#564: The Gift in the Struggle: Leveraging Emotional Intelligence for Growth, with Sara Muender

Episode Notes

Transcript

Sara Muender:

Hi, I am Sara.

Zack Glaser:

And I’m Zack, and this is episode 5 64 of the Lawyerist Podcast, part of the Legal Talk Network. Today, Sara and I talk about struggle, hardships and how to reframe failure in your life. It’s a different conversation, Sara, than I think I normally have. As we say in this talk, I’ve been talking about AI with everybody that comes on the show, so

Sara Muender:

You’re going to ask me about ai?

Zack Glaser:

Yeah, yeah. We’re going there. I am. Before we get into honestly, some of the more important stuff that I think you and I talk about, let’s be a little bit lighter and let’s talk about what’s your favorite thing you’re doing with ai? What’s your favorite AI prompt that you’re using or just way that you’re using an artificial intelligence tool to make your life easier?

Sara Muender:

So I use a couple of tools on a regular basis chat, GBT, every day for everything. I’ve just kind of gotten into the habit of how do I use this first just to kind of kickstart this thing that I’m about to do or this thing that I’m about to write. I’ll ask it to make me spreadsheets because I hate setting up spreadsheets. And it just always, it saves me that mental hurdle of where do I start with this thing this quarter, my rock, my project that I’m working on is finding ways to make the lab community more valuable for our members. And so I’ve been using it to work on that project, but I used it to scope out that project. What would this project look like, what would be Some Of the milestones? And I think that that’s a often forgotten part of working on any project in business is taking the time to scope it out properly and define what done looks like. So I

Zack Glaser:

Used

Sara Muender:

Chat GPT to help me with that, but also co-pilot to help me create the project timeline and also the surveys that I’m sending to our lab members to get some information. The first step of improving what we already have is to take survey and find out what they love about lab and what they want to see more of. So I’ve just kind of been going back and forth between the two and sort of letting it be my project manager.

Zack Glaser:

I really like that. First thing, kudos client feedback. I think that’s hard for attorneys and people to do is to actually ask for feedback. I know a lot of people that are saying, my clients think this. It’s like, well, if you actually ask them. So kudos for client feedback. I love using chat as a way to scope stuff. It knows what project management platform that I use and I’ve trained it to be able to create a CSV to upload exactly what I need so I can do my milestones, my project, my subtasks, and all that stuff. But having it help me scope, I love that one. What I’m getting into now is going through what it’s scoped and taking the time to check its work, to really dig into each individual task that it’s putting there. Because much like the photos that chat creates or that AI creates from 30,000 feet, everything looks hunky dory, everything looks really good, but then when you dig into the specifics, you got to adjust some things sometimes.

Sara Muender:

Yeah, I mean, it doesn’t know all. Eventually it might, but yeah, a hundred percent. It’s learning our team, which is cool because I will tell it who’s potentially involved in this project and who I can source for Some Feedback or interview or other people on our team that can help me with this project. I don’t want to do it all by myself. So that’s been really helpful too. But then sometimes it’ll suggest that this person maybe take this part of it and I’m like, no, that’s not really part of what they do. So you definitely have to adjust and kind of retrain along the way.

Zack Glaser:

Yeah. Well, I love that. I love that using chat GT to kind of scope out what you’re doing. I mean, that makes you, it’s that cinta thing. It makes you do more better.

Sara Muender:

It does, and it keeps you from getting overwhelmed and burned out, which is what we’re going to talk about partly in our conversation in this episode. I mean, there were a couple weeks there where I’ve gotten behind just life started happening and piling up, and I told Chad, GBT, Hey, I’m in the middle of this project and middle of the quarter, and I’m a couple weeks behind here. Where should I jump in? Where would you suggest that I jump back in? What’s five

Zack Glaser:

Things I could do.

Sara Muender:

This week that is going to get me further along in this project?

Zack Glaser:

I absolutely love that because I’ve used the word triage with my chat GPT so many times having it saying, okay, I need to get this done in this amount of time. So really, really love the project management aspect of it, but the realistic project management aspect of it. Yeah. Well now here, before we go way off in the deep end with ai, let’s get back into a little bit more emotional intelligence and go to our conversation where about leaning into hardships and reframing failure?

Sara Muender:

Hi, I am Sara Der, and I’m a business coach here in the Lawyerist lab program.

