Practice Management

A Big Dose Of Yes

By chucknewton

A lot of lawyers tell me how hard it is to make the decision to go solo or to move their practices home.  But, you know it ought not be this way.  After all, where is the difficulty?  Where is the barrier?  It does not cost a ton of money to start a practice in this manner.  It does not take a lot of equipment.  It does not even take a lot of room or space to do so.  The difficulty lies in between you ears.  It is the caused by stinky thinking.  It represents the battle that we have with the unknown and public opinion.  It challenges the image we have of ourselves.  Because we judge our success with our surroundings as oppose to how low our overhead can be, or how big our personal bank account (as opposed to our business bank account) can be, we get caught up in this hesitancy.

I am here to tell you that this mind game is so unnecessary and unwarranted.  Sure you do not know what your money situation is going to be like in a few months, but do you know now?  Certainly you are not going to have people to shoot the bull with at the water cooler every day, but apart from some distant kinship what do these people off you now?  Maybe you will suffer a lose of self-motivation on your own or at home, but if you cannot even motivate yourself to do what is necessary now to succeed, home or on your own can only be better.

A small problem is that other people are not encouraging enough.  But, the big problem is not that there are too many naysayers in this World getting in your way, the problem is all of the nay saying you are doing to yourself.  The problem is that we too often say NO to ourselves.  We would rather stick with the devil we know than the devil we do know.

What you need, what I need, what most of us need is a big dose of YES!  We have to learn to answer ourselves with a yes instead of no.  Can I cut my office expenses drastically?  YES!  Can I be comfortable working for myself? YES!  Can I work from my home?  YES!  Can I make the money I need to provide for my needs and desires?  YES!  Can I be productive and self motivated enough to accomplish what I need to accomplish?  YES!

Will there be some difficult times?  Well, the answer to that is yes as well.  But, there are going to be difficult times no matter what you elect to do.  The difference is you cannot face the difficulties and overcome them without giving up if you already have NO on your mind.

You have to make a positive, deliberative, determined effort to stay positive in your life, in your dreams and in what you want to do.  It is simply too easy to get down there on a low level and convince yourself that you cannot do it, that you cannot make your life better, more comfortable, less stressfully, and substantially cheaper.

Start to think through this process with this new prism and see if it does not help.  Maybe it is called faith to believe that if you make an honest effort in the direction you need to move that everything will be alright.  But, when you cannot walk by sight you have to walk by faith.

Well, I am here to tell you YES YOU CAN!  I am here to tell you YES YOU SHOULD TRY!  I am here to tell you that YES YOU CAN MAKE IT WORK!  I am here to tell you that YES YOU CAN MAKE MONEY!  I am here to tell you that YES IT IS POSSIBLE!  I am here to tell you that YES YOU CAN BE HAPPY!

But, to do what you need to do, you need to get all of the crap and clutter out of your life.  You need to get the dead weight overhead out of your life.  You need to get all of the made up practices and procedures out of your life.  You need to get all of the paper out of your life.  And, you need to whittle what you need and want down to just that which is necessary to make a solo or at home practice operate and successful.

So, today start saying YES to your life and YES to your dreams.

Full post as published by Chuck Newton on February 06, 2008 (boomark / email).