Your Legacy: Marinate in the Muddles of Life

Understandably, being a lawyer, I may not have the most exciting content to put out there. Important yes, exciting not so much.  Some of you may not even click to open what I put out there for fear that it’s some freakish email telling you what will happen if you don’t get your butt in gear and get an Estate Plan.  And believe me, I understand.  Keeping up with estate planning may not seem as fun as keeping up with the Kardashians. 

So, I’m going to take it in a different, but relevant, direction.  Just stick with me. 

I am a mom of twins.  They are seven years old and generally wonderful kids.  Bonus: I am married to an amazing, supportive husband. I am an attorney, a marathon runner and I only eat organic (yeah, Rachel Hollis!).  Like many moms – both working and not – life can be, and usually is, crazy.  I recently decided to open my own law practice under the assumption that being my own boss would be a super fun adventure while simultaneously removing a little stress and adding flexibility to my life.  Whoa. Tots wrong about that second part.  I, like many of you, find that there are just not enough hours in the day to even remotely begin to tackle what seems like an agenda of insurmountable chores that even with the help of Indiana Jones, MacGyver and Michelle Obama, one would never complete. Now add “build a new company from the ground up” onto that list. Ugh.

 But I wake up and get at it.  Sometimes I get so caught up in crossing off my list of things to do, that I literally have to stop myself to breathe.  Slooooow down and really, breathe – like if only we all had the Zen of a yoga instructor. I’m only sort of joking because the yogis do have it right, somewhat and in their own way. If you’ve done yoga, you know what I am talking about. And if you haven’t, I highly recommend you try it.

 During my journey as an entrepreneur, I have come to fully understand that everything is not going to all get done today and you will drive yourself mad thinking that it will.  Because the thing is (here comes lesson in this blog. . .drumroll please. . .) it’s not the end game that matters. It’s not how many things you’ve accomplished or the goals that you’ve reached.  It’s the process that you took to get there.  There’s always going to be a next objective, and next project, a next thing to cross off the list, a next problem to solve, a next whatever it is.  Always and undoubtedly, those will come.  So that’s why it can’t be that solving the “next” is what matters. Rather it’s the steps we take to get there, the reactions we have in facing them and the lessons we learned throughout that shapes, forms and makes us who we are.  In other words, life is the process.  Making breakfast and dressing the kids is just as important as getting them to school on time; your commute to work can matter just as much as arriving to work; handing over the final product is equally significant as creating it. It's like in training for a marathon, it's all those long and strenuous training runs that mentally and physically helped you do the race the way you needed to do the race.  Life is not the one second it took to cross the finish line. 

So in facing the daily pandemonium, remind yourself that the small steps are not random, they are part of the big picture. Fall in love with the day to day chaos and trust the process because it truly is the meat of life.  Actually reaching your goal, well that’s just the gravy.

 There’s a great lesson in the movie Kung Fu Panda (seriously, it’s a great movie, watch it).  The wise old Turtle meets Panda, who is a bit of a hot mess, at the sacred peach tree of heavenly wisdom and explains that “yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery and today is a gift. . .that’s why they call it the present.”  Yes people, this is life.  Today, as you tackle all your oh so important things to do, this is life. 

So marinate in the muddle of life because this is your legacy.