Zack Glaser:

Hey, Sara, thanks for being with me again. You’ve been on the podcast umpteen umpteen times now, haven’t you? Yeah,

Sara Muender:

And it’s been a minute, so I love doing this. I’m really glad to be back. Let’s see what kind of juicy conversations we can have.

Zack Glaser:

Well, you and I were talking that everybody that’s come on the podcast lately has wanted to talk about ai, AI this, AI that how you can use AI in your firm, and you and I use AI plenty in the day, but I think one of the things I really like about our coaches and especially you, is the emotional intelligence, your emotional intelligence, your ability to honestly do the things that the bots can’t

Sara Muender:

Do, the

Zack Glaser:

Things that it will at least be really difficult for artificial intelligence to

Sara Muender:

Replicate.

Zack Glaser:

Yeah. So we were talking about the, you gave me an idea or a topic of the gift in the struggle and this man, that idea, the gift in the struggle when you break it apart is just so fascinating to me. It’s like flipping your emotions around,FlippingYour perspective on, your emotions around. So yeah, if you don’t mind, let’s kind of get into that. So you coach a lot of law firm owners, a lot of our lab stewards and whatnot. When you think about the ones that are hitting the wall that are getting stuck that are starting to struggle, what do you see? What’s usually going on underneath that for them?

Sara Muender:

So I’ve seen it all and every single person that I have coached eventually gets to that point at one time or another. No matter what it is they’re working on, no matter what phase of business they’re working on, we all tend to kind of plateau sometimes or hit a wall or just get discouraged. And so I’m glad we’re talking about this because I would much rather talk about emotional intelligence than artificial intelligence any day. But also I think it’s so important because it’s not talked about enough on this podcast. We offer a lot of strategy. We talk about the best ways to run a business, but part of the healthy business model that lawyers came up with is also having a healthy owner and is such a foundational part of a healthy business. So yeah, I don’t want to talk strategy today. I don’t want to talk about tips and tricks and technology and things like that, but real human experience, which often shows up. There are a lot of underlying emotions going on when we hit a wall or we feel loss of momentum. Burnout is very common these days, and I think that burnout looks different for different people, but I think sometimes it’s common to get stuck in this constant state of burnout that you get used to and can’t even imagine what it’s like to actually have peace and joy and awe, all the positive emotions that we want in life and that we want to get from our business.

Zack Glaser:

Sorry, I just want to hang on that for a second if you don’t mind, Sara. The idea that if we get stuck in that constant state of burnout and that’s our neutral, that’s our normal, you kind of said, or at least hinted at that you don’t know what it looks like to not be burning out. And I want to emphasize that for our listeners right here, because when you are in a state like that personally, when I’m in an unhealthy state that is equivalent to that, you do not see that the other side the other way. It’s not a grass is greener sort of thing. You don’t even see the healthy aspect of what it could be when you’re not in a constant state of burnout.

Sara Muender:

And we think maybe we get glimpses of it sometimes if we think back to what we hoped life would be like at this present stage. But I don’t think we take the time to slow down enough to really look at it and look at how we’re doing and look at how we’re feeling and how we operate. We just get so caught up in the day-to-day and there’s just so many things pulling at us from on the personal side and the business side. There’s always work that needs to be done, and I am encouraging all of us to just take a step back for a minute, and it doesn’t have to be some crazy weekend retreat, although that’s nice too. That’s important. But to just slow down for a minute and I used to keep this little sign around my house. I printed it out and put it in a frame all over my house and it just says, just slow down.

And that has been so powerful for me personally because when I slow down, I can actually take inventory of how I’m feeling and assess am I operating in a healthy way? Am I operating in the best way that is ultimately going to determine how I’m feeling, but also the results, the results in your life, the results in your business. So yeah, I just don’t think we take enough time and it shows up. I hear people ask themselves and it’ll come up in coaching calls. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. It seems like everyone else is crushing it. I don’t know why I keep hitting these walls. I don’t know why I can’t seem to get out of this burnout or get to this stage that I want to get to. So it’s like the comparison comes in, that’s immediately what comes in because instead of comparing how we’re currently feeling to how we would want to feel, ideally we compare how we feel to what we think others are feeling or how they’re doing in their lives and in their businesses. So that’s the first sign is the comparison trap. Why is this taking so long? So take a step back and look at that and what are the things that you’re saying to yourself about yourself? I think that that would be a good first step in getting perspective.

