Watch the YouTube version of this episode HERE

Most law firm owners say they want to be “happy.” But what if that’s the wrong target?

In this short Maximum Lawyer Live episode, Tyson breaks down a powerful distinction between happiness (which rises and falls) and peace (a stable state you can actually design for). He then shows how everyday micro-actions, like checking the mail, create ripples that quietly drain the energy you need for the work that matters.

A practical, no-fluff framework for designing more peace into your firm and your life.

What You'll Learn

•  Why “Are you happy?” creates pressure for law firm owners
•  The difference between chasing happiness and designing for peace
•  How small, everyday actions create expensive energy drains
•  Why checking the mail (or any low-value task) can quietly steal your focus
•  How to protect your energy so the right efforts compound

Timestamps

• 01:40 – Tyson reacts: Is happiness the wrong target?
• 03:15 – Designing the firm for peace (angry clients, missed deadlines, chaos)
• 07:50 – The mail example: how small actions create expensive ripples
• 09:30 – Focus only on the ripples that actually matter

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Full Transcript: 

[00:00] Welcome back to Maximum Lawyer Live. I’m Tyson Mutrux, and today’s show, it’s an interesting one. I pulled a couple clips that I’m gonna play for everyone that I’m gonna go over. They’re both from the Steven Bartlett show. They are by an unnamed monk, which is kind of interesting, but I’m gonna play these, and we’re gonna talk about it.

[00:35] (Clip begins – Monk)

[00:38] Monk: It’s a difficult question. I’m not searching for happiness. I’m searching for peace. So my state of what I’m aiming for, I would say it is peace. Because happiness for me… if there’s happiness, there is sadness. If something can rise, something must fall. If you can attain something, there’s something to lose. That’s why it’s difficult. That’s why I stopped a moment. I don’t know what type of happiness you mean. Being satisfied with where I’m standing, yes. Does it mean that I don’t have hard moments? I have hard moments.

And that’s why for me, what is it I ultimately look for? I would call it, it’s just peace.

[01:30] (Clip ends)

[01:32] Tyson: So, as you imagine, that’s pretty powerful. I think that’s a pretty powerful statement. I guess I have lots of thoughts about it. The main thought I kind of had was, like, have we looked at happiness the wrong way? Is happiness peace? You know what I mean?

[02:04] And you’ll understand why I’m talking about this in a second because there’s another clip that I’m gonna share. But like, we’re always… I say we, I’m generally talking about the legal profession… we’re always kind of… you hear people talking about, you know, being happy and all that kind of stuff. And I’m a firm believer like happiness is not like this destination that you get to, right? You do have these peaks and these valleys, and at times yes you’re happy, at times you’re sad, right? And sometimes you’re somewhere in between. But is really what we’re looking for peace?

[02:49] And whenever I first saw this, it may have been last week, I don’t know when I saw it, but ever since that I’ve been really kind of thinking about like, okay, am I just looking for peace? And I think that’s what it is. And this has been sort of a theme for me the last few weeks about like, okay, do I… I think peace is sort of like what we want in our lives, what we need in our lives.

[03:18] So you’re thinking about in the firms, right? You’re wanting… you don’t want the chaos, right, in the firms. You don’t want the angry client calls. You don’t want the missed court dates. You don’t want the screw-ups when it comes to a draft of a document. When it comes to employees calling in sick, all that kind of stuff right?

[03:40] There’s a level of peace that you kind of get as an employee because you’re not dealing with a lot of those other things. And as a law firm owner, how do we design our lives and our firms so that we have more peace?

[03:58] I find that to be a very interesting way of looking at life. And if I’m being brutally honest, it gives me an immense amount of calmness when I think about life that way. And how when I think about happiness, it almost makes me feel anxious about like when someone says, “Are you happy?” And it’s almost like I feel this anxiety building inside of me where I’m like, you feel a pressure to say, “Yes, I’m happy, I’m happy, I’m happy.”

[04:34] But if someone says, “Are you at peace?” I don’t have that same feeling, right? I have this… I know I desire peace. And if I am focused on peace, I have peace. I know that’s another thing to say, but like if truly if I’m focusing on like, “Oh, do I want peace?” it brings just an immense amount of calm over me.

[05:04] And so you really… part of this thing, you got to really protect your energy and stay the course. But that is related to the next clip.

