Judgment & Alignment: Business Lessons from the Court Room

I’ve always heard that jury duty in the U.S. is an interesting experience. Interesting in a good way. I thought I’d enjoy it, but I never wanted to do it since I’ve owned my own business. I have a very delicately balanced schedule between work and kids. If I unexpectedly had to leave for a week or two from my business, it’d create a bit of chaos.

Needless to say, when I got summoned for jury duty right before my second son was born, I panicked. After a little reading, I saw that I could postpone it because of my due date being so close. Phew!

Darn if I didn’t get another summons in the next year. I was able to postpone again because now I was breastfeeding. As you can see, I must’ve had some emotional charge on this topic. And to seal the deal, I got ANOTHER summons this past December. Well, I didn’t have a legitimate excuse to get out of this one.

Every time I saw the paperwork for jury duty on my desk it brought up a little anxiety. You see, I remember when my business partner, Eva, was chosen some years back and it took about two weeks out of her life. Geez, was that going to happen to me?!

Everyone has stuff that pushes their buttons. I happen to have a hot button on the topic of time. I’m a lot more peaceful about it than when I first had children, but I haven’t mastered the feeling of total spaciousness with work, toddlers, not sleeping through the night and taking care of the household stuff.

Knowing that I create my reality, I decided I was not going to serve on a trial but I didn’t know how that was going to happen. I was very caught up in the cursed ‘how’. I’d wake up in the middle of the night plotting out all the possibilities and getting myself worked up.

When I arrived on the scheduled day I armed myself with books, calendars and gadgets that connect to the internet, so I could still work on things that felt inspired. I actually got some important things done while waiting. But once in the courtroom things got very interesting.

The case was about a DUI and I instantly wondered how this person thought they were going to get out of a DUI, as they had been given a blood test. I had already decided that this person was probably guilty and they were wasting the taxpayers time and money. For this one case, about sixty people were called in as potential jurors. Whew, one person and a lot of energy, effort and resources were being poured into justice being served.

Now, I’m very aware that I was making a ton of assumptions based on nothing but my own stories. But guess what? That’s just how us humans are programmed. So I surrendered into all of my judgments and prayed I wouldn’t be called to be questioned as a potential juror. At the last minute, they called my name (of course! I was so wound up at this point!).

Heart pounding, I went into the jury box and stayed very focused on my objective: being excused. I didn’t worry about what to say. When they asked questions, I answered, with no wavering in the reality I was going to create. Within two minutes of sitting down, I was excused. I walked all the way to my car with a smile on my face.

Here’s what I learned (again):

• If you think something is a big deal, it will be a big deal.
• Spending time going round and round about the how, solves nothing. The how will come when you’re relaxed.
• You can still have anxiety about a desired outcome and still get what you want in the end.
• Suffering is optional.
• Judgment is inevitable, but stay open to other realities.
• It’s none of my business how the court system is setup. The U.S. system works better than many other countries and I appreciate that!
• If I would’ve been chosen to be on the jury for the trial my business, my finances and my sanity would’ve been fine. I always figure it out and great things would’ve happened as a result.

If I ever get summoned again, I will still focus on my end desire, but not resist the possibility of serving. My fear of spending unexpected time away from the business is what caused me the greatest unnecessary stress. I’ve never had to spend unexpected time away from my business. Even when I birthed my children, I was back to work in two days. That’s just the way I roll.

But as soon as I thought somebody else was in control of my destiny, I lost my power. I’m always in charge and I can relax into that truth.