Who Defines Your Worth

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Allison Williams: [00:00:05] Hi, everybody. It’s Allison Williams here, your host of The Crushing Chaos with Law Firm Mentor Podcast. Law Firm Mentor is a business coaching service for solo and small law firm attorneys. We help you to grow your revenues, crush chaos in business and make more money.

Allison Williams: [00:00:30] Where on today’s episode, I’m going to ask you a question that I want you to seriously contemplate, which is who defines your worth? Now, I am recording this podcast during the week of April 10th, and I will share with you that our recent events in the world, April 10th, 2022, I should say the recent events in the world that have inspired this podcast are the recent confirmation of our newest Supreme Court Justice, Ketanji Brown Jackson. Now, there’s been a lot of conversation in the public spaces around whether or not Justice Jackson was the appropriate choice, whether or not President Biden should have started from a pool of only black women. We’re not going there for purposes of today’s podcast, other than to comment upon what I think is really critical for all people, regardless of gender or race. A query of who defines your worth. Because Justice Jackson explained a story, she shared a story of her past as people have gotten to know her that is very similar to that of Michelle Obama’s and in some ways similar to my own story.

Allison Williams: [00:01:52] But I don’t believe it’s exclusive to black women. I believe that everyone has a story like this in their past if they look hard enough. And so I want to remind you guys what that story is. And then we’re going to talk about a five-step process that I want to give you to shift the narrative around who defines your worth. So the story that Justice Jackson shared was that she, as a high school student, had spoken with her high school guidance counselor and said, I think I want to go to Harvard. And her guidance counselor gave her the guidance, quote-unquote, that she should not set her, her expectations too high, and that maybe she should apply to a state school and try to stay in her lane. Now, I don’t know enough about Justice Jackson’s academic record to know whether or not that was sage advice or if that was or if that was really just the thoughts of someone who thought lowly of her, for any number of reasons. But I will say that that is a similar story to that shared fact. It’s almost identical to that shared by former first lady Michelle Obama, i.e. go to guidance counselor, say, hey, I want to go to the Ivy Leagues and you’re told, Hey, I don’t think that’s so great for you, stay in your lane.

Allison Williams: [00:03:07] Now, I think it’s important that we contextualize this because for women of their generation and frankly, even young women who are going into the academic spaces, the Ivy Leagues, looking for more for themselves now, there is oftentimes guidance given that is not necessarily malevolently motivated. Sometimes it is very much malevolently motivated. I remember in high school I had, I had a mathematics teacher, she was actually my geometry teacher in my ninth-grade year and I remember that I wanted to put myself on a path for advanced placement courses because in my high school you could take advanced placement courses, and if you pass the test at the end of the year, you would get college credit for those courses. And so I knew that I would be in calculus by my senior year, and I wanted to be in Advanced Placement Calculus. And ultimately I expressed that to her, and she’s a very racist woman. She directly said, Oh, you’re definitely not going to succeed at that. I don’t even know why you would consider that as an option. So having that type of experience, obviously that type of person you shouldn’t be listening to because that type of person thinks lowly of you just because of your demographics and you know, who cares what they think. But there are a host of other people who would share with you thoughts around whether or not you should try for something that seems to be out of reach. Not because they don’t believe in you or because they don’t think you are capable, but because they don’t believe that the world will give you the opportunity and they don’t want you to be hurt in the process of trying and failing.

Allison Williams: [00:04:51] Think of this like the maternalistic or paternalistic parent who says, You know, I don’t think that you should shoot for this particular college because you don’t have the greatest SAT scores or, you know, this is a very, very competitive school to get into or a very competitive music program to get into, you haven’t practiced hard enough. I don’t know if you’re going to quite cross that threshold and I don’t want you to be disappointed. I’m sure all of us have had those types of experiences where someone has shared with us the, maybe you shouldn’t get your hopes up mindset because they are trying to protect us from the pain that we would experience if we were not chosen. But the reality is that if you start creating in your life circumstances where you don’t create, you don’t pursue, you don’t go for that big goal that seems out of reach, then you ultimately live a life of expanded mediocrity, right? You expand from being the mediocre college student, to being the mediocre employee, to being the mediocre business owner if you choose to go into business or continuing in a mediocre relationship that doesn’t serve you, making a mediocre income, you don’t ever allow yourself to expand your thoughts to create the desired outcome. Because the desired outcome is something that you have learned through these various well-intentioned people that you’re not entitled to receive. So that’s very much what happens in the line of sight of a child. When you tell that child, even if that child is nearly an adult, that they are not likely to get what they desire. So they shouldn’t bother trying.

