Jim Wawro

Are you creative? Do you know how to call on your own lawyer intuition whenever you need it?

Your Creative Solutions

Many lawyers quickly dismiss the thought that they are creative or that they can receive a useful insight just by calling on their own intuition whenever they need it. But those same lawyers also do just that on a regular basis without even thinking about it.

How do they do it? We all work at jobs with challenges. New issues regularly arise in our work requiring new solutions. In fact, think of a situation at work where you were presented with a problem that you didn’t immediately know how you were going to solve, but that you ultimately did solve. What did you do? Did you give up? Did you sweep the problem under the rug or shift responsibility to someone else? Likely not. If you’re like most lawyers, you take pride in accomplishing your work competently, and you likely have enough confidence in your ability to know that you will probably be able to solve most problems that crop up in your practice. That’s why you became a lawyer in the first place. So, what did you do solve the work problem that first seemed impossible?

Creativity’s Four Steps

Creativity studies indicate that you likely went through four stages in solving the problem: Research, “Kick Back,” “Ah-ha,” and Manifestation.

First, you studied the problem to understand why you couldn’t solve it quickly. Then you gathered the facts necessary to understand as much as you could about why the problem wasn’t susceptible to a quick solution. Perhaps you studied the problem visually, talked to a colleague, reviewed precedents in the files, or looked it up on Lexis or the Internet. Perhaps you experimented with quick solutions to see if one would work. If none of those approaches worked immediately, what did you do then?

Second, you probably set the problem aside for a while and went on to something else. You “forgot” about the problem, or “kicked back,” or otherwise turned the focus of your conscious attention away from the problem. What happened then?

Third, the solution likely suddenly “popped” into your mind in plenty of time to solve the problem, as answers had on many other occasions when, for example, in conversation with someone you had forgotten a name and said “give me moment, it’ll come to me.” And it later did.

Fourth, if you’re like most, the excitement of solving a problem that had no apparent solution likely energized you to actually solve the problem, to make the solution exist in the world and to not just exist in your mind. Besides, it was part of your job to solve such problems, to make the obstacles in your work disappear, which you likely then did. And, if the problem was tough enough, and your solution effective, you probably shared the problem and your solution with a co-worker.

Creative Intuition

What went on here? You were presented with a problem that you didn’t know how to solve; you asked your intuition to work on the solution; your intuition delivered the solution in time to solve the problem; and you made it exist in the world. Aren’t you in fact creative?

Do you think that your creativity is limited to solving problems at work, or can you call on your intuition whenever you need it to solve a problem, to gain a creative insight, or to simply make a wise decision with confidence? How would you go about finding a creative and effective answer to a most pressing question, like a question about finance, a relationship or your health?

Intuition on Demand

Why not follow the same four steps you used to solve the problem in your practice: study the problem, learn all you can about it, and research possible solutions to the problem. Then forget about the problem for a while and wait for an idea for a solution to pop into your mind. When it does, act on the idea and make the solution exist in the world. You are creative. You can call on your intuition whenever you need it to find answers to your most pressing questions.

Why not try this approach the next time you could use an intuition to solve a problem in your practice?

Jim Wawro, author (Awakening Counsel; Ask Your Inner Voice), executive coach, and former senior partner in a 1400-lawyer firm, discovered while trying cases that some people have learned the secret to actively calling on their own intuition whenever they need it. Jim’s books and coaching reveal proven methods of accessing your own inner wisdom to know what you really want and how to get it. Learn more at www.JimWawro.com.

1. Ever since Gutenberg (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johannes_Gutenberg ), the publishing industry has effectively monopolized what books the world reads. Why? Producing printed books from written words requires capital and the expert knowledge of many businesses, including print manufacturing, book marketing, and distribution. However, recent events have rendered this key intermediary between reader and writer no longer exclusive.
2. Many online facilities (like Kindle Direct Publishing, https://kdp.amazon.com/self-publishing/signin), now provide an easy way for any lawyer to upload an ebook in an hour and receive a 70% royalty on sales, indefinitely. Contrast this with a typical traditional-publisher scenario: one year to find an agent/publisher; a publishing contract that (after the agent’s fee) nets the author 10-15% of the book’s sales price; another year for the traditional publisher to actually publish the book; a substantial portion of the marketing effort for the book expected to be learned and performed by the author (http://bit.ly/cvKOfU ); and the book allowed to go out of print by the publisher after a year or two.
3. On December 15, 2011 Amazon reported sales of one million Kindles per week. http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix.zhtml?c=176060&p=irol-newsArticle&ID=1640193&highlight= .
4. The publishing industry is being shaped by the same Internet pressures that shaped the music industry. When is the last time you bought a CD instead of downloading what you wanted from the Internet? Can books be far behind? A convincing (free) analysis of the inevitability of ebooks over print books may be found here: http://davidgaughran.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/lets-get-digital-by-david-gaughran6.pdf .
5. A lawyer-published ebook with a striking cover, professional editing, expert formatting, interesting blurb, and a readable story is indistinguishable from the ebook offering of a traditional publisher, except that the traditional publisher’s overhead will never allow it to compete with the lawyer-publisher’s ebook on price.
6. The Internet has provided marketing insight never before available to book publishers: keyword tools (like https://adwords.google.com/o/Targeting/Explorer?__c=8494762518&__u=3577777158&__o=cues&ideaRequestType=KEYWORD_IDEAS#search.none) show the specific topics that known numbers of readers currently search for worldwide. Knowing exactly what topics quantifiable numbers of readers are most interested in is far better marketing knowledge than guesses as to what readers would like to read about or writers’ knowledge of what they’d like to write about. Lawyers can now quickly find out what readers want to read about and write books that satisfy those needs.
7. Every lawyer has something important to say from experience that would contribute to society. For the first time in human history, any lawyer can now easily make a lasting contribution to humanity’s collective thoughts and experiences. That contribution is why writers write (http://activateintuition.com/why-writers-write-2/ ) and why readers read. And why to publish an ebook.

