Ep #23: When Your Gut Says “I Told You So”

The Joyful Practice for Women Lawyers with Paula Price | When Your Gut Says "I Told You So"

Last week, I mentioned a painting project I’m currently undertaking in my home office, and on this episode, I’m diving even further into this story because it’s not only amusing but what happened is something that I know you experience in your day-to-day too, whether in your professional work or personal life. 

 

I’m sure you can recall instances of making a decision, feeling great about it, and then something happening that made you second-guess it. Maybe you decided on a particular strategy at work, or with your children, it didn’t work out the way you expected, and you hear that revved-up inner voice telling you, “I told you so,” and you’re left kicking yourself for making a mistake. 

 

Join me this week as I show you how to have your back when your decisions don’t produce the results you ultimately want. Rather than getting wrapped up in self-doubt and second-guessing your instincts, I’m inviting you to listen to my painting experience and take away 5 valuable lessons I discovered about what it means to have self-trust and faith in my decisions, no matter how they play out. 

 

If you want to learn how to clear the runway so you can go after your goals, come join me for some upcoming webinars I’m hosting in the next few months! Mark your calendars for November 12th and December 3rd at noon Pacific time. Click the dates to register, and I look forward to seeing you there! 

 

If you enjoyed today’s show and don’t want to miss an episode, be sure to subscribe and follow the show. And if you haven’t already, please leave a rating and review! Your feedback will help me create a podcast that’s tailored to your needs and goes straight to the heart of what matters to you. Click here to learn how to subscribe, rate, and review.

What You’ll Learn from this Episode:
  • A recent experience I had where I questioned my decision-making. 
  • What sparked my doubt about this decision. 
  • The reality of making any decision that pushes you outside of your comfort zone. 
  • How to navigate the internal “I told you so” voice when you make a mistake.
  • 5 things that happen when we second-guess our decisions.
  • The lessons you can take away from my experience. 
Listen to the Full Episode:

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  • If you enjoyed today’s show and don’t want to miss an episode, be sure to subscribe and follow the show. And if you haven’t already, please leave a rating and review! Your feedback will help me create a podcast that’s tailored to your needs and goes straight to the heart of what matters to you. Click here to learn how to subscribe, rate, and review.
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  • Ep #22: Planning: How to Get What You Truly Want

 

Full Episode Transcript:

You’re listening to The Joyful Practice for Women Lawyers Podcast episode number 23.

Welcome to The Joyful Practice for Women Lawyers Podcast. I’m your host Paula Price, lawyer turned certified executive coach. This podcast was created to empower women lawyers just like you to create a life and practice you love. Join me every week for a break from the hustle so we can focus on you, what you truly want, and how you can create it.

If you’re over the overwhelm, done with putting out fires, and ready to create a life and practice that brings you more joy, you’re in the right place. Ready for today’s episode? Let’s dive in.

Hello my extraordinary friends, and welcome back to the podcast. For anybody who’s joining for the first time, welcome. My name is Paula Price. I’m a lawyer turned certified executive coach and the host of the podcast.

I just wanted to say I’m so happy to be recording today’s podcast episode. I’m normally pretty content when I sit down to do this, but it is a rainy Wednesday morning here in Vancouver. I just dropped the kids off at school. I’m pretty excited to talk about today’s topic. I normally am.

Before I jump into anything, I really wanted to acknowledge and extend my appreciation to all of you who are joining me for these podcasts. I had the pleasure of reconnecting with an old friend last week who has been listening to the podcast. She has been sharing with me some of the elements of podcast episodes that really resonated with her. It means so much to me to hear your feedback, to hear how things I’m sharing with you are resonating with you and helping you in the various aspects of your professional life, in your personal life.

I wanted to acknowledge each of you because I know from my experience of speaking with you with those of you who have reached out to connect with me how much of an impact you’re making. I know you are all sitting there or standing there quietly achieving really incredible things.  You’re going after your dreams. You are really making an impact in your professional realms, in your families.

Sometimes you can do that work and not really feel like anybody is noticing. I just want to be that voice for you today. That person who acknowledges all the things that you’re doing, and to say that I think you’re doing an amazing job. Thank you so much for being here with me. I am so delighted to have your support. So thank you and keep up the great work.