Allison Williams: [00:06:39] Now my story is a little bit different. I didn’t have the high school guidance counselor story, I think partly because my mother was a high school teacher at the school where I went. And I think that if anyone had said something like that to her, that would have been problematic. But I don’t know that I haven’t had a litany of those types of experiences. Some of them have landed, some of them have not. But the one I will share with you that I think is probably the most, the most jarring to me. It happened when I was actually being admitted to the New York State Bar. And for those of you that have been following this podcast for any length of time, you know that I am a New Jerseyan. I was born and raised in Florida, went to law school in Syracuse, New York, landed in Jersey for my first job. But I wanted to be licensed in New York and New Jersey to expand my options. Right. And so I passed the New York bar first time out, and I was going back to New York, to Albany, New York in particular, so that I could go through the interview process and then ultimately attend the swearing-in ceremony.

Allison Williams: [00:07:46] Now, the stress of doing this at the time I did it, I actually I was sworn into the New Jersey Bar in the middle of my judicial clerkship year in December by the judge for whom I worked and they threw me a surprise party, and all of the attorneys in my account, in my county that practice family law regularly before my judge came and it was a big, wonderful occasion. But for the New York State Bar, I was going to a room of strangers and the process was that you traveled to the location where the interviews were going to happen, and then you had to get in a long line in a hallway. And one by one you went through this interview process where you were either told right in there, you’re approved to be sworn in or you are not, and we need further information or we’re declining you outright or whatever. And then you were sent on your way. So there were of course, as I’m walking up to the door, I see candidates. I’m getting closer and closer with each person that goes in and comes out. Most people were going in and coming out with a sigh of relief on their face or a sign of release of that tension. Others were coming out in tears or very upset. And so I knew that there was a possibility that I could be told, yeah, we’re not going to admit you to the bar. Even though I had taken a day off of work from my judicial clerkship in New Jersey and driven all the way to Albany, New York, several hours that I had told everyone that now that I had passed the New York bar, I am ready to be admitted. I have to go through this process and my family and friends would be waiting for me to come back to New Jersey and give them the call that I am officially admitted to the state of New York. Now, that is before social media was what it is now. I think MySpace existed back then, this was 2004 when I was sworn into the New York bar, I passed the bar in 2003. And that experience was just it was nerve grating waiting to go in. And I remember I went in and I’m seated across from an older white woman who had a folder and there were papers kind of strewn all about her desk that related to me in some way. She had everything from my resume to my transcripts to information on jobs and apartments where I had lived and all the things that are a part of the vetting process to determine if someone is eligible to be admitted to the New York State Bar. And I went through the interview process, she asked me a couple of questions, and I just remember detecting this, you know, are you worthy type of energy from her? It was very much a, you know, so, so you work at this place and you weren’t there very long. Why did you leave? And it was just kind of a condescending error. Right. And we all know when we have that error, right. If you’re paying attention to someone, you know, when a person is seemingly annoyed that they are talking to you, frustrated by the fact that they have to engage with you, not really interested in hearing what you have to say, just kind of asking the questions so they can ask the question, check the box, go through the form. So I have several questions like that. And at some point, it occurred to me that this person was devaluing my worth through the questions that she was asking.

Allison Williams: [00:11:04] Now, one of the things that a lot of people don’t know about me is that I graduated from college in two and a half years because I had completed through advanced placement courses and college courses that I took as a high school student. I had completed effectively one year of college before I graduated from high school, and then I went to consecutive summers to complete another full year over my first two years of college. So I had a year before I got there. Then I had effectively a year over two summers and therefore two years in college, two summers which created a year and then a year before. That’s how we got to four years. And the additional half-semester was really to finish up some projects that I was working on. I had actually more credits than necessary to graduate, so that was my college story and I was very urgently trying to get through college because I was desiring to get the law school right. I saw college as this frustrating thing that I had to go through to get to the formal education that I really required, which was being trained as an attorney because I knew I wanted to be an attorney before I even got to college.