So, my intuition is to take the plunge, publish an ebook, and blog about the experience. Why not join me and read about the journey?

“How much pain they have cost us, the evils which have never happened.” ~Thomas Jefferson

How can I make being a lawyer easier on me?

Let’s start with the sources of anxiety in an attorney’s typical day. Why do we get paid for the work we do? Because we routinely solve whatever problems are presented to us in our practice that are too challenging for our clients to solve by themselves. But, in addition to the challenging legal problems we solve in our work, life also daily presents us with a steady stream of personal challenges. The cumulative effect of the problems we solve in life and at work can produce anxiety—that vague feeling that something is always wrong, that the next disaster lurks around the corner. Here are three proven strategies that help dispel anxiety and thus make being a lawyer easier on you.

Strategy #1: Write down a list of your worries.

Everyone knows that the first step to overcoming fear is facing it. Anxiety is essentially unfocused fear. How to face unfocused fear? Make a list of the top ten things that are making you anxious right now in any area of your personal or professional life and a curious thing begins to happen. As you write the list, intuitions come about solutions. “That’s nothing. I can resolve that with a phone call.” Or “I can just go fix that right now.” In fact, as you write, you will find it difficult to keep as many as ten worries on your list. And anxiety will dwindle as your list gets shorter and shorter.

Strategy #2: Avoid the news.

It is my job as a lawyer to be on the lookout for treachery and for the awful things that people can do to my client. The first thing I can do to improve my life as a lawyer is to limit my unnecessary exposure to treachery and awful things. And a good place to start is by limiting my exposure to the news. Why? The news is addictive, overwhelmingly negative, and designed to shock the conscience. Does it provide a balanced view of the life we live? No. In a planet populated by seven billion people, someone, somewhere, is going to be the worst person in the world that day. And someone is going to be the best person. Which one do you think will be presented in the news that day? Interspersed between the most outrageous stories of the day will be commercials aired to pay for the broadcast—commercials that will play on the main themes of consumerism—that I’m ill, not stylish, or lacking in something essential to my happiness. The news will not make me feel good on any level.

If we monitor the news regularly, feelings of anxiety arise from the constant bombardment of negative information about other people who are having bad days. What so fascinates us about the news? Aristotle’s Poetics identified the key element of tragedy as giving vent to the audience’s emotions of pity and fear—pity for the victims of the drama and fear for the consequences of the actions that afflict the victims. Isn’t that what so attracts us in the daily news, tragic information and entertainment combined into a dramatic presentation? But the steady drip, drip, drip of daily tragedy presented in the news overdoses us with the vague feeling that tragedy is everywhere and could soon or later happen to us—that’s anxiety. Avoid the news and you avoid unnecessary anxiety.

Won’t I be thought of as uninvolved, clueless, or naive if I avoid the news? Try it out and see what happens—the news is so pervasive in our society that anything important will likely be brought to your attention without your even seeking it out. Have you ever had the experience of returning from a two week vacation at a location far from any news and realizing that you hadn’t missed anything? Stop and think about it: what does the news really add to your life?

Strategy #3: Identify your ideal day.

If listing your worries helps reduce them, what will listing your joys do? Many find that it helps them identify what makes them happy and to identify those opportunities that regularly appear in their lives to experience happiness. We all engage in activities that have brought us joy, that were fun, that caused us to lose track of time during the activity, that brought us peace of mind, or that just made us feel happy. Write down your favorite activities and look at the list: does each of these activities bring you joy? When is the last time you did each of these activities? Is anything stopping you from doing them?

Start with your list of available activities that bring you joy and construct a day around those activities. Add in the elements that you feel are essential to maintaining your life. Rearrange the list so that the joyful and essential elements are scheduled to comfortably all happen in any given period of time. Review the list, pausing over each item to get an intuitive “feel” for the activity. At the end of the list, is anything missing? Add it to the list. Once you have identified your ideal day, ask your subconscious to bring you one. And, when your subconscious does bring you an ideal day, as it surely will, ask for another.

Put it all together.

Now here’s the important part: if you’re feeling anxiety, the only way to get a different result is to actually change something in your life. Logic alone doesn’t cause change, only action causes change. Here’s an easy action to try today:

Block out the time you would spend today watching the news and use that time to instead draw up a list of the problems that are bothering you and what you can do about them. When that’s completed, outline your ideal day. How does this exercise make you feel? What does that tell you intuitively about how to alleviate anxiety?

Try it for a day and then see how you feel about practicing law.

Jim Wawro, author (Ask Your Inner Voice), executive coach, and former senior partner in a 1400-lawyer firm, discovered while trying cases that some people have learned the secret to actively calling on their own intuition whenever they need it. Jim’s books and coaching reveal proven methods of accessing your own inner wisdom to know what you really want and how to get it. Learn more at www.ActivateIntuition.com.