I’ve been reviewing the footage from the 90 Day Look Back from the last Live Quarterly Meeting, and I’m finding that it to be very humbling and inspiring stuff.

The things our members have accomplished in the last 90 days- weight loss, new offices, additions to their homes, etc– are making me really sit down and think about our members and how each of them is a HUMAN BEING.

Sure, you’re all lawyers, but each one of you is a human being first.

You’re a husband.

A wife.

A mother.

A father.

A sibling.

A member of the community.

A human being with goals and dreams!

Thinking about it makes me think of a really cool word that many people aren’t familiar with:

Sonder (n).- a word that means: the realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own.

Think about that… sonder refers to the person in the car in front of you when you’re sitting in traffic. The person 4 rows down from you in the movie theater. The person you just walked passed in the grocery store.

Each one of them is the hero of their own quest. Each one is leading their own lives populated with their own ambitions, friends, routines and inherited craziness.

Each person is living their own epic story that continues invisibly around you like an ant colony sprawling deep underground, with elaborate passageways to thousands of other lives you’ll never even know existed.

Lives you might even appear in yourself, unbeknownst to yourself. You might appear just once, as an extra sipping coffee in the background, or as a blur of traffic passing on the highway… or every day as a father, a mother, a spouse, a lawyer.

What kind of imprint do you want to leave?

There’s no time for excuses, and you can’t be too busy to make a plan.

The trap that so many fall into is worrying about keeping their “personal lives” and “professional lives” apart from each other, as if that’s even possible.

It’s not about whether you WANT your professional life to affect your personal life; it’s GOING to. That’s just the way it is.

How could it not be that way?

Back when you opened your law firm, you had some kind of vision for what you wanted it to be.

And that’s because you had some idea for what you wanted your life to be.

Your law firm is the bridge to fulfilling your family duty, the bridge to making the dreams you had a reality, the bridge to the freedom you originally envisioned for yourself.

Your law firm is what feeds your entire personal ecosystem, and when run correctly it can be the conduit to enhancing your entire human experience.

So making sure it’s running efficiently is an act of love to everyone around you who counts on you to be present and fulfilled.

I hear from so many people that make excuses and say they are “too busy” to take the time to plan, and yet these same people are the ones who are always worried about what’s going to happen to their firms, themselves, and their families!

Creating a plan now is a form of love and self-respect. A plan to grow your law firm is a healthcare plan for your family, a relationship plan for your spouse, and a retirement plan for yourself.

So remember- you’re not just a lawyer. You’re a human being first. A human being who owns a law firm, and has a responsibility to their family to help it grow so you can ALL be inspired, fulfilled, and happy.