours like that. They will instead have do not disturb time where in these hours, I do not get interrupted, but the rest of the day how we normally roll is just fine. But either way, just setting those expectations and those boundaries and communicating those in a way that people can support you.

What I find is most of the time the team wants to support you, they just don't know. No one has ever said that to them. No one really thinks in that way. You are going to be the one that has to put those boundaries into place and do so in a really kind way. People are usually happy to honor that stuff.

So what can you do? How can you anticipate barriers around interruptions that you experience so that interruptions itself isn't a barrier for you as you are working on consistently showing up for whatever it is that you're showing up for?

The next one is burnout or exhaustion. This comes from grinding, from hustling, and it usually doesn't exist unless there's chaos behind the scenes. So the key here with burnout is to, usually when you have true burnout, you need a period of recovery in order to be able to come back with any sense of vigor.

When you're really burned out and exhausted, I think there's different levels of this, but I mean true burnout. It doesn't matter if you're connected to your vision. Nothing matters. You're not going to get that fire under your butt to keep going in the ways that you want to be. You're going to be missing the vigor. You're going to be missing the attention to detail. You're going to be fried. Nothing's going to fix that until you let your nervous system calm down and come back to baseline.

So true burnout and exhaustion, you need a break so then you could put the reset button for how to move forward. But as I mentioned, there's varying levels to this. I have days where I feel fried. I have weeks where I feel fried. I don't let that go on very long because I understand the consequences of working like that.

So if I start to feel that, I pull back and evaluate how are we going to fix this because this ain't happening. I'm not going to keep going like this because I know what's on the other side. I have been there, and so have all of you. I bet money all of you have been in real burnout before.

So when I say varying degrees, I almost think of it as having a day when you are fried. I mean, there are days where I leave work and I feel tired. Like I've spent my energy well. I was fully utilized that day in ways that contributed and whatever.

But there is another version of when I leave work, and I feel like the life has been sucked out of me. That is kind of what I mean by fried. When people start to have tastes of that, it's important to have a look at the chaos that is ensuing and figure out how you can reduce the chaos.

Now, I'm thinking specifically about the calendar because that's how it shows up for me and for the members and clients I work with. When they are feeling fried and they're starting, like they have a week where they are burnt and then feeling burnt. Again, I'm not talking about true burnout that requires their nervous system to recover but just this shorter term feeling. You have to tune into that.

One way to tune into that is at the end of every week, if you have a burnt week and you look back at the week and you feel like you didn't really get as much done as what you wanted to. You feel like you have a ton more to do. You could work all weekend. You're frustrated because you thought you were going to get this stuff done by Friday, and here we are, and you didn’t get it done. That means that you are not very organized about how you get your stuff done. That means that there is chaos behind the scenes.

Now, we talk about Monday map Friday wrap a lot around here, and that is a way for you to plan your time and then honor that plan, which forces people to get really organized with their approach to what they're going to get done and to the outputs they're going to have and when they're going to do it. Then evaluate on the back end how did that go? What are lessons learned? You keep making progress in that way.

When you are just running and you start to feel chaos in your schedule week over week over week, even if you do practice Monday map, but you experience some chaos that it's improving, that helps. That's progress, not perfection. Then you can prevent those days or reduce the days that you feel fried where the life has been sucked out of you, and you're deflated and you're kind of pissed about the amount of work that you have, heading into a space that you weren't expecting to have to do it.

So this really does come down to managing things in a way, being proactive in a way with planning so that there is less chaos and you're more organized, even if it's not perfect. You may still have days that feel a little more chaotic than what you want, but you don't feel fried because days are a little more chaotic than what you wanted. You feel fried because it is running hard at full speed, and you aren't getting done what you thought you were going to get done, which is why at the end of the week you have more. This is about getting organized.

I highly recommend Monday map Friday wrap as a tool to do so. You can get the guide on our website if you want to dig in deeply. We're actually getting ready to, when this airs, it'll be two days away from the Monday Map Accelerator we're hosting, which the new guide will be released in that accelerator. You can learn more at VelocityWork.com/MMA from Monday Map Accelerator, but that is what it boils down to.

If you're true burnout, you need to push the reset button, and you need to allow your nervous system to calm down before you even come back to really focus on this stuff. But if you are just fried on days and weeks, and it's agitating, turn to Monday map. You got to get sorted. You got to get organized about what you're getting done and when and honest about it so that you don't feel like things are piling up.

All of these barriers that I have listed are so normal. I want you guys to hear me when I say that. I feel like I've dug in, and I've dug in passionately on some of these. But no one gets away from feeling these barriers. It's a part of our experience. It's a part of being experience of a business owner.

So because you experience these doesn't mean anything is wrong. But learning how to navigate out of these and around these so you can eliminate them or at least reduce them for yourself in the future will help you be more consistent with the things that you want to be consistent with.

So I'm hoping that this podcast offered something. Whatever barrier you're experiencing the most right now, just run with what I said there. You don't need the rest of the podcast. Really just focus in and home in on what felt most useful from this and go deal with that. Truly, I really mean this. This mostly comes down to what is going on in your brain, what you're allowing to have happen.

All these barriers that we tend to experience that I have listed out today, it's because you let your brain use you instead of you using your brain. Something really wise from Jerry Seinfeld I've heard is he said, your mind is infinite wisdom. Your brain is a stupid little dog. Which I don't know that I agree with that, but it gets to the point across. So he says, don't confuse the mind and the brain. So often we let our brain really just run, and we are being used by our brain and by the default mode of operation. This is your opportunity. You have an opportunity to get that sorted.

If this is interesting to you and you want to find your groove with this and you want to increase your awareness with this, join the accelerator. It's going to be fantastic. There's a ton of information in there for you to learn, and you can take what you feel like you need in the moment and throw the rest out the window for now. But I think you'll find that it'll be really useful for you whether you identify with time management or not. This is really about brain management and then how to apply that into the world sort of logistically with nuts and bolts.

All right, everybody, thank you so much for tuning into the series. Thank you so much for being a listener. It has been such a privilege to prepare these episodes and be able to deliver them to you. Cheers to consistency into 200 episodes. See you next week, my friends.

Hey. You may not know this, but there's a free guide for a process I teach called Monday Map, Friday Wrap. If you go to VelocityWork.com, it's all yours. It's about how to plan your time and honor your plans so that week over week more work that moves the needle is getting done in less time. Go to VelocityWork.com to get your free copy.

Thank you for listening to The Law Firm Owner Podcast. If you're ready to get clearer on your vision, data, and mindset, then head over to velocitywork.com where you can plug in to Quarterly Strategic Planning, with accountability and coaching in between. This is the work that creates velocity.