On this week’s episode of the Wealthy Woman Lawyer® podcast, I want to introduce you to 3 questions you can ask yourself when you are feeling overwhelmed and exhausted by all the items on your “to do” list, or when you feel out of control.
I remember the first time someone asked me to ponder these questions in relation to my business. At the time, my ideas about time and money were very fixed, but through this process of discovery, my beliefs changed, and with them, so did my ability to shift my thinking. Along with that shift came breakthroughs for me and my clients that I previously did not think were possible.
Today, I want to invite you to journey with me through these 3 questions so the next time you are feeling stuck, frustrated, sad, or even just confused about what to do next, you’ll have some tools in your toolbox to help you step into what’s possible.
We hope you enjoy this episode as we discuss:
- The one question to ask that will shatter your limiting beliefs
- The secret to ending negative thoughts
- How taking off your sarcasm-colored glasses can change your life
- And much more…
Listen now…
Mentioned in this episode:
- Wealthy Woman Lawyer® website
- Wealthy Woman Lawyer® League
- Davina on Facebook
- Davina on Twitter
- Davina on Instagram
Transcript
Davina Frederick: Hello and welcome to the Wealthy Woman Lawyer podcast. We believe all women lawyers deserve to be wealthy women lawyers. Our mission is to provide thought provoking, powerful and practical information to help you in creating your own sustainable wealth generating law firm without overwork or overwhelm so you can live your best life. I’m your host, Davina Frederick. Let’s get started.
Hi, everyone, it’s Davina. And today I want to share with you three questions to ask yourself when you’re feeling overwhelmed by all the items on your to do list, or when anything happens in your life that makes you feel overwhelmed, exhausted, or out of control. I remember when someone first asked me these questions in relation to my business. I was just starting my coaching business. And I had some very fixed ideas about time and money and limitations of both. My coach at the time, Mande White-Pearl began asking me questions from Access Consciousness. Access Consciousness is a program designed to help you expand your capacity and your impact in the world.
So the first question she asked me, and the question that I’m now asking you is, what else is possible? Wow. It’s amazing how this one little question shook my world and created a crack in my belief system. Of course, it did not immediately change everything I had come to believe about my life, my business, and the way the world works. What it did do though, was create some space for me to breathe. You see, at the time in my life, that she asked me this question, I was feeling very angry and frustrated, like I’d been dealt a bad hand, been betrayed by people who were supposed to love me in the way that I expected to be loved.
And I was really determined to pick up the pieces of my life, and never rely on anything or anyone else again. So in particular, my financial well being, I told others, I did not need anyone else. If I had to do it right by myself, I would push any boulder up over a mountain to get the kind of life I desired. I would be Hercules. Can you relate to that? Unfortunately, it didn’t take me long until I felt like Sisyphus, you know, the mythological King, who was punished for his misdeeds by being condemned to push that same heavy boulder up a hill over and over for all eternity, only to have it continuously roll back down as he neared the top.
See, that’s how I feel, working in my business, non stop 24/7. It made me feel overwhelmed and exhausted. And while I was making good money, I was asking myself, but at what cost? Because back then I believe that the only way to create a million dollar plus revenue wealth generating business was to work harder. I’d grown up being taught that. My parents always took great pride in their work ethic. And so did I. So it wasn’t until I was talking with Mande anyone day and I was in tears, because I was so tired and ready to quit. And she asked me what else is possible? And I like to rephrase it a little bit. And to expand on it and say what else is possible you have not even considered or even knew you could consider?
It wasn’t until that moment that she asked me that question that my thinking began to change. Of course, the key to this question she told me is to stay in the question. Don’t try to rush in to fill in all the blanks and answer the question from your place of limitation. So this is what high achieving women, like you, like me, like most of my clients tend to do is that we ask question, what else is possible, and then we immediately start creating a chart, a table, a grid, something where we start filling in all the things that are possible. And while that’s helpful to a degree, really what we’re doing here is we’re kind of just putting this idea out to the universe, and we’re waiting to see what answers we receive.
So, you want to ask the question, if you’re facing a particular struggle or a challenge, what else is possible that I’ve not considered or even knew I could consider and then go to something else. Turn your attention to something that you really enjoy. Something that makes you feel very full and satisfied on a deep level or makes you feel very rested. So maybe that’s taking a nap. Maybe that is going for a walk with somebody you love. I like to play with my english bulldog puppy as most of you know if you know me well at all. Because she just makes me laugh and reminds me that life is about playing sometimes, right?
So today, I really invite you to do the same. Whatever problem you’re facing in your business or in your life, instead of continuing to hack away at it day and night, thinking, if I just keep keep chipping away at this one day, it will all be worth it. Instead, try sitting for a few minutes in a quiet room and ask yourself, what else is possible? So the next question that Mande asked me was, what’s right about this I’m not getting. And I remember thinking what? Nothing is right about this, right?
Because when we’re faced with a particular challenge in our life, whether it was you know, feeling a feeling of betrayal, like what I had, or money worries, you know, not feeling like we can’t pay a bill on time, or worrying that we are, you know, clients are being demanding, and we’re not gonna be able to meet their demands, or anything, anything that would happen in life that feels like it’s going wrong. You know, our knee jerk reaction is to say nothing is right about this. And at the time that she said, asked me that question, I felt like not only was I doing everything wrong, but I was being treated in a way that was wrong.
When I began to ask the question, though, and stay in the question what’s right about this, I’m not getting, I realize that every incident and accident in my life contained some element of rightness to it. Now, I know this is going to be a hard concept, because certainly bad things happen to good people. And you may look at it and say, there’s really nothing good that came from this thing. But I want to give you an example, early in my business, I was really eager to serve more clients. And I would be so disappointed when someone did not want to work with me. And when I began to ask myself, what’s right about this I’m not getting, the answers really began flowing pretty easily to me.
