The amazing attorney Jordan Jewkes shares his expertise, wisdom, and beautiful examples of compassion and love.
How can you put yourself in someone ele’s shoes to better understand where they’re coming from?
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Welcome to Lovin My Daughter-in-law podcast, where my mother-in-law, relationship expert and master certified coach, LeAnn Austin, will help you create more love and connection with your daughter-in-law and everyone else you care about.
Hey y’all, welcome to Lovin My Daughter-in-law, Episode #112: Empathy with Jordan Jewkes
I love observing and connecting with other humans, especially noting how they feel and implement love into their lives and their relationships.
We have the amazing Jordan Jewkes sharing some beautiful love and relationship insights with us today. All right, Jordan, tell us a little about you.
Hey LeAnn, thank you very, very much for having me. I’m excited to be here. This is a treat for me. It’s my honor.
My name is Jordan Jewkes. I’m a father of four. I am very involved in my church, and also I am a practicing attorney, with offices on the south side of Atlanta. We do mostly personal injury law. I’m happy to join and to be with you today.
Ah, well, it’s such an honor to have you here, Jordan. Thank you. So I’m going to ask you five questions. And the first one is, how do you incorporate love into your business and life, and how does that impact your relationships?
That is a really good question and I hope that I am treating love in my relationships on business and on personal levels in the same way, but I think that that’s a tough thing to do, especially in the business setting.
I will say just from an owner of the business, I think it’s really, really important to empathize, and really to have love for your employees. To help them do good. They are ultimately stakeholders in the organization. And I think regardless of whether it’s a business, it’s a church, and especially a family, for true stakeholders, people that are there to help you and to support and to love, you have to express love and be genuine with them and be authentic.
That can be tough on a business side because, you know, mistakes happen and on the family side as well. And so I think truly trying to understand who they are, why they’re making those decisions and try, what I try and do is put myself in their shoes so that I can better understand how they are making decisions and seeing things, and it helps me to be able to help them.
I love that so much. Just the empathy and putting yourself in their shoes, because I can imagine as an attorney, that can be pretty tricky sometimes I would bet.
Yeah. And so here’s the thing, you know, I’m in a highly, gosh what’s the word, I’m in a business that tends to be very adversarial by nature. The difficult thing for me is I’m not adversarial by nature. I dislike, you know, conflict, highly dislike it. And so it’s my sort of natural position to avoid conflict. And so the way that I kind of cope with that is to be able to really empathize with the other party, whether it’s an insurance agent or a really insurance adjuster, or it’s an opposing attorney on the other side. I have to sort of slow down and say, all right, if they say something that it comes across as demeaning or personal, I have to be able to say to them, okay, I don’t think that’s how they meant it. Let me let me put myself in their shoes to be able to really see where they’re coming from.
Ah, that’s so beautiful. And what a great way to operate as yourself, and your business, and at church, and in your family, and everything. I love that, thank you. All right, so what is something you love about you and why?
This is a really tough question because I think it’s hard to say, hey this is what I love about me because we are so hyper critical of ourselves. I think society with social media and everything else, it tends to promote this hyper, you know, analytical and it makes you critical of yourself and others on a tough scale.
I’m going to default to my mom here because I think what she always says even growing up, she would say that, you know Jordan, what I love about you is you treat people the same regardless of their class or social status or whatever it is.
So I think one of my qualities that I have to work less on to improve than maybe many other qualities is the ability to see people for who they are and to come at them with maybe less judgment, regardless of their social status or position. It’s just a little easier for me to extend love and trust and benefit the people, at least that’s what my mom says. And so I feel that kind of has come natural to me in many ways.
I love that. And I’ve seen that in you as well as I’ve seen you in leadership positions and just having that empathy and that love for everyone, no matter what. So what an amazing quality, that’s pretty cool. Thank you.
All right. So number three, I love talking about connection with others and ourselves. And I think the daughter-in-law relationship is packed full of endless examples to learn from. So, any thoughts about your future daughter-in-law or a mother and daughter-in-law that you know?
Gosh, this question I’m woefully inexperienced. Really, I’ve never had a daughter-in-law. I hope to have at least two as I have two sons. But I’ve actually done a lot of thinking about this and, and trying to I guess give practical advice. And I think that I am one of 11, you know, and so I’ve got two parents who have 11 kids who are all now married or the very last one, the very youngest one is now engaged. And so there are four boys and seven girls. And so that’s four daughters-in-law that my parents have sort of welcomed into the fold, as well as seven sons-in-law.
So just kind of thinking about those relationships and as they’ve developed over the years, I’ve thought about, you know, what’s practical advice. And I see my parents as saints and as people who rarely make any mistakes. And I don’t want to be critical of them of any way, but I also would say when we approach a relationship, I think when a child gets married, I mean it’s a beautiful thing, it’s a wonderful thing, and we love our families. And I think the tendency is to, hey let’s quickly bring them into the fold as quickly as we can and do everything we can to make sure they feel comfortable and a part of the family as soon as we can.
But I think sometimes we have to appreciate that the daughter or son-in-law comes into this with obviously optimism and happiness, but also some hesitancy and, what’s the best word, some level of difficulty with embracing that, and maybe I’m just speaking from a larger family. Maybe that doesn’t happen. I think it does. But I think one thing that I I have seen over the years is maybe giving space to allow that daughter-in-law or the son-in-law find their own space within that family unit that is new to them.
Yeah. And sometimes rushing them to be a part of their traditions and their activities and their circumstances can be a little daunting for that new in-law. So I guess my very practical advice would give them all the love in the world, but also give them space and allow them to grow and to find their place within that extended family.
I love that so much. And I think, too, with that, letting them kind of bring to the table their traditions and their things that they have, because that opens up a whole new world when we can stop as the parents-in-law per se, to stop thinking it needs to be our way or a tradition that we’ve already had. How can these new daughters-in-law, sons-in-law, whatever, bring new things that maybe we could start incorporating into our family. So I love that thought of just opening up the space for all of it.
That’s a great idea. I mean, you hit the nail on the head there I think, because I think one of the really beautiful things of two families joining together through marriage is exactly that, the traditions and the strengths of each family. And there’s often a sense of pride, like, hey no, we always do this for Christmas, or we always do this on Sunday night, or Wednesday evening as part of our family. And we’re hesitant on our own to embrace other traditions and ideas, when really when you blend them together, it’s beautiful and it does create a wonderful sense of love and happiness. That is just fantastic. Yeah, that’s a great thought. Well yours too, thank you so much. Yeah, totally agree.
All right, so anything else you’d like to share? And where can our audience go to find out more about you? Yeah, I love this topic. We could really talk for a long time about it and there’s so much to learn about it. It’s deep and there are so many facets to it.
You can find me on Facebook and Instagram. I have a leadership position in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which I love, and I love serving in that capacity. I love being a dad and I love being a father and a husband as well.
You can always email me at my email at jordanjewkes@hotmail.com is the easiest way to reach out to me, and anyone would be welcome to do that anytime. I love that. And I’ll put all that information in the show notes and they can follow you. It’s fun to follow your Instagram account, but I haven’t seen an attorney Instagram account. So you’ve got some fun things on there. So I highly recommend y’all following Jordan on that. And as a leader in our church and everything, he is amazing. So really appreciate that and you being here.
Okay, so our last question, what is your favorite question or quote about love and how have you used it for yourself and in your relationships?
Yeah. I spent a lot of time just sort of thinking of, there are so many wonderful examples out there. And like you, LeAnn, I love the scriptures and I love looking to those in the scriptures who’ve been there and done that. And there’s no better example of love in the scriptures than our savior, Jesus Christ. And I truly believe that. And I try and follow him and treat people the way that he treated them, with love and compassion. And over the last year, you know, as I’ve studied in the New Testament and the Bible, I have really just tried to become more like a savior in how he’s compassionate with others.
And so one of my favorite scriptures that I’ve really come to appreciate, it’s short, is John 11:35. It just says, “Jesus wept.” And when I was young, I’d read that scripture and say, why did they include that? You know, why did they include that scripture? But as you start to study and read the entire chapter and appreciate what was going on at the time, it’s so meaningful and impactful.
And I know you know the story, but essentially, Mary and Martha’s brother Lazarus had passed away and Christ had the opportunity to go immediately to him, and to heal him. And instead, he carried and he stayed for, I think, two days. And when he finally went there, Martha and Mary, particularly Mary, was upset and basically said, you know, My Lord, if you could have been here sooner, if you hadn’t waited two days, you could have prevented him from dying.
And Christ with just incredible compassion says, you know, he visibly weeps in front of her and the Jews. And what I love about it is the compassion he has as an all knowing, you know, God, as the son of God, he knew that that Lazarus was dead, and he knew the impact it would have. And he had said that his his sleeping is to glorify God. Yet he still had this incredible emotional experience And I think he had that because he just loved Lazarus, but he also loved Mary and Martha, and he knew that the pain that they were having to endure because of their brother passing.
And so what I love about that really is, Christ knew what was happening. You know, he there was a purpose for it all. He knew the end from the beginning. Yet when he saw the pain of others, he couldn’t help but having compassion and love for them.
And so I think it’s just a wonderful example, you know, especially in family, but in business settings, when we know there are tough decisions to make in business life, you know, when you have compassion on those around you, even your adversary. When you can really put your feet in their shoes for our clients, you know, when they get injured or having a difficult legal process and you put yourself in their shoes. Even if you kind of know the end from the beginning, you can see where this is going to go. You have to have compassion and love for other people and for your children. It’s just, it’s so important.
So I love that verse. It is incredibly short, yet incredibly powerful, about love and compassion and learning to see people for who they are and to hurt with them. And that’s a good thing. It’s good to have those emotions. Absolutely. Ah, that is so beautiful, “Jesus wept.” Hmm, something to think about.
Thank you, Jordan. Thank you for sharing your love insights with us. So appreciate you being here. Thank you, LeAnn. I’ve really enjoyed it. Thank you for having me again.
Have a good one y’all, and here’s to empathy, connection, and love.
If you enjoyed this podcast, check out LeAnn’s Connection Crew program, where she coaches and teaches a variety of ways to have more fun and connection in our relationships. LeAnn also shares the five secrets she uses to create a beautiful relationship with me and her other daughter-in-law. She’s the real deal! I highly recommend you check this out.
And if you want one easy question you can keep in your back pocket and use to increase the love you feel for your daughter-in-law today, go to leannaustin.com and get the one question.