Now I will be talking about decisions and self-trust and your gut. Before I do that, I just wanted to mention that I’ve got a series of webinars that I’m doing. They are free. The first webinar has already taken place. That one was about reimagining your practice. If you joined me, wonderful. I hope you really enjoyed it.

There’s another one coming up on November 12th which is called decluttering your desk, your calendar, and your habits. Which, as you might imagine, is all about streamlining. So I’m really excited to be talking to you about that. I’ve recently started doing some decluttering of my own, and it’s really interesting to see what that’s bringing up for me. So I’ll be sharing some of that with you in the podcast and also in that webinar. So that’s November 12th.

Finally on December 3rd, there will be a third and final webinar. That webinar is all about amplifying your impact. So once you’ve reimagined your practice, you’ve set a goal for yourself, you’ve cleared the decks. Then it’s time to really step into what it is that you want to accomplish. It can be difficult to take that step. There can be a lot of invisible tripwires that come up. Maybe it’s fear or perfectionism or any number of things. So that third and final webinar will be devoted to that.

So I would love to have you join. Please if it is of interest to you, go to the podcast notes for this particular episode. It’s episode number 23. You’ll find the links to register. So please go ahead and do that.

So turning to today’s topic, I wanted to share an experience that I had recently because I think it is so relevant in what happens in your day to day whether it’s in your professional work or whether it’s in your personal life. So the example I’m going to use is my painting project.

If you listened to last week’s episode, then you’ll know that I repainted my home office space from yellow, which nothing wrong with yellow but this particular shade wasn’t doing it for me any longer. I don’t think it ever had. It was painted that way when we initially moved into our house. I really wanted to brighten this room and paint it a nice white.

So I talked about this last week, how I spent a day on the Thanksgiving long weekend here in Canada dedicated to painting this room. The aftermath of that led me down a bit of a rabbit hole. I wanted to go into this in more detail. I know that sounds really exciting, doesn’t it? Let’s go down the rabbit hole together.

But I want to take you into the rabbit hole because there are so many valuable lessons that came out of it. I want to share those lessons with you and invite you to think about how these lessons are applicable in your own perspective areas whether it’s your practice, whether it’s your personal life, and some of the lessons that you can draw from it and apply them in your own life so that you’re not making the same mistakes or thought errors that I was making.

So to give you a little bit more context, I went to paint the walls in my house. The first thing that I needed to do was paint. So I drove out the other weekend to my usual paint store. The paint store was actually closed. It was closed indefinitely. I gather they’re switching ownership. So I had to find paint from a different source.

I went to a store that’s a little bit closer to my house. It’s not exclusively a paint store. I don’t want to give too many details because I don’t want to throw them under the bus. I don’t think they’ve done anything wrong here, but I don’t want to give that impression. So I went to the store, and on my way there I saw this sign. The sign said, “Live everyday like something wonderful is about to happen.” So I was really in a good mood. I was thinking okay, something wonderful is about to happen.

So I got to the store, and I found the paint section. I looked at all the different shades of white. Turns out there are many, many, many different shades of white. So I picked something, and then I found a gentleman there who could help me get the paint because they keep it somewhere where you can’t really access it. So he did that. He complimented my color choice. Said he’d actually painted a room in his house by that same color. I thought of that’s great. I felt so good about it.

He disappeared into the back, and a couple minutes later he reappeared. He said, “You know if you’re okay with not going with the eggshell, I can offer you a paint that is just off of eggshell which will look the same on your walls for 20% off.” I said okay, that sounds fine. He seems really enthusiastic. I trusted his opinion. So I said that sounds great. Let’s do that.

A couple of minutes later, he came back a second time and said, “You know what? There is paint in our supply area that has a different label on it. So if you’re okay with paint that has a different label on it, I can give you the paint for $5 for each container.” I gather the paint is normally $50 or $60 for each container. So this was a deep discount, and he was really excited. So I said okay, that sounds really great. Sure, $5 for a can of paint? Why not?

I had this moment where I kind of remembered situations that I’ve had in the past where paint has actually been expired. So I asked him about that. I said, “Well, you know I’ve had this situation in the past where paint has been experienced. Is there any chance that that’s going to be a problem here?” He said, “No, no, no. It’s just a relabeling issue. Nothing to be concerned about.”

So off he went to prepare this paint, and I was excited. I thought wow, that sign was right. Something wonderful was about to happen to me. Isn’t this great? I get my paint for $5 per can. I went off and looked around the store and picked up a few more items while I went to wait for my paint. So that’s the backstory of how the paint came into my possession. I picked up the paint, took it home, and proceeded to paint the walls.

Now the thing I want to share with you is what happened after I painted the walls. The reason that I’m sharing this with you is because it’s all about decision making and how sometimes when we make a decision, we feel great about that decision. Then something happens that causes us to second guess ourselves, to start to doubt our decision. So I’m going to identify step by step because I think that some of these might resonate for you in terms of decisions that you may have made in your personal life, in your practice.

So the first thing that kind of threw me off was my husband coming home with the children and making a comment about the paint. To me, painting is just an exercise that is neither here nor there. It’s a little bit smelly and you have to be pretty precise. There’s all this paint. You have to cover the floors, etcetera. So of course it smelled to me. It smelled like paint.

He came home and he said, “That paint kind of smells. It smells musty. It doesn’t smell like normal paint.” Then he told a story about some painting he’d done recently in his office where the paint smelled so amazing that he was wanting to go back into that room to smell the fresh paint smell. All of a sudden, I started to second guess myself. I thought oh my gosh. Maybe this paint is off. Maybe this whole $5 business was not so great after all.

So the reason that I mention this is up until that point, I’d had no concerns about the paint. I was happy. It was a good deal. It was the right color. I mean I mentioned last week that maybe it didn’t totally clear up the yellowness I was trying to cover, but that’s a whole other story. We’re not going to get into that now. Bottom line I was really content with the results until I had this feedback about this paint maybe being off.

So you might ask yourself where this has come up for you. For example, it might be that you are making a decision on a file. You decide to go with a particular strategy on a file. You’re talking with a supervising lawyer or another lawyer in your office. Maybe they say something that causes you to think, “Wait a second. Maybe that wasn’t such a great idea after all.”

I know that I’ve had conversations back when I was practicing where there’s a lot of different opinions about how a file should be run. The practice of law is not a science. It’s an art. Really the circumstances depend on the person who’s involved. You can go different ways on a file. It’s not to say one is correct and one is not correct. But when you have that negative feedback from somebody else, it can start to cause you to question whether or not the decision that you made in the first place was correct.

So you might think about where that may have come up for you where you made a decision, you were great with that decision, then all of a sudden you start to get some negative feedback. It maybe will start to cause you to second guess what’s going on. So that was the first thing that happened.

Now the second thing that happened that started to really undermine my decision was discomfort. Now for the past week and a half my office space has had a paint smell. Every time I’ve gone to sit in the office to work, it causes me to be a little uncomfortable, right. There’s that weird smell. Gives me a bit of a headache. Then I start going down the mental rabbit hole of did I buy the right paint? Maybe this was a big mistake. It was the discomfort that really started to further second guess my decision.

The reason that I want to highlight this in particular is that discomfort is such a huge part of growth. It’s not to say that I’m going to undergo some major transformation because I painted the walls in my workspace. But anytime you make a decision that pushes you outside your comfort zone, chances are it’s going to bring up discomfort. I think we often take that discomfort as a sign that something has gone wrong.

So if you think about, for example, if you decide that you are wanting to develop your public speaking skills and you start volunteering to speak at conferences or internal presentations at your organization or your law firm. You go to do these presentations and it’s difficult to prepare for them. You’re nervous while you’re presenting. That can make you think, “Well I’m uncomfortable. So I really should not be doing this.”

Maybe it’s a new job that you’re looking for or a promotion that you’re seeking.  Maybe you want to negotiate a more generous compensation at the organization where you are. So there’s all these challenges that may come up for you or these decisions that you’re making where the thing that you’ll have to do is going to cause you discomfort. So you interpret that as a sign that you shouldn’t do it.

