Rainmaking Recommendation #166: It’s Mind over Matter

Those who know me know that I am obsessed with personal & business development.  Since I was 18 years old I have been reading books by Napoleon Hill, Norman Vincent Peal, Dale Carnegie, Tony Robbins, Brian Tracy, Florence Scovill Shinn, and so many others.  I have a library of thousands of books and recorded programs that I have listened to and read over the years.

(I hate the term “self-help” because it implies that there is something fundamentally wrong with the person who is reading the books or listening to the recordings.  Instead, I prefer the term “Success Literature” because that is what I am trying to achieve.)

The one thing that I have realized is that every single one of these authors says basically the same thing: It’s all about mindset. 

Your mindset, particularly what you think about yourself, is one of the most important traits that will determine your success.  A negative mindset is going to lead to negative results. A positive mindset is going to lead to positive results. 

Now, this is not to be Pollyannaish about it.  Far from it, but if you spend your life beating yourself up, you will never feel good.  And, by the way, I happen to be an expert at beating myself up.  Particularly over certain areas of my life (specifically, like many women out there, body image).  But there are other areas of my life – my ability to help lawyers become rainmakers – that I am more confident about. 

If you look at the most successful rainmakers, what is the one thing that seems to separate them from the other lawyers in the firm?  

Confidence!

Even if this confidence is misplaced, i.e. they think they are the best lawyer in the world and they are only mediocre, they still have confidence in their ability to succeed.  And this dictates their actions.  They will take the steps necessary to bring in new clients where others who feel less confident in their abilities to do so will sit behind their computers and not perform the tasks needed to become the rainmakers they say they would like to be. 

Some may call this an ego-driven personality.  And while that has negative connotations to most, there is nothing wrong with being driven to succeed!  There is a huge difference between a healthy ego and a narcissistic personality.  A healthy ego allows you, the Rainmaker (or even potential Rainmaker), to be empathetic, interesting and engaging.  It allows you to be able to be self-assured in your decisions and the advice that you provide your clients.  It also allows you to be confident in your abilities as a lawyer and as a Rainmaker.    

Studies have been conducted which claim that there are specific characteristics of lawyers who are rainmakers.  But boiling down the studies to one word, the various attributes equal one main quality: 

Confidence!

And just to give you a confidence boost: