Life & Career Coaching for Lawyers
Life & Career Coaching for Lawyers
There are many ways people make decisions in every moment. What I find interesting is that so many of us are willing to hand over those decisions to others. Rather than making a conscious decision, we (subconsciously decide to) answer to whomever or whatever is immediately before us. There is a better way.
Many of my clients lose the majority of their Sundays to that Monday morning dread. “Sunday mourning.”
What can we learn from those Sunday emotions?
We all have our thing that we turn to when we’ve had a long day–cookies, Doritos, wine, chocolate cake, ice cream, beer. It’s that little reward we give ourselves for a job well done. I’ve had a long day, I deserve to treat myself. But what do those “cheat” days really cost us?
One of the reasons so many of us struggle to “find the time” is because we are not being decisive about how we spend our time. We take everything that comes at us.
We live our days drinking from the fire hose. But there is one simple shift that can change everything.
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?
For me, overwhelm feels like hot compression of my chest and a ringing sound, like after a bomb goes off and your ears are trying to adjust. It’s the worst.
What is the real cause of overwhelm and can we prevent it?
Practicing law is difficult and sometimes you will have to reorganize your carefully laid plans or have some challenging discussions about competing priorities. It happens. Success is about learning to honor yourself and your abilities and not expecting yourself to tackle every single thing that comes your way. There are limits to your ability to handle it all. Getting organized is the first step to recognizing those limits.
One of the biggest challenges in any career is how to stay focused, motivated, and avoid frazzle, or even worse burnout.
Over the next few weeks, I will tackle each of these challenges separately. Today, I want to focus on burnout.
We all have days when we are tired and operating with a low tank of gas but when your thoughts compound that physical tiredness, it is a recipe for disaster.
For better or worse, most days spent in corporate legal practice start off with good intentions and big plans about all the things we will accomplish that day. Then the train derails and we spend most of the day “putting out fires” and ignoring all of those best laid plans. While some of this may be the result of real client emergencies, more often than not, there is no real emergency.