So in this case, the discomfort that came up for me was of course sitting in this room and wondering did I make a mistake here? So that’s something that might come up for you in terms of decisions that you make. You may start to second guess yourself in terms of the discomfort that you feel.

Now the third thing that happened as a result of this decision, and this kind of followed the negative feedback and then this physical discomfort, was the internal I told you so. How many times has that happened to you where you’ve made a decision, and maybe there was a part of you that was like, “Hey maybe this isn’t the best decision.” In my case, that was the voice that kind of came out during that conversation with the salesperson which was what if the paint was expired?

So all of a sudden, my inner gut, the inner paint expert in me which I actually am not at all a paint expert, clearly. Was saying to me, “Well Paula, of course you should have known. Anybody who’s selling you $5 paint, of course it’s going to be expired. I told you so.” This really is your inner I told you so reflex, which in hindsight maybe makes sense.

Now in this case, I actually don’t think that my gut sense was necessarily correct. I don’t think there was anything wrong with the paint. We can talk more about that. It’s that instinct where you start to really anchor in on something that you were thinking or something that you told yourself that kind of second guesses or undermines the decision that you’ve made.

So maybe this has happened to you in a situation where, for example, maybe you’re in a job and you decide to go to a new one. You have some reservations about going into that new job because you start out and it’s not exactly what you’d anticipated. So you kick yourself. You say, “Well, of course this didn’t work out. I knew from the outset.” Then you fill in the blank.

It’s not to say that the decision that you made is wrong. It may just mean that there is a tweak that is required. It can be easy to latch on to a thought that actually this was not the right thing. You may find this in the work that you do.

When I was practicing as a lawyer, there were times when I would have an instinct on something. I would then voice that, and we would have—I’m thinking about when I worked on a team, for example. Maybe it’s something I raised with another lawyer. Ultimately, we decided well, let’s not worry about that. Then it came back and was something that would have benefited from further investigation. That has happened.

Conversely, I’ve also had it where I had an instinct and I’ve gone with that instinct, and it’s turned out to be something that was really helpful. So you may have situations like that where you have this instinct, and you follow it or not. Where this can also come up is you realize based on what has happened what truly matters to you.

So in this situation, I was thinking to me the cost of the paint—whether it’s $100 or $10—isn’t really the issue. The issue for me is I’m spending the time to make this room the color that I want. What is important to me is I get it right, not how much money I save. So it’s being more clear on what matters to you in a particular situation. What can be helpful about that is it can help you with your direction and to stay on course versus situations where you might get pulled off that course because of somebody else’s enthusiasm.

So in this case, for example, when the salesperson was so enthusiastic, I was getting enthusiastic, right. I mean it’s super contagious. When someone is really excited about something and so are you, it can be really easy to want to follow a path that may not match up with what your gut is really telling you. So this is a tricky one, right. I think your gut is something that you should listen to. Whether or not you should follow that is another question.

What I’m trying to flag here, and I’m going to talk about this a little bit more when I talk about the lessons to take away from this experience. The idea here is for you to notice when you make a decision and all of a sudden, it’s like that part of you is like, “I told you so.” I just want you to notice that I told you so voice may not actually be correct. So that was the number three. There are five.

The next one is sometimes you make a decision and then you start to then distract yourself or ruminate over that decision. So the way that that showed up here is here I am. I’m in the smelly room. I kind of have a headache. Then I start to get kind of obsessed about the smell of the paint.

So then what happens? I started to Google. I go to Google, and I start asking it questions about paint and should it smell. How do you get rid of the smell? How long is it going to smell? So I started spending all this time going down the rabbit hole of research.

Then I found the smelly candles that we happen to have in the candles. We have two. So I started burning the candles. I started alternating between candles burning in the room, opening up the window, turning on the heat, turning off the heat. All these different combinations to try to get rid of the smell. I think it only made the room smell worse, frankly, having these candles going.

Then I also started doing something that we might start doing, you might relate to, is opinion shopping. So I started asking friends. Hey I just painted this room and it still smells. Is that normal?

