There seems to be a general trend that experiencing emotions is not permitted especially among female professionals. That being emotional is a sign of weakness. It’s understandable that we don’t want to break down in tears at the office but what are you doing with those emotions once you leave for the day and does it matter?
Being a Good Leader
As lawyers we often sign up for chaos. Many of us thrive in it. But here’s the thing about chaos: chaos, like all parts of life, provides us an opportunity to learn and evolve and do the chaos better next time. Unfortunately, many of us just want to enjoy the end of the chaos and be thankful we survived. We regroup and brace for the next round. But in that regrouping there is also an opportunity to debrief and make the next round of chaos much less painful.
Overloaded and Angry
As a coach and practicing attorney, I am no stranger to being annoyed by other humans. Recently, I found myself dreading a particular meeting that was planted right in the middle of my afternoon. Through a series of events, I learned to appreciate small irritations and approach them in a way that not only gave me peace but freedom and a greater understanding of myself.
Sometimes You Have to Leave
When is time to change course and abandon ship? How do you know if you should stay and work it out or just wipe the slate clean and start again?
Cutting People Out
We all have people in our lives who have challenged us but this particular exchange opened my eyes to some deeper work waiting for me to explore. What if cutting people out of our lives was the easy route? What if there was a better way (one that didn’t involve an epic showdown)?
When Your Boss is a . . .
As many of my clients and myself have concluded: just because we are attorneys does not mean that we are good bosses, leaders, managers, or mentors. So what do you do when you find yourself working with a boss (or any human for that matter) who is less of a leader and mostly just a jerk?
Difficult Co-Workers
We can always choose to live with those negative perceptions and interpretations of our life. But the power there comes from our choosing to feel negatively about those experiences and to think negatively about those experiences.
Being Treated Differently
As humans in this world, we all have a role to play in fostering the evolution of thought. While that might mean we have to place ourselves in uncomfortable situations and call out actions that we know are not mal-intended. Unless we’re honest with people about how their words or actions impact our abilities to show up, to stand up, to speak up, we will never make the progress that our world so desperately needs.
Quick Fixes
We all want to be able to “fix” the problems that we see in our lives. Once we understand what is causing chaos and suffering, of course we want to fix it. It’s only natural to want to resolve it as soon as possible. What we overlook in this worldview is that when it comes to ourselves there is no such thing as a quick fix. Not only does it take time and effort to transform your relationship with yourself and reconfigure your automatic thinking, the desire for a quick fix ignores the real work that must be done.
Why You Are Frustrated
When we find ourselves living in frustration over the circumstances of our lives we must take a step back and acknowledge that what is making us frustrated is not the events around us but rather our thinking about them.