In this particular circumstance, we were discussing a friend whose only contribution to the group had been decades of chaos and destruction. As we lamented the other person’s (obvious) shortcomings, I found myself slipping into a black and white position. I found myself saying that I will never forgive her and I will never move past what has happened.

Later on, I found myself reflecting on this discussion and asking myself whether that positioning was consistent with who I truly wanted to be. Was there a better way to deal with our challenging friend than to simply write her off?

As part of this exploration I started asking myself why I was closing the door on the relationship. I realized that I no longer wanted to give her the gift of my love, compassion, and friendship.

I believed that if I forgave her and loved her despite the past, I would be condoning her past actions and giving her more than she deserved.

I felt righteous in my conclusion and unmoving in my resolve. The idea of showing up with this person in anything other than a suit of armor seemed unfathomable. Give them my heart? No thanks, hippee, move along.

In my deliberations, my mind began to wander and I started to fantasize about an epic showdown with this person, where I would undoubtedly leave them speechless with my righteous and cutting oration! I was fully consumed in an indignant hypothetical battle.

I sat there in silence for quite some time, observing my thoughts and my physical responses. Making note of where my mind ran off to. At the conclusion of it all, I felt terrible. There I was, sitting alone with myself, fists and jaw clenched, poised for a battle that was not coming. I felt miserable and bitter.

Nothing had happened. I haven’t spoken to this person in years and there’s no prospect that I will see her anytime soon. In that very moment, I did not know with certainty what she was doing or how she was feeling but what I did know with absolute certainty was that I was feeling lousy and I wanted to lash out at somebody.

What was this anger getting me?

Absolutely, freaking nothing.

(Okay, it actually just made me more angry and all rage spiral-y.)

Why was I so resistant to showing up with love and compassion for this person? Because I didn’t want her to feel that love and compassion. I didn’t want her to benefit from my willingness to be the “bigger person.”

But that theory and that logic contradicts everything that I stand for. It presumes that I am actually capable of making her feel any particular way and vice versa.

I know that when we show up in love and compassion for other people whether they feel that love and compassion as well is completely outside of our control. They may even receive that compassion with complete disdain and disregard. They may not trust it, they may not believe me, and they may not care how I show up for them. But the critical point here is that when we show up in compassion you feel it. You are the only one who benefits from showing up in that way. So why do we show up in love and compassion for people? Because it feels good FOR US. Because it feels so much better than how I was currently feeling.

Instead of sitting alone in a mental ju jitsu match, clenching my fists and grinding my teeth, I could have been experiencing compassion in that moment. My choice to be angry wasn’t punishing this person who was oblivious and miles and miles away. I was only punishing myself.

“Compassion is the keen awareness of the interdependence of all things.” Thomas Merton

Choosing compassion instead of white hot rage didn’t mean that I forgave her. It didn’t mean that I wasn’t hurt by her actions. It simply meant that I wasn’t going to dwell on it and be a victim to it. I was going to focus on how to show up in a compassionate manner. I was going to try and see her good qualities just as much as I saw her bad ones. I was going to contemplate clear boundaries with her and give her space to be whomever she wants to be. I was going to stop wishing and hoping she was something different than she was. I was just going to let her be her and stop trying to change her. Not because it gets her anything but because it gets me everything.

Do you have a challenging human in your life that you are tempted to cut out? Is it possible that this person is in your life to teach you something about yourself? Sign up for a free consult and let’s see if there’s another way — a way to evolve.

This morning, an old man approached me on the street and started talking to me as I was unloading some donations from my car. His clothes were ragged, he was missing most of his teeth and he was wearing coveralls and a flower covered baseball cap. As I was unloading my things into a donation bin, he started to tell me about his life. He told me about how he had gotten hit by a car as a child and that he had been in a coma for weeks. Years later, he said, that accident impacted his mental capacity. He continued to chit chat while I was going from door to door, unloading bags and boxes of donations. When I finished, I was going back into my car to leave he said he wanted to share something with me. He looked at me and he said,

“Regret looks behind, trouble looks to the sides, and faith looks up.”

As I left I got to thinking about what he had said and the truth of it. Whenever we invite regret, guilt, frustration, or anger into our lives, our focus is on our pasts. Those emotions are often rooted in a judgment and examination of people and events that have come and gone (what people said, what they did, etc.).

When we feel troubled, our focus is on some unknowable future. We are continually looking around ourselves and off into the distance, expecting something to jump out of the bushes and sabotage our plans.

When we are living in belief in ourselves and have faith in the path, we can allow ourselves to be present and truly in the moment, giving thanks for the experience and trusting our ability to keep moving. We “look up” because we are present with gratitude and giving thanks to the god of our understanding for getting us to where we are.

If our life was like a race, looking behind us or frantically looking around ourselves would not be helpful. In fact, those actions would likely drain our energy and bog down our progress. While it might seem most useful to scan the horizon anticipating obstacles and indulging in some worry, that approach is only useful if your worries are accurate and help you avert a crisis–but how often does that happen?!

When we indulge in worry about the future, we imply that we have some capacity to foretell our futures; to know exactly how something is (or isn’t going to pan out). What’s more, when we indulge in worry, it removes us from the present moment and all that is available to us in that space. It’s like running a race, worrying that the road ahead is going to be flooded and washed away and you’re so focused on that possibility that you don’t realize that you are running right past a life raft that could safely carry you across the path, if needed.

When we are stuck in worry, we ignore the gifts and solutions at our feet.

Worry is such a tempting emotion because it feels so important to our primitive brains. The part of our brains that is designed to keep us safe latches on to those worries and expands upon them. Suddenly, our thoughts about a washed out path, morphs into a hurricane and fire breathing dragon up ahead. When we allow ourselves to put energy behind those worries, we are often persuaded to stop running altogether, to change course, or to take a break until you figure it out. But we forget that those worries are only half of the possibility of what lies ahead–what if there was no hurricane or dragon up ahead and the path ahead is smoother and flatter than the path behind? Indulgence in worry overlooks the fact that it is equally possible that our worries are completely unfounded.

If life was like a race, isn’t our best approach to remain in the present moment not only so that we can see all the gifts currently being offered to us but so that we can focus our energy on the task at hand? We must stop looking behind, around or far ahead of us and instead allow space for us to consider–where am I even running to? When worry or regret drive the bus, it distracts us from the reason we started running to begin with. We forget why we started and instead lose all our energy to fruitless wanderings.

What is the benefit of the race if we can’t find space to be grateful for what we have, what we have learned, and to consider what we want next?

Today, challenge yourself to stay present, stop worrying about the future and instead reconnect with your WHY. Why are you running this race and where are you going?

Photo by Monstera from Pexels

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

My client had been charged with managing a particularly large project that was not within her traditional practice area. The initiative required input and contributions from various practices across the firm and ongoing strategy sessions with the team. In addition to the strategy sessions, my client had regular one-on-one meetings with her supervisor. During a recent meeting with her supervisor, he indicated that he expected her to take the lead on the upcoming team discussion and that she would be managing the project from there on out. He wanted her to use this to get project management experience. When she attended the first team meeting to present the project plan, her supervisor took over and did not offer any opportunity for her to make contributions. As the meeting progressed, it became clear to my client that her supervisor and his team had not read any of the materials relating to the scope of the project and had grossly misunderstood the intent of the client. The meeting was largely unproductive, confusing for all members, and my client was pissed.

When we met, she relayed this story and went on to explain how her supervisor is a jerk, a terrible leader, incredibly disorganized, spiteful, arrogant, and childish. She said she hates working with him and that having to continually interact with someone who was such a poor supervisor was making her consider leaving her job entirely. How does someone like that get into a position of leadership!?

This kind of scenario and feedback is something that we all have to deal with at some point in time simply by being members of the human race. Although I like to think that we in the legal industry have an abnormal amount of individuals who are poor leaders and managers, the ultimate truth remains the same: sometimes people just suck.

But the problem with this scenario is that so many of my clients are driven to leave or consider leaving their place of employment due to this type of interaction. In attempts to remedy these situations, many of us vacillate between confronting the individual and outright avoiding them. We all know that feeling when you’re sitting in a meeting and you’re swimming in angry thoughts about the individual in front of you. They have no idea what they’re doing….I wish they would just shut up….why do they keep doing that….how can they be so oblivious….you’re such a terrible leader…. and on and on it goes. We feel our skin start to crawl and we actually start to believe that if we don’t get out of this place and get away from this person ASAP we’re going to lose our minds!

I get it. I have completely been there and so many of my clients have as well. So how do you dig out when every part of your body and every thought in your head is screaming to get away from this person?!

(Sound familiar? Sign up for a free consult, and let’s sort it out.)

First, we have to recognize that when we confront this person or simply avoid them, we are either trying to get the other person to change or we are trying to remove them from our orbit so we don’t have to do any work. We dream of confronting them and seeing them take our comments to heart so they can change for the better and then everything will be OK. In the alternative, we think that if we can just escape this person and not have to deal with them then everything will be OK in that scenario too. In either case, we’re trying to change or eliminate the problem person so that we don’t have to feel angry and frustrated anymore. Therein lies the problem:

Wanting someone or something else to change so that WE can feel better is a futile endeavor that rarely works. Instead, our work rests solely with us and how we handle the situation.

In my client’s scenario, she truly believed that her boss was a jerk, a terrible leader, disorganized, spiteful, arrogant, and childish. She provided those details to me as if they were well-documented facts. What she didn’t see was that none of that was true. These were all optional things she was choosing to believe about her boss. All of these thoughts and judgments about this person were making her completely miserable. She wanted me to help her learn how to navigate dealing with her jerk boss but she didn’t see that her beliefs and judgments about him were actually what was making her miserable. What she didn’t see was that in order to move forward she would have to at least open herself up to the possibility that her opinion about this person may not be accurate. That she was choosing to believe day-in and day-out that her boss was a jerk. Regardless of whether or not any of these thoughts could be proven factually accurate, it was clear that by living in these judgments of this other human, she was making herself crazy. The work wasn’t in learning how to deal with her “jerk” boss, the work was in seeing that she didn’t have to believe that he was a jerk.

Our judgments of other people are founded on the belief that those around us are supposed to act a certain way.

My client’s boss was supposed to be a good mentor, a good cheerleader for her, and supportive. She had this whole perception of who he was supposed to be. Her conclusion that he was a jerk was at odds with how she wanted things to be. That tug of war with reality was causing a tremendous amount of discomfort and frustration for her. So much so that she just wanted to get away from it. But as many of you know, anytime you leave one experience for another we often encounter the same types of humans who elicit the same types of challenges all over again.

We end up creating for ourselves a pattern of moving from place to place, identifying a new jerk in each situation, and moving on again and again.

Rather than showing up to work believing that her boss was a jerk, she had myriad options available to her as to how she could potentially think of the situation. She could instead recognize that he was showing up exactly how he was meant to. He was being everything that is uniquely him. And that is completely OK. In fact, that is the beauty of this world. We all have the ultimate right to show up and be whomever and however we want to be. So rather than showing up in judgment and stewing in anger and frustration, my client could instead look at this person as an opportunity for her to experiment with compassion and unconditional love. She wasn’t frustrated because of him or the things that he was doing. The reason she was frustrated was that she was focusing on who she wanted him to be and was marinating her brain in all of these negative judgments about him when he didn’t fit her mold. So instead I asked her, how do you want to think about this person? How do you want to show up in this experience?

She revealed that she wanted to be calm and collected. She wanted to advocate for herself. To step in and LEAD just like he had asked her to. She wanted to focus on the fact that she knew he never wanted to be a manager and that he seemed to be trying to do the best he could with the position that he never sought out.

This didn’t make her feel warm and fuzzy. It didn’t make her want to stay at the firm forever. But it did allow her some neutral emotions and some space to look at this person from a different perspective. It allowed the judgment to subside and along with that came a reduction in her frustration and anger and her desire to flee. Instead, we developed a plan for her to have an honest and curious conversation with him about the project. A conversation that was not intended to CHANGE him but one rooted in compassion and a desire to better UNDERSTAND him.

After all, it’s so much easier to speak your truth from a place of neutrality than when you are fueled by pent-up anger and frustration.

Imagine how much happier we all could be if instead of judging everyone around us and believing that things should be different we chose to believe that everything was happening as it should and just tried to love those around us? It’s not easy but it certainly feels a lot better than the alternative.

I truly believe that the only thing preventing us from loving everyone around us is our thoughts about them. If you could change that, imagine how much happier you would be.

Photo by Startup Stock Photos from Pexels

“Some humans are really bad at being human.”

If I could teach my clients how to change other people, I would. If I could help my clients persuade their bosses that working from home periodically is not the end of the world, I would. If I could show women how to get their significant others to be more loving, supportive, affectionate, romantic (this is a long list), I would dive right in. But I can’t. Coaching is not about helping you become a manipulation magician or specialized in your methods of *helping* others see the light.

When it comes to other humans, coaching is largely about putting down the boxing gloves and walking out of the ring.

I recently had a client we will call Mary. Mary had a boss who was “driving her mad.” He kept trying to instill his values and beliefs in her, lecturing her about how to succeed (work more, obviously) and how to build a thriving practice (focus on high-value projects rather than projects you enjoy). According to Mary, he was always saying offensive things and flying off the handle. He wasn’t interested in training her and he was unwilling to give her any feedback. But at the same time, Mary saw some good in him and wanted to continue to work with him. If only we could figure out how to “get him to be better.”

Sound familiar? Sign up for a free consult now and let’s chat about your horrible boss.

Mary’s explanation of the situation and her description of this man were dripping in judgments and criticisms. “He just doesn’t get it…he’s completely offensive…he has a screwed sense of reality…he doesn’t understand me…” Once she was on a roll telling me about this ogre of a man, it was hard to get her to stop. She was energized and animated in her criticisms and she was fully invested in this story she was weaving. He was clearly the problem and we needed to fix him.

All that energy built up and invested in those criticisms and what was it getting her? Absolutely nothing. The truth of the matter was that she was wanting him to be different much the same way he was wanting her to be different. They were locked in this tug-of-war trying to get the other person to change. My advice to Mary and other clients in this same position: drop the damn rope.

You are never going to succeed in changing other people. When has that ever worked for anyone?

There are so many better ways that we can use that energy. When we stop wasting energy ranting about the faults in our neighbors, we can instead use that energy to figure out how to better deal with them. Rather than ranting and raving about how your old school boss won’t give you any feedback, what if you spent that energy figuring out how to make that feedback happen? What if you put that energy into scheduling meetings with the man and directly and sincerely asking him for feedback?

When we waste energy complaining about the humans around us and how their shortcomings negatively impact us, we give them all the power in the relationship. We overlook any opportunity to make it happen on our own terms. To ask for what we want and start taking actions to get it. When we believe that other people have to change in order for us to get what we need, we will lose every time. We will give them all of our power and relegate ourselves to the role of victim stuck in a never-ending drama.

When we let other humans be who they are we can allow space for the yin and yang of life. If you have a boss that isn’t great at being a boss, we can let him be and recognize that his shortcomings are part of the job description. When you recognize that we are choosing to have these people in our lives and we agree to let them be who they are, we take ownership of the 50/50 of our life. In Mary’s case, sometimes her boss is going to give her unsolicited advice she doesn’t agree with. He is going to say things that get under her skin and he is going to be reluctant to give her feedback. That is her 50/50. That is part of what she signed up for. Unless she decided to quit, she was choosing to engage in these challenges by remaining in that job.

We have to stop fighting reality and accept that when reality involves other humans, things are going to suck at least half of the time.

And. That. Is. Okay. Nothing has gone wrong here and nothing has to be fixed.

Well actually, the only thing that has to be fixed is our own thinking. We have to drop the rope and stop the “I wish you would change” tug-of-war. We have to stop swimming in judgment and criticisms of the other and start looking inward and asking “Who do I want to be in this relationship? How can I take my power back? How can I take action to get what I want?”

Ultimately, you know what just might help them change their old school thinking? Watching you find success your way with grace and integrity. It’s hard to deny hard evidence right in front of you, even for those stuck in “old school” thinking. Start creating success on your terms and stop battling old-school mentalities, use that energy in a way that better serves you. Need support? Grab a free consult now.

The challenge then, for me, is to remain impartial and offer my clients the opportunity to examine their reality through a different lens. As difficult as it is for me not to get into the drama pool with my clients, my goal is to offer a space where we can reasonably and rationally address the challenges of practicing law and strategize how to stay afloat.

My experience as any attorney has made me intimately familiar with certain “truths” about the practice of law that we are all better off simply accepting:

It will be demanding.

There will be long days.

You will have to make sacrifices.

While I work with my clients to explore different ways of thinking about their practice, a positive outlook cannot insulate us from these truths. Rather than trying to put lipstick on this pig, we work to anticipate these inevitable challenges.

First, we stop fighting these realities.

There are certain aspects of practicing law that simply come with the territory. Litigators and deal lawyers will be at the mercy of the life cycle of the deal or the case. There isn’t much you can do to change many of those deadlines. Non-transactional lawyers will have different marketing expectations and will have to juggle 20 different clients on any given day. That is just part of the deal.

In the same way, we would not sign up to lifeguard and complain about having to wear a bathing suit all day long, we cannot waste energy fighting with certain realities about the legal practice. It’s futile and it is making us miserable.

Second, we have to understand our “why”.

Why are you doing this? Why did you sign up to have your weekends and schedule sabotaged by the demands of the job? Are you trying to develop the skills to land an in-house job, are you trying to make partner, are you wanting to pay off your student loans?

If you are you going to survive the challenges of a legal practice, you must gain some clarity as to why you are choosing to stay.

Because, after all, you are making a choice. The job is not happening to you. You are choosing to invite the above challenges into your life. You are not a victim.

In order to move past our tendency to mourn for the life that we lost or yearn for the life that we want, we have to focus on our WHY. Why do you stay? Why do you do it?

Instead of carrying the mental and emotional weight that comes when we agonize over the realities of legal practice, we can shift that energy to getting through it. Our justification for staying allows us to make that shift. Once we know why we are doing it, we can dispense with the lamentations and weather the storm.

For many of my clients, once they realize and connect with their WHY, they can start seeing the job as simply a season in their life.

It’s the same principle we employ when we lift weights or train for a marathon. It’s painful and it’s grueling and it requires sacrifices but we do it because we see the ultimate goal and we are committed to it. We have a compelling reason for our suffering. Your legal practice is no different.

It’s supposed to be hard and challenging.

That is what you signed up for. But for many of my clients, partnership, and lifetime commitment to billable hours is not their desired result; it’s simply a means to an end. It’s a season in life that has an expiration date. It will not last forever. That is the head space that will keep you on track and allow you to use the experience as it was intended in your life.

Stop fighting with reality and start taking ownership for your choice to stay. I know it’s frustrating and challenging and sometimes soul-sucking but you choose to be there. Focus on what this experience will GET you.

It’s just a season in your life. It will pass.

If you are treading water in your practice and feeling overwhelmed and tired, set up a  time to chat (for free) and let’s get to work reconnecting with your WHY so you can get back to it.

Photo by aj povey from Pexels

Is this sustainable?

Do I want to live like this forever?

They dream of a practice with better culture, fewer hours, a place that is more women-friendly, family-friendly. A place where the co-workers and clients act like civilized humans rather than tantrum-y children and junior high bullies.

Early on, many of us realize that working 70 hours/week does not create a happy life, no matter the paycheck. It is not exactly the life you dreamt of. We hate that having a family is often seen as a detriment to our career. We struggle with the notion that our personal lives must be planned taking consideration where we want our career to go. We stew and we ponder:

How can I make practicing law more live-able?

For many women, these thoughts eventually get drowned out by the rest of life. They continue their precarious balance, never truly happy or comfortable with the life they have chosen but willing to just keep going. They are good at it. They know that life. It is familiar. And it pays well. Leave it alone. Some weeks it’s okay, some weeks it’s hard to get out of bed. So be it.

We are not wired to voice our needs or ask for something better.

Our brains are designed to seek pleasure, avoid pain, and maintain efficiency. This means that whenever we begin to wonder and question why things can’t be different, what can I do to make this work for me? We are forcing our brain to take a pit stop and examine these matters. Our brains promptly remind us that

We make plenty of money.

We are well-respected.

This is just how it is.

You aren’t going to change it.

Don’t rock the boat.

Don’t be a trouble maker.

Your brain reminds you why those worries and thoughts and dreams aren’t important. Your brain wants you back on the hamster wheel, running the same routine we are so good at. This is your brain playing it safe. Keeping you in the cave. The very notion of rocking the boat triggers two of your biological responses–stay safe and be efficient. Don’t challenge authority and keep doing what you know. Stick to the plan, kiddo.

When we decide to do something new or scary, our brain’s survival mechanisms kick in.

While we may be saying to ourselves, I’m going to start leaving the office at 4:30 everyday, our brains start screaming

RETREAT! Stay with the herd! Don’t challenge the norms! Don’t rock the boat! You’re going to get in trouble. They will cut your pay. The Board will hear about it. You’re going to have to explain this!

I recently had a mini-session with an attorney and her big dream was to start her own firm. In response to her ambition, her brain was telling her

You can’t do this. You haven’t practiced long enough. No one will hire me. You won’t figure it out.

Those thoughts were her brain’s version of “Retreat! Stay in the cave.” None of those thoughts were true. None of them were factual. They were optional sentences her freaked out brain was offering her.

This is normal. This is biology.

This does not mean you are doing it wrong. In fact ,when you experience fear or anxiety while you are taking action toward your dream, you can rest assured you are doing it right. That discomfort is proof that you are forcing your brain to run a new pattern–no more of this lemming crap, forge your own path. No more of the old thoughts and routines.

This is not how is has to be. You can stimulate change and ask for what you want.

If you want to start leaving a 4:30 every day. Ask for it. If you want to be allowed to run your own cases. Ask for it. If you want to take the big deposition on your own. Ask for it.

It’s going to be awkward. It’s going to be uncomfortable. It’s going to force you to use muscles you haven’t used before. Decide what you need to do to grow your practice, to develop, to make your life more manageable and start thinking

How can I make this work for me? How can I ask the firm to support me in making this sustainable for me? What do I need to do to develop?

What is the alternative?

Waiting for someone to read your mind and offer you exactly what you want and need? When do you suppose that will happen? Why are you giving them all the control?

If there was a way for me to teach you how to get law firms to give us what we need, I would teach it to you but it doesn’t exist.

You are going to have to find your own voice.

If you have a big goal and your brain is not freaking out, your goal isn’t big enough. If you aren’t uncomfortable as you are building your practice and making your dreams a reality, you are not trying hard enough. You are not dreaming big enough. You are just a hamster on a wheel with a brain that is content in the cave.

Change is supposed to be hard. Change requires you to do things and think things you never have before. It requires you to evolve. It requires you to become a different version of yourself.

Are you choosing to be stuck?

Are you choosing a life of comfort and familiarity?

What is that costing you?

Is this what you want your story to be?