Zack Glaser:

It seems counterintuitive sometimes though, to take a step back when you’re, you feel behind. It’s tough to take a step back when you feel like, well, I mean if you look around, you look at your competitors, you look at your peers and you feel like they’re a couple steps ahead of you, stopping and taking a weekend does not feel like it’s going to do anything for me. What do you say to your lobsters that have that in their mind? I imagine that’s not an uncommon thought or response.

Sara Muender:

It’s very common, but I think that they think that the people who are successful and crushing it and having the lives and the businesses that they want are just go, go, go. And they’re going fast and they’re rushing through life, but that’s not the reality. The most successful business owners that I’ve known actually operate a little slower throughout their day. They take the time to set intentions, they take the time to process information that they’re getting so that they can make the right decisions. And it doesn’t even have to be a weekend retreat. It doesn’t even have to be like a day. It can just be I’m going to take 15 minutes and set a timer and just process this CLE that I just took in instead of just rushing to the next thing. So that’s one practical tip we can do is just build more space into our day to take inventory, to process and to kind of adjust what direction we want to go. If we just keep going, we’re likely to keep going in the wrong direction and you can build negative momentum or you can build positive momentum. And so it’s sort of taking a step back in order to take five steps forward in the right direction.

Zack Glaser:

Yeah, I think it’s at least attributed to Abraham Lincoln, the idea of taking the time to sharpen your ax. If I’ve got two hours to chop down a tree, I’ll spend an hour and a half sharpening my axe or something like that. I think that’s powerful. I think that’s powerful.

Sara Muender:

It’s worth it.

Zack Glaser:

We also wanted to talk about, as we said at the top of this is the gift in the struggle is that what is kind of inherent in that to me is that’re going to struggle. You look around and it looks like everybody else is having it really, really simple, really, really easy, and we’re just trudging through and we want to be out of that. We want to not have that. We think other people don’t have that. But you’re saying there’s another side to this. Talk a little bit more about that with me.

Sara Muender:

What a concept. Instead of running away from our feelings, instead of running away from the struggles and the challenges to actually again, take that step back and look at it And Just look at what’s happening and that it may be very uncomfortable and it is usually very uncomfortable to do that because we are wired as humans to want to seek better and to seek safety. But that’s a form of self-sabotage. When we run from the struggles that are actually offer an opportunity to sharpen the X to make us stronger, more resilient people, that shows up in so many ways. And so that’s what I’m also encouraging in this conversation is if you’re going through some challenges in your life or in your business, which we all do,

And they’re never going to go away, it’s never going to be a perfect situation. Lean into it, embrace it, and actually be willing to sort of sit with the pain for a minute. And that in itself is so hard to do, but it takes a lot of courage for sure. Sometimes you have to do it in bite sizes because we also don’t want to get flooded. We don’t want to overwhelm ourselves by, that’s why therapists exist and they are very skilled at walking people through difficult things in life or past traumatic events in a very safe way that’s not going to completely derail and overwhelm someone. So sometimes takes, again, I’m not talking about anything crazy. I’m talking about just stop right now. And if you’re listening to this, take a moment to think about what’s your biggest challenge in life right now and embrace it.

Let’s look at it. Let’s face it, because that is going to open up subconsciously the space for us to eventually solve that problem or that challenge for the ones that we can’t solve. For example, when things happen in life that are just completely out of our control, we can find acceptance with it, and then there’s a piece that comes with that. But when you can make peace with the hard, the suck, the struggle, the challenge, you are going to take more of a solution oriented approach to at the very least, making the best of it if that’s possible. I think it is possible with anything we go through in life.

Zack Glaser:

Well, I think it’s important to note that you’re not saying wallow in it. We’re Not saying sink into depression and go, whoa is me. I can’t do anything about whatever your struggle is, whether it’s financial or emotional or physical or it sounds like you’re saying just be there, be there with it, and that helps you approach it, that helps you because again, it sounds like you’re saying still go through it, still get past the struggle, especially if we’re talking about financial struggles in our business. We still want to get past it, but not trying to get away from it, come hell or high water

Sara Muender:

Or just completely ignore that it’s there. That’s not going to do anything positive for us.

