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[00:00:07] Scott Benton: Hey, everyone. Scott Benton here. How are you? I’m the host of the Classroom 2 Courtroom podcast where we help you easily transition from a law school student into your professional career as an attorney and where we make the practice of law easy and fun.
[00:00:19] Scott Benton: And today, we’re going to answer the question of why you should celebrate your mistakes. Not just your wins, but your mistakes.
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[00:01:16] Scott Benton: One of the things that you hear about on this podcast, and you’ll hear about it frequently, is the idea of celebrating wins for all kinds of reasons. First, whenever you celebrate wins, whether those are smaller wins, such as maybe filing something at a courthouse, or a bigger win like winning a case, you’re actively creating a positively charged, energized, and uplifting environment that not only contributes to your ability to focus on and deliver your work, But to do it with consistency because it helps propel your momentum and providing legal services for your clients.
[00:01:51] Scott Benton: And that inspires and supports all of the work getting done at your firm. Now, second, Celebrating Wins keeps everyone at the firm much [00:02:00] happier. It keeps them more connected as a team and working together to continue that upwards growth trajectory of the firm. In turn, the sum total of your work helps clients achieve their goals, which means you’re making the world a better place. As you can see, celebrating wins isn’t important, and in fact, it’s a vital function of any work environment that you definitely want to focus on, and that we are going to be talking about here.
[00:02:26] Scott Benton: But what if we go in the other direction for a moment? What if in addition to celebrating wins, we also start to celebrate the mistakes that we make? Is there any benefit to celebrating setbacks and losses and blunders? Wouldn’t that take us exactly in the opposite direction of celebrating wins and instead introduce negative energy into the firm and create a negatively energized environment instead?
[00:02:50] Scott Benton: Actually, no. I mean, yes, it’s possible to focus and dwell upon mistakes that you make as a negative occurrence, and you can certainly punish yourself or maybe [00:03:00] even other people for making those mistakes. And a lot of people do that.
[00:03:03] Scott Benton: But keep in mind that there’s a lot of power and benefit not only in celebrating your wins, but also in celebrating your mistakes. Now, what do I mean by that? How is that a good thing to do? The reason that you want to celebrate setbacks and mistakes is because it turns out that one of the very best ways to learn anything well is to learn from your mistakes.
[00:03:27] Scott Benton: You’ve probably heard that before, right? In each and every single mistake that you make in life, whether it’s in law or anywhere else, there is the golden nugget of an opportunity for you to get better at whatever activity the mistake was made in.
[00:03:42] Scott Benton: In fact, if you want to be let in on a little secret when you talk to attorneys who are more established attorneys have been around for a while and they’ve been working in the legal field for many years, let’s say, I don’t know, 10, 15 years and you start asking them about how they got so good at their [00:04:00] practice and you’re going to notice that They’re really good at practicing law.
[00:04:04] Scott Benton: Each and every one of them is going to tell you right off the bat about all the mistakes they made. And they’re going to tell you about those mistakes for generally about the first five years that they practiced as an attorney. They’re going to tell you that they made more mistakes than you’ll ever make, than you’ll ever hope to make.
[00:04:22] Scott Benton: They’ll recount and now in hindsight, all the just boneheaded things that they did from what’s they actually learn the most about practicing law. They’ll probably even go so far as to give credit to those boneheaded mistakes for becoming the outstanding attorney that they eventually became. They probably won’t say it like that.
[00:04:41] Scott Benton: They’ll be a little bit more modest, but the underlying message is that they became really good at what they do through the mistakes that they made. But keep in mind that this process is not automatic. In other words, once you make a mistake or you experience a setback, there’s two ways to go. One [00:05:00] way is to cover it up, hide it from yourself, hide it from others, just make it disappear, bury it under the rug, whatever you have to do.
[00:05:06] Scott Benton: The other way is exactly the opposite, which is to celebrate the mistake and celebrate it exactly the way that you celebrate a win, because really Mistakes and setbacks can be viewed as a win and not just as a loss. You just went through something that makes you better, stronger, and more capable of practicing law because you’re probably not going to repeat that same mistake twice.
[00:05:30] Scott Benton: Let’s hope, but you’re going to learn a valuable lesson for the next time that you’re in the same or in a similar situation, and that’s priceless information for you to have. So this is a part of what we talk about on this podcast. of getting comfortable with being uncomfortable. Celebrating setbacks and mistakes is just going to be one of those things.
[00:05:52] Scott Benton: It’s going to be an example of where you feel uncomfortable, but if you figure out how to feel comfortable whenever you’re uncomfortable, and by the way, as an attorney, [00:06:00] you’re going to be uncomfortable all the time. Then this is going to allow you to look at setbacks and it’s going to let you look at the mistakes and you’re going to know how to process those productively learn from them.
[00:06:12] Scott Benton: Internalize the lessons and continue moving forward anyway. Now in that way, you’re not inviting any kind of negative energy into your workplace or into the firm. You have transformed a potential negative experience into a positive benefit that you’ve learned from. And if you do that over and over again throughout your career and celebrate mistakes, Then you’re going to become the one, you’re going to become the attorney that first time attorneys go to and they’re going to want to learn your secret for becoming an outstanding attorney.
[00:06:45] Scott Benton: That’s when you’re going to tell them all about the mistakes you made and the setbacks you encountered when you first began practicing law, probably the first five years. And you are going to become the inspiration for the next generation of attorneys.
[00:06:56] Scott Benton: So I hope that’s been helpful for you and that it’s usable and [00:07:00] actionable information. My name is Scott Benton. I’m the host of the Classroom 2 Courtroom podcast. Thank you so much for listening to this episode. If this is material that you are enjoying and that you’re getting a lot out of, it’s helping you make that transition from being a law school student into your professional career as an attorney, and you want to get a notification every time we put out a new episode, you can go to our website.
[00:07:20] Scott Benton: Our website is classroom2courtroom. com That’s classroom, the number two. You can leave us your contact information there and we’ll send you an alert. And if this is information that you’re enjoying, of course, don’t forget to share and subscribe. That’ll also help you stay on top of all our newest episodes.
[00:07:35] Scott Benton: And until next time, we hope you’ll join us in making the world a better place, one client at a time. Thank you so much.
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