We must set big goals to grow. Doing this will make us uncomfortable. It will trigger our biological responses to run away. Anticipate that resistance and do it anyway. It doesn’t “have to be this way.” Let’s shake it up a bit.

Life is whatever you choose to make it.

What are you choosing? Do you like your reasons?

Photo by Semina Psichogiopoulou on Unsplash

I hate being a lawyer

What else can I do with a law degree

How do I know if practicing law is right for me?

You will get a boatload of hits and stories of woe from “recovering lawyers.” Law school and practicing law are like any good love story. You can’t really understand how amazing and yet how terrible it can be until you experience it yourself.

In my practice, I spent many a dark night wondering if I had made the right choice in going to law school. I cried in my office more times than I probably remember. I missed important events, skipped parties, and used work as an excuse more times than I care to admit.

I deeply empathize with those of you going through that turmoil. The feeling of hopelessness and pressure. That heavy, oppressive fear that you just spent thousands of dollars getting into a prestigious club only to quickly realize you want right back out.

Fancy degree, fancy office, fancy car, fat paycheck and miserable. Congratulations!

Ooof. The agony.

So, what do you do?

One of the things we coaches love to do is “question your most closely held thoughts, beliefs, and assumptions.” These are the words of my coach who makes me pledge to do this very thing at the beginning of every session.

Many of our most closely held thoughts, beliefs, and assumptions are really wolves masquerading in sheep’s clothing. They sound so nice and innocuous, even virtuous. Yet, pretty thoughts have a way of causing so much unnecessary pain.

I want to have a job I can feel good about

I want a boss who respects me

I don’t want to be treated like an idiot

I want to love what I do

We have so many thoughts like this that we are choosing to swish around in our brains. They are not facts. They are not gospel. They are only true because you are choosing to believe they are true.

There are people in this world (ESPECIALLY during this pandemic) that would be thrilled with a job. Any job. If they could go to law school and work for someone who yelled at them, treated them like an idiot and didn’t respect them, they would be thankful just to have a job.

There are people in this world who would rather have a job for a horrible boss making tons of money than a job with Willie Wonka making pennies.

There are people in this world who neither love nor hate their jobs; it’s just a job. It is not who they are, it doesn’t define them, it’s a means to an end.  It pays the bills. They don’t care that they don’t love it. They have other things to love.

If you want to believe that you should love your job, that is 1000% your right and your option. My only question for you is

How is that thought serving you?

Does it make you feel terrible? Does it make you jump from job to job constantly searching for something better? Does it inspire you to get out of bed every day?

There is no such thing as inherently good or bad thoughts. Thoughts are good or bad based upon the impact those thoughts have on you–how they make you feel, show up, act, and the results they drive you to create.

Last week, I had a mini-session with a woman who was really grappling with her career. She was trying to figure out what to do next. As we discussed her reasons for considering a change she keep coming back to

I just want a job that I can feel good about; that brings purpose to my life.

Lovely. Beautiful. Commendable thoughts.

They were making my client miserable.

Those thoughts made her feel anxious and panicky. They drove her to overly criticize every job opportunity and scrutinize every aspect of her work. She was creating an impossibly high standard for her career and it was wrecking havoc on her life as she jumped from job to job and career to career seeking that elusive “purpose”. It was blocking her ability to see and appreciate the good in any aspect of her life. Those thoughts were keeping her from being happy in ANY environment.

This applies to everything. Not just your job. Thinking about quitting your marriage, that relationship, that friendship? Whatever it may be, the first step is getting honest with yourself about your brain.

What closely held thoughts, beliefs, and assumptions are contributing to your present strife?

Are some of your pretty thoughts blocking you from happiness? 

If you can get a handle on your brain and the role you are playing in creating your current misery, you can move into a space of greater clarity. From that space of clarity, you can make clear-headed, logical decisions about your life. Decisions that aren’t frantic, panicked or based in fear. Part of that process is examining some of your closely held thoughts, beliefs, and assumptions.

How are those beliefs/