The Essence of The Inspired Solo

What’s the essence of inspiration? It’s the essence of life itself – what the Hindu philosophers call rasa – “life’s juice,” as Ayurveda puts it. How does that concept impact your law practice? In wonderfully helpful ways, as it turns out. Read on.

Yoga – The Art of the Whole

It’s no secret that I practice yoga – and “practice” is such a great word for it, since it’s truly a practice in every sense of the word. Something you do consistently, and something you never really “perfect.” Even the word “yoga” comes from a pair of Sanskrit words commonly defined as connoting “union” or “wholeness” – further reminding us that the integration of our various “lives” (work, home, personal, etc.) is the key to true inner peace and an ongoing process, not something that is achieved once and forgotten about. And as a perennial beginner in the art of yoga, I believe there are a lot of lessons to be learned and applied to the practice of law – assuming, that is, that we want to make it more inspired, and less soul-killing.

Rasa: What Makes Life – And Work – Delicious

One such lesson is the concept of rasa. Read more from well-known yogini Shiva Rea, writing for Yoga Journal:

I first learned about rasa from Mohandas Gandhi’s grandson, the philosopher Ramachandra Gandhi, while studying at the University of Delhi in India. We were watching an outdoor rehearsal of the Manipuri dance troupe while sipping chai at the Triveni Art Gallery’s cafe. I noticed the way he inhaled the graceful circular dance as if it were a natural form of prana (vital energy). At one point, he stopped talking and took in the movement with utter reverie. Silently, we digested everything that surrounded us – the wind moving through the trees, the liquid concentration pouring through the dancers, the sound of the drum with its increasing tempo, the buzz of conversation, and the smell of the jasmine growing nearby. Ramachandra said something that has lived within me ever since: “When you taste the rasa of life, you drink from a well that is never dry.”

Literally translated as “juice, essence, taste, plasma, or transformational state,” rasa assumes one of several meanings, depending on its context. From an Ayurvedic perspective, it refers to the concentrated essence of something, such as the sweetness of a mango, but also to the nourishing energy that infuses us with life; it is the enlivened state of a dry plant that has just been watered, or of a person newly relaxed after a massage, or of a yogi after an inspired practice. As Ayurveda teacher Robert Svoboda says, “Existence without juice is dry and tasteless. Rasa is life’s fluid reality, life’s juice, in every sense of the word.”

What we’re talking about is the essence of the thing at hand – in this case, work, or your career as a solo lawyer or solo-to-be – that makes the work its best possible form and allows you to ride the peak experience of what Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi called Flow.

And it’s totally get-able for the solo lawyer.

The Rasa Of Work

What makes work “juicy”? What gets your heart pumping and gives the air around you in the office a brighter quality? Is it merely doing good work? Or is it more – perhaps a confluence of things that together put you at the top of that wave?

To me, the question is best approached from behind, as it were – by looking at the negative image. What makes work bone-dry and dusty, completely devoid of all “juice”? Ah, that’s easy, right? Boredom. Conflict with your values. Work that means nothing to you.

So, put it in reverse to find the building blocks of rasa. While the precise answers might vary from lawyer to lawyer, I think we can agree on some commonalities:

• Interest – your work intrigues you, tickles your curiosity
• Meaning – the work you do carries an intrinsic source of fulfillment for you due to its place in a larger context of your values or principles
• Value – you observe and accept the value of your work and of you in the work

In addition, there are certain so-called hygiene issues at play. While they, in and of themselves, won’t create that peak state no matter how abundant they might be, the absence of these factors will make it tough for even the most inspired solo to stay on top of the wave:

• Financial support – basic human living needs are met
• Relational stability – the absence of crisis in your closest relationships
• Functional health – the absence of severe illness or illness that impedes function in ways that are not easily accommodated
• Order – or rather, the absence of true chaos

Examining each of these aspects of work rasa in turn:

Interest: Pique Your Curiosity

If your work doesn’t intrigue you at some level, to some degree, then you’re fighting a losing battle to get and stay inspired. Something about your work must kick-start your creativity and intellectual curiosity. For some lawyers, it’s a sense of challenge – work that isn’t rote or formulaic but requires real effort to complete. (Not too much, though: work that far exceeds your current capabilities will require too much attention and create an imbalanced state of anxiety.) For others, it’s the people involved – the clients, the forum, the opposing counsel and parties or the industry served – in which the lawyer is interested. Whatever the case, if the practice area doesn’t interest you, flow will evade you.

So, tip #1: Identify those aspects of your job that most engage you.

Meaning: See The Bigger Picture

Does your work have a place in the bigger picture, in your view (and your view is the only that counts, by the way, at least in this inquiry)? If not, you’re going to have a hard time finding and maintaining the peak. It doesn’t have to be life-saving work, by the way, in order to have intrinsic meaning. After the 9/11 tragedy, many people experienced profound life shifts and changed careers in order to create more internal consistency between their inner and outer lives. While for some people this manifested in a shift from private industry to public service (witness Pat Tillman), for others it was simply a change in environment. The lawyer equivalent: leaving the big firm corporate practice for a small Main Street solo office. What has meaning will vary depending on your values, your principles, your interests, and your world view.

Tip #2: Define the portion of your work that carries an intrinsic sense of meaning for you.

Value: Put a Price on What’s Priceless

By “price,” I don’t mean you have to put a dollar figure on your practice. Rather, you must recognize a contribution to something larger than yourself. If meaning is about the worth of your work to you, value is about the worth of your work to others, and your recognition of that worth. Again, it doesn’t have to be an act of super-charged heroism. Perhaps you can find your value in setting up corporate entities for small and family businesses, or in representing new musical acts. If so, you’ll see the work you do as not just another incorporation – but as helping the local economy; helping the new rock band is creating joy for others.

Ergo, tip #3: Define the value of your work, according to your perspective. Can that perspective perhaps be broadened or deepened?

The Hygiene Issues

What about the hygiene issues – financial support, relational stability, functional health, and order? Having more of these things won’t make your flow … er, flow more fully. But the absence of these four factors – or any one of them, if severe enough – will seriously impede your peak experience. Of these four factors, it may well be the first that is most commonly at fault for a solo’s lack of inspiration. Money, or lack of it, is at the heart of many a would-be solo’s stumbling blocks. It’s the single most frequently-cited reason stopping otherwise motivated lawyers from launching their solo practices (if my mail’s any indication, and I think it is), and it most likely drives a fair number of us back into the land of the W-2 after launch. The answer isn’t easy: through a combination of reduction of expenses, savings, and smart choices, a solo who wants more than mere survival – who craves inspiration – needs to pay attention to money.

To sum up: the pre-launch solo, or the solo interested in redefining his or her practice, needs to get healthy, first and foremost, because without energy and functional health, the rest of the goals are unachievable. Attention must be given to one’s relationships – family and otherwise; mental and emotional health also demand a certain amount of detachment of self-worth from the lives of others (in other words, get your confidence from inside, not from how well your kids do in school). Order must be created in both the home and the office (books could be written – and have been). And finally, the solo’s financial life must be stabilized and built up sufficiently to support the solo, so he or she can focus on building business.

Then, the building blocks of rasa can be brought out for some serious play.