Allison Williams: [00:12:11] So the woman asks me, so you work here, and then you did this, and then you did this, and then you did this, and it seems like you were just a bit scattered when you were in college. And that was kind of the moment where I wasn’t going to rise up too much because, you know, I still knew that this woman held the power in the pen between saying yes or no to me to be admitted. So I had to accept her derogatory treatment to a certain degree just because I wanted to be licensed as an attorney in New York. But when she said that to me, she referred to me as scattered, and she kind of spewed it at me with like, you can just kind of feel the word spitting off of her. You know, you were a bit scattered when you were in college.

Allison Williams: [00:12:56] And I said, Well, yeah, I guess if you consider graduating from college while working two jobs on average every single semester and getting a 3.9 GPA in my chosen field in two and a half years, if that’s what you constitute as scattered, then yeah, I guess I was, right? And I remember she looked up when I said that, and I don’t recall that she said anything. She just kind of like checked the next box and then I said, okay, I need to kind of wind it down. You know, I need to give the appropriate apology for myself so this woman doesn’t, like, derail my career. And I said to her, you know, with all due respect, and of course, we all know what, what all due respect means. But I really didn’t mean it in that way in this moment. Right. I said, you know, with all due respect, I worked very hard when I was in college and I paid my way through college, even though I took scholarships and even though my grandfather had set aside some money for me, I did work because I knew that I was going to have expenses all throughout law school. So I worked and yes, my parents helped me somewhat, but I felt morally that I should contribute toward my college education. So there was that and I did not want to stay on campus because it was not the most inviting place for me. So I stayed in apartments and I didn’t want a roommate, so I had to pay more rent than probably other college students were paying. So yeah, I was working hard and I was going through school, but I did very well in school and I did very well at my jobs. And every time I change jobs it was for another opportunity because in a college campus, you know, the opportunities are plenty. They’re always looking for cheap labor, and that’s what college students are seen as. So if I am one of the masses of cheap labor at job number one and I can get even $0.50 more an hour at job number two, that’s helping me. That is how I was able to completely fund my graduate school education. I have a master’s degree. I funded my master’s degree without having to take any loans. Right. And so I explain that to her. And I got my master’s degree before I went to law school. So, you know, the, the result of the scatter, if you will, resulted in my graduate school year.

Allison Williams: [00:15:14] Now, you guys are probably thinking, wow, she’s so narcissistic. Why is she talking about herself to this degree? Well, the reason I wanted to share that with you is that even back then, even in the state of and I’ve shared this with you guys before, you know, I had very low self-esteem throughout most of my young adulthood into my early adulthood. The value that I placed on myself was my academics and my ability to do well in my profession. So anyone criticizing, challenging that was always going to get some level of ire from me and it was going to hurt me in a way that now you can say whatever you want about me. I know who I am. I know why I’m here. It’s not going to, it’s not going to sting me. Right. But it stung me back then. And even then it stung me because I was allowing this person, this stranger who knows nothing about me other than words on paper. I was allowing this person to through her words, through her questions, through her condescension and tone. Tell me that I was worth less than I felt I was worth based on what she valued. And that is what I really want you guys to take away from this episode, that the power in being able to ask yourself the question who defines your worth is not that you stand up to people when you think they’re not ultimately showing you your worth or treating you with the worth that you ascribe to yourself, but that you recognize that their definition does not have to be your definition. So again, I want to give you a five-step process for how to shift your own thoughts around how someone else may be defining your worth and how to segregate what their feelings are of your worth from your feelings of your worth.

