It’s not uncommon for attorneys to question their sanity in the face of a dysfunctional work environment which is all too common in the legal industry. Today we are digging into endemic toxicity in the legal industry to help you better understand whether your workplace is a danger to your mental health and long term well-being and what to do about it.

As you may know, in the Collective we have spent the entire month of March exploring the ins and outs of relationships. This month we are exploring a related topic: how to transform relationships and start advocating for ourselves. This month’s newsletter and podcast episodes are packed with actionable steps to help you start taking action to transform toxic workplaces and relationships and start using your voice more effectively.

It may come as no surprise to many of you that a 2022 study in the MIT Sloan Management Review cited toxic work cultures as the top driver of employee attrition. The study concluded that toxic work cultures drove employees out the exit door faster than job insecurity or lack of recognition for performance. The report noted that the leading contributors to toxic work cultures include: failure to promote diversity, equity, and inclusion; workers feeling disrespected; and unethical behavior.

This study sheds light on several red flags that should not be ignored and may very well indicate a toxic work environment which could wreak havoc on your well-being and productivity. Below are a few of the common toxic characteristics identified by studies and ones that I see most often in my own experience working with hundreds of women lawyers:

Common Red Flags in the Legal Industry:

High Turnover Rates: A consistently high turnover rate can indicate that employees are not satisfied or are experiencing difficulties in the workplace. Not only does high turnover rate indicate significant workplace challenges, it also suggests higher pressure and workloads on those continually left behind due to ongoing attrition issues.  For those of you entering the job market or looking to make a move, asking about turnover rates can be critical in avoiding this sign of a toxic workplace. 

Poor Communication: Lack of open, honest, and transparent communication between management and employees, or among team members, can create confusion, misunderstandings, and resentment. IMHO This one is all too common in the legal industry. Productive feedback is rarely provided and passive aggression is generally the preferred approach. This toxic characteristic not only makes it difficult for you to hone your skills and understand your strengths but ultimately is detrimental to your clients.

Micromanagement: Excessive control or micromanagement by supervisors can stifle creativity, demotivate employees, and create a sense of distrust. Micromanagement in the legal industry makes it difficult to complete work efficiently and effectively but also prevents attorneys from developing their own approach and style within their practice. Over time, this leads to senior attorneys who are insecure in their abilities to operate independently.

Lack of Work-Life Balance: Expectations of long working hours, constant availability, or pressure to sacrifice personal time can lead to burnout and decreased job satisfaction. This one needs little explanation. If you look around at your coworkers and do not see a single person whose life you would like to emulate, there is a good likelihood that the organization has a low tolerance for healthy work-life balance.

Unclear Expectations: When employees are unsure about their roles, responsibilities, or performance expectations, it can lead to stress, frustration, and feelings of incompetence. This issue becomes particularly prevalent as attorneys advance in their career. As you become more senior and approach partnership, your responsibilities should similarly evolve and there should be a clear understanding of what is required to advance to partnership. Where those requirements are undisclosed or amorphous, the situation is ripe for further discussion and clarification or a speedy exit.

Resistance to Change: An organization that is resistant to change or innovation may become stagnant, hindering growth opportunities for employees and the company as a whole. This has become more and more common in the legal industry. In my experience, today’s generation of attorneys are unwilling to accept “this is just how we’ve always done things” or to tolerate firms that are unwilling to concede any need for growth or evolution. I have witnessed countless attorneys leave firms due to stagnant hiring practices, lack of DEI investment, archaic return to office policies, and inflexible (or nonexistent) family leave protocols. If you see an organization seemingly stuck in the dark ages my recommendation is to have frank conversations as early as possible to best understand the organization’s willingness to evolve.

Lack of Support for Growth and Development: When opportunities for learning, training, and career advancement are scarce, employees may feel stuck and unfulfilled in their roles. This toxic trait exists at all levels of the legal industry from baby lawyers looking to develop fresh new skills to young partners wanting to understand business development and management. If your workplace is not willing to provide that level of support and mentorship I strongly encourage you to explore alternative avenues for support.

While the foregoing are just a handful of the toxic characteristics identified in recent studies and that I have witnessed in the legal industry, there are countless others that is simple Google search can highlight.

Identifying these red flags as early as possible and taking steps to address them is crucial for fostering a healthy and productive work environment. If you find yourself disconnected from your workplace struggling to access motivation and disengaged from your work, you may be suffering the side effects brought on by a toxic workplace. Overcoming a toxic workplace can be challenging, but it’s essential for your well-being and professional growth.

 What to do in the face of toxic workplaces

• Identify the toxic behaviors: Be aware of your organizations toxic traits.
• Maintain professionalism: While it’s important to address toxic behavior, it’s equally crucial to remain professional. Avoid engaging in negative behavior yourself and focus on your work.
• Seek support: Talk to a coach, trusted colleagues, or friends outside of work about your experiences. Sometimes, simply sharing your feelings can provide relief.
• Set boundaries: Establish clear boundaries between your work life and personal life. Don’t let toxic behavior consume you outside of work hours.
• Document incidents: Keep a record of any incidents of toxic behavior, including dates, times, and details of what occurred. This documentation can be helpful if you decide to escalate the issue.
• Address the issue directly: If you feel comfortable, consider addressing the toxic behavior directly with the individual(s) involved. Check out the podcast this month to learn how to have difficult conversations and negotiate on your behalf.
• Talk to HR or management: If the toxic behavior persists or escalates, consider discussing the issue with HR or management. Present your documentation and express your concerns about the impact of the toxicity on your well-being and productivity.
• Seek alternatives: If the toxic environment persists despite your efforts, start exploring other job opportunities. Your mental and emotional health should not be compromised for the sake of a job.
• Focus on self-care: Engage in activities outside of work that help you relax and recharge. This could include exercise, hobbies, spending time with loved ones, or seeking therapy.
• Know when to walk away: Sometimes, despite your best efforts, a toxic workplace may not change. In such cases, it’s important to prioritize your well-being and consider leaving for a healthier work environment.

