How do you achieve your personal dream while living a great life? Focus and persistence.
Often Bar Exam takers won’t acknowledge that life can go on despite failing the Bar because it feels like they’re giving up on their attorney dreams. Wrong.
Just because it doesn’t feel imperative that you pass “yesterday” doesn’t mean you’ve given up. You don’t have to be desperate and anxious in the process. You can live a great life even if you haven’t passed the Bar. You just need very specific instructions on how to do that.
Living a great life while working towards your goals means you have to be more disciplined about doing what it takes, even though your life is great and you feel no urgency.
Special Note: If your great life lulls you into complacency about passing the Bar, such that you can’t work up the energy to even do the very simple method I’m teaching below, then passing the Bar isn’t a worthwhile goal for you. Your goal must light a fire under you for you to be persistently focused. It must be something you want even though your life is overall wonderful. This is your true calling. If being an attorney isn’t that, do yourself the great service of going to where you are called and not forcing yourself down a dead-end.
Forcing yourself to persist in this when the calling doesn’t come from deep in your soul is just putting off your true calling—you’re hiding from your purpose in this “worthy” pursuit of Esquire title. You’re hiding. Opposite of brave and accomplished.
A legal education can be a tool in your greater journey. Not all paths through law school end in “Esquire”. So, if you get the sense that Esquire is not it for you, it’s actually a great accomplishment to realize that and honor your true calling now.
Back to our regularly scheduled article…
There’s a specific way to incrementally meet your goal while living your best life.
This is what you have to do:
1. List the outstanding tasks for passing the Bar and being admitted. Example:
study daily — break that into smaller tasks (read the outline, take notes, mindmap, etc
save money
file paperwork
2. Make sure the list is broken into baby steps. For example, for filing paperwork break that down into a list like this:
Order copy of driver’s record,
Order Transunion credit report,
Request letter of explanation
3. Plan to accomplish 3 of those tasks per day.
Here’s where the discipline comes in…
You must complete your three tasks every day. Troubleshoot any reasons why you may not be accomplishing it.
At this point, it is MUCH easier to see if you have a resistance to becoming an attorney or passing the Bar.
The fractional tasks are so tiny that if you can’t get yourself to do even that, you must not want it that badly. But if you know deep down you really do want this, then you have a mindset issue that must be addressed. It takes a different set of tools to address mindset issues. The Bar Exam Mindset Support Group is a great place to start uncovering and examining what is holding you back.