Allison Williams: [00:17:08] So step number one is that you have to always set high expectations of yourself. Now, setting high expectations of yourself does not mean perfectionism. It does not mean that you will allow yourself to believe that anything is possible for you with no training, no skill, no experience, no drive. It’s not being absurdly unrealistic. It is setting high expectations, right? It is saying, if I desire something, I recognize that it is within my ability. It might not be within my present awareness of my ability. Right. It might not be that I have the knowledge, the skill, the resources, the network in this moment. But the very fact that I have a desire for something knows or should tell me that someone knows how to get there. Someone, something outside of myself can assist me to get where I desire to be. The very fact that I have the desire is what ultimately tells me that I have the aptitude to get there, whether I have the present aptitude or I have the ability to acquire the aptitude. But if I don’t set the high expectation and say I want that thing over there, therefore I’m going to pursue and achieve that thing over there. What happens is, as I said earlier, the continuing expansion of mediocrity. Right. You believe that you can get a little bit more and a little bit more and a little bit more. So you slowly, baby step your way up through life when you could just take one large step and get where you desire to be in half the time, if not less. Right. That’s how I was able to go from a startup law firm with no savings. I mean, I literally funded my law firm through every client that retained me. And when a client came in and retained me, I had money to pay for the next thing and then money to pay for the next thing. And I didn’t get a line of credit until three and a half years into my law firm. Right. And so and by the way, it was only after we had a multimillion-dollar law firm that I even did that. Right. This was all self-funded. It started at $0 and got to a multimillion-dollar law firm in three and a half years because I set a high expectation for myself. Right. I didn’t believe that this needed to be a slow, gradual creep forward that I had heard from lawyers that were that had left law firms to go solo, that had an idea of going so low. They were thinking, okay, you know, I can, I can get up to a few hundred thousand dollars and I’ll take a good portion of that for myself and I’ll be able to pay myself more than John Doe’s law firm paid me. So I’ll be doing better. And that’s good enough, right? The good-enough often comes because we don’t believe we have the ability to achieve the high expectations that we set for ourselves.

Allison Williams: [00:19:52] So the first thing that you have to do is set the high expectations and with that, devote your energy, your focus into believing that those high expectations will come to fruition with your work.

Allison Williams: [00:20:06] Now, step two of this process is do not ask others, unless their expectations of you exceed your own. That means do not ask others about your desired outcome. Do not ask others what the process is to get there. Do not ask others unless their expectations of you exceed your own. Now, this is something that came to me quite a while ago. I remember it’s a client that has been in Law Firm Mentor now for several years, and the first point of contact, the first point of immersive contact I had with her. She bought the More Money, More Free Time Course, and then she attended one of our business retreats, and it was in a pre-event call to a business retreat that she told me that she had an interest in doing personal injury law and she had gone to a retreat with a personal injury attorney that called herself a coach. And this personal injury attorney had taken people to a beautiful island and put them up in a nice house. And it was a great experience vacation-wise. But when the personal injury conversation came to bear, when everyone kind of gathered around the table for the coaching, as it was referred to, what the instructor essentially said was to this particular lawyer, you know, your practice is family and criminal. I don’t really know that you’re going to have the ability to create as much income as you desire in personal injury, at least not for a few years. And when the person told me how much income that she desired, I immediately saw a way for her to create that amount of income in a year from a personal injury practice. Right. She already had somewhat of a pipeline, if you will. It was about nurturing the pipeline. It was about projecting out settlement time. There were, there were steps in the process, but the process wasn’t wait a few years to get to this relatively modest amount of money. I believed in that person from the moment that she told me what her desire was. And the person that was her instructor, I don’t believe is a bad person. I believe the person is a very, very capable attorney but I believe that that person has a world view that says we have to stairstep our way into this process by doing X, Y, and Z. In this order, she doesn’t believe in the quantum leaps, and therefore she doesn’t believe that the person that she was speaking to could create the quantum leaps, doesn’t make her a bad person, doesn’t make the client a bad person. But what the client was missing in that relationship was someone to believe in her more than she believed in herself.

Allison Williams: [00:22:54] If your coach does not believe in you, you need a new coach. Because frankly, if you could on your own set low expectations and achieve on your own the use of product of those low expectations. Why do you need someone else in your, in your ear that you’re paying to help keep you at your low expectations? You don’t need help to do that, you can do bad by yourself. So it’s really important that you not ask other people that you’re not involved, other people in your story. Unless they expect more of you than you expect of yourself.

Allison Williams: [00:23:34] All right, step three, surround yourself with those who have surpassed your goals. Now, this is really important in terms of community. This is not necessarily who your facilitator is, even though I do think it is helpful to have a facilitator who has been where you desire to go. But I have coached clients that have more than I have. You do not have to have the exact same goals as the person who is coaching you or vice versa. But you do have to have people around you that have been where you have been and ultimately have passed where you desire to go. Right. It’s important because for a lot of us until we start to really get into our stinking thinking and reorder our thoughts in a way that is positive and productive until we get there, we are vulnerable to adopting beliefs that are supportive of where we are. Because every time you step into a new level, every time you reach for a new objective, you are going to encounter yourself. And yourself has behaviors, patterns, and beliefs that have gotten you to where you are. And it is hard to stop thinking what you have been thinking for however long, and it is also hard to let go of the thinking that has gotten you to your current level of success, such that your thought goes to If I let go of this thought or this belief or this pattern or this behavior, if I let go of it, what’s on the other side? Right. I don’t know what to do, what to think next and I don’t know that what I would think next would correlate with a higher level of success. It is just as likely in my mind that it would correlate with a lower level of success. That is the reason why having coaching is so important. But having people around you who have been there and done that is super important because those people serve to you as the impetus to support your new beliefs so that as you are stepping into new beliefs, as you are expanding your mindset and reaching for a broader realization of yourself, then you currently have people around you can be the trigger point for you to say, Ah, yes, there is a person who once upon a time was at this level and now is at a higher level.

Allison Williams: [00:26:02] Now, is at a level that I desire to be at. Now, has adopted the mindsets that I am trying to install. Now, as adopted the thinking that I am trying to rehearse myself into believing. And that person then signals to you that it’s possible. And more often than not, especially as you grow in your development as a person, as a business owner, and in your mindset, just having someone else that you know has had to go through that same process is really, really helpful for you to anchor yourself in the belief that you will get there.

Allison Williams: [00:26:35] All right. Step number four, know that the good old days weren’t that good. It is very common for the mind to romanticize. We all do it. We all think back over how great things were when we were at a different place in our life, in a different relationship, at a different body weight, in a different business. Right. In fact, one of the things that I remember happened probably about maybe two or three years ago now is that I have a couple of team members that have been with me for the better part of a decade. And we were all kind of standing around because they have been with me through what I would consider to be the traumatic parts of growing a business, right? The time where you had too much work and somebody quits or you have to fire somebody, or you’re adopting a new protocol for how you’re selling in your company and you’re starting to get pushback from people, or you get a complaint from a client about something that escalates to the bar and you have to defend it. And before you get the answer that there was nothing wrong, you have to deal with that mishegoss, right? We all have to go through something. And so they went through this something with me. And so we were course, very bonded. I like to say we went through a trauma bond. Right. We’re very bonded through going through this process. And one of the things that one of my team members shared with me is that she missed the days. Periodically, she says, I love it now. I love that I love the firm that we’re in now. But I miss the days where we would have our Friday afternoon gatherings. And what she’s talking about is that when the law firm consisted of me, these two team members with whom I was speaking, and two other team members who are no longer with the company, the five of us were very close as people and Friday was kind of our decompress and debrief the weekday. Think of it like a stand up meeting, it wasn’t exactly a scrum meeting, but usually we would eat lunch together and we would kind of talk about what we accomplished that week, what we had coming up, and people would kind of go around and share what was the thing that really hit this week or what was the thing that really stunk this week that we want to make sure we learn from so we can avoid in the future.

Allison Williams: [00:28:49] And there would be times where I would see that we were so frustrated, we were so exhausted, we were so worn out after a bad week that I would say, guys, you know, I’m not really in the mood to work anymore. How about you? And the team would say, no, we’re not really in the mood anymore either. So then we would just put on our, our out of office recording for the phones, and we would go next door to the local nail salon and just get our nails done. So we would have like a two-hour lunch and then we would go get our nails done, and the pedicures, and the chair massages would put us in a great mood, and then we would leave for the week. And the person that was sharing that memory said to me, it was really great that we had that experience, because I remember it felt like it was just a simpler time, right? We had fewer rules, fewer protocols, fewer people, fewer clients, etc., etc., etc. And I reminded her of that we also had that occurred with that, and I said, I want you to think about that time that was definitely a positive moment. But during that time we also had clients paying at a lower rate, so we had to service more clients. Even though there are currently now far more clients in the building, there are fewer clients per lawyer because lawyers can charge a higher hourly rate, work through the cases, expect that most of those fees will be paid, and paid timely and there is a better energy. And then I reminded her of some of the, the negative experiences, the negative clients, and she was like, Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, I remember, right. But when we think about where we are, we are almost always going to have a tendency to romanticize the past, because when we think about the past, we think about the positive aspects of it. We oftentimes will suppress the negative aspects of our past because the mind is always looking for solutions. And the other thing to consider is that your subconscious mind is always looking for safety. Safety comes in what you know. So in order for you to attach to the idea of what you know and to seek more of it, you have to have had a positive experience of it. Right? So think about it and I use this example often because people can, can get the frame of it.