Want more on these topics? Check out this month’s newsletter and related Lawyer Life Podcast episodes where we dig into to how to transform relationships and how to have difficult conversations!

Now that we are adults everything seems to have changed. Not only are our lives and personalities more complicated than they were as children we start to care a lot more about the type of people we want to spend our personal time with. Now also for whatever reason that fear of rejection seems to be a bit more painful than it was when we were children or perhaps that part of us just never really grows up (?!).

As most of us are pressed for time it seems a lot easier to simply lament the fact that we don’t have a large friend group any longer than to expend the effort in time it makes to create new friendships. But in reality there are a lot of simple ways to make friends that will not only further that goal but will likely fulfill other interests that make us well-rounded, happier humans.

For whatever reason, March has declared itself the month of relationships. If that doesn’t make sense to you it’s probably because you’re not following along on the podcast, in which case, what are you feeding your ear balls?! This month, in the Lawyer Life Podcast we are not only exploring how to deal with difficult relationships but those episodes will be followed by episodes addressing how to know when a relationship has run its course and how to transform any relationship. Since I have been spending so much time thinking about relationships, it has gotten me thinking about one interesting recurring relationship theme I often coach on: how to establish and create new friendships as an adult professional woman.

For me personally, my legal career started in a city where I knew no one and had no ties whatsoever. Overtime, this introvert of yours has tried a variety of tactics to establish and create meaningful friendships as an adult. The following are my tried and tested tactics for finding and maintaining adult friendships.

Join Professional Groups or Organizations

This goes beyond your local and state bar associations — trust me, we already have enough lawyer friends. For me, this consisted of Junior League and a city-sponsored leadership program. While joining these programs harkened back to my days joining a sorority in college when I didn’t know anyone there either the results were worth every excruciating formality of the process. I found like-minded professional friends that have lasted long beyond the close of the event calendar. Time consuming? Yes. Overly structured? Yes. Both things that pushed me outside my comfort zone and forced me to learn and experience things I would otherwise have missed.

Attend Networking Events (other than bar/firm events)

After getting plugged into my local Chamber of Commerce via the city-sponsored leadership program, I signed up for one of their ongoing networking events and, despite my discomfort, attended a morning networking event. While there, I was able to connect with the lone attendee who appeared just as uncomfortable as I was in the room full of men in suits. Our discomfort quickly led to connection and our friendship followed from there.

Take Initiative at Work

This goes beyond taking on new projects but instead asks that we initiate conversations with colleagues and participating in work-related events or outings to expand our work networks. Some of the most important work-related friendships that I formed occurred with women outside of my practice group with whom I actively pursued a social relationship. They provided invaluable perspective on my working group and my team and could also relate to the challenges of practicing law in general. If there are women in your organization that you admire but that you don’t know socially, those are the ones to experiment with. Invite one of these women out on a coffee run and come prepared to talk about anything other than work. Try out: What do you do for fun when you’re not at work…if you weren’t a lawyer, what would you be doing for a career?…Tell me about how you landed in law… Bonus: those relationships will become essential for lateral moves as everyone starts bouncing around among firms and in-house jobs.

Join a Social Group or Club

One of the easiest topics of conversation when you were uncomfortable is that of your interests outside of work and your hobbies (if you don’t have any or don’t have time for that, let’s develop a plan to change that). I was recently at a holiday party where I didn’t know anybody and I struck up a conversation with an older woman at my table who mentioned that she was in a stand-up paddleboard  and kayak club. As someone who loves paddle boarding and kayaking, after the party I reached out to the host to get the woman’s contact information and contacted her to see if I could tag along to her group’s next outing (a very uncomfortable outreach for me!). She obliged and it has opened my world to a whole new group of interesting people that I would never have met otherwise as well as an opportunity to enjoy my hobbies which were being neglected. Bonus: groups like this open the possibilities to all sorts of potential client opportunities as well!

Volunteer for Causes You Care About

Years ago after my divorce, I reached out to the statewide domestic violence and sexual assault organizations to see if I could support them in any way (might as well put my traumas to good use, eh?). I quickly became a board member for a DV/SA organization and years later became the chair of the statewide coalition. That simple e-mail has connected me with so many interesting people with so many amazing backgrounds and great connections across my state. Again, amazing client opportunities as well as friendships.

Host Social Gatherings

We currently live in my husband’s hometown, albeit a metro of one million people, he seems to know or be related to most of them (Irish Catholics!). Because of this, I often found myself in groups where everyone knew everyone else and I was the outsider. To remedy this, my husband and I decided to make a regular practice or hosting a Sunday dinner for couples in our friend group. It was an easy way for me to get one-on-one time with the wives of his friends and build meaningful connections with previously casual acquaintances.

A few things to keep in mind…

Take the initiative. So many of us are waiting for someone else to initiate contact/conversation with us, but according to one study, when people viewed friendship as happening without effort, they were lonelier years later. When they viewed friendship as taking effort, they were less lonely.  Whether you use any of the tactics above, I recommend going into the situation believing that everybody there wants to be your friend and wants to get to know you but they’re just waiting for you to initiate it. Don’t wait for friendships or new connections to happen organically. Make it happen for yourself. Both you and the other party will thank you.

Seasons change and so do friendships. Not every friendship is meant to go the distance and that is OK. (Read that again.) If you find yourself struggling to maintain existing friendships because you feel like you should it’s possible that the friendship has simply run its course. That is not an indictment of you or the individual but simply an acknowledgement that our life is comprised of different seasons with different needs and different individuals willing to join us for those seasons. If a friendship feels forced let it go with love and move on (and listen to the upcoming podcast on that topic!).

Being vulnerable and authentic is the easiest way to forge connection. If you are at a networking event and you’re uncomfortable, say it to whomever you are talking to. If you have met someone that you want to become a closer friend with, say it. One of the most memorable adult friendship experiences I ever had was when a woman that I have known casually for years asked me to lunch saying I just don’t have a lot of friends and I would like to connect with you on that level. Her vulnerability blew my mind and opened my heart to invest more in that relationship. I won’t ever forget it.

Organization is important. Life is messy and busy and it’s easy to lose sight of these essential relationships. We must not forget that friendships require nurturing and attention to some degree. Every week when I sit down with my calendar I make sure that I have time scheduled to catch up with friends. At times, I have even developed a list of individuals that I want to maintain a relationship with or develop a relationship with and I used that list to guide my weekly calendar reviews to ensure that I was making time for everybody on that list at some point over the upcoming weeks. As an added bonus, whenever I had a bout of the “woe is mes” I was able to look at that list and remember all the amazing friendships I had in my life. Yes, it sounds overly structured and impersonal but it is the best way I have found to hold myself accountable to be a good friend and show up to nurture my existing relationships and those I am developing.  In my world getting together with friends is no different than scheduling time to go to the gym – if it’s important to me it gets a spot on my calendar.

Check out the full Newsletter and related topics here.

Photo by Belle Co

Prior to the pandemic, most of my clients admit to feeling like chickens running around with their heads cut off half of the time going from soccer games to PTA meetings to client board meetings to practice group meetings to being screamed at on the phone by angry clients and partners….They were constantly running around juggling 10,000 different things but there was some semblance disconnection. By “disconnection” I mean the time and energy it took to actually get from one of these places to the next. Even though it felt like we were running around like mad women most of the time, there were periods of space between those emergencies — time wasted in the kitchenette talking up a colleague, hopping onto the elevator to grab a quick lunch or coffee, actually walking (or even driving!) from meeting to meeting. There was a transitional moment or moments (if we were lucky)…not that we appreciated them at the time.

What I’m seeing now with my clients is that the time it took to transition from one of those things to the next whether it was the five minutes you spent in the car or the five minutes you spent walking from meeting to meeting, there was breathing space available to us.

Little did we know how valuable that time actually was.

For many of us who have been working from home for the past 30+ months, we are finding that those transition periods have completely disappeared. There is no opportunity to clear our heads or return text messages walking from meeting to meeting. There are no 15-minute breaks to walk outside (READ: breathe fresh air) and go pick up something for lunch. No more chit chatting with your girlfriend at the coffee bar. Instead, we click from meeting to meeting without breaks and without a moment to catch our breaths.

In this remote work environment, we have conditioned ourselves to be 100% connected with our work and our clients 100% of the time.

Keeping office hours seems unusual given that our office is now our homes where we spend 100% of our time.

In a pre-pandemic world, many of my clients struggled to disconnect when they were home. They had that nagging itch to check their email every time they sat down with their partners to watch a movie. While they were waiting for the pasta to boil and cooking dinner, they would absentmindedly scroll through their emails to see what was happening. We did these things automatically and without thinking. But now it seems the desire to check in and remain connected has become even more extreme as expectations around our availability have changed.

How, in a world where our homes are now our offices, do we find space to breathe?

I recently had a client who was struggling with this very same thing and wanted to spend some time learning how to disconnect. She wanted to be able to step away from her computer for periods of time to have lunch, go for a walk, turn over the laundry, or simply take a break. She was craving those small pleasures that we all overlooked when life was in person. Who knew that the 20-minute commute into the office would now be seen as a luxurious moment of peace?!

In a digital world, boundaries have become essential.

The primary struggle as I see it is how to best communicate those boundaries when people are not actually seeing whether you are in your office or away. While we can implement certain strategies like setting clear office hours and communicating those to your team, over utilizing out-of-office messaging (no matter who it annoys!), and updating your status on digital messaging platforms, the real work to disconnect is internal. I can give my clients all sorts of tools to implement better boundaries at work and to seek some separation from their professional lives, but if they’re not doing their own inner work, none of the tools that I offer will work.

To illustrate this point, I asked my client to start conducting a simple experiment. First and foremost I asked her to set clear office hours that she would commit to honoring every day. When people called her outside of those office hours she wouldn’t answer — in the same way we didn’t answer our office phones after hours while driving the car pool. We also established a schedule for checking her email. We agreed upon using a timer on her phone to remind her every two hours to check her email. In between those time frames of checking her email, she was free to focus on research and actual projects on her plate. She was to close all email platforms during those two hours. Last, I asked her to start paying closer attention to how much this whole set up freaked her out. Specifically, I asked her to write down all of the nasty thoughts and worst case scenarios playing out in her head as we implemented this plan.

Someone is going to be mad at me. I’m going to miss something. Someone is looking for me. People are going to think I’m not available. I’m going to get reprimanded. If I remain unavailable I’m going to get fired.

While it’s certainly possible that some of those wild scenarios could have become reality, it was also equally possible that none of them would happen. Is it really unacceptable to be away from your email for two hours? We all go to the doctor. We all have continuing education requirements. When life was in person we would often attend 2-hour lunches or meetings. Why is it that our brains are OK with being absent for blocks of time in those scenarios but not OK with us doing it to actually do the job we are being paid for? Because we allow all of those nasty thoughts to carry such weight that it compels us to run to our emails every 30 seconds to confirm that the sky is not, in fact, falling.

If this sounds familiar. Do this. For your sanity and for the good of your long-term career.

The panic that this plan elicited in my client and the discomfort that she experienced as she stepped away from her email for short periods of time really brought to the forefront of her awareness what a critical problem this had become. How checking her email had almost become an obsessive addiction to confirm that she wasn’t messing up. To assuage her concerns that people were upset with her. Now that she had some space, she could see how toxic her relationship with connectedness had become. While she was making dinner she was thinking about her email. While she was talking to her husband, she was thinking about her email. While she was eating her lunch, she was worrying about her email. The anxiety was constant.

She saw those worries build and compound during her day as we conducted the experiment. It wasn’t fun and it wasn’t comfortable for her but at the end of it all, she saw that none of her worst case scenarios happened by stepping away from her email for two hour blocks at a time. She was more productive. She was more present. The experience allowed her to foster the belief: I can step away to focus and do my job and nothing life-altering will happen in a span of two hours.

In a world where everyone is so connected and the lines between our home and our professional lives have become so blurred, the need to set boundaries and start paying attention to our automatic impulses to constantly check our email and be available are critically important.

How are those impulses serving you?

If this is to become our new normal, we need to start re-employing the small daily treasures that can make life so much more enjoyable. Taking breaks. Disconnecting. Stepping away. And honoring a set work schedule. Your professional world will not come crumbling down if you are away for two hours. I would even posit to say that your professional world will not come crumbling down if you step away from your email for as long as three or even four hours. What would you gain have if you were able to eradicate the thinking that is gluing you to your phone and your email all day long? More peace? More happiness? I encourage you to conduct your own experiment to find your own answer.

Photo by İsra Nilgün Özkan

There are all these rules about how we are supposed to live and how things are supposed to work out and many of us wholeheartedly believe these rules and it is stagnating us.

I recently had a client who was struggling to figure out her next move and she was struggling to make a decision. She was examining certain career opportunities available to her and she was convinced that they were all mutually exclusive. She believed that she had to pursue her legal career or her passion for social change. She believed that she had to be an educator or an attorney. She felt that she was at a crossroads and the only way to move forward was to make a dramatic change one way or the other. She was paralyzed by the

tyranny of the or. 

During our session together, we were able to explore the possibility that maybe none of her dreams need to be mutually exclusive: it’s possible to have a legal career and do lobbying work. It’s possible to be an attorney and support nonprofits with their legislative work. It’s possible to be an attorney and an educator.

When we allow our ourselves to buy into either/or propositions, our brain is not able to see the solutions available to us. (Hello, confirmation bias, you old goat!)

When we feel like we are faced with mutually exclusive options, our duty as evolving humans is to challenge these prescribed rules and ask:

Why can’t we do both? What could that look like?

Does one choice really have to eclipse the other?

Is there some way we could make both options work?

How do we know that we can’t do both?

The only way you will ever know the answer to these questions is if you ditch the tyranny of the or and invest in both and thinking.

If you catch yourself feeling stuck and unsure what to do next ask yourself whether you are subscribing mutually exclusive thinking. Instead consider ways that you can make all options work for you in this moment.

I encounter all sorts of professionals whose lives are multifaceted and well-rounded. Women who are invested in both and thinking and committed to living a well-rounded life that incorporates everything they want. They don’t allow their lives to be a series of black and white options: they subscribe to both and  thinking.

If this is appealing to you, I would love to visit with you and see how we can get you closer to a balanced, both and kind of life. Grab a free consult and let’s get to work.

This doesn’t necessitate any large life changes but can be applied at the simplest and most basic levels. I can’t work out and get my work done. I can’t get enough sleep and finish these projects. I can’t have a social life and have a career.

The next time you catch yourself in one of these simplistic lines of thinking, ask yourself whether this is a middle ground. For instance, if you are stuck thinking I can’t work out and get my work done, what if you only tried to work out for 30 minutes instead of an hour? What if you identified projects that don’t need an A+ finish and used that extra time to workout?

When we allow ourselves to ditch the tyranny of the or, we are often amazed at the solutions that manifest just to being open to new possibilities.