You might be able to relate to this. You in your practice. Maybe it’s a file that you’re working on. There’s a particular strategy that you’re using to negotiate an agreement or a way that you’re handling a particularly difficult client. You start to ask yourself whether you made the right decision, and you start kind of seeking out other people’s opinions. It’s almost like if other people are in agreement with you then you’ve made the right choice.

What’s so interesting about that part of it is that when I got different opinions, it had such an effect on how I viewed the room. So, for example, one friend said, “Oh no, that sounds a little bit sketchy. That’s not normal. Maybe you should go back and see if there’s anything they can do to fix it.”

Another friend that I asked who had painted recently said, “Oh yeah. We painted. It was super smelly. We even bought that low emission paint. We had the fans going.” So when I heard that I thought well, that’s great. That means this is totally normal. So your opinion about the decision that you’ve made can change based on the feedback that you get from others.

So what I want to highlight here is that here’s the decision that I made. Now I’m out there. Not only am I sitting in a room that smells stinky from the paint, but I’ve also started to spend a lot of time ruminating, second guessing myself, opinion shopping, doing research. It’s not really moving the dial forward. It’s just really taking the time away from what I really want to do, which is be productive in my workspace.

So finally the last sort of consequence that I want to highlight here was that as a result of all this, I started to experience self-doubt. Now don’t worry. I wasn’t really getting too far into it over a can of paint or two cans of paint.  Here’s what I started to experience. I started to think this really serves me right. I should have known better that this paint was going to be off. I mean really who am I to be doing this? Was it even worth it? Maybe I would have been better off not painting the room?

You can see how this might happen for you in situations where you are putting yourself out there. Where you’ve made a decision. Maybe it’s the decision on the file. You put yourself out there and you don’t get the outcome that you want. So you start second guessing yourself. Maybe I just shouldn’t have made the decision. Maybe I should have asked for somebody else to give me their opinion.

Maybe you’re reaching out and trying to network and connect with people, and you don’t get the response that you want. So you beat yourself up. You have a conversation with somebody, and it turns awkward. Then you leave that conversation thinking that was all my fault. I’m terrible at this. So the effect of all of this is it leads to this place where you start to really doubt your decisions.

Now this is just the paint. I can happily report that almost two weeks later this room doesn’t smell nearly as bad. Yes, it still smells, but I’m pretty confident that the paint was fine. The man who sold it to me really truly—I totally believe that he was doing this out of the goodness of his heart. I appreciate it. I really wish I could get back to that moment because I really enjoyed that whole experience. It was like everybody was winning.

What I want to highlight here is how that one decision led to this almost fallout of subsequent decisions and how it kind of undermined the decision that I had made. So the next part of the podcast, I want to highlight what the lessons were that came out of this experience. So there were five.

Lesson number one is anytime that you make a decision whether it’s a decision on a file, whether it’s a career decision that you’re making, whether it’s a strategic move that you’re making with your children. Anybody who is out there parenting, you know that there are so many decisions that you’re making on behalf of your children every day. I think those warrant consideration. Or parents if you’ve got aging parents and you’re making decisions on their behalf.

Anytime you make these decisions, you are making decisions based on the information that you have. What is going to happen is that somebody out there is very likely going to have an opinion about what it is that you’re doing.

What I encourage you to do is anytime you’re making a decision that is of consequence where you anticipate that there may be negative outcomes for other people is to shore yourself up ahead of time. Really give yourself that confidence that the decision that you’re making is the right decision for you.  It doesn’t mean it’s the perfect decision. It doesn’t mean that nothing’s going to go wrong. It just means that you’re not going to allow yourself to get caught up in the comments that others have.

Now, this is not to say that there was anything wrong with him commenting on the paint. That was his opinion. That’s not the issue. People are entitled to have opinions, and they will share those opinions with you. The thing that I’m asking you to focus on here is your own response to that opinion.

So that is lesson number one is to really shore yourself up and to be okay with the fact that there are others who may not agree with the choice that you have made but you have your own back. That you are going to be okay with your decision no matter what. If you want to change something, you can always do that down the road.

So the second lesson that comes out of this experience is the lesson of discomfort. I’ve spoken about this before on the podcast. I’ve coached clients around this numerous times. I highly encourage everybody out there to develop a practice of really learning to manage discomfort.

So this experience for me was a little bit different from the discomfort that I’ve been training myself with. I, as a coach, have a practice where I deliberately put myself in uncomfortable situations because I believe that that’s what makes me grow. I encourage clients to do that as well. I have had a journaling practice, which I’ve shared with some clients, and they’ve actually adopted it. They seem to really enjoy it.

I don’t do it every day, but I journal for discomfort. So I might say in the morning the discomfort that I’m willing to feel today is the discomfort of trying something new, speaking in public, putting out a new product, whatever that happens to be. It’s really giving yourself instructions ahead of time that you are going to embrace something uncomfortable because of the growth that comes on the other side of it.

So in this case, I’m not so sure that sitting in a smelly, painty room is the kind of discomfort that I would normally go for. However I think the parallel here is that sitting in the room made me physically uncomfortable. That discomfort is what caused me to second guess my decision.

For you, you may make a decision to go after a big goal. The next thing you know, you’re super uncomfortable because you are taking steps that are way outside your comfort zone. That might seem to you like a signal, like you’re not on the right path. My advice to you or the lesson that I drew from this experience is sometimes it’s just uncomfortable and that is okay. That is part of the process.  That, my friends, is lesson number two.

Lesson number three is that, this is where we were talking about that gut sense, right. That your gut is telling you I told you so and you shouldn’t have done this. The lesson here is that your gut is such a strong indicator of what is important to you. So when you are making a decision about doing something, I strongly encourage you to do that gut check.

In this case, for example, my takeaway was don’t buy the cheap paint if it’s not what you truly want. I’m not saying that paint wasn’t the right paint, but the importance to me of getting the thing that I’ve really wanted was way more important to me than buying something at a discount.

The parallel that you may have in your life maybe that you are selling yourself short in particular areas. Maybe it’s at work, maybe it’s at home, maybe it’s with yourself where you’re taking on less or you’re taking on something that is not truly in alignment with what you want for some reason. I’ll give you some examples because it’s probably more helpful for you if I do that.

For example, maybe in the workplace you have been invited to join the committee. It’s a committee that is not really up your alley. It’s not something that you’re truly passionate about. You’ve already committed to a number of other things, and this would really not be furthering you along the path that you want to follow. But the person who’s asking you is really excited about it. They really want to have you on the team. They really love the work that you’re doing. So you may get caught up in their enthusiasm, and you may be tempted to go and take on that project.

This isn’t to say that you shouldn’t take on the project, but I would invite you to really check in with your gut. To ask yourself is this something that you truly want to partake in? If it’s not to allow yourself to not go ahead with that. Or if you do decide to take it on knowing that it’s not truly in alignment with what you want. That your gut reaction was that maybe you should not be doing this. So it’s not so much that you need to always follow your gut, but it’s really that exercise of listening to your gut.

Another example that might come up is not really going after what you truly want. So you may think in your current context whether it’s something that you’re doing at work that is not really something that you want to be doing. You’ve been doing it for whatever reason. Is to ask yourself whether you want to continue to do that, right.

It’s like maybe you’ve been—I mean this is kind of a bizarre example—but maybe you’ve been buying the soap that you don’t really like because it’s at a discount. What you really want is this other soap that’s more experience. So what I’m encouraging you to do is to treat yourself to the better soap. I know that’s kind of a weird example. It’s the only one I’m coming up with right now, unfortunately. Rather than settle for something that’s not really what you want, I’m encouraging you to get really clear about what it is that you do want and start dialing things in so that you’re getting closer to that.

So figure out. Part of the webinar that I’m doing this week, if you do miss this webinar and you want an access to this recording, send me a note. Because I think it’s going to be really impactful. Part of the exercise there is really reimagining your practice in a way that you want your practice to unfold.

So much of the material that I share on my podcast, you’ve probably noticed if you’ve been listening, is about really getting back in connection with yourself. I think as lawyers, as professionals, as women who are operating in professional environments and social environments where we really are seeking out to please others and to follow rules.