[05:17] Tyson: I want to show this next clip before I say anything else, because to me, they’re so tied, like so greatly tied together, that we can’t really skip this one. So I’m going to play this one too. Here we go.

[05:36] (Clip begins – Monk)

[05:36] Monk: Whatever you try to hold onto, the nature of the thing is that this is happening. It’s going to move away from you. And whatever you try to avoid and push away from you is just a question of time until it’s going to move pretty close towards you. It’s going to come towards you, okay? So that means, also in the way of how it’s expressed, don’t touch the water. If you don’t want to have a life that is too shaky, don’t touch the water. Because in the moment you touch, your touch is the initiation for the ripples to appear. Same way you want to follow that goal, you want to have it easy along that goal, don’t touch any additional water along your goal. Don’t touch it because you like something, and don’t touch it because you dislike something. Because when you walk towards the goal and to here and here and here, you’re just gonna ripple your whole surroundings, which ultimately means your energy is being just drawn away from your initial goal.

[06:54] (Clip ends)

[06:58] Tyson: I can’t tell you how much I love that. And the reason why you might have drawn the connect to the dots there, but so we have this desire for peace, at least I do now. And at least I have a better idea as to what I’m really kind of looking for, right? But if you create too many of these ripples in the water, it is impossible for you to have peace.

[07:26] And some of these are kind of exist by design or by necessity early on in our firms where we have all these different ripples going on. And if we can find a way to stop the ripple… it could be the smallest of small things, right?

[07:51] Where maybe you check the mail, okay? Like, you check the mail. And I will tell you, just to be honest with you, I still to this day, I enjoy when I get to check the mail. It’s not my job to check the mail anymore, but I will tell you, I do enjoy checking the mail. However, and I’m like, I bet a lot of you check the mail. I just like it because I like whenever the check comes in or whatever, you know, or maybe I get cards from people, I just like it, right?

[08:22] And some part of that’s removed whenever someone else… a lot of times people open my cards, like the cards will come, because a lot of mail comes in, it’s like junk mail, whatever, and it’s not really a card, but sometimes it’s an actual real card, and it’s already been opened by someone else, so I get it, it kind of ruins it. However, that’s fine.

[08:41] There’s a ripple created whenever I go and I open the mail, because I see the check. I can, maybe sometimes I go and I look at the file. “Oh, who settled this case? They did a really good job,” whatever it may be. I have now created a ripple just by simply checking the mail. And so that, in a way, reduces some of my peace because it’s taking away from other things I should be doing, and then that takes away some of my peace, which then takes away from something else. And so it creates this ripple effect.

[09:16] So I think this is really interesting because it gives us something tangible to think about. I love whenever there’s an example that you can think about that’s tangible, like the ripple, like you think about actually touching the water, right? And if you can avoid touching the water in as many ways as possible… I just love the way he talked about it, how if you like it, don’t touch it. If you don’t like it, don’t touch it.

[09:49] It makes me think about social media and how much time we waste on social media or on just doing anything that is something that we should not be doing, right? And how we really have got to laser focus on the things, on the ripples that matter the most. And if you really focus on those things, those things could turn into waves, okay? And the waves are what leads to success.

[10:14] Now, from a business standpoint, is it actually possible to touch the water and it turn into a wave? I don’t think so. I don’t know. I highly doubt that a ripple is going to turn into a wave, but I think you get the concept. Here’s this… I do know this fact: If you touch the water, the ripple will spread, it’ll get bigger and bigger. But if you touch a bunch of different spots in the water, they will hit each other and it will reduce the size of that ripple. I do know that.

[10:47] So if you touch once, it allows whatever the thing is that you’re focusing on to get bigger and better, okay? And that’s just a concept that I really love that allows me to really bring this home a little bit for me. And I just love the idea, and that’s why I wanted to share with you all this idea of not touching the water, and then also how it affects your peace in your life.

[11:19] So that’s all I had today. This is not a long episode. This is a really short episode. I acknowledge that, but there’s no point in going any further. You had two great videos that you got to see that really demonstrate the point. I got my thoughts out on it. Let me know what you think. Feel free to leave a comment below in the video. If you’re in the association right now watching this, leave me a comment in the association. We can talk about it. But I found it really interesting. Hopefully you got something from this. Have a wonderful week, everybody, and we will be seeing you. Bye.