Shine (17 page)

W
hen you’re getting yourself emotionally ready, in the way you
feel
about your self-esteem, your friendships, or your finances, it’s also very helpful to change the way you
think
about all this. The way you mentally analyze your relationships and why you act the way you do is of paramount importance. We’ve learned that you can make changes in the way you feel, but can you actually change the way you think and act so that friendships and finances and true love arrive in a more intelligently planned way? Well, yes—I do believe you can reconstitute your thought processes. One of the reasons I so love being a lawyer is because lawyering, in a direct way, led me to my best life with my best partner, Al. It wasn’t even the lawyering by itself that helped me change my life—it was the lawyer-think. Lawyers just think about things differently from most other people.

Okay, let’s get them out of the way—the lawyer jokes:

Q. How does a pregnant woman know she’s carrying a future lawyer?

A. She has an extreme craving for baloney.

Q. And God said, “Let there be Satan, so people don’t blame everything on me…

A. And let there be lawyers, so people don’t blame everything on Satan.”

Q. Why won’t sharks attack lawyers?

A. Professional courtesy.

Say what you will, lawyers are a pretty clever group as a whole. First of all, they’re rarely boring. Second of all, they ponder stuff, they plan creatively, they have to convince others of the justness and rightness of their side. They’re good at what they call
discovery
—finding out facts and evidence that will lead them to the best results.

So, the lawyer jokes may be funny, but they don’t tell the whole story about the profession because the one thing lawyers do best is think things out. The paradox is that I could do that wonderfully well in the courtroom, but somehow the skill eluded me when I was just being Star.

I decided to try to carry the kind of thinking I did for my professional life into my personal life. I was convinced that would be the best emotional and mental preparation I could find.

You know what? I believe that everyone—every doctor, plumber, painter, mother, Home Depot salesperson—ought to think like a lawyer. Honestly, I’m
not prejudiced because I’m a lawyer; a lot of my colleagues underwhelm me. It’s just that thinking like a good lawyer makes your route to emotional preparedness very clear and simple. Hear me out.

If you want to make your case and win it, if you want to figure things out so they work to your advantage, if you want to clearly see both sides of a problem—and then make a sound decision—think like a lawyer. Whether you’re contemplating a job change, throwing a not-terrific boyfriend out on his ear, making or terminating a friendship—think like the best lawyer I ever met, Johnnie Cochran Jr. When I wanted to find love, I thought, “What would Johnnie do?”

I was a long time coming to this “think like a lawyer” concept. I’ve told you that I did not approach my emotional life in the same way I approached my professional life. A lot of professional women make the same error. In deciding to be a nurse, teacher, accountant, or lawyer, the successful people are usually very methodical about how they plan it. They know how many years of school it will take, the organizations they need to join, how they want to look when they come to work. But when it comes to their inner emotional preparedness, they’re often messes.

Believe me, I was one of those people. I joined Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority in college because it’s the oldest black women’s social service organization in the country, and I knew, wherever I moved, there would be a group of professional, college-educated women in Alpha Kappa Alpha with whom I could affiliate; they would be a built-in group of friends wherever I moved, and in Washington, DC; New York City; Houston, Texas; Los Angeles, California, I
have
established an easy and helpful relationship with these sorority sisters. I was methodical. I chose a law school based on how quickly its graduates passed the bar because I wanted to have a leg up in passing that exam, first time around. I was methodical. I interviewed and was offered jobs at several district attorney’s offices around the country, but I chose the Brooklyn DA because I did my homework and learned that that office moved people along in their careers very quickly. I was methodical.

When I came to work on
The View,
I found it very difficult to have a conversation that didn’t bring in my legal training because it was so useful in coming to the right decision. Sometimes, I guess it gets on people’s nerves, but be sure I’ll throw in an “allegedly” every little once in a while just to keep my legal edge.

But in my personal life, all these smarts flew out the window. I was haphazard, I was all over the place, I constantly made the same bad choices with men. I did not think like a lawyer. I was the antithesis of methodical.

But as I began to systematically prepare myself for love, it came to me that there was no better way to do it than by using the tried-and-true elements of legal thinking—the elements of a trial. I could make a better case for my personal future if I knew how to find evidence, look at the exhibits—build a case, period.

Follow me, step by step, and when you’re preparing yourself for a relationship, when you’re truly ready for love, you’ll be a winner if you think like a lawyer getting ready for trial.

The Elements of a Trial
(And Finding and Building a Relationship)

A. Jury Selection: Your Peers Will Judge You

In any trial, the law requires a jury of your peers. In your personal life, it’s the same thing. You need to look closely at your peer group. Who are the people who will judge you? Who are the people you must judge? Try to select a jury of your peers; those are the people with whom you should hang out.

I have a friend who’s a brilliant neurosurgeon, Dr. Keith Black; he’s also African American, one of the most gifted medical men in our country and we are both involved in an effort for brain cancer research in honor of his patient and our friend, the late Johnnie Cochran. “When you’re choosing your friends,” I once heard Keith say, “I think it’s important to choose a group of friends who are achieving more than you are. That’s the peer group you want, that’s the jury of your peers. If you choose a group of friends who are achieving less, your friends will want to keep you in their group, they will continue to bring you down. The group of friends who achieve more will attempt to bring you up so you’ll be part of their group.”

That thought resonated with me.

When you’re getting ready to form a relationship, do the same thing. You want to affiliate with a group that’s going to give you the opportunity to meet the partner you need, the person with whom you want to talk—and talk, and then talk some more. If politics is important to you, hang with an achieving group who have similar political backgrounds. Volunteer to work in their organizations. They will judge you well.

If religion is important to you, find the purest, smartest, most appealing religious group on the planet—and join it. You will find men and women there whom you judge highly.

One of my matrons of honor, Janet, loves tennis. She serves on one of the committees of the United States Tennis Association, and her husband, Mark, was an amateur tennis player in college and very well ranked. Today, when they sit down together to watch Wimbledon or the French Open, they share their mutual delight in the sport. She didn’t hang with a group of people just because they were friendly to her, she actively selected, she chose a jury of her peers to hang with—and the sunshine in her life was on that jury.

Now, be clear: I’m not talking about wealth, even though your mom might have said if you want to marry a rich man, don’t hang out with a poor guy. You can be wealthy in knowledge, experience, education, social life, as well as dollars—it depends on what you value. Hang out with that jury.

I remember reading in the Old Testament that you don’t want to be
unequally yoked
—you don’t want to be with someone who can’t pull his side of the wagon, doesn’t share your core values, your interests. Opposites may attract, but they don’t often last forever, which is why you should always marry a guy with whom you can be equally yoked. Remember the friend I mentioned, the neurosurgeon Dr. Keith Black? He recently told me that when he went looking for a mate, he too had a list. He wanted someone intelligent, goal-oriented, worldly, athletic, and pretty. He also wanted someone a daughter could use as a role model for the woman she would one day become. Well, he hit the jackpot. His wife, Dr. Carol Bennett, is a urologist who fills his list and more—that woman has it going on. Dr. Black sought someone who would complement and challenge his mind, body, and soul. Shouldn’t you? When you purposefully try to associate with a jury of your peers, you’ll meet people whose values and absolutes mesh with
yours, whose life pursuits you judge highly. You will make relationships that do last forever.

B. The Opening Statement: First Impressions

The next stage of a trial is the opening statement, where you present and represent your case. As you do this, first impressions are crucial. For example, no intelligent lawyer goes into court badly or loudly dressed. She works hard not to offend the jury. Almost surely, she won’t wear garish clothing or snagged pantyhose. When you appear at any job on the first day, you’ve purposely picked out appropriate clothing. If you work in a dance hall, you’ll wear flashy stuff. If you work in an office, you’ll be dressed down.

Think of dress as costume; it enhances the part you play.

When you go out on a date and you’re looking for that special person, are you going to be someone who uses foul language? Are you appropriately dressed but sloppy (bra strap showing, shoes scuffed)? Do your dark roots show in your blond hair?

First impressions include being knowledgeable about the world. I watch
60 Minutes
every Sunday. It’s “appointment” television for me because when I was a young girl, my family would always have an appointment on Sunday nights to gather and watch it and then have a discussion on one of the three issues presented. When you go out with a new guy, what have you got to offer in conversation? How will you maneuver the date into an experience he can’t forget?

You
are your own opening statement: how you look and how you act and sound is your brochure. Remember: there are people observing us from the sidelines at all times. If you’re wearing a shirt cut down to your navel, swigging beer, and talking loudly and crudely, forget about attracting the young architect from Harvard or the successful businessman: your opening statement is awful. Well, maybe you’ll attract him for a quickie relationship (I use the term lightly), but a booty call is not what you really want, is it?

Remember—you can always change your opening statement if it’s not working well for you. But the first thing you can do is make an assessment of who you
are today, who you want to become tomorrow—and dress, act, and sound the part.

C. The Case in Chief: Offer Your Best Evidence

The case in chief is the direct evidence you will present to the jury. It goes deeper than the opening statement. A trial lawyer very carefully prepares this evidence. And you must do the same. The best way to do it is to take a long, hard look at what you’ve become, whom you’ve chosen as friends, and where you spend your time. If you’re satisfied with what you see as you assess yourself, fine—keep it just that way. If not, you can choose to make changes. The worst thing to do is to accept ambiguity—to agree with everybody and all the choices you’ve made in the past. No good lawyer agrees with everybody.

So, question your past and your present, question your evidence the way a two-year-old would. Ask why, just like a two-year-old:
why
did I go out with him,
why
am I spending so much time with friends who bore me,
why
aren’t I doing something to perk up my mind? Every rule of law has a reason for its existence, and if you see something in your personality or habits that you automatically do without a good reason, question it and change it.

Here’s a great way to question things. Write yourself down on paper.

In real life, if I wrote me up on paper (and I was scrupulously truthful), what evidence would others read? What would my case in chief look like?

When I really began to deal with my personal life (and not a trial), I started to
keep a seven-day journal. This became my case in chief, the direct evidence of my lifestyle. It helped me step back and look at myself closely—and be pleased or displeased. The evidence gave me a clear look at the way my life had been going. I got the idea when I started my weight-loss program and my nutritionist told me to keep a food journal. How could I figure out what to eat if I didn’t already know what I’d been eating—and believe me, you forget unless you write it down. The food journal would be evidence of what I’d consumed that week.

So, I decided to keep a seven-day personal journal for evidence of the lifestyle I was leading. For the first time really, I began to think like a lawyer in my personal life. I made many objections to what I saw as I reread it. My case in chief was weak. My evidence about myself was incriminating. And so, I consciously began to change the way I made decisions about men, friends, and my lifestyle in general.

I suggest you try it. Check out your calendar, Palm Pilot, or BlackBerry for help in remembering your week. And start writing down, for seven days, most of everything you do and think and everybody you see.