I like to get inspiration from a
wide range of places. Including Lorna Jane. For the unacquainted, Lorna Jane
Clarkson is the Founder and Chief Creative Officer of Lorna Jane, the
multimillion dollar active wear brand for women. She started her business by
selling her self-designed gym gear after aerobics classes. Over two decades the
business has grown to over 155 stores and has a turnover of $100 million a year.
Lorna Jane runs the brand with her husband and CEO Bill Clarkson. Despite the
apparent disparity between lawyers and fashion designers, there are five main
lessons lawyers can learn from Lorna Jane Clarkson.
Lesson 1: Live with purpose.
Lorna Jane is a staunch advocate
for identifying and working towards your purpose in life. Your purpose may
change during your life and that is ok. The most important thing is to have a
purpose at any one time you are working towards. Lorna Jane claims that without
a purpose “we often feel lost and confused”.
How can lawyers learn from this?
It can be easy to lose sight of
your “purpose” as a junior lawyer. The job market is tight, so you may have to
take an opportunity in an area you didn’t really want to work in. I barely no
anyone who was lucky enough to get straight into the specialisation they
wanted. The strategy is to get some experience and then transfer into the area
of law you are actually interested in. Some junior lawyers lose sight of their original
purpose, as they “fall into” an area of law. The longer you spend in a
specialisation, the harder it can be to leave. By the end of law school you
should have an idea which areas of the law you would like to work in. Lorna
Jane explains finding purpose as “asking yourself what you are passionate
about, what you love to do and what it is in your life that you can’t stop
thinking about”.
Lesson 2: It is never too late to admit to yourself what truly makes
you happy, connect with what that might be, and then start to point your life
in that direction.
This lesson is related to Lesson
1 and involves having the courage to do what you love. Lorna Jane worked as a
dental therapist during the day and an aerobics instructor at night when at 25 she
decided to start her own range of active wear: “It’s not as if I had
consciously been pretending to be someone else for the first half of my life,
but I was too compromising. I was taking the easy road and behaving like
everyone else around me”. She had a mortgage and other financial commitments
that made it difficult, but did it anyway. Lorna Jane never lost sign of her
love for fashion and made sure her career eventually led her in that direction.
How can lawyers learn from this?
Do not be scared to make the move
to the area of law you are passionate about. As Lorna Jane says “I don’t think
it is good enough to just do something that you think you are good at, or that
you have some interest in. You owe it to yourself to find a way to do what you
love”. If you were a tax law addict or an IP nerd at university, do not lose
sight of this. Don’t be afraid to make the jump and apply for jobs in these
areas after you have initial experience.
Lesson 3: Celebrate individuality and realise you won’t be great at
anything until you feel great about yourself.
The more I work as a lawyer, the
more I realise that despite the external bravado, there are many lawyers out
there who do not feel great about themselves. Despite appearing self-confident,
the reality can be the opposite. One reason for this could be lawyers feeling
pressure to conform with the culture of their law firm. Finding a place to work
where you feel comfortable to be yourself is one of the most important things
you can do in your career. While you may not be able to be too picky as a law graduate,
always be on the look-out for places you may like to work in the future where
you would be a good cultural fit.
Lesson 4: Time is precious. Just 30,000 days in the average lifetime.
After seeing this figure and
realising how alarmingly small this number was, Lorna Jane changed her
perceptions of time. Time was suddenly precious. Each second of every day had
to count. Lorna Jane makes each second count by having daily intentions, otherwise
known as a daily plan. She categorises her intentions daily into headings such
as work, making dinner, and interacting with her husband.
How can lawyers learn from this?
Lawyers are great at calculating
time in billable units, but Lorna Jane is talking about something else. She is
talking about valuing each day and making every second count. In my first year
as a lawyer, I know I didn’t value time. The year flew by, and on some days I
was hoping for the day to end just so it could be over. I now try and use Lorna
Jane’s technique of daily intentions, such as:
Work
I will be a
positive influence to those around me and be enthusiastic about all tasks,
including boring tasks.
I will be a
supportive buddy to the summer clerk.
Meeting a friend
for lunch
I will listen
without judging.
I will be
supportive to my friend and celebrate her success.
Cooking
dinner
I will cook a
healthy and nutritious dinner.
Learning
I will do 15
minutes of learning before bed (I like to learn something new and non-law
related each day).
You may think this is crazy, but
just try it and see what a difference valuing time and having intent makes to
the quality of your day.
Lesson 5: Building positive rituals into your day is important.
When Lorna Jane talks about
rituals, she is talking about habits. It can be difficult to fit the important
things into your life, which is why you need to develop positive habits to make
them occur. As Lorna Jane says “the whole point of a ritual is to make sure you
find time to do the things you should be doing, but also the things you love”.
If you are interested in learning about how to build positive habits and break
bad habits you must read Charles
Duhigg’s “The Power of Habit”.
Lorna Jane’s daily rituals:
1. Wake
up at 5:30am and have 2 hours for stretching, exercising, walking the dog and
thinking;
2. Spend
quality time with husband (business partner Bill) on a daily basis; and
3. Reading
before bed, even if it is just a few pages.
How can lawyers learn from this?
Building positive habits can
reduce stress and enhance your life. Lawyers operate in a high stress
environment. Coping in this high stress environment can create negative habits.
My example of a negative habit for coping with stress is to walk to Haighs and
buy a chocolate frog. This would be ok if it is an occasional treat. This is
not ok if it occurs multiple times on a daily basis. It is very important for
lawyers to create positive habits to cope with stress on a daily basis. Make
your positive habits as specific as possible. Examples could be:
1. Making
a green tea at 10am each day;
2. Making
time to go to the gym at 6am each morning; and
3. Catching
up with a colleague for a quick lunch break on Tuesdays at 1pm.
Lawyers can also use habits to
fit in the things they want to achieve outside of work, such as learning a new
language or undertaking further education.
In writing this blog post I used Lorna
Jane’s suite of books, predominantly “More of the Fit Woman’s Secrets” which
was published in 2013.
No comments:
Post a Comment