We’re not all going to fall into these categories and certainly not for all aspects of our lives. I think it can be really easy to get caught up in the checks and balances that others are setting up for us. I’m not saying that we should remove ourselves from those external measures entirely, but I really think it’s important to check back in with ourselves and make sure that we’re on the right track for us. So that’s really the takeaway here.

The third takeaway is listen to your gut. If your gut is telling you something, is it time for you to take action on that right now? Sorry. I got a little bit off track there, but that was the third lesson that I pulled from this was to really listen to myself.

The fourth lesson is that when you make a decision and you find yourself ruminating is to try to limit that rumination, and to realize it has limits on how helpful it’s going to be. So, for example, doing some research on Google, not a big deal. Maybe this has happened to you where you’ve made a decision on a file and then you find yourself researching after the fact trying to decide if it was the right decision.

Maybe you make a decision in your professional work or a decision that affects your children, and you find yourself out there opinion shopping. Opinion shopping is a little bit dangerous because everyone is going to have their own view based on their own experience.

So what I would invite you to do there is rather than go opinion shopping and spending a lot of time ruminating and second guessing yourself, maybe take some time to journal out what it is that is bothering you. Maybe speak with somebody about that. You could obviously speak with a coach or a counselor or whoever might be helpful for you. A family member, a friend.

Maybe it is useful to give yourself a certain amount of time to have that conversation but then to really try to put that conversation away particularly if it’s not serving your end. If it’s not taking you any steps forward, it’s kind of just distracting you from doing something more significant and important for you. So that was the fourth one.

The final lesson that came out of that is ultimately to have faith in yourself. If there’s anything that you take from this particular podcast episode it is that I would love for all of you listening to really have faith that whatever decision you made, it was the right decision. It may not seem like the right decision at the time, but it is a decision that you made. You get to stand by it. You get to have your own back. If you need to make another decision in the future, you can do that.

Rather than get wrapped up in self-doubt, in this case it’s why did I go and buy the $5. Not really a big deal. But you can see how with bigger decisions how there may be that temptation to ask yourself why did I do this? This was such a dumb thing to do. Obviously, anybody with their mind on properly would have seen this coming. I’m encouraging you never, ever to go down that path. To allow yourself to be there for yourself, and to have faith in the decisions that you make.

So those are the takeaways that I wanted to share with you that come out of my painting experience. Yeah, the room looks way better. I am getting used to the paint smell. The paint smell is dissipating.

I’m 100% confident that it was the right thing to do. That if it hadn’t happened, I wouldn’t have had this wonderful opportunity to think about decisions, to think about how we can second guess our decisions, and to feel more confident going forward that the decisions that I’m making are fine. They are the right decisions. How you might apply that in your practice, how I might apply that in my practice, these are all things that I would encourage you to think about.

So, my friends, it has been an honor to have you here today. I hope this little story was at least amusing if not somewhat helpful for you. I really, really do hope to see you at my next webinar. Again, there will be a webinar on November 12th which is all about decluttering. As I mentioned, I’m doing my own decluttering project. I’m excited to talk to you more about that. It is a truly impactful exercise, the decluttering process, what is left behind, the choices you are going to be making. I highly encourage you to tune in for that.

Then on December 3rd, I’m super excited to talk about amplifying your impact. The inspiration for that particular webinar comes from my own coaching practice where I’m at a point now where I’ve been doing this for a few years and really looking at the parts of my practice that I really love. Trying to figure out how to do more of those things.

The parallel in your practice, of course, is the same. It’s to start looking at your legal practice, start looking at the relationships you have with your colleagues, with your professional relationships, and decide how you can go about intentionally creating more of what you want and acting on those things.

So, my friends, thank you again for joining me. I really do hope to see you at the webinars. I hope you will tune back in next week. Again if you did want to sign up for those webinars, I would encourage you to go to the webpage for the particular podcast episode. You’ll find the links there. If you have any trouble with that, just reach out on LinkedIn. Reach out by email. I’d be happy to send those to you.

So thank you everybody. It’s been a pleasure. Have a wonderful week. Bye for now.

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Thank you for listening to this episode of The Joyful Practice for Women Lawyers podcast. If you want more information, visit www.thejoyfulpractice.com. See you next week.

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