So for instance, I might know I might have a knowing that the person that I was, had had a discussion with them wanting to work with me, wasn’t really a good fit for me. And I was because I was eager to have a greater impact and serve more people, I might have taken that person on. But when they didn’t respond, I would ask myself, what’s right about this that I’m not getting I realized that maybe she was not ready to work with me. Maybe she wasn’t as ready as she thought she was. Maybe something else had come up in her life. And maybe I wasn’t ready for her, even though I thought I was. And so maybe, by that not working out, I was able to avoid a situation that would have been paint both painful for me and the client. And they were able to avoid that situation, right?
Because sometimes we you know, not sometimes all the time, often, we don’t know everything, you know, that may be going on in someone else’s life, that may impact our relationship with them. And sometimes, you know, we’re we’re divinely guided, perhaps. So we never know the rightness of decision. And or we may not know the rightness until sometime later. So I had another client who renewed with me. And then, so we had worked together for a year. And then she renewed and a couple months later, she quit. It was probably about six, about six weeks later, she quit, it’s in seemingly out of the blue. And she said, I just can’t do this. And she sort of backed out of the contract.
And I had a couple of choices there. And in that particular case, we had a conversation. And I just felt like I needed to let her go and reflect on the rightness of it. What’s right about this I’m not getting. And I discovered a few weeks later that she soon would receive a life threatening diagnosis, which would require all of her time, attention and resources over the next several years. So I don’t think she knew it at the time, she was talking with me about not continuing the work. And I certainly didn’t know. But as it turned out, this came up for her and her life. And I think the universe was looking out for both of us by allowing us to let go of this so that she could focus her time and attention where it needed to be.
And I’m really happy to report that she’s thriving and I could not be more proud of her and all the blessings in her life. So you don’t need to find a rightness and something that feels like it’s wrong to you. Okay, I’m not saying that. What I’m saying is, I found that when I ask the question what’s right about this that I’m not getting, immediately I’ll start to feel some relief. I’ll start to feel a little more light. It’ll begin to shift my perspective and my thoughts in a way that will allow me to move forward more easily. Instead of staying stuck in the venting and in the story of the thing that I felt disappointed about, right.
So the last question I want to share with you today to help you if you were struggling with negative thoughts about your business or your life, perhaps because maybe you found it difficult to hire just the right team member to help you grow your business. Or maybe because you had to deal with difficult opposing counsel all day, or because you ran into traffic on the way to your child’s soccer game after work. And now you’re late and you’re feeling like the worst mom of the year. So this question is, what if everything is always working out for me? So I like to flip this question to a statement, you can simply make this question into a statement, everything is always working out for me or everything always works out for me, which is the way that I like to use it in the present tense, everything always works out for me.
So perhaps when you are stuck in traffic, you missed being involved in an accident, because of your late timing. And you will never know. Right? You will never know because you’ve missed it. Thank goodness, right. And perhaps you haven’t yet been able to find the right team members to help you grow your business because you are not ready. In some way you did not realize, or maybe the right person is on their way to you. But they are not ready. So I want to give you an example from a client of mine who lives in a rural community. And she really, really, really was ready to expand and hire another attorney. But she was struggling with actually finding somebody who in her community to work with her.
And by just allowing herself a little bit of space and saying, I just believe that everything always works out for me. And this, this is going to resolve itself and having faith that there was indeed somebody who would come and then sort of taking inspired action in that regard. Very quickly after our conversation, she had an attorney from another state, reach out to her several people were telling this other attorney, you need to contact this law office and you need to go work for them. And so she she reached out and it turns out, she’s a perfect fit. She’s wanting to relocate to the state where my client is, and everything worked out.
So sometimes it’s really about just shifting our mindset. And so I want to share with you another story around that. I have this other client who was a gentleman This is before I began working only with women law firm owners, and this gentleman tended to look at the world through what I call sarcasm colored glasses. Okay, so this was his sense of humor. And he didn’t believe me when I told him if he would start saying this statement several times a day, particularly when he felt something bad, quote, unquote, bad was happening, how much his life would change. I remember telling him, I want you to start saying everything always works out for me. And he gave me the stink eye. But he agreed to try it for a few weeks see what happened.
At first, he couldn’t even say it without the sarcastic tone. Because as I said, that’s, you know, kind of his go to, and I let him slide on that for a while. And then I gently asked him to drop the sarcasm and continue saying it. So sure enough, a few weeks later, he texted me, you were right. Everything does always work out for me. And the next time we spoke, he was full of tales of all that it worked out for him over the last few weeks. His business grew. He was getting more clients he liked. His team was expanding. His life was improving. I mean, the list goes on his love life isn’t perfect. The list goes on. So did saying everything always works out for me cast a magic spell on his life. Well, maybe I mean, I don’t know. But maybe it just drew his attention to all that was already good in his life.
And the more he focused on appreciating all how all of that was working out, the more it began to work out even more. So who knows, who cares. The result is he’s happier and more successful. And that’s what mattered. So I share all of this with you. So the next time you’re feeling stuck, frustrated, sad, or even just confused about what to do next. When you’re feeling at your wit’s end, you’ll have some tools in your toolbox to help you. So these three questions I call them three magical questions. What else is possible? What’s right about this I’m not getting, and what if everything always works out for me, or everything always works out for me. If you just want to say that multiple times a day everything always works out for me. You will begin very quickly to see and observe all that works out from you.
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