When I was growing up, I never knew how to be angry. I never knew how to feel anger or process anger or even identify anger. And so I pushed it down my entire life and eventually all negative emotions have to come out at some point because they want to be seen. So they eventually came out in very self-destructive ways. And so when I started my personal healing journey and I went to therapy, I actually got this tattoo, I don’t know if you can see it in the video if you’re watching this on YouTube, but it’s a tiger, and I named her serenity, and this is my reminder. Half of the tiger’s face is angry and the other half is more like stoic and serene. And it’s my reminder that it’s normal to feel negative emotion in life. It’s normal and it’s healthy. But to your point, we don’t sit in it, we don’t wallow in it and feed that.

We look at it, we acknowledge it, we embrace it, and then we go, what do we do with it now? And sometimes just shining a light on the dark, the hard, the ugly things in life is enough to either make it go away or to make it less scary and to build our inner resilience, which is so important for business owners. And that’s why I’m glad we’re talking about this, because you have to be willing to embrace challenge. You have to be willing to embrace failure. That is a very real part of being a business owner. The more willing you are to embrace failure, the more successful you’re going to end up being because again, it puts you in that solution mindset of we go, okay, there it is. We made this mistake. We went off track for a while, we hired the wrong person, or we made this personal decision that wasn’t the best. Alright, there it is. We acknowledged it now. And then that puts us more in a mindset that is problem solving rather than problem avoiding.

Zack Glaser:

I like that recognizing failure or trying to force the issue almost as quickly as possible. I was reading a book recently and the person was saying, as scientists, our job is to fail as quickly as possible. It’s to find out what’s wrong with our assumptions as quickly as possible. And if you put it in that perspective, well then, I mean that’s not really failure, that’s just getting information.

Sara Muender:

That’s just data. That’s just information. And I think we want to avoid failure. We want to avoid admitting our mistakes and avoid facing the negative things in life because we make it mean something about ourselves. But as business owners, I’m encouraging you to be neutral with it, look at it and pay attention to the things that you’re telling yourself about yourself in any situation. But realize that what’s going on in your life or business is not a reflection of who you are as an individual. It’s not a reflection of your worth or your value or your lovability or your likability. It’s just a reflection of what is the current state of things in life now and now what can I do about it?

Zack Glaser:

How do I affect it? Well, so you’ve walked through something recently that you said really brought a lot of this into perspective. Would you be open to sharing a little bit of that?

Sara Muender:

Yeah, absolutely. I am an open book and I have recently gone through some personal tragedy. It’s still new. I’m still in the grieving process. And what I’ve learned about grief is that it’s never really over. It just takes different forms day to day. There’s No one right way through it. So what I can tell you is that today I am able to get perspective of the whole situation in my life As a whole. Couple of months ago, I lost my fiance to suicide, and it was one of those things that was something I never thought I could get through.

We think there’s certain things in life we just would not be able to make it. And if something happened to your kids or your spouse, and I had my whole life planned out. In fact, we were supposed to get married this last Sunday on 5 25 25 that was going to be our wedding date. And now my life is taking a much different path. And so it’s been incredibly hard, obviously, especially being home at the time and being the one that found him and then having to tell his family and his three kids, and of course my three kids as well. It’s definitely been the hardest thing that I’ve ever gone through.

But perspective wise, I have two choices. I could either let this whole situation completely destroy me. There’s an easy path of that, right? Or I could let it make me more resilient. And I truly feel like at this point, I don’t know that everything happens for a reason, but I do think that we can make meaning out of any situation. So I am choosing to take this loss, to take this grief and this horrible traumatic experience and use it to make me a better person so that I can make something of the pain. I don’t want

His pain to be wasted. I don’t want the pain that me and my children are going through to be for nothing. So I’m determined to find meaning in it, not just for me and the rest of my life, but for other people. That’s my new purpose is to take that and how can I use this to help other people? So it is tough to talk about. It’s not a pretty thing, but I think I’m doing a good job of embracing it and embracing just how hard it is. When people ask me how I’m doing, I’m like, I don’t know. I’m still here. I’m functioning, I’m thriving. Sometimes I’m not doing well, sometimes I’m falling apart. But overall, I keep pulling myself up and sometimes I just focus on the next thing.

