Jump Off the Couch and Into Action

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. 

Feeling stuck? This week, Attorney Shaune B. Arnold unpacks the silent fears and self-doubt that keep entrepreneurs paralyzed. Learn why your couch is not your destiny and how small steps—mental, emotional, and physical—can reignite your ambition. It’s time to move, reclaim your worth, and power up your entrepreneurial spirit! 

Transcript

Hello, friends! …and welcome …once again …to legal biz cafe. I am your host, attorney, Shaune B Arnold.

Listen, we're going to jump into motion tonight! We are going to get moving toward our goal. But before we go getting all froggy and tryin to leap, I want to talk to you for just a moment about what we're doing here on the legal biz cafe. You know, I've been a business attorney for 30 years, and I've been a business consultant for 40 years. Yes, I know. How did I do that when I'm just 28 years old? That's a conversation for another day...

I'm a business attorney and a business consultant, and I deal with entrepreneurs on a daily basis. I talk to them when they are experiencing issues that make them want to just suck their thumb or take all of their marbles and go home.

We are showing you here on legal biz cafe, how to play nice in the sandbox with others, …including yourself. Tonight, we are going to explore why you may be sitting still on yourself. We’re going to give you some wonderful tips that are going to help you light a fire under your bum.

So, tell me, why are you just sitting there? …Are you struggling with self-doubt about your ability to build your business? I feel you. This lousy feeling plagued me years ago, when I lost a job due to the economy, like so many millions of us did. When that happened to me, I sat on my couch for a good six months. I desperately wanted to hang a shingle and start my own firm, but I was paralyzed by the strangest fear.

I had absolute faith in my ability as an attorney. I had been practicing law for nearly 20 years at that point. However, I just couldn't bring myself to have prospecting conversations out in the marketplace. I was sitting on the couch. I was seriously stuck.

Now, on some level, I have to admit, this was a self-esteem issue. As much as I love me some Shawny B, I can't tell you exactly what that underlying issue really was. It didn't identify itself as anything other than just massive resistance whenever I had to get near a telephone or a business card or a networking event or a business conversation. I mean, this was bad. I was seriously stuck.

Fortunately for me, however, I was studying Neurolinguistic Programming (NLP) at the time. As part of the program I did some work adjusting my values around entrepreneurship. That actually made the difference for me! I was trying to start a business with the values structure of an employee. Any entrepreneur can tell you these two mindsets are vastly different. I couldn’t even begin to build my business until I programmed my unconscious mind to value prospecting and…believe it or not …money. These are two values that are critical for building a business.

So how about you? ...Did you take a hit sometime in the past, and now you find yourself just sitting in the pain? I once knew a young woman who was a secretary at a business where I worked as an attorney. She was consistently abused by her boss, the evil Associate General Counsel. The secretary was fired for quote “incompetence.” She went home and sat on her couch for several months, unable to move. She was absolutely convinced that she was completely incompetent, not that the attorney was mean as a coiled snake, which she was, but that she, the secretary, was incompetent. She internalized what was said to her. She internalized what was done to her.

Please understand when you take a hit like that, you need to remember who you are. So, that job didn't work out. So what? There's something else out there with your name all over it, but you have to get up off your knees. You have to wash your face. You have to leave the house with clear energy. And that means meditate. That means talk to a friend to clear out the sadness and frustration before you leave the house, because people will feel your sense of desperation, frustration, sadness or fear that's keeping you on the couch.

Gosh, leave it at home. See if you can actually kind of sweep it out the back door. Leave it on the back porch. Maybe it'll just go away by itself.

When you get home, you can start to employ some new energy that has to do with the new people that you met out there and the new situations that you are grooming for yourself to enjoy going forward.

Let’s assume that you have some self-esteem issues surrounding getting off that couch and getting yourself moving to build your business. It might be that you're just not expecting much in your life. Low expectations for success can keep you glued to that couch.

Perhaps someone in your past discriminated against you because you were female, or you were the youngest in the bunch, or not as big as the others. There are lots of reasons why people get left out of the crowd, and sometimes we internalize those messages, and we start to lower our own bar. We do it to ourselves. We just give up.

Many of us grew up in households or in communities where we were not hugely supported. You may have been told that your chances are limited because, well, they have grossly underestimated you. That’s THEIR problem, not YOURS. 

They get to watch your jaw-dropping meteoric rise to the top.

I was a foster kid in New York City. When I consider the kids that didn't make it out of foster care successfully (meaning getting a good education and gainfully employed) there was a moment in each of their lives when they internalized the ugly things that were said about them by people that should have loved them.

There was a moment when they decided they were not worth it, when they believed there was nothing for them on the other side of that situation, and they gave up on themselves. They stole cars and they took drugs and they hung out with the wrong people.

They gave up because, after all, their parent told them they were stupid and they would never grow up to be anything of value. They thought to themselves, that awful parent must be right. That nasty boss who said you’re dumb and useless is in a position of authority, so they must be right, …right? …WRONG! You are a unique expression of the beauty and magnificence that is possible in this universe. You are valuable because you breathe. You do not have to prove your worth in this world; it’s intrinsic.

Here's what I want you to do to reset your bar. Study deeply the things that you love, the things that you have a passion for, and that might be something that you're afraid of taking that step into because you think somebody might talk about you, or you think maybe you might not be good at it, or whatever reason why you won't try that thing that keeps pulling at you. Just. Do it.

I encourage you to be curious. I implore you to step out beyond those boundaries that you have forged for yourself. You know, an elephant is an unbelievably powerful animal, but when they are captured for the circus, the first thing that happens to them is they are caged and put in chains. They are taught they can no longer move. They are taught they have no power. They are taught they are stuck.

They try to break free at first, but eventually they are so frustrated in that intent that they just give up. …They just give up, and in the end, a single, slim string, a rope, can hold that mighty elephant in place.

Has this happened to YOU? ...Has life roped you in without you even realizing it? You have that fear of failure, and it keeps you from trying something new. You have that fear of success, so it keeps you from turning left and trying a new career. You have that fear of criticism, so you don't want to do anything that's outside of the box, because people might not like you if you do.

Baby, let me tell you, …all of these fears can reduce your world. They can restrict your vision, and the next thing you know you are sitting on the couch absolutely unable to move.

I'm here this evening, my friend, to give you some tips on how to get going, on how to break out of that malaise and take life on so you can get what you want. Because if you don't get what you want, somebody else will get it. Check that out. ...Yeah...

Here are some tips to get going. First of all, join a gym and get physically strong. Get that blood pumping again. What? You don't have any money for a gym? Oh, I heard that, honey. Times are tough when things get rough. You can instead take a long walk. Choose a long walk, uphill. Take off your shoes and put your feet on the earth. It's good for what ails you, I promise you. Get yourself physically moving. That is the very first step to moving. You’ve gotta move!

That’s like the concept of trust. Mark Twain said, “The only way to trust a man is to trust a man.” ...Deep. ...So, the only way to move …is to just …begin to move. Even if you don't start with the uphill walk, just strap on those sneakers and get out of the house. Walk around the block, walk around the neighborhood.

Once you get yourself physically moving, I encourage you to tackle the mental malaise that you find yourself laboring under. You've heard me say before, you should start to journal. You can get awesome journals from TJ Maxx, Marshalls or even Office Depot. A good journal can be about $4.

You got to get moving if you're going to chase your dreams because you can't chase your dreams from that couch. Put the remote down, get up, grab yourself a journal and start to identify exactly what has you stuck.

Once you crack open the journal, I encourage you use it to create a five-year plan for your growth and your success. I encourage you to break that five-year plan into five one-year plans.

Literally start to deconstruct the five-year plan, starting from five years out. What does that big picture look like? And then come back, four years, three years, two years, one year. What do the successive pictures look like?

And for this first year, what do you need to do? How do you need to structure the next 12 months to get you where you want to go? What do you need to do this month? …What do you need to do this week? What do you need to do TODAY to get moving?

Create a plan concerning something that excites you. Start to take action to carry out that plan. This is the very best way I know of to get moving.

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 encourage you to follow me on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter X. My name in all of those places is Shaune dot Arnold. In the meantime, and in between time, I'm Attorney Shaune B Arnold reminding you, …as always, …to MAXIMIZE your competence to get the confidence you need to succeed.

I'll see you next week right here on Legal Biz Café. Bye-bye, friends!