Walt Hampton, J.D.

Creating the Work & Life You LOVE

You: A Fraud

by Walt | Jul 21, 2016 | Leadership, Success | 0 Comments

Not.

But chances are that you’ve felt like one from time to time.

I had dinner recently with a high-ranking foreign official. She was appointed to her position by the president of her country, the first woman to hold it in over 700 years. Trained as a trial lawyer, she is bright, savvy, shrewd, articulate and attractive. And yet, she confessed, after every television and radio interview she does – and she does many – she comes away feeling like she’s making it up as she goes along, that she’s shallow and transparently inept, that she must have fooled someone to hold such an important job, that she’s… a fraud.

She’s not alone. More than 70% of folks have suffered from the “Imposter Syndrome;” and it is especially prevalent among successful women.

I can’t remember a time that I haven’t questioned myself before going out on stage to speak to a group: There is a little voice that asks, “Who am I to teach these things I want to say; what can I share with this audience that is of any use whatsoever; and what veracity does any of it have especially when I’ve struggled and thrashed as much if not more than the next guy?”

But here’s the truth: Each of us has gifts and talents that are uniquely ours to share with the world; no on else is equipped to share them the way we can.

And it is our call, our obligation to do so.

There are folks on the path behind us who need to hear what we have to say; who want to hear. We can make their way sweeter and gentler when we have the courage to stand up and be heard.

Every third grader looks up to a fourth grader… each of us can turn around and share the lessons that we’ve learned.

With confidence and integrity… even when we’re scared; even when we feel we have no “standing.”

Marianne Williamson says, “Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”

No one escapes these feelings of inadequacy.

It’s what you do next that matters most: Will you shrink? Or will you step up and lead?

There is a great children’s book called Everyone Poops.

Yup, everybody does.

Where The Magic Is

by Walt | Jul 14, 2016 | Success | 1 Comment

We get to stop from time to time. In fact, we need to stop.

Our technology, meant to free us, actually enslaves us. We’re ‘on’ 24/7/365.

There’s no space; no respite.

We’re expected to be at the net ready to volley. We’re expected to react: Immediately.

Forget about consideration; forget about reflection.

Everything is urgent. Everything is now.

Except that it’s not.

We’re not trauma surgeons. And even if we were, we wouldn’t make ourselves quite as crazy as we do.

Many of the lawyers I work with exist in a near-constant state of anxiety and stress. Everything appears to be an emergency; everything seems dire. Every day, they feel as if they are fighting a forest fire with a squirt gun.

No doubt, they have some pretty important deadlines to keep in mind. We all do. But for the most part, no one dies if we slow down the pace for ourselves. No one dies if we take the time to give a considered response.

No one dies if we take the time to pause.

But endeavoring to slow down in our culture of overwhelm can be one of our most daunting challenges.

It’s not really in vogue.

In fact, if you’re not ‘busy,’ if you’re not ‘flat out,’ if you don’t have your calendar jammed, if you don’t have stuff scheduled back to back for yourself (and your kids), something’s wrong with you!

But that’s not sustainable. (Would you run your high performance car that way?)

You cannot thrive without a pause. So pause you must.

Create time and space for yourself to think, reflect, create; take the time to decide how you want to impact, who you want to serve, and what you want your legacy to be!

Take the time to consider the beauty and the grandeur of the here and now.

Take the time to nurture and care for yourself.

Take the time to me mindful.

Take the time to be; to just be.

You will enjoy the rewards of a peaceful, grounded, joy-filled life that is productive, resourceful and resilient.

Your life is your masterpiece.

Artur Rubenstein once said, “The notes I handle no better than many pianists. But the pauses between the notes—ah, that is where the art resides.”

That’s the power of the pause.

Maybe You Should Stop Thinking

by Walt | Jul 7, 2016 | Success | 0 Comments

I’m a big fan of thinking and reflection. In fact, carving out dedicated blocks of time for thinking and reflection is a practice essential for creativity, innovation, and long-term success. And sadly, it ‘s become a lost art; a casualty of our culture of overwhelm.

But ‘thinking’ can become a roadblock; and excuse for not taking deliberate action.

Perseveration the poor cousin of resistance.

(After all, who can really fault you if you’re ‘thinking’ about a challenge, ‘working’ on it, ‘trying’ to figure it out? Read this: sitting around, wringing your hands.)

At some point in time, you need to take action.

Races get run, mountains get climbed, art gets made, books get written, businesses are built, masterpieces are created… only when you act.

I have one client who tells me that he has been spending a lot of time thinking about how to discover his passion. Another has been thinking (a long time!) about how to position herself in the market for her job search.

It sounds rational to be doing this thinking. But it’s so easy to get stuck in a place of uncertainty; fearful that we will err; afraid that we might get it wrong.

My advice: Act.

“Feel the fear,” as Susan Jeffers says, “and do it anyway.”

Action is the antidote for uncertainty; action is the antidote for lack of clarity; and action is the antidote for fear.

It is in taking action that we put our thoughts and ideas to the test. We see what works; and what doesn’t. We revise, adjust, modify, pivot; and act again.

Lather, rinse, repeat.

Martin Luther King said, “Take the first step in faith. You don’t need to see the whole staircase. Just take the first step.”

The next step will appear. It most certainly will.

Action creates momentum; action eviscerates resistance; action precipitates ideas.

Small steps over time lead to magnificent outcomes.

So just do it, as the Nike ad once said.

Get going. Take action. Today.

Just Go Away

by Walt | Jun 30, 2016 | Success | 1 Comment

This is a popular time of the year to take a vacation. Except that a lot of folks don’t.

Last year, there were about 169 million unused paid vacation days that were forfeited by U.S. workers, amounting to over 52 billion dollars in lost benefits. Forty percent of workers will leave paid vacation days unused this year.

Culturally, in many organizations, workers are explicitly or implicitly discouraged from using their vacation time. On my first day at The Big Law Firm, my mentor said to me, “You get three weeks of vacation.” And then he lowered his voice, looked me square in the eyes and said, “But no one ever takes them.”

This is dumb.

Vacations help you to:

Recharge

Refocus

Re-boot

The Huffington Post reports an internal study of Ernst and Young employees in which it was found that “for every additional 10 hours of vacation an employee took, his or her performance ratings went up by 8 percent — nearly 1 percent per day of vacation. That means companies where employees are leaving two and three and four weeks of vacation on the table are foregoing an enormous productivity boost.”

Tony Schwartz, CEO of the Energy Project, says that “the best way to get more done may be to spend more time doing less.”

We know that, in athletics and physical training, rest and recovery are keys to peak performance. For some reason, though, we pretend that this principle is not applicable to our work lives. So we just keep on going like hamsters on a wheel; which results in stress, burnout and poor productivity.

When you take a vacation – a real vacation (yes, that means away from the tether of your computer and your smartphone) – you come back rested, refreshed and ready to take on the world.

So go.

And if you decide to forfeit your days, please give them to me. I promise that I’ll put them to good use.

Why I Hate Fridays

by Walt | Jun 23, 2016 | Success | 0 Comments

Do you know that more heart attacks happen on Monday than on any other day? That’s because Monday is the most stressful day of the week.

Many people dread Mondays.

I know I did. For years. I was a gladiator. I did battle as a trial lawyer. I’d come to the end of the weekend and, as Sunday evening encroached, I’d feel a dark, black cloud settle over me. And on Monday morning, I’d drag myself out of bed and trudge to work.

“How are you?” I remember asking the State Marshall, a familiar face just beyond the metal detector at the courthouse where I often worked.

“Well, one day closer to the weekend,” he said.

It was Monday.

Too many live lives, if not of Thoreau’s quiet desperation, then of silent despondency. (Indeed more than 70% of Americans report that they are unhappy in their work; the number is 90% among attorneys; higher still among physicians.)

We don’t have the luxury of living just for the weekends. The sands of our lives run way too quickly through the glass.

We have the opportunity to choose a different way.

We have the opportunity to wake up every single day excited and on fire about what we get to do. In fact, we have the obligation to do that.

We get to create the work and the lives we love. Lives filled with purpose, passion and joy-filled possibility.

Steve Jobs once said, “For the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: “If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?” And whenever the answer has been “No” for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something…almost everything – all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure – these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose.”

I have the great privilege of working every day with those brave entrepreneurs and professionals who hear the ticking of the clock, who have the audacity to confront the status quo, and who have the courage to envision a better way. I have the great privilege of standing with them to bear witness to their creations: Work and lives that allow them the freedom to express their unique gifts in the world, and the joy of abundant prosperity.

I get to Fridays now and feel a vague melancholy. How did another amazing week fly by so fast, I wonder? And all weekend long, I look forward to Monday morning and the opportunity to begin again.

You. You get to wake up every single day excited and on fire about your work and your life. If you want to. It’s your birthright. To do otherwise, I believe, is to abdicate the gift of your unique humanity.

If you are in that prized minority, and love every minute of the work you do, please share this post with someone who needs a nudge to reclaim their sense of hope and possibility.

If you are living from weekend to weekend, do you hear the ticking of the clock?

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A decade ago, the life I live now, with the freedom and flexibility to work around the world with the most amazing entrepreneurs and professionals on the planet, was beyond imagination. And yet I knew in my bones that there was something more; something better; I knew that I couldn’t compromise, that I couldn’t settle, that I couldn’t continue to muddle through. My own journey, and the journeys of the now countless entrepreneurs and professionals I have witnessed, are testaments to what is possible when we listen to call of our hearts. When the noise of the clock in your head gets to too loud for you, let’s talk. Email me at: [email protected]