Photo by DS stories

Disclaimer: I do not share details of my coaching sessions without explicit consent from my clients and any personal information has been altered to protect their lovely identities.

In this particular session, my friend Claire explained how she is working on a new side-gig she is really passionate about. Her excitement for the project was evident and she explains that if she could, she would spend every waking hour on this endeavor. The problem? Claire is a full-time WFH attorney. Every day, Claire balances her passion project with the demands of her job. In addition, Claire is in the process of moving and has all the lovely tasks that come with that experience. She also has a boyfriend and a 3-year-old child. As I asked Claire to rate different aspects of her life on a scale of 1 to 10 it became clear to me that her dissatisfaction in various areas of her life all came back to one glaring issue: she believed didn’t have enough time and she believed the only solution was to quit her FT job.

She explained that any time she was frustrated at work or wishing that she was spending time on her passion project instead of sitting in conference calls and CLEs (can I get an amen?), her mind immediately responded:

You should just quit. This is too much. You don’t have enough time to do it all.

In the moment, those kinds of black and white thoughts are incredibly persuasive. They elicit such strong visceral reactions from us and strong feelings of hopelessness that it’s difficult to believe that they are not legitimate. However, surprisingly, sometimes those thoughts are simply just thoughts and there is no factual basis behind them.

Before we started exploring options for leaving her full-time position, I wanted to get clear on the facts.  I asked Claire to help me understand how she was spending her time. As we walked through a typical week, we got really clear on how much time she was spending on her side project, her grown-up job, acting as a mother and a partner, and moving.

At the end, it became clear to both of us that Claire was, in fact, getting it all done rather seamlessly. In addition, she rated her physical, emotional, and relationship health at 8, 9 and 10, respectively. Other areas of her life that she rated poorly, she reasoned was because she didn’t have enough time for them (e.g. she wanted more time with friends and more time for her passion project). However, as we explored her day-to-day activities, we realized that on most nights she wraps up by 6:00 PM, she gets to the gym three times a week, spends time with her boyfriend and her daughter every evening and over lunch breaks, and she was getting plenty of sleep.

So what was really the problem?

The problem was that she truly believed that she did not have enough time and she blamed that on her current job. As we worked through the session, we started to see that maybe those thoughts didn’t have a lot of factual support. Rather, we realized that by allowing her brain to demonize her job and marinate in thoughts of time scarcity, she was making herself miserable. In fact, at the end of our session she observed: I’m getting it all done I just don’t like the way that it feels.

Of course not! It feels terrible to believe that you don’t have enough time and you have to quit your job in order to make it all work. That is a frightening and stressful conclusion to carry around all day long. Rather, when Claire sat with the realization that she is getting it all done and is doing a good job, she was able to move out of the frustration cloud and start making different decisions about her days.

When you stop dragging hopelessness around with you all day long, you have a lot more energy to do all the other things you *think* you don’t have enough time for.

Claire realized that she was not going to be able to spend every day, all day working on her passion project while maintaining another full-time job but she also realized that she didn’t really want that. She didn’t want to quit her full time job and the faulty belief that she *needed* to in order to “have enough time” was freaking her out. Rather than living in her truth (I am a FT attorney with a side gig), she was choosing to live in a black and white world where her full-time job was the source of all of her woes: she had to do the passion project or the job but not both. Suddenly, she realized that if she snapped out of the funk and stopped ragging on her job every day, she just might find the emotional space to improve the other areas of her life that she felt were lacking.

How often have we chosen to believe that we can’t get it all done, that we’re failing, and that we just don’t have enough time?

How many times in your life have you taken the time to honestly explore the validity of those thoughts?

While there may certainly be times in our lives when priorities conflict and choices must be made, so many of us rush to believe we don’t have time, we can’t make it work, something has to give. That kind of either or thinking is terrifying and we often accept it automatically and without question. As Claire discovered, that kind of patterning not only makes you feel miserable but it can detract from the reality that you are in fact handling it all like a boss.

So what’s the answer to this time quagmire? Brutal honesty. Brutal honesty about where your time goes, what you want, and what you are capable of.

Photo by Keira Burton from Pexels

Their minds are constantly re-hashing conversations, reconsidering strategies, worrying about what’s in their email.

The build-up of anxieties drives them to obsessively check their emails to see whether they have missed anything or gotten any feedback on their most recent projects.

Every time they check their emails, they are either “rewarded” with radio silence–Wahoo! I can relax for a minute!–or they receive more evidence that they cannot, ever, disconnect–Good thing I checked my email and can respond to this emergency right away!

Over time, this pattern disconnects us from our friends, family, and loved ones and creates an obsessive compulsive relationship with our phones and our jobs.

My clients want to be able to disconnect. They want to be present with their loved ones.

They want to enjoy a nice meal with their spouse and talk about something other than work.

They want to silence the chaos in their minds and focus only on what is happening in that moment.

They want to be able to put down their phones and make time to relax every day.

They know that if they don’t stop this pattern, every relationship outside of work is going to suffer and their mental well-being will erode.

But they BELIEVE they can’t stop. They BELIEVE disconnecting isn’t an option.

Sound familiar? Work with me and learn the foundational steps to protect your well-being and learn how to disconnect.

In order to fully commit to our profession, it means also making a commitment to show up as our best selves. It means investing in rest and life outside of work so that we can be fully engaged when we are working. To do otherwise is to cut our careers off at its knees because what we create is not sustainable.

Obsessive commitment to anything is not sustainable.

Recognize where your life is out of balance and endeavor to find pockets of rest and disconnection. Allow your brain to freak out every time you step away but honor yourself and your long-term wellbeing by making disconnection a priority. It WILL get easier with practice.

Your future self will thank you.

When we don’t practice disconnection and rest, we instead practice NOT disconnecting and NOT slowing down. We strengthen those muscles which ultimately makes any kind of balance even more difficult.

Today, I encourage you to find a pocket of space to reconnect with yourself.

You are not the job.

You are so much more than that.

Spend some time with your real self today. She might have some things to say to you.

Photo by Olga Lioncat from Pexels

Saying, “No, ” is always an option available to us to make more time for ourselves. To make time for the things that actually matter to us. So that we can find some space and happiness. We know, logically, that if we want more time, more balance, and more peace, boundaries are part of the deal but we are reluctant to flex those muscles because we fear the consequences.

There is a difference between not knowing how to resolve a problem and being afraid to implement solutions you know exist.

When my clients consider the possibility of not responding to an email at 8:30pm on a Wednesday night, it doesn’t seem like a real option. Their brains tell them that those kinds of boundaries will get them fired, demoted, judged, and “into trouble.”

Possibly.

We set boundaries because we know what is good for us; that doesn’t mean others are going to like it.

But let’s explore that. My clients that are learning to set boundaries and say “no” continue to meet their hourly obligations to the extent those obligations are clear. They continue to do good work, often times even better work. They continue to be a team player. And with these changes their attitude and energy change dramatically as well. Is it reasonable to believe that a firm is going to fire someone performing in this manner simply because they are not willing to be a doormat, on call 24/7? It’s possible. But it’s also possible that the firm will swallow that pill even though they don’t like it.

If this resonates with you, grab a free session and commit today to start living differently.

Furthermore, when we tell ourselves that setting these boundaries, pushing back and saying “no” is going to cause us to get fired, I don’t believe that result differs from the alternative. I work with attorneys all day long, every day. Attorneys who are burnt out and unhappy. Attorneys who have implemented the rage quit or attorneys who are tap dancing on the edge of it. What I submit is this:

If we continue the path that we have historically been on, where we ignore our boundaries and forget how to say “no,” the ultimate result is that we leave. We leave burnt out, unhappy, and disillusioned, believing that practicing law is just not right for us. That path may take several years to trek but ultimately the lack of boundaries ends with a sad exit.

In contrast, we can choose a path where we speak our truth. We’re honest about our availability, we set clear boundaries and make time for what’s really important to us. If that path were to result in us being terminated, we must also ask:

Is that so much worse than the alternative?

How long do you think you could flex those “no” muscles, set boundaries, stand up for yourself, and make more time for what’s really important to you before the firm steps in and decides that they no longer want to employ you? Six months? A year? What would that time be like for you? To have more time, more balance, to have the ability to workout and spend time with your family instead of constantly feeling on the edge and on call. Wouldn’t that six months or one year of balance and peace serve you in a much better manner than those years of burnt out frustration?

The ending is the same most certainly but the person at the end of either of those journeys is absolutely not the same person. And the sacrifices each of them would make during those journeys could not be more different. The choice is yours. What do you have to lose?

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Sometimes we get the opportunity to set off and start anew. Unfortunately, what we often find is that while the scenery has changed, our problems remain the same.

During most summers, I spend about 7 hours in my car, every other weekend, driving home to visit my family. I love to make the long trek back home to enjoy time on the lake with my friends and family back home. The majority of my trip is spent at a gleeful and fast-paced interstate route, going 80 mph, making great time. But eventually, once we are about an hour away from our destination, everything changes. Suddenly, the only route to our destination is on county highways and gravel roads. The pace shifts to a crawl. It’s maddening to suddenly go from quickly moving along, making manic progress to maintaining such a slow crawl. It’s a challenge to keep myself from slamming down the accelerator and getting right back to cruising along at a smooth 80mph pace. At this point in my trip, 80mph is what feels natural; it’s become a habit and one I have to consciously brake (pun intended).

Our brains’ ability to get comfortable functioning in a particular state goes beyond my interstate driving. Just like when I moved from interstate to county highways, whenever we change the circumstances of our lives, our ingrained habits come right along with us. Changing to gravel roads doesn’t stop my ingrained desire to drive 80mph. Moving to a new environment does not make it easier to stop speeding in the same way that burning it all down and replacing it with something shiny and new, will not “fix” your tendencies. In the new space, we will find ourselves facing the same challenges all over again:

We say yes when we mean no.

We take on too much.

We struggle to disconnect.

We beat ourselves up over every mistake.

We fail to honor our priorities.

We doubt our abilities.

Those thoughts are like my 80mph climb back home. I’m comfortable there; I know that space. It’s uncomfortable to try and do something different. In the same way, it will take practice and work to change our patterned thinking, regardless of the scenery. No matter what external factors we change, it won’t have a lasting impact on our lives unless and until we change our patterning.

Switching over to gravel roads doesn’t change my tendency toward 80mph, I have to make that change consciously and with effort and attention. Burning it all down and starting over will not change whatever patterning we have that is plaguing us. That work will always be there waiting for us, no matter where we go.

Real change can only come from within and the external circumstances have no bearing on that kind of change.

Are you ready?

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be.

still.

Once we decided that we wanted to be attorneys, the journey was not that difficult. There’s a list. There are instructions. There is a long checklist of things that must be accomplished and done in order for this dream to take place. Once we get our first job, the instructions become even simpler. Say yes to all the work that comes to you. Do a good job. Don’t make waves. Just keep executing and don’t ask questions. So we spend even more years continuing to live in this fight or flight mode where we just move from one challenge to the next. Inevitably, we come to a crossroads where we catch our breath for a moment and start to wonder

what’s next?

Many attorneys come to me for coaching support because they don’t know what to do next. They are overwhelmed with the possibilities for their life and they want to know how to figure out where to focus their energies now that they have come so far. Having a law degree affords us many opportunities as to what we can do with our life. We can go down the partnership track…. counsel track….teaching at a law school….go in-house….go into business…..start our own firm…. When we start looking at all the options available to us it can easily become overwhelming.

But when we find ourselves stressing about where are we “supposed to” go next, the more important question we can be asking ourselves is

Is there anything wrong with just being where we are without having a plan for what’s next?

I recently found myself in a coaching session with a woman who was overwhelmed with the possibilities for her life and the decisions that needed to be made at some point in the future. In the future. Not now. There was nothing pressing. Despite this fact, she was incredibly overwhelmed and uncomfortable with not knowing what her long-term plan looked like. After exploring various possibilities and trying to get a sense of what resonated most closely with her, I finally asked her what if nothing is wrong here?

At that moment everything seemed to click for her and she realized that this need to have a plan and this desire to know the end result was creating a tremendous amount of discomfort for her. She had spent her entire life and her entire career living in fight or flight mode getting things done and now that she had found some space to breathe, she was uncomfortable just being where she was. No pressing decisions. Nothing urgent that needed to be done. Just a regular job. No family matters to attend to. No drama. No chaos. The calm following the storm of chaos that had comprised the early years of her career was causing her a tremendous amount of anxiety. She was uncomfortable just being in this space and not having a plan. In that quiet space, her brain wasn’t accustomed to being still, instead, it kept telling her that something wasn’t right, it needed a plan…she should be doing something more.

All those shoulds are indicative of how we value ourselves. Those shoulds come from our historical patterns where achievements and checking things off the list meant that we were doing well. It meant that we were good enough and that we were successful.

But when the list runs out and the goals have been achieved, we are left in this open space where we have to reexamine our worthiness.

In that space and on those plateaus where our brain starts telling us all the things we should be doing, it reveals a need for us to reexamine our worthiness and where we place our value. It is not a time to create a new goal and a new plan and something else to strive for. There will come a day where you will run out of plans you will run out of checklists and you will only be left with yourself. Those plateaus and spaces between the items on our checklists afford us the opportunity to work on that relationship because ultimately, that is truly the only relationship that matters. Those spaces force us to stop running and take a look in the mirror and that can be terrifying.

(Sound familiar? Grab a free session now and get support during your times of plateau.)

When our brains are used to living in panicked, fight or flight mode, it can be difficult to understand WHO we are if we are not busy accomplishing. It can be difficult to recognize our value if we aren’t busy checking things off a list. What’s more, for many of us it’s been so long since we’ve had the opportunity to explore that aloneness. To really consider our relationship with ourselves. We have lost sight of that relationship and so when we have reached this summit and find ourselves alone with no one other than ourselves, we panic. We feel like we have to develop some other goal and something else to strive for so that we don’t have to sit here in this stillness and take a long hard look at who we really are when we’re not focused outwardly. It’s easier to have something to be striving toward; it’s harder to do the work on yourself. It’s harder to challenge that voice that’s telling you that you should be doing more you and that you should be wanting more.

That’s the beauty of coming to these plateaus.

That’s the beauty of the stillness.

It reminds us that we’re not a long list of things to do. We are not achievements and we are not defined by our long-term plans. Where are so much more than that and once our current plan reaches that plateau rather than jumping into a new plan I urge you…no, I implore you to take that time to be with yourself and learn how to be still. At the end of the day when the race is over the only person standing next to you will be yourself. Those plateaus afford us the opportunity to rekindle that relationship and learn how to see our innate worthiness, without all the fluff.

Sometimes it’s okay to just be where you are.

If you find yourself uncomfortable taking an hour to relax on the couch or uneasy that you don’t know whether or not you want to make a partner it’s an opportunity to ask yourself

What is wrong with just being where I’m at? What is it about this place that makes me so uncomfortable? What judgments am I lobbying at myself when I am not frantically achieving and checking things off my list?

That my friends is truly where the work begins.

When I was a little girl, my brother had an imaginary friend named Doodah. Every time he would get into trouble for putting spiders down my shirt, he would insist that Doodah made him do it. Nothing was his fault when Doodah was around!

Not all of us had imaginary friends when we were kids but, like all other kids, we were never quick to take the blame for our actions.

We’ve all seen those kids in the airport. There you are waiting for your bags to plop off the carousel and while you wait, you watch two kids, worn out from travelling, annoying the goodness out of their harried parents and each other. Then, inevitably, one of those kids will haul off and smack the other one. Hard. While seemingly no one is watching.

