How to Grow in Times of Uncertainty

Episode Notes

Transcript

The Un-Billable Hour

How to Grow in Times of Uncertainty

05/13/2020

 

[Music]

 

Intro: Managing your law practice can be challenging. Marketing, time management, attracting clients and all the things besides the cases that you need to do that aren’t billable. Welcome to this edition of The Un-Billable Hour, the Law Practice Advisory Podcast. This is where you will get the information you need from expert guests and host Christopher Anderson, here on Legal Talk Network.

 

[Music]

 

Christopher T. Anderson: Welcome to The Un-Billable Hour. I am your host Christopher Anderson and today’s episode is about you, and I am very excited to bring you a very special guest today to discuss what I have been hearing and seeing among lawyers and law firm owners out there.

 

I have been speaking to a lot of clients, former clients, future clients and just lawyer friends and I have been hearing like this universal message that a lot of folks are feeling stuck. They are away from their office or their team is away from their office. They feel their marketing has stopped working the way that they are used to working. A lot of folks feel their phones have gone quiet and the payroll is coming up. They are stuck. They just don’t know which way to turn.

 

And so I am excited to have David on to talk about that and how you should be thinking during this time and what your mindset should be. And so the title of today’s show is, ‘How to Grow in Times of Uncertainty’ and my guest is David Neagle. He is a Founder of a coaching company called Life Is Now, Inc. and before we start talking to David though, I do want to say thank you to our sponsors, Nexa, Solo Practice University, Scorpion and LAWCLERK.

 

Nexa, formerly known as Answer 1, is a leading virtual receptionist and answering service provider for law firms. Learn more by giving them a call at 800-267-9371 or online at www.nexa.com.

 

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Today’s episode of The Un-Billable Hour is ‘How to Grow in Times of Uncertainty’ and I am very please to introduce my guest today, David Neagle. David is the Founder of the multimillion dollar global coaching company known as Life Is Now, Inc. and in that company David and his team have helped thousands of entrepreneurs, experts, and self-employed professionals gain the confidence and find the right mindset to build their businesses, increase their revenue and turn these businesses into seven and eight figure ventures.

 

I have personally known David for many years and watched this happen, and doing this now as he has for more than 20 years, his clients now count many well-known people, including New York Times number one best-selling author Jen Sincero and many others and because his results his clients have achieved along with his dedication, David’s coaching has expanded to more than 30 countries, he has been featured on Forbes, on CBS, NBC, Wall Street Journal, Inc., Entrepreneur, Fox and others.

 

And he is also the best-selling author of a fantastic book, which I have read and recommend called the ‘The Millions Within’. This book focuses on intention, on focus and awareness to build your dreams and your life in it. It’s a great companion piece to today’s show.

 

So with all that, I would say that I am extremely pleased and very happy to bring a warm Un-Billable Hour welcome to David.

 

David, welcome to the show.

 

David Neagle: Thank you for having me Chris, pleasure to be here.

 

Christopher T. Anderson: Yeah, that’s great. That introduction is fairly thorough, but I just thought it would be helpful to the listeners of this show who may not have encountered you before, what leads you to — what in your life and company and background in brief; I know you have got a great story that can take the whole show, but just briefly what has led you to talk about growth mindset and to help entrepreneurs build businesses and adjust their mindset particularly in times like this?

 

David Neagle: Well yeah, so I will keep that short. The thing is, is that I started making — I was really stuck in my life many, many years ago and I could not figure out how to turn around the decisions that I had made that were poor decisions. I made a couple of changes in my thinking intentionally by the way, because I really had nothing else to try, like I did not know how to — I was basically driving a forklift, making $20,000 a year. I was a high school dropout. I had kind of pinned myself into a financial corner because I got married and we had two children and couldn’t figure out how to get up because I didn’t have any education and I didn’t have any other skill sets.

 

(00:05:02)

So this is all pre-Internet and I was just going from one bad situation to another and I got this idea that I should probably change the way that I am thinking about things, and it was just something that popped in my mind one night when I was really, really down.

 

So I changed three things. I changed my — there were attitudinal changes. They were act like I love what I do, do every job to the best of my ability and treat others with total respect, which might sound simple, but at the time I was not doing any of those three things.

 

Christopher T. Anderson: Right.

