Life & Career Coaching for Lawyers
Life & Career Coaching for Lawyers
One of the struggles with being a lawyer, coaching lawyers is that I get it. I can 1,000% relate to the struggles and challenges female attorneys face. I know the pains of receiving emergent emails as you’re about to walk out the door to a funeral, the helpless fatigue and mild depression that sets in on your 10th straight day of working 14-hour days. How do we handle the demands of law?
One recent study concluded that sexual harassment in the legal industry is at epidemic proportions. Sadly, I have never met a woman in the legal industry who has not experienced some of these challenges.
Yet, despite our ability to clearly articulate ourselves and zealously defend others, so many of my clients and colleagues shy away from defending themselves.
Why is that?
Many of my clients struggle with being wrong because of what they make that mean about themselves. If they are wrong, it must mean they are not good enough, they aren’t cut out to be lawyers. But what if defensiveness had so much more to teach us?
Our relationships with the people in our lives are at the root of every challenge in our lives.
Our relationships with others play a significant role in our happiness. How do we improve those relationships and overcome adversity in our relationships?
How do you describe your practice to others? When you are at a mixer and someone asks what you do, is there a momentary hesitation about promoting your skills? Why is that?
When we ignore our negative emotions and bury them under anger, we ignore what is really going on. We deny ourselves our own truth. Without experiencing those negative emotions and those associated thoughts, we can never shift away from anger to something more productive…but how?!
Whether you are a practicing attorney or engaged in another profession, horrible bosses are a thing.
Why is it that we have such a hard time working with certain people?
What role do we play in this interpersonal tug-of-war?
So many of my clients back themselves into a corner, agreeing to do things that they don’t REALLY want to do, things that they shouldn’t do, things that ask them to color outside the lines. They agree to do it because they feel like they “should” help as much as they can. But then as they settle into the work, they are fuming. All because of this word “should.”
Disagreements usually happen because we want to treat our thoughts as facts. We are clinging to our thoughts and treating them as if they are a universal truth that everyone, including our current adversary, should endorse. And when they don’t, we lose it.
How can this simple awareness change our tendency to argue?
Ever reached for a glass of wine (or two) after a “really long day” to “take the edge off” or “wind down”? Ever plow through that whole package of Oreos because you were feeling lonely on a Friday night?