What’s Yoga Got To Do With It?

March 14, 2012 By Dolly Garlo Leave a Comment

Here's my definition of legacy: "a conscious and meaningful contribution of your authentic gifts, talents and resources that adds value in a lasting way."

It’s not what comes to most people's minds, but think about it. Whether large or small, financial or not, isn't that what it comes down to? Okay, often it's not all that conscious since even people who don't think about it or design it directly, do create a legacy and are known and remembered for some contribution they’ve made … usually after the fact.

So, being conscious about it is a big shift that makes legacy more applicable to everyone – simply a part of daily life. If you were consciously making a contribution using your authentic gifts, talents and resources to add value to some part of the world, what would you be doing? It’s amazing how such unique expression can develop into significant, positive, lasting change. It just takes a little personal pioneering

Pioneering


One young pioneer pursuing this definition of legacy through her professional practice is Kristin Scheel. Like most young lawyers, Kristin started out in a pretty traditional fashion, earning her undergraduate degree in Economics from Texas A&M University and graduating at the top of her class from South Texas College of Law. She then racked up lots of experience as an associate in other law firms and work as in-house corporate commercial counsel.

What can happen from there is what I call the professional opportunity of a lifetime – the decision to hang out your own shingle and create your own professional practice. When that happens not only does the pioneer spirit kick in, but also an entrepreneurial one, which requires the development of business and other skills not taught in professional training.

For me, it was incorporating into my legal practice the notion of preventing legal problems. Many colleagues thought that was a crazy notion – why do something that would potentially limit the amount of work you could do for clients? But clients thought it was great – investing in legal services to put in place what you need to avoid big legal fees from major, but avoidable, problems. The pursuit gave me the opportunity to incorporate my values into professional practice, and to develop a profitable and sustainable business that continues though I’ve stepped away from active involvement.

In Kristin’s case, it’s about yoga. 

Kristin is a devoted yoga practitioner and teacher.  That doesn’t mean she gets clients on the mat doing various postures and breath work (though that might help in most situations)! What it means is that in her own professional practice, with its own philosophy and approaches to problems, she gets to incorporate her own brand of service.  And perhaps shift the way law is practiced and the way lawyers are perceived by the general public – a legacy feat in itself!

Integration

Kristin sees herself as an interdisciplinary collaborative practitioner providing services as both an attorney and mediator. Rather than compartmentalizing who she is from her work, she integrates it all: her experience as a corporate lawyer, litigation attorney, family law and divorce clinic volunteer,  yoga teacher, family member, seeker of knowledge and rich life experience, and nonprofit board member. She also brings significant training in communication as well as right-left brain balance and other philosophies from yoga to her work in addressing legal matters. 

She has built a private law firm in Houston, Texas designed to provide family law services, divorce and collaborative law mediation, as well as business law services and her vast experience in corporate law and commercial contracts for entrepreneurs and conscious business owners, and nonprofit organizations.  It is the goal of her professional practice to provide clients with ‘holistic legal services.’ It’s an expression of her own personally held core values to honor people and bring a peace-making approach to conflict resolution.

To that end, she brings a deep commitment to helping clients create solutions mindfully, creatively and with minimal court involvement, and with a focus on impacts to community – however that may be defined in a given situation. She has cultivated skills in deep listening, compassionate communication, responsiveness and creative option generation (things not taught in law school). Legal solutions then reflect clients’ needs and customized resolutions from exploration of a wealth of choices, and they align with the client’s life experiences and core values.  Her focus is to support their success and harmony not just in the immediate concern, but in the long run, allowing legal strategies to develop from a place of strength, alignment and responsiveness.

The result? She finds that approaching legal services in this way can save time and money, as well as priceless emotional stress.

A Foot In Both Worlds

Kristin maintains her mainstream involvements as a member of the Texas and Houston Bar associations. She’s also eagerly involved with organizations supporting the delivery of services in alternative ways, including the Collaborative Law Bar Association and Cutting Edge Law. To further support the expansion of approaches available to lawyers in practice, Kristin is also the founder of  the Houston Holistic Lawyers for Transformation.

So what’s yoga got to do with it?  In Kristin’s case, it’s got everything to do with it. It forms a foundational purpose for how to approach people and the world.  It defines who she is in all contexts of her life and work – and what she believes is possible in the way she serves and literally creates the world around her. These things provide a framework for decisions and actions – how she helps people find solutions to their challenges and how she builds her business.

It’s About Courage

It takes courage to be yourself – and be your best self – and then build your work around it.  But that work can change the world … and in this case enhance or change the direction of an entire profession. It’s legacy, consciously created at the level of daily work.

Are you ready to step out and be more of who you are, incorporate that into your business and attract the people who resonate with that and are looking for someone like you to work with? I’d love to explore what that would be like for you.  Join me for a complimentary breakthrough consultation – get on the schedule here and let’s see what develops!

Filed Under: Blog, Business Mastery, Designing Your Legacy, Life Balance/Harmony Among Life Arenas Tagged With: , , , ,

Power to the People! Power to Mamisma, Right On!

October 29, 2010 By Dolly Garlo Leave a Comment

Mamisma. What a great word. 

It was coined by publisher Harriet Rubin, author of The Princessa: Machiavelli for Women and Soloing: Realizing Your Life’s Ambition, and can best be described as the energy a mother bear has when she senses her cubs are in danger – and action taken not out of vengeance but out of the urge to provide for and protect future generations.  According to Rubin, it is “femininity defined by mature and maternal qualities.”