 

David Neagle: So what shocked me though Chris was that my income tripled in a month and it was an astounding experience to have at that time in my life and I could not figure out what actually caused it or how changing my mindset could have affected that in such a great way when a month-and-a-half prior to that it looked like it was going to take me 30 years to just maybe double my income.

 

So what it did is it sent me down a road of studying for about seven years. I spent seven years really advancing in my life and my career and studying everything about mindset, human potential, psychology, religion, like I had so many answers that I was looking for. After about seven years I started piecing it all together and I started teaching it to other people and I saw them getting the same kind of results that I was getting, so this really floored me.

 

So then I decided I want to make a career out of it because I just became so fascinated with it and so passionate about what a person can actually do if they understand how to think successfully.

 

Christopher T. Anderson: Yeah, and that’s now how long ago that you started a career?

 

David Neagle: 21 years, 21 years. It was October of ’99 that I started Life Is Now.

 

Christopher T. Anderson: Fantastic. What you described there in your history is, it kind of dovetails right into what we want to talk about here today, which is intentionality, like you made a conscious decision and what I caught in what you just said was that one of your intentional acts was to act like you loved what you did.

 

Now, one day — yesterday you didn’t love what you did and today I am going to guess that you didn’t instantly actually love what you did, but you decided to act like you loved what you did and that’s just an intentional choice that you made.

 

David Neagle: It was a very intentional choice that I made. It allowed me to see the good in what I was doing and it allowed me to see the opportunity in what I was doing, because I wasn’t walking around going I really freaking hate this with all of my being everyday and I was very shocked that it made that much of a difference in how I was perceiving my world.

 

Christopher T. Anderson: Yeah. And obviously, like you said, it had along with the other two decisions really tangible results.

 

So when I say dovetails what I wanted to talk about is, I think you heard during the introduction like lawyers and small business owners across the board are feeling the same way; in this show just we happen to have a lot of — almost all of our listeners are law firm owners and other lawyers, but they are feeling stuck in a different way. Some of them may hate — not love what they do, some of them — a lot of them do love what they do, but they are not loving it right now. So I wanted — like what’s the intentionality for them to be able to control their emotions and get more clarity so they can move forward? What is this uncertainty that they are in now doing to their psyche?

 

David Neagle: Well, I think it’s doing a lot and I think a lot of the problem is that they have to understand that they are actually allowing the current crisis, pandemic thing that we are experiencing and the fallout from that, they are allowing that situation to cause the way that they are thinking, if they are not actually taking control over what to think and actually what to focus on during this time. Because if I don’t know that my thought process is being caused by an external situation, it never occurs to me to change the way that I am thinking about it.

 

I mean we are raised in such a way, where basically what we are taught is how to get through life with the least amount of problems possible and really kind of play life very safe. So that’s years of conditioned thinking that we go through. It is millions and millions and millions of bits of information about how to do specific things in life and we automatically react in our thinking based on that information that we were conditioned to take on.

 

So if we don’t really — if we don’t know that our thought process is completely reactive based to how other people actually viewed the world, then we don’t know that we have the power to change it.

 

And the other thing is that not only do we not know that, we don’t know that there is something productive that can actually happen out of changing it, that we don’t have to be in some reactionary fear in crisis mode around what’s actually happening, but we can change our mind over so we can actually see the opportunity and the benefit of what’s happening and what’s for us and what’s for other people at the same time.

 

(00:10:10)

 

Christopher T. Anderson: Yeah, and I definitely want to talk about seeing that opportunity, but I want to stay here a little bit, because I think the way you explained this was actually it’s sort of a gift rolled up in this, because a lot of lawyers and other small business owners before this crisis who also felt stuck really had a harder time putting their finger on or acknowledging that there are external factors leading to the way that they are thinking.

 

Today I think everybody can put their finger on the fact that there is some external factors, like things — yeah, there is definitely something out there that we could say yeah, that might be affecting the way that I am thinking.

 

So can you talk a little bit about what decisions to make about that, like how do you take that stuck feeling and make a conscious decision or an intentional decision to think about it a different way and what’s that way?

 

David Neagle: I think the first thing that has to happen is the need to hold on to the way that we are perceiving something. Nothing in this world or in our life has any meaning other than the meaning that we assign to something. So when we assign meaning to something, we then have a definition of how that thing is not just viewed, but how do we react to it, what do we do, how does it affect our life and it goes on and on from there.

 

So if we really say to ourselves okay, there is a greater benefit here for me if I am willing to let go of the way that I am attached to thinking about something, I will then allow myself to transfer over to really the first thought should be gratitude. And the reason is, is because no matter what happens, even if it’s something that we are assigning meaning to that it’s bad, there is something good about it, there is a law that rules that and it’s called the law of polarity. It says that everything in the universe has an opposite and its equal and opposite. Meaning that for everything that we label bad, there has to be something equally as good about it and they both exist at the same time in the same place.

 

So the matter of how we perceive that, bad or good is how we decide to use our mind. If my conditioned thinking says find all the bad things about this, then it becomes the only thing that I see, that becomes my reality. But if I use a strategy to flip my mind over into really consciously looking for the good, then the first thing that I would do is be grateful for what actually happened and I would start looking for things to be grateful for.

 

I often tell people Chris, start where you are, things that you know that you are grateful for already and then begin to move out into the situation or the circumstance. If we do that, it allows the mind to let go of what’s bad, because we actually start physically and psychologically, intellectually seeing the evidence of good in the situation we just perceived was all bad.

 

Christopher T. Anderson: Right. As you said, it’s all there already to be seen as long as you are open to seeing. So that definitely sounds like a very intentional, but very doable way and I think it doesn’t take a whole lot of deep thinking to think about what blessings, what is good about getting being at home, spending more time closer with family, being more available to your clients and being able to think more clearly, it doesn’t take a whole lot of thinking to find the good there for most people.

 

What stops people from making that transition, is it just not knowing to stop and change?

 

David Neagle: That’s a person who is really ignorant, but like you said, I want to give credit to something that you said that I think is important, a lot of people know that there is something there that they need to think different and they may not know how to or whatever, but they know. So there is a consciousness divide there. Some people are unconscious of the process, some people are conscious and they just don’t know what to do.

 

But when a person is conscious of it and they don’t know what to do really what’s going on is there is some story inside of them that says that in some way it’s not safe for them to view what’s happening in a different light. It could be personally, it could be outside of them, like they would be ridiculed or they would look stupid or foolish if they said there was something good about something that was so obviously bad to everybody else. There is a lot of different reasons that a person would not actually do that or feel very uncomfortable doing it. And a lot of it really does have to do with peer pressure and the other part has to do with their own personal safety.

 

In the time that we are in right now there are many — we are getting hit from a personal safety perspective from many different directions at the same time, it’s a very unusual event in history when it comes to how many of the decisions that are being made can affect our life from various different perspectives. So if a person begins to understand that, then they realize how easy it is for their mind to be overloaded with the information that’s being presented to them.

 

(00:15:14)

 

Christopher T. Anderson: Yeah, that makes total sense. We are going to take a moment here to hear from our sponsors. I am talking with David Neagle. David is the Founder of Life Is Now, Inc. and is a global multimillion dollar coaching company and we are talking about really getting a hold of your own emotions and your thinking in this time of crisis to get unstuck and we talked about thinking about gratitude.

 

When we come back David I want to talk to you a little bit about seeing the opportunity; you started to really touch on that and I want to go deeper, on seeing the opportunity despite the current circumstances or possibly because of them, but first we will hear from our sponsors.

 

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Christopher T. Anderson: And we are back with David Neagle, the Founder of Life Is Now, Inc., author of ‘Millions Within’ and we have been talking about getting control of our thinking and our emotions in this time when the uncertainty that’s all around us is affecting the psyche of business owners and law firm owners.

 

David, right before we went out you mentioned something that really kind of struck a tone with me, which was that it’s unprecedented like from how many different angles decisions that are being made around us and things that are happening around us can affect us personally and you said that was unprecedented. I just wanted to know if you can just touch a little bit further on that, like what uncertainty is being injected from various angles that you see?

 

David Neagle: I think that our world operates on multiple channels of distribution. So we have things that come to us, how we receive various different things, whether it’s products, whether it’s money, whether it is help from other individuals, there are all these different channels that this stuff comes to us and then we distribute things through our own source channels.

 

Well, right now what’s happened is that basically everybody has to stay home, we can’t be in each other’s presence and we have basically one channel of distribution, which is the Internet, although that has multiple channels of distribution. But I think it’s important to know about this is that our mind is programmed to distribute and receive through all of those other channels.

 

So I see a lot of people fighting with the idea of when things get back to normal, and they are not saying okay, I need to push pause on that for the time being and really focus on being aware of all the opportunity that’s available to me through this different channel of distribution and how can I maximize that in my life, because their brain keeps wanting to go, but here is the way that it was, this is the way that it’s supposed to be, it’s not supposed to be the way that it’s not, it becomes very frustrating for people and they get very stuck in the minutiae and in resistance of it actually.

 

Christopher T. Anderson: Yeah. I think that’s a great segue into what I wanted to talk about here too which is, what I am seeing with a lot of offices are like my marketing is not working. I am not able — people don’t want to buy the service that my law firm is used to selling, like maybe I do estate plans, maybe I do Medicare plans, maybe I do divorces and people don’t want to buy it that way, and then that’s it, that’s like the end of the thinking, like well, I guess they will when this is all over rather than knowing that there is opportunity right now even in or maybe even because of the current circumstances.

 

So how do we encourage people to think differently about that, to see the opportunity and get unstuck from trying to get back to the new normal, which might never happen?

 

David Neagle: Yeah, it might not. I mean it could be very different than what we were used to in our life.

 

(00:19:47)

 

But to answer your question, I think that one of the first questions a person has to ask themselves is what meaning are they giving this situation personally and in their business, what meaning are they attaching to this, because if they give it any incorrect meaning or a meaning that’s not productive, it also becomes a block in seeing all the different things that are available to them, like you were just mentioning, because there are a lot of opportunity if they are giving it the correct meaning; and I think that they also have to ask themselves this, what is this crisis magnifying in their life?

 

So this is a great magnifier and it’s allowing people to things that are maybe negative in a person’s life to be magnified very greatly and it also has the possibility of allowing great potential to be magnified in a person’s life. And I think what kind of swings that is the meaning that a person gives to it. So if I give this a great meaning and I am able to let go of the way things were normally done, I am going to look at a couple of things very different.

 

One of the things I am going to look at is, what is my personal worth during this time? Like another — when I say “worth”, I mean where’s my value? Some people can’t do business exactly the way that they did it before, but it’s not in the way that they did the business that was the valuable part, it’s what it is that that business did for somebody else that has the value.

 

So if we can separate those two things in our mind, the way we did it versus what was actually done, we can begin to see how the value that we do actually carry for someone else is applicable during this time. And it may mean that we have to innovate in some way to be able to do that or repackage or redistribute what it is that we have to offer not only so people can be aware that we still have a service to provide but being able to provide that service to those individuals. And just that little mindset shift can open up a lot of doors for a person, but then there’s one that comes in that can be very, very destructive and that’s if a person has attached their own worth to the way that they distribute their business.

 

Christopher T. Anderson: How would someone do that?

 

David Neagle: Well, what do we do is, many people go into business or take a job or really do anything in their life, what they found was, is that, as they went down whatever road this is in their life for their career of choice they self-identified with how good they were at it or the feedback that they got from it, and if that is attached to the business itself. In other words they are not actually in-charge of their own worth but how well the business does or does not do is in-charge of how they feel about themselves.

 

I have noticed a lot of people crashing in that area where they literally or like overnight I have seen people have multi-million dollar businesses don’t think they have anything of worth or any value for anybody else, and I am like, well, how can that possibly be? You have a great business, and when it is, is that, they are very attached to the way that it was done, they feel like they have lost control over the way that it was done. They let themselves get into a real negative spiral in their head so deep that they can’t actually see the truth that’s in front of them which is that they can do this in a different way and be just as good if not greater with whatever is available to them now as far as opportunity goes.

 

So I think it’s a very big pivot point for a person to really think about. And again, is a great magnifier, Chris. If that’s going on, it’s magnifying a weak area in your life that we need to go do personal work on.

 

Christopher T. Anderson: To some extent this audience should be one that can take this message and really, really run with it. I mean, may be someone who really whose business is really being a technician that does something very technical, they are proud of the way that they do it might have a harder time, but at the end of the day lawyers, I mean lawyers if you boil down they solve people’s problems or help them seize opportunities, and if they get away from like I do estate plans or I do divorce litigation and get back in touch with I solve people’s problems, they should be able to find that value more easily, wouldn’t you think?

 

David Neagle: Absolutely. And I think that you also have to be careful not to define whether or not a person wants those problems solved, can pay for those problems to be solved, it’s very dangerous if we start lumping the people that were hearing about that are going broke or losing their jobs or losing their business and we categorize them with everybody in the same mind-frame, it’s not a good thing. But yeah, I totally agree with what you are saying.

 

Christopher T. Anderson: Yeah. Can you just give an example if you feel comfortable about like you have changed the way you deliver your business and to continue to deliver value, can you share a little bit about that?

 

David Neagle: Yeah, absolutely.

 

(00:25:00)

 

So this is a very interesting thing because about a week-and-a-half before, maybe two weeks, before everything started to really come to the surface as what was happening, everybody was kind of talking about it on the edges and everything and I was like, this is weird, what’s going on with this thing, because I saw that big companies were reacting to this virus, this is before anything was shut down, anything like that. And I am like, no, this is not a political thing, you don’t see companies start moving money and decisions the way that they are when there’s not something else going on.

 

So as soon as I realize what was going on and they started talking about actually literally probably having to stay in our homes, what we did was, because we are very heavy in live events, so we do many live events all over the country and Europe every year. So what we did was we just we postponed the big live events and we put — we re-amped everything to be done online, some of it is group, some of it is individual and we completely shifted everything so that the entire model of how we market it and how everything flowed through worked within the new frame of how we are actually doing business today.

 

And it’s working very well, so the thing, is that, there were some people in the company that were resistant to this at first. It took everybody their own period of time to kind of self-adjust to the reality that this was something that was actually going to happen then it was not just the scare tactic of the media, but there was actually something coming of this.

 

But once that happened it — everybody was on-board 100%, roles have been redefined, people that had more of their job was to do things in the outside arena of the company, they have now been have their roles redesigned, we need to let them go, they are just — their roles have been redesigned and they are doing and learning new skill-sets based on how we are actually doing business now. So we were very flexible with everything and all we looked at is what’s the customer base need now right now? What can we provide, how can we deliver that, and how could we do it in a way where if this goes on for a long period of time that we can do it in a structure that is going to allow us to not just serve our current clients, but continue to build our business? And that’s where we are right now.

 

Christopher T. Anderson: Yeah, and I love that the first question is what do our current customer base and our perspective customer base, what do they need right now, and it’s got to start with that question, and that’s what I think is a great message. And I asked you to share that and I really appreciate that you have done, because I think it’s inspirational particularly for law firms because they need to be thinking exactly the same way.

 

Before we go to break, I want to just ask you one more question on that. Do you let’s say a month from now, the stay at home is lifted and we are to use the current jargon, restarting the economy, do you see any of what changes you have made now persisting?

 

David Neagle: Well, that’s a really good question and the answer is, is that I am not a 100% sure, a lot of it will really be based on how does the client want the message delivered? So one of the reasons that we do live events is because it’s an experience and regardless not making it right or wrong, it is a different experience than if you do it via Zoom or a Chatroom or however you are doing it online.

 

So if the smaller end of our business one would prefer to actually stay within this model, it’s not a bad model to stay in, like there’s a lot less overhead as a company for us to be able to deliver some things in this model. I don’t perceive that the live event, the big live events will change, when we come out of it I think people will still want to do things like that again, but I could be very wrong about that also. So it will be very fascinating to see the psychology of people when we come out of this.

 

Christopher T. Anderson: And then meanwhile you certainly and your people certainly have acquired entirely new skill-sets and a new business model that could serve your clients and you, well, over time, it maybe some of it stays, some of it goes. I just think there’s a real danger with a lot of law firms thinking like, okay, this is what we are going to do for right now and then six weeks from now everything is back to the way it was, because that’s not what the clients may want.

 

David Neagle: Right. And it won’t be back to the way it was in six weeks, it just won’t.

 

Christopher T. Anderson: Yeah.

 

David Neagle: It’s going to take – everything is going to come online in stages and then it really is going to depend on what the solution is to the virus overall if there’s still no solution, but just less people have it, there’s going to be have to make some maintenance of separation or it comes back again, right? Like in few months we will be all back in the same place again. So it’s going to be — it’s a very interesting thing to be in the flow of watching things self-destruct and recreate in time.

 

(00:30:09)

 

Like, normally we don’t see this many things change in our own paradigm of the world. In real-time it’s usually looking back on how something change and then going, yeah, it did change, but now we’re experiencing it as it happens.