Allison Williams: [00:28:49] Think about an abused child, right? If you take an abused child out of an abusive household and you drop them off in foster care, they still desire to go home. Even though their home may have been abusive, they still desire to go home. It’s natural. Why? Because it’s familiar. And what the child is probably desiring is not that they are being smacked by mom or dad or that they are deprived of food when they don’t do their homework right. The child is not seeking out the negative. The child is seeking out the positive. The positive is sleeping in their own bed, the positive is going to their favorite school, the positive is having dinners at night with grandma, right? There’s positive and negative in everything. And so what tends to happen is we are always looking for familiarity. That is what our subconscious mind is designed to do, it’s designed to keep us safe, and safe comes from familiarity. So we’re always going to be looking for that. And that is the greatest risk that we have to growing. Because as soon as there is a thought of something positive from the past, it disconnects us temporarily from thoughts of positive in the future. Right. We think about the good old days as if it was all good, and for most of us it wasn’t good. That is the reason why we evolved out of it. Why we created out of it, why we grew out of it.

Allison Williams: [00:32:34] So this leads us to the fifth and final step in the process, which is never stop growing. You know, when you start thinking about your own worth, it’s really important that you recognize that your worth is not a fixed item, your worth is not a fixture in your life. It is not something that is stagnant. Your worth is the sum total of your beliefs about yourself. And it’s all within yourself. So if you believe that you are capable of having a multi-eight-figure business and that’s what you want to create. Then you’ll create it, right? If you believe, then what you are capable of creating is a five-figure business, then that’s what you’ll create. If you believe that, you are imminently capable. But yet you are not doing something consistent with that capability. I don’t want you to have the illusion that you have a high sense of self-worth, because when people tell themselves no, and more often than not, we’re not even aware of when we tell ourselves no. But when we tell ourselves no, when we refuse to create the big dream, when we refuse to step into the major achievement, when we refuse to go for the big desired outcome, when we stop ourselves because someone or something is standing in our way. Because a spouse doesn’t want us to go down that road, because a client doesn’t feel that we are as wonderful as we say we are, because an adversary does not believe that we are capable, because we don’t feel inside ourselves that the hassle, quote-unquote, of achieving and overcoming these obstacles is going to be better than what we have right now. We convince ourselves that the obstacle is a sign that we should stop.

Allison Williams: [00:34:33] The reality is, the obstacle is a sign that you should keep going. The obstacle is put there in order to use for you to stretch yourself into a greater iteration of yourself so that you can achieve the big desired outcome. But if you continue to stop every time you hit that wall, every time the person files a grievance, every time an adversary is an asshole, every time a client doesn’t pay a bill if you stop yourself when it gets challenging because the obstacles are what you choose to believe in rather than believing in yourself. That is a product of allowing external circumstances to define your work. And the reality is the only person, the only person that should ever define your words is you. I’m Allison Williams, everyone, you’re Law Firm Mentor. You’ve been listening to The Crushing Chaos with Law Firm Mentor podcast. I’ll see you on our next episode.

[00:35:42] Thank you for tuning in to the Crushing Chaos with Law Firm Mentor podcast. To learn more about today’s show and take advantage of the resources mentioned, check out our show notes. And if you enjoy today’s episode, take a moment to follow the podcast wherever you get your podcast and leave us a rating and review. This helps us to reach even more law firm owners from around the country who want to crush chaos in business and make more money. I’m Allison Williams, your Law Firm Mentor everyone. Have a great day.