Cowboy Law: Playing to your strengths and away from your weaknesses

COWBOY LAW—Learning how to play to your strengths and away from your weaknesses.

It seemed doable to me.

My wife and I were building a small deck on the back of our house.  Our builder was a client with that easy country grace that is not valued as it should be. But with country frankness, too, that sometimes stung when it hit the mark.

Before I left for the office one early morning during the construction, I had outlined my idea of what the deck could look like, and what I hoped was possible. But my knowledge of what was possible was limited because I had virtually no skill at building anything with my hands. 

After I was gone, our builder friend said to my wife, in his courtly way: “Miss Janet, Mike Wells is the finest guy in the world, but he “cain’t” do nothing.”

Our entire family has laughed about this story for years.  It captured so fully our friend, and his distinctive way of saying things.  But mainly it hit a bull’s eye about me.

Will Rogers, who had an uncommon common sense, said: “We are all ignorant, just about different things.”

Part of the maturing process of life is recognizing there are a whole lot of things we do not know how to do well, or how to do at all.  Things we wish we could do, and things which many of our friends and contemporaries can do well, and sometimes very well. (And which bothers us, truth be told, more than we really like to admit.) 

But in time we learn the smart money bet is to define our lives by what we can do, and to worry little about what we cannot do well, even if we really worked at it. We should limit the impact of our weaknesses as we can, but let’s keep our eye on our advantages and not our disadvantages.

We are going to run into people to whom this truism does not seem to apply.  They are smart, witty, they are good at many things we usually value in society, they look good, and they seem to have a lot of success.

But the truth is, there are very few people like this, so don’t put them up on a pedestal.  Having it all together as you live your life is not always an advantage, anyway, and sometimes, ironically, it is a disadvantage.

Starting out as a young lawyer, I knew a lawyer a year older than me who seemed to every advantage.  He had played sports at a local college, he had a commanding physical presence, he was smart, and he had a nice way about him. People, and clients, seemed to be drawn to him. The hard path to building a good practice seemed much easier for him.

But he did not work very hard, and he did not prepare as he should have.

I had been co-counsel with him on a couple of matters. After a particularly tough hearing went well for our side, due to some hard background work and preparation, he got credit, even though he had nothing to do with it.  That was the trumping power of being a successful college athlete.

That charismatic lawyer faded out in time. In a very real sense, his strong persona, without a lot of apparent weaknesses, did him in, because he failed to value effort and hard work as he should have. 

As an old, old story tells us: does the tortoise really beat the hare in life?  All the time.  All the time.

What I’ve learned about life on the way to the courthouse is this:  we are all ignorant about an awful lot of things.  We have so many things we cannot do, or do well.  But what we all have in the same amount is: time, our potential to work hard, and our ability to play to our considerable strengths.  And that is the law that matters most of all. Our ignorance, and weaknesses, notwithstanding. 

Mike Wells