Those maternal qualities need not mean bearing and raising children, or even being a woman for that matter.  They are generative and creative.  Women, and anyone else possessing this feminine strength, can continue to exercise this sort of power long after child-bearing years are over.  Those qualities can be utilized and developed throughout the lifespan.

Mamisma is not about ‘machisma,’ the feminine version of machismo.  It is not about having dominion over others – but using one’s heart and smarts to make things better in a sustainable, healthy, happy way.  Power is, after all, the “ability to do” and the more one can get done, now and for future generations, the more power-full.

To me, mamisma is about the strength to protect and restore, to make beautiful, and to be strong and confident in bringing more good to the world. It is about taking care of oneself as well as others. Beyond putting on your own oxygen mask first, it is about getting what you want and need so as not to feel one iota deprived or resentful in then assisting, promoting or supporting others. It is about being willing to win and let others win, too – and finding resolutions that allow for both, rather than compromising.

It is a word to describe feminine power wielded by either gender, but it is especially important to women.  Our ‘power-struggle’ – at least in the U.S.A. – has been going on since the 1960′s; though truly it has been going on seemingly for centuries.

Gloria Feldt argues that it is time that women embrace their power - so we move beyond “justify[ing] our lack of progress by pointing outward,” rather than taking responsibility to move things courageously forward; and so we can really get to a point where women lead both themselves and others with intention toward fulfilment of human potential for now and future generations.

When we as women can fully embrace the type of power with which we are naturally endowed, and its importance, the sooner we can shift the world in more nurturing, growing, developing, just and innovative ways. 

The world needs more of that.  How can we support you in your exercise of that power?

Cheers, Dolly

Filed Under: Blog, Enlightened Leadership, Life Balance/Harmony Among Life Arenas, Living Your Best Life, Women and Girls Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

Increasing The Power of Feminine Energy on the Planet

May 1, 2010 By Dolly Garlo Leave a Comment

There is an amazing legacy project that starts today and runs for the next week – that you can access from the comfort of your home.  It’s called the Inspiring Women Summit.

The Summit is directed toward women for sure – as the primary demonstrators of feminine energies on the planet - in an effort to support them in greater use of the power of the feminine viewpoint and approach in the world.  And we here at Creating Legacy support that, because we want to see the power of the feminine viewpoint get stronger in terms of the way the world works.  Cultivating and nurturing a culture of contribution – living a legacy approach to life – certainly embodies that. 

However, while the word feminine – just check the dictionary – is most often defined with sex and gender characteristics, feminine and masculine (for that matter) are gender neutral terms.  Each of us possesses both feminine and masculine traits.  A great comparison of those qualities is available here (you may have to adjust the items under the proper columns depending on how it shows up on your computer, but you can download the Google version into Word). 

It is really how culture and sex role stereotypes have influenced you that will determine how comfortable you will be with expressing the feminine or masculine qualities you have access to.  And the context you are operating in will also be an influence – or a challenge to rise above and choose to use a different tool than the expected.

When I was training to be and practicing as a Registered Nurse, most nurses were female.  Not all.  But despite the highly scientific and technical aspects of the nursing profession, the fact that it was founded on caring put it squarely in the feminine domain and thus only a few strong guys were attracted to it.  That is not so true anymore.

Unlike my female predecessors and pioneers in the law, who may have been one of 5-10% of women in their law school classes, when I went through law school, my class was about 30% female.  Today, in both medicine and law – both previously the provinces of men – women make up about 50% of the graduating classes.  The focus on reading, research, writing, oratory and advocacy skills that make up legal education are clearly “something girls can do” … well, and thus do well in practice, too.  But historically, culturally, lawyers were men – not because women were not capable.  Even the skill sets of the law might be considered feminine in nature when compared with the hard physical labor of construction or combat jobs …

I’ve had two previous careers that gave me a lot of opportunity to consider the difference between a feminine and masculine approach to the subject matter and related tasks of the work.  I’ve seen males take a feminine approach to aspects of the work, and I’ve certainly seen (especially in law practice) females do their best to take on a masculine approach to the work – often thinking that is what they had to do to ‘compete’ in the workplace or the courtroom.

Well, it’s not true.  Either gender can use, hopefully the best of, the feminine or masculine energies in approach to their work.  What’s great about the Inspiring Women Summit is that we’ll get a chance to explore more of the feminine approach - as well as how women can emerge as stronger leaders in the world.  In my view, it’s certainly time in history for a greater emphasis on the feminine, from everyone.  And no, I’m not trying to be emasculating as some in the culture might suggest.  I’ll be the first to take on and use masculine energies when I need to.  It’s just that I know the difference … have a more varied toolbox perhaps than folks who insist on sticking with rigid sex role stereotypes. 

I have my parents to thank for this.  They taught me that I could do whatever I wanted to do based on merit, not on gender.

I wonder how clear these distinctions are for the generation of women who follow mine.  At the baby end of the baby boom and the leading edge of Generation X, I know the struggles of my predecessor women professionals and business owners - the trail blazers – that allowed me to be more of a pioneer with my work, discovering, designing, and building new approaches as opposed to just getting a foothold.  How do the women who come after view their power (‘ability to do’) to take on the important work they have in life and then make amazing contributions they have to make?  And their role – if not trail blazer or pioneer, how do we best characterize what they are up to?

Would love to hear your thoughts on that.  Cheers, Dolly

Filed Under: Blog, Coaching, Enlightened Leadership, Legacy Stories, Life Balance/Harmony Among Life Arenas Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , ,