As 2011 winds to a close, I find myself wrapping up the year with an empty tank of gas.  Maybe some of you feel this way, too.  It’s hard to be optimistic every day and have you’re A-Game on all the time

Yet you must and you will!!

As I looked for something to write about this month, I realized many of us might be at the same point.  Working tirelessly at rezooming our careers, yet questioning our sanity in the process.

Last month I wrote about trusting your spiritual guides, in my column ‘ASK‘.  I must have struck a chord because it got readers talking.

Now I want to share a way you can use the advice given in those books during you’re high and low periods as you rezoom your legal careers.  Read for fun an hour a day.  I tend to read Forbes Women and intuitive sites that help me ground where I am, reflect upon where I’ve been, and plan for where I am going.

Two end of year articles jumped off the computer today as I was thinking about my empty tank:

• Paula Gregorowicz’s Do You Fall Prey to Opportunists?, on her site, The Paula G. Company, and
• Three Strategies for Winning in 2012 by Holly Green of More Than a Minute.

Both articles take us into 2012 thinking clearly and keeping us focused on what it is we would like to accomplish by 12-31-11 and in 2012!

Paula describes her experiences at a retreat for intuitives, where they are given a horse and told to walk ‘Temptation Alley’.  The alley is a path created by bales of hay and buckets of grain.  As a horse owner, this is truly both a test of wills and sheer laws of gross tonnage.  As I continued to read, it hit me how this exercise trains you to concentrate and be single-minded of purpose.  The writer walked her horse between the hay and grain buckets and as long as she concentrated on the task at hand, she and the horse have one purpose.  Paula said,  “for just a split second I broke my concentration and presence and boom, his nose headed to the bucket”.

The moral of the exercise is this – if you remain focused and set boundaries for yourself and others your purpose is clear and your path straight.  The minute your mind wanders and you need to ‘reclaim’ your boundaries it becomes much harder. You need to exert a lot of energy to get back on track.

For us Rezoomers, this is where Holly Green’s Forbes Women article picks up the ball and runs with it. Her three strategies lay out clear ways in which to concentrate and limit the number of times we have to refocus to get to our endpoint.

Holly’s Three Strategies for Winning in 2012 list:

• Getting Clear About Winning,
• Shedding Your Outdated Ways of Looking at the World, and
• Slowing Down to Go Fast

These are three of the most effective ways to win in 2012. Holly encourages us to get ‘crystal clear’ on our vision of winning.  Is it joining a large firm as a Rezoomer or starting a solo niche practice we are passionate about?

She encourages us “to constantly revise and update our picture of winning as the world changes around us”.  Rezoomers do this each and every day as new adventures unfold in our rediscovered professional life.

Educate yourself, not with what you think you know but what is really true.  This is what rezooming is all about.  We know what we knew.  However, is that still accurate? Will it still hold true when tested in 2012?  Don’t “assume speculate or hope…[pursue] what you know to be true through verifiable data.”  As Rezoomers this may be the easiest or hardest part of the journey.  Relearning what is accurate for our practice today and letting go of discussions and arguments that are no longer accurate or preferred, sometimes pose the most unique of challenges.

Finally, slowing down is an anathema to Rezoomers.  We have so many balls in the air if we slow down we undoubtedly feel something will come crashing down.  Yet, as Holly implores, “slowing down to go faster requires pausing from time to time, challenging your beliefs and assumptions, learning to think differently and focusing on opportunities to add value to [clients] in ways that nobody else is doing.”  For the most part, this is what we bring to the legal arena.  We’ve perfected the ability to stop, regroup, and think outside the box.

I hope you take time to read the full articles by Paula and Holly.  They bring such great out-of- the-box’ thinking to we Rezoomers.  It’s ok to listen to your inner voice.  Our inner voice tells us what we need to do.  It’s ok to stop, look, and listen to become clear on exactly what it is we want to achieve in 2012.

Have a great Holiday Weekend and a Happy and Prosperous New Year

I look forward to providing you with continued ‘fuel for your rezooming rocket’ in 2012.