What to Do When It's All Slip Sliding Away

Welcome to LegalBiz Cafe! Digitally remastered with AI, in this podcast series, Attorney Shaune B. Arnold gives to frustrated professionals like YOU the tools and resources you need to make the LEAP to entrepreneurship so you can start, build or fix a business you will absolutely LOVE. 

When your business feels like it’s slip-sliding away, this episode of LegalBiz Café invites you to reclaim control. Together, we explore how self-sabotage, misaligned goals, unclear beliefs, and poor time management derail your progress—and how small, intentional shifts can restore traction and reignite your entrepreneurial fire. 

Transcript

Hello, friends! And welcome …once again …to legal biz cafe. I am your host attorney Shaune B Arnold. Listen…, …Tonight, we are talking about what to do when it all seems like it's slip sliding away. What do you do? How do you get there from here when the ground is moving under your feet? Bills are piling up. Employees can’t be counted on to truly support you. Even your loved ones are giving you grief. 

Let’s deal with all of that tonight. But before we get there, we need to get here and do some housekeeping. We need to figure out what it is that we are doing as we meet weekly on legal biz cafe. Well, …we are dealing with your mindset, of course. We're talking about your mindset as an entrepreneur.

We are dealing with your secret fears here, the ones where you don a disguise and sneak into the legal biz Cafe just to sit in a corner and listen in, and hear solutions for your business. You know, …THAT business. The one you've been talking about forever. The one that's up there on the shelf, or out in the garage, …or worse, …still buried deep within your heart, where you THINK you are protecting it. Yeah, …THAT business.

Well, we are going to pull that business out into the light. We are going to give you the tools and the resources that you need to be strong and to stay strong so that you really can build a business that you are going to absolutely love.

So, when you seem to be at a standstill. When it feels as though you've taken one step forward uphill and two steps backwards downhill, and you appear to have made little or no progress, what do you do?

Well, my inclination in these situations is to examine myself. I know a lot of us really do like to look to the outside world and say the thing that is wrong is because of THOSE people, those THINGS and that SITUATION. However, I find that if I look to myself, and put myself at cause in the situation, most of the time, I can come up with a strategy that can at least move me forward.

See, if you're blaming other things and other people for the thing that is wrong, that blame to the outside world is going to keep you right where you are, in misery. However, if you look to yourself for causes, you just might be able to find some things that you're doing that might be unknowingly sabotaging your own efforts.

So, what causes us to stall out in the first place? Well, for example, you may have a goal of losing, say, 20 or 30 pounds, but every day you eat out in a restaurant and you don't bring your lunch. I had a girlfriend who lost a bunch of weight and started going to restaurants. She would call me up and invite me out, and we'd go to restaurants, and she'd eat a salad, and it was wonderful, and then she would order dessert. I kind of mentioned it once or twice, but you don't want to be a jerk. So, I let it go. But guess what, within just a few months, she gained back all the weight, all of it, and probably a little more too.

So, it was very clear to me that the desserts, the things that she was doing were sabotaging her desire to lose weight. It’s easy to see it in others and difficult to see it in ourselves.

So, what are you doing that might be sabotaging your progress in your business? Do you want to build your business, but each night you take your place on the couch in front of the TV, and another day slips by, and then another week, and then another month, and eventually another year goes by, and you have not built that business beyond a hobby, or a limping going concern?

You haven't fixed it. You have not built that beautiful business. Now, in some cases, you know this comes right down to the level of commitment that you have in your dream. Do you believe that you can attain it? That could be the disconnect.

Now, I talk to you a lot about your beliefs. Most of our beliefs are silent; we don't know what we believe, much less why we believe it. Most of our beliefs run just beneath the surface.

I mention your beliefs to you over and over again, so that you can stop and examine them. How many people actually do that in their lives, and of those people that do how many actually take the time to stop and examine their beliefs and then make a shift. Not many. Self-improvement is a full-contact sport. You’ve gotta get messy.

What do you believe happens for people that make a shift? I think they attain their goals. So, think about that also. Sometimes when you lack commitment, it's because you really don't want it.

Are you reaching for a goal that isn’t your own? Are you living somebody else's dream? …a parent, maybe, …or a spouse that met you when you were in med school and you felt as though you had to get out and get that residency done, and now you are just miserable.

You know very well that you're not suited for what you're doing, but people expect it of you. Is that happening to you? Maybe that's why you feel like you're losing ground, because you're not living in your truth or your purpose.

I encourage you to spend some time seeking clarity on what exactly you want, and examine whether the things that you're doing on a daily basis are truly designed to get you there. If they're not, then you can make a 2% shift and redirect yourself. You can make that small shift to bring yourself back into alignment with your goals and your true potential.

You'll start to get real traction as the ground becomes more sure beneath your feet. We've spoken before about your focus and your ability to concentrate and complete a task, or follow through on a goal. All of these techniques are going to be instrumental in achieving that goal.

So, if things feel as though they are slip sliding away from you, are you taking your eyes off the prize...? If that's happening to you because it's a long road and you're finding that perseverance is short while the road is long. Then revisit your why.

Why are you doing this? Why did you start down this road in the first place? Did your why change? Is something else more important to you now? You need to make these considerations known, because this is the only way that you are going to find happiness. This is the only way that you're truly going to be able to achieve your goal.

Let me ask you a question. Are you making the right choices? Now, what I mean by that is, do you actually analyze all the data that's available to you, or are you the type to ready, fire, then aim? Now, in truth, sometimes that's a good thing for an entrepreneur. The very nature of being an entrepreneur is to be a risk taker, right? However, …you felt that “however” coming didn't you …HOWEVER, risk management is always going to be key. You do want to take chances, but …you knew that BIG BUT was coming, didn't you?

You know that you want to take chances, but …you do not want to dive into the shallow end of the swimming pool. You’ll break your neck.

Take your chances, but they should be good, calculated choices. Get all of the pertinent information that can affect the outcome of your situation so that you can avoid all those, “If I knew then what I know now” situations.

And finally, I invite you to consider time management. You know, this is a really big one. I know someone who has little or no awareness of time. They are late every single time we get together. Now, I need to decide whether I feel some kind of way about it and if I feel negatively about it. How negatively do I feel about it?

The challenge for me is, I am completely attuned to time, the fourth dimension. I completely respect it. From the moment that I open my eyes in the morning, I literally jump out of bed, jump into my jogging suit and run outside before it's dawn, because I want to be outside when we get those first little flashes of light in the sky.

I feel as though I'm ahead of the game when I do that. I feel as though I'm ahead of time.

So, I wonder about people who do not seem to worry about or who aren’t even cognizant of time. I wonder if it is a respect issue. I mean, is it a respect issue for themselves. Their constant tardiness has nothing to do with me because they do it to everyone. I'm not going to stress about it. I only stress about things that I can do something about, and I cannot control someone else’s appreciation of time.

If you have a time issue, I would love for you to consider these words. I would be willing to bet that you're not getting as much done daily as you could, or might, if you respected time more. Time often seems to “get away from us” and our goals can then seem like they are very hard fought battles. We feel like we're losing ground and it is slipping away.

Ladies and gentlemen, I really want to thank you for joining me on this week's episode of legal biz cafe. I am your host, attorney, Shaune B Arnold. I invite you to follow me on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter X. My moniker in all of those places is Shaune dot Arnold. In the meantime, and in between time, I’m reminding you ...as always ...to MAXIMIZE your COMPETENCE to get the CONFIDENCE YOU NEED to succeed.

I’ll see you right back here next week, on LegalBiz Café. Bye-bye, friends.