 

Christopher T. Anderson: Yeah, as with everything else I always said, at an ever accelerating pace. We’re going to take a moment to hear from our sponsors. We’re talking with David Neagle, he is the author of ‘Millions Within’ and Founder of Life Is Now, Inc., the multi-million dollar global coaching company.

 

When we come back for the last segment, David, I want to ask you, we’ve talked about making intentional decisions about how we think about the current circumstances, we’ve talked about seeing opportunity. When we come back I want to talk about how we can actually take that opportunity and the way we think and use both and this current time to engage in growth, internal growth, personal growth, and ask you a little bit about that when we come back from these messages.

 

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Christopher T. Anderson: And welcome back, we are still speaking with David Neagle, the Founder of Life Is Now, Inc. coaching company and the author of ‘Millions Within’ and we’ve been talking about being intentional with the way we think about the current circumstances. We’ve been talking about seeing opportunity and being willing to be open to that opportunity and change the way we deliver and not get our own personal worth tied up in the way we deliver, but rather the solutions we deliver.

 

So David, now that we’re back I wanted to talk to you about how we use those two things, how people should be thinking through and taking the opportunity with those things happening in their life to not stay stuck, to not stay paralyzed, and actually engage in some personal growth as a result of these changes.

 

David Neagle: Yeah, and I think that this is the perfect opportunity because like I said, the crisis has put a magnifying glass on everybody’s life.

 

Christopher T. Anderson: Yeah.

 

David Neagle: So it’s really telling us a lot about where we didn’t prepare, what we took for granted, what we never expected to happen, where we have not paid attention to certain things in our life? It’s really exposed a lot of vulnerabilities and it’s such a great time for a person to be writing those things down, not judging themselves, but really looking at it from a place of real intrigue and interest, like wow, something like this really could happen, and I was living my life as if something like this could never happen and because of that here’s what my experience has been.

 

So now, how can we make changes so that if something like this happens again we are very well prepared to go through it even if it’s something that becomes permanent in our life.

 

Christopher T. Anderson: Right.

 

David Neagle: I think it’s also psychological things, Chris, like looking at how did we do psychologically during this time, how did we do emotionally, how did we do in relationships, what were the challenges that we had, and really start working on ourselves from that perspective so that it makes us psychologically stronger to handle everything that life throws at us.

 

I think everything comes our way for growth, absolutely everything comes our way for growth, and then it’s our choice as to whether we are going to resist that growth and judge things and make it wrong, or are we going to look at it and go, you know what, if I grow in this area it will allow so many more opportunities for me to be better, to do better, to affect more people in a great way, to earn more money, like there’s an advantage to all of this for each individual person, I really believe that.

 

Christopher T. Anderson: Yeah, and you mentioned something earlier in the show that kind of stuck with me, I meant to ask about it I hadn’t yet, which was to be prepared for some people around you, some influences around you if you do decide to use this for growth, if you do decide to see the opportunities, to reflect that negativity back on to you, to impede that thought process. Can you just talk a little bit more about that, why would there be resistance around you to engaging in that growth?

 

(00:35:06)

 

David Neagle: Well, there’s this old adage that whenever you change, whenever an individual chooses to change they force everybody around them to change, meaning that they have to adapt to the way that you change, and in relationships, whatever the relationship is, people will contextually put you in a box in their mind, because that’s kind of how the mind works.

 

If I can learn everything I can about and give rules to this relationship with this person and then stick the person in that little box of rules, I know that they are safe, I know that I’m safe, I know how to react to them, I know what it means in my life. I create all those parameters around it, and then they go and change, and then it’s like, what the hell?

 

Christopher T. Anderson: Yeah.

 

David Neagle: They were supposed to follow my rules. So that may make a person very uncomfortable. Now, if you’re doing something that you’re trying to make your life better, if another person is perceiving that as a threat in any way, and here’s the thing, most people would never say that they would perceive something like that as a threat until it hits their own insecurities, and then it becomes very threatening, because you’re exposing something that I didn’t want exposed.

 

Christopher T. Anderson: Right.

 

David Neagle: By you growing, by you changing, you’re exposing where I haven’t, and I didn’t want that exposed. So by our mutual denial we were both safe before and because you’re throwing that to the wind, now you’re exposing mine, very much like the virus is doing for a lot of situations.

 

Christopher T. Anderson: Yeah, exactly.