Naturally, this results in an avalanche of tears and lots of drama punctuated by the aggressor-child insisting they “didn’t do anything”, indignant at the accusation. Such a comical and common display of our basic human instincts.

As adults, we like to tell ourselves that we have grown out of that propensity. Most of us would never outright deny doing something that we clearly did or that could easily be proven – hello, there are cameras EVERYWHERE!

But just because our logic-reasoning skills have improved and we know that it’s not prudent to lie about things that are likely memorialized on camera, it doesn’t mean we have gotten any better at accepting the results of our actions.

In fact, most of us have just gotten really good at dressing our blame up in prettier clothing: victim clothing.

Years ago, I found myself working in an environment where I did not fit in. I was one of very few women working in a role other than secretary. I was working in an environment where I felt completely isolated. I looked around and saw that the vast majority of my co-workers and nearly all of the organization’s leadership consisted white men from the same colleges and grad schools, even from the largely the same high schools. Most of them practiced the same religion if not the same parish. Most of them were in the same political party and most of them grew up in the same city. Lastly, the majority of them had the same family structure –  2-3 kids with a stay-at-home wife, even where those kids no longer lived at home.

Being alone on an island certainly takes its toll and while every organization comes with its own unique challenges, I quickly started to feel like there was no way I could be successful in that space. 

They will never take me seriously…they will never understand me or my life…I will always be different and they will always see me as a token: something to be regarded and retained but not taken seriously…My brain was filled with angry pronouncements about my workplace, its leaders, and my co-workers.   

I believed all of those thoughts and I carried them around with me every day. Every time I told myself that my complaints were disregarded, every time I thought my comments were bowled over, every time I felt I was interrupted more than the men, I clung to those thoughts – you will never take me seriously because I’m a woman….you can’t comprehend a woman with a brain and an opinion…you will never treat me like a peer because you don’t believe I am your equal. 

Over time, I found myself having screaming matches with them in my head. If I saw a member of the leadership team in the hall, you could bet I was yelling at them in my head, telling them they were sexist and old school and on and on and ON…Every challenge I encountered in that place was cast in a veil of sexism and anger. It was exhausting.

Now look, I am not saying that any of these thoughts couldn’t have been true. Maybe some of those guys were sexist. Maybe they lacked the skills and experience to treat me as an equal. Maybe it never would change. I don’t know and it didn’t matter.

It didn’t matter because I realized that I could not control them. I could not change them. I could not make them into the kind of men I would respect. They were grown adults who were entitled to act and treat me in any way that they chose. I realized that the only thing I could control was myself and my thoughts and at that point my thoughts were making me miserable. I trudged through each day unhappy, grouchy, unsatisfied and disappointed. It was a terrible way to practice.

I started working through my thoughts and endeavored to re-cast the situation. I had to let go of my anger that these people were falling short of my expectations for good leadership. I started focusing on the fact that my angry thoughts about the situation were making me angry and bitter. No one was negatively affected by my diatribes but me.

Eventually I left. To put it more accurately, I RAN out of that place as fast as I could.

Later when I would think back to that time in my life I would find myself bubbling with anger. I blamed them and judged them for my leaving. I blamed them for my unhappiness. If only they had been willing to act in accordance with their values. . . if only they were capable of accepting their short-comings . . . if only they weren’t so freaking insistent upon taking care of their own…if only they were willing to accept different points of view as valuable… I had nothing good to say and every time it came up in conversation or I thought about it, I would find myself fuming with rage and indignation.

That’s when I realized that I was making myself a victim. I knew who the villain was – and so did everyone who made the mistake of asking me about my prior employer! That made me the victim. Yikes. I never thought of myself as a victim or a blamer and the realization stung.

As I thought about it more, I realized that I was blaming the male partners and leadership for all my unhappiness there. I was blaming them for me leaving. I got to work picking through those thoughts and one stuck out in particular: I will never be successful here because I am not one of them. I believed that down to my core. But then I started to probe it. Was that true? Were there really no women there that were successful? Nope. My thought wasn’t entirely factual.

There were women there who had found some form of success and happiness. They worked a lot more than I did. They made less waves. They were willing to “go along to get along.” They worked hard and didn’t make time for indignation – it’s not that they didn’t see it; they just didn’t spend energy on it. That’s when it clicked for me. I was wrong. I could have been successful there and I could have become one of them. I chose not to. I chose not to make those same sacrifices and I chose to use my voice. I chose to leave in honor of my principles and values. They didn’t force me to leave.

They weren’t the villain and I wasn’t the victim. I made a choice to leave. I didn’t have to make that choice and no one forced me to do it.

Now when I think about my time with that organization, I am filled with pride and sadness instead of anger and indignation. I am proud that I clung to my values and I am sad that women are still fighting to be treated fairly and equally. I’m no longer villainizing their failures – that is for them to sort out. I made a choice that was all my own and I was not a victim to some faceless villain.

Could I have stayed there and found happiness? Sure. It would have required a lot more time working through those thoughts. I could have found a way to be happy. But here’s the thing. I didn’t WANT to feel good about what I seeing and experiencing. I did not WANT to be okay with that environment. That was also my choice. I chose to be unhappy during my time there. Life is not meant to be 100% happiness all the time. My experience at that organization was my time for struggle, challenges, growth and sadness. That, my friends, is how life works and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Cheers!

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