Three Things to Do When You've Had a Crappy Day

Being an attorney is hard. Being an attorney who owns their own business is even harder. There are ups and downs, disappointments, fears, wins, and immense pride in what you've not just worked so hard to build, but had the courage to put yourself out there and build.

And sometimes it's lonely.

An attorney I was working with today reminded me of this.

It hurts when a prospect doesn't hire you, or a client complains, and you truly feel you did your best. You question yourself. You beat yourself up. It's easy for people to say “don't let it get to you” and “you can't please everyone.” And that's true. But attorneys are humans too, and especially when you're selling your own services in your own business, and there's no big firm brand to hide behind that makes it feel less personal, it stings. It can get in your head.

Perhaps the goal isn't to try to “not care” what people say. But to do these three things:

1. Be able to distinguish “my feelings are hurt, I'm disappointed, I'm questioning myself” from the idea that those thoughts are TRUE. You can feel your feelings about not getting hired or a client complaining AND you can also know the ugly thoughts you are thinking about yourself are NOT true. Both things can co-exist. It's ok to be human and feel your feelings. Just don't agree they're the truth.
2. Strive to recover faster. Instead of aiming for an inhuman goal of never caring what people say or think about you, know it will impact you. But instead of letting it wreck you for a week, work on knowing your self-talk isn't true, learn what you can from the situation, and recover in a day, not a week. Don't strive to be inhuman. I firmly believe our motivation, creativity, and sheer courage to run a business is deeply connected to our humanness, our feelings, and the fact that we DO care.

If you cut away your feelings too deeply to “not care what people think,” you can also cut away that special part of you that brings the courage, creativity, and passion to your business.

3. Do no harm. On days you get your confidence rocked, or frankly just get pissed off, acknowledge incoming emails and requests for feedback, a tricky situation, etc. Don’t ignore people. But don't get into the weeds of responding unless it's critical. Respond: “I want to let you know I received this. I won't have time today to fully respond, but I will respond tomorrow.” That way people aren't sitting there stewing, but you also aren't responding from a negative headspace and creating a mess you'll have to clean up the next day.

And it’s not just the hard things that can make you feel lonely.  It’s when the great things happen but you don’t know how to explain to someone in your life how meaningful it is.  They love you and they are proud of you, but they don’t ‘get’ it.

They may not get why that first “YES” from your first client is so special. Not just because you got hired, but because you were brave enough to put yourself out there, learn a new area of law, be uncomfortable doing something new, and care enough about your client to guide them through something important (like their estate planning) despite your own nerves and insecurities.

The resource at your fingertips is finding the community of people who know what it's like. The other business owners. The other moms. The other people who can understand the fear and celebrate the wins with you. So often we walk right by the celebrations, and trust me, you need that gas in the tank for the tough days.

A favorite quote of mine is the African proverb: “Alone we can go fast. But together we can go far.”

That holds true here. Find your people. Go together. Stay human.

Always in your corner,

Laney