 

David Neagle: So it has the potential to create negative reaction and negative feedback from even people in your own family, like we see it all the time and everybody — one thing that I say, one commonality, it’s a very interesting commonality, I’ve never worked with anybody in my entire career that did not have some kind of criticism or pushback from personal family members.

 

Christopher T. Anderson: So, yeah, are you just saying, well, you’ve worked with and coached with people to help them to go through change, it’s been a universal experience related back to you that they’ve found this resistance in their closest relationships?

 

David Neagle: Yup, yup, somewhere, somewhere. It could be mom-dad, it could be husband-wife, it could be brother-sister, it could be best friends, everybody gets some kind of negative feedback from it, from the people that are the closest to them.

 

Christopher T. Anderson: And how do you then encourage them, because that that then threatens their own self-identity, right, because they trusted in those relationships, how do you then talk to them through that, how do you immunize or inoculate them for that eventuality?

 

David Neagle: Well, from a general perspective, we tell them, basically the idea is that no one has governing authority over your life other than you. So when you give people equal, the equal power in your mind to criticize you, you make yourself very vulnerable.

 

In individual situations we look at what is the story that you have with this individual that’s causing the problem, because the real problem is the way the person is reacting — the person that’s actually making the change, the way they’re reacting to the negative criticism.

 

Sometimes they feel guilty, sometimes they feel like you are abandoning someone, sometimes they feel like they’re not loved, that they are not supported, and sometimes they feel like they have to literally leave people that they love in order to follow their own path in life, and sometimes, Chris, that’s true. That’s the thing about this that can be so startling for individuals. Sometimes that is true.

 

When a person that we love becomes toxic, where they believe you’re wrong they’re right, they’re not willing to negotiate, they’re not willing to learn, they’re not willing to do anything, your only choice is either to conform to their way of thinking or leave.

 

Christopher T. Anderson: Yeah.

 

David Neagle: Because they’re not going to allow you the space that you need to be you, so what choice do you have? You really don’t have any, and that’s hard.

 

When we are raised with a model that says, “family is everything”, people really mean that, that family is everything, and then when we want to do something that’s outside of the what defines everything within the family, then all of a sudden we’re outcast, or we are ostracized, and it’s very painful.

 

So it’s a place of growth, it’s a place where a person takes on responsibility for their own life, their own ownership of their own authority, as they see themselves how they’re going to make decisions for themselves and not need loved ones’ approval to be able to do it, and it is a process, it takes some time and it takes a real committed decision.

 

Christopher T. Anderson: And of course, those loved ones obviously also have the choice to meet the change, right, to adapt to live, they have a choice and if they choose not to that says a lot too.

 

David Neagle: 100%.

 

Christopher T. Anderson: Yeah. Fantastic. David, we are at the top of the show, this is — I know we’re just scratching the surface.

 

(00:40:03)

 

I wanted to know if you have any way that people can follow up, get more resources, more information so that they can continue to learn about the things we’ve been talking about.

 

David Neagle: Well, one of the things they could do is, they could go look at my podcast, The Successful Mind Podcast. It’s on all the podcast channels and providers and our website is davidneagle.com. So everything they could possibly want to know about me is there and on the podcast.

 

Christopher T. Anderson: Fantastic, David. Thank you so much for being on the show.

 

David Neagle: Thanks for having me, Chris; it was great.

 

Christopher T. Anderson: My pleasure, and that wraps up this edition of The Un-Billable Hour, and thank you all for listening. Our guest today has been David Neagle and he’s the Founder of the coaching company Life Is Now Inc., and please do check out those resources and check out his book ‘The Millions Within’ as well.

 

This of course is Christopher Anderson and I look forward to seeing you next month with another great guest as we learn more about topics that help us build the law firm business that works for you.

 

And, remember, you can subscribe to all the editions of this podcast at legaltalknetwork.com or on iTunes. Thanks for joining us and we will speak to you again soon.

 

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Outro: The views expressed by the participants of this program are their own and do not represent the views of, nor are they endorsed by Legal Talk Network, its officers, directors, employees, agents, representatives, shareholders and subsidiaries. None of the content should be considered legal advice. As always, consult a lawyer.

 

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Thanks for listening to The Un-Billable Hour, the Law Practice Advisory Podcast. Join us again for the next edition, right here with Legal Talk Network.

 

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