Zack Glaser:

For

Sara Muender:

Those that are listening, we tend to compare what we go through in life to what other people have gone through in life. And I think that can be helpful. In some ways, it does give you perspective of today’s problems really aren’t that bad compared to what it could be.

Zack Glaser:

And sometimes it makes you feel less alone if you’ve done, yeah, you’re part of a group or something.

Sara Muender:

Yeah, for sure. But then the other part of that that’s not helpful is when you’re dismissing or diminishing the challenges that you’re actually going through in life or that you have been through, because I believe all pain is relative. It’s relative to your experience and your tolerance level for it. So if you’re listening to this and you have been through something tragic like that, definitely know you’re not alone and there’s a way through it. But if you haven’t and you’re just like, well, gee, I feel bad for complaining about this annoying client that I talked to today, or something like, don’t feel bad about that either, might try, then yeah, it is all relative. And those are just all opportunities to challenge us in the right way that we need to be challenged.

Zack Glaser:

To me, I think what’s important and what you said there really does resonate because I think our pain is relative. It really is. I can’t compare mine to anybody. I can’t compare my struggle to anybody because it just, it’s mine. It’s not theirs. But I think one of the takeaways for me here is you are not bullshitting me with the gift and the struggle. When you say that idea sounds like a really cool thing that you put on your wall, and it’s a nice little thing to say, and you put it on a coffee mug or something, and it’s just a little platitude and it doesn’t really mean anything. But for you, certainly it means something. It really means something. You’re not just saying, we’ll, find the purpose in this. Sit with it. Because like you said, it would’ve been really easy for you to try to get away from it as quickly as possible.

Sara Muender:

Oh yeah.

Zack Glaser:

Get Away from the pain, get away from the idea, get away from all the things as quickly as possible. And that, well, I don’t want to make any comments on whether something would’ve been right or wrong, but it certainly wouldn’t have been productive.

Sara Muender:

Right? No, absolutely. I mean, this is, for me, it’s life or death because I’m also sober and I’m in recovery. And so I’ve had to figure out how to make that my priority through all of this, Because Again, that would’ve been a perfect excuse to go out and drink and numb the pain. So it actually gives me more reason to keep going and get through the day, stay sober, focus on my mental health. And what you said about not comparing, I think that we’re kind of bringing this conversation back full circle. That’s why it’s so unproductive to compare your life and your situation or your business to somebody. You just don’t know what they’ve gone through. They know

Zack Glaser:

What’s going on,

Sara Muender:

They don’t know what you’ve gone through. So I think my takeaway message that I want people to walk away with from our conversation is, you are right where you need to be. And if it’s not where you want to be, well, we can do something about that. That’s why business coaches exist. That’s why I have a job. We can absolutely, there always is something that we can do to make our situation better, but you’re right where you need to be. And I would say for people listening, like stop being so hard on yourself and feeling like a failure and saying all these negative things about where you’re at because it’s all part of the journey of learning and becoming the person you’re meant to be.

Zack Glaser:

I love that idea of you’re right where you need to be, at least certainly in this context, because if I’m where I need to be, then I can look around. I can take a breath, I can enjoy the moment. I can figure out what I’m going to do next if I’m where I need to be. I don’t need to be in a rush to get out of where I am. And I think that really goes to what you’re saying earlier of taking a moment, planning, thinking about what’s going on, sharpening your acts, and again, the idea of you’re right where you need to be sometimes can gloss over people. When you hear that, you think you hear the meaning of the words.

Sara Muender:

It’s like, you know how lawyers think, Zack,

Zack Glaser:

It’s like, I’ve been there. It’s like I’ve been scared shitless trying to figure out how I was going to pay all my employees the day before payroll. And I tell you what doesn’t work is ignoring that or sitting there and thinking about how easy it must be for the person down the street who just has it easier because that’s how I imagine them as having it easier. But yeah, I guess inherent being in the place that you need to be is also not being behind. Say

Sara Muender:

More about that.

Zack Glaser:

You’re not behind. You’re not behind. Because I think that a lot of people, and I know you run into this a lot, or just think they’re not just doing things fast enough, they’re not doing things as quickly as they need to. They’re behind everybody else. And is that something that you come to with a lot of the lobsters? I assume so.

Sara Muender:

Yeah. Well, and it’s because they haven’t taken the time to just stop and deal with the challenge that they keep running into and think through it. They just keep trying to run away from it and change the circumstances without changing the underlying issue or the underlying problem. And so with the lab stars that I coach, their circumstance of their business is a result of a pattern that has replayed over and over and over. We all have certain tendencies. We all bring our humanness and our limitations into business. So what we find when we dive deeper into coaching is we look for that underlying reason why they keep hitting the same walls. They keep ending up where they don’t want to be. That’s just a symptom of something deeper that’s going on. So we really look at what’s really going on here? What have you been avoiding?

What have you been running away from? We tend to stay busy, so we don’t have to acknowledge that because it is painful. It’s hard to be honest with ourselves, but if we keep hiring the wrong person, for example, it could be a result that we just keep trying to hire someone that we want to get along with. Maybe that’s the pattern that we just keep repeating instead of doing the thing that’s harder and figure out how to operate within a business with someone that we might not be friends with. But that’s what the business needs. That’s just an example.

Zack Glaser:

No, that’s interesting because to me, I can connect that with the failure being data. Sometimes the harder thing is actually, or the thing that’s harder to do is actually pushing the issue. We can stay busy. We can keep rearranging the deck chairs. In a law office, you can always stay busy and you think, oh, well, I did so much today, but did you face the issue? You try to make it break. Did you it? Did you try to get more data by making the decision that would either show you that it’s going to fail or show you that it’s going to succeed? Because that is a tough ass decision to make sometimes, is when you realize that based on this, it’s either going to fail or succeed. And I’ve put a lot of effort into this thing and I don’t know that I want to know that it’s going to fail. I don’t think I want to know that data.

Sara Muender:

And yet, that’s our biggest fear. And it goes back to the willingness to fail as many times as it takes to get it right.

And I give you a personal example, just something that I did today. So I tend to let my home get a little disarrayed, and now that the kids are home, you both from summer, it’s getting worse. And I’m currently living in a smaller place right now, so hence the need to have some good systems at home and create some structure and probably get rid of a lot of things. I think that’s one of the issues. I just have too many things that I’m collecting, so my tendency is to just rearrange the apartment and I’ll move furniture. I literally did that earlier today. I moved some furniture around thinking it was going to make me feel better in my home, and it did. It gave me that dopamine hit. But then I’m looking around and going, there’s still the exact same amount of stuff, and we still don’t have a system for keeping that from happening again.

Zack Glaser:

But I was busy, but got work done. Yeah, I feel that so much. That idea that I’m staying busy. I mean, that’s procrastination. A lot of times’s why I clean, that’s why I get things clean because I’m not doing the thing that I should be doing. The thing that could fail,

Sara Muender:

This can show up in so many small and big ways in life. And so if you’re listening, I really encourage you to think of something that you’ve been avoiding, whether that’s in business or in your personal life. Maybe it’s a tough conversation you need to have with someone. Maybe that’s a tough conversation you need to have with yourself and be like, this isn’t working. I need help. That’s the first step, and then all of a sudden you’re on the right path to finding a better situation or finding solutions to make things better.

Zack Glaser:

Well, Sara, let’s leave him with that.

Sara Muender:

Let’s leave him with

Zack Glaser:

That. I think that’s good advice.

Sara Muender:

A good challenge has

Zack Glaser:

Been, yeah, it’s a good challenge. Seriously, if you’re listening to this, you’ve got something. You’ve got something you can do that with. I’ve got something I can do that with. I’ve thought of 34, 35 things in the course of this conversation, but this has been a nice conversation, Sara. This has been a gift. This has been very helpful. Thank you.

Sara Muender:

Aw, well, thanks for being willing to have this conversation with me because it’s a tough one. It’s tough, but vulnerability is where the answers lie, And We want to hear from you guys listening too. We want to hear about what is going on in your life and in your business, and if we can help me and the other business coaches in lab, we want to help you get to that next level. My last comment I’ll say is, if you want what you’ve never had, you’ve got to be doing, willing to do what you’ve never done, and you don’t have to do it alone. Us in lab and our community, we can help you do it. There’s my plug.

Zack Glaser:

Love it. Love it. Once again, Sara, thanks for being with me and thanks for sharing. I really appreciate this conversation.

Sara Muender:

Me too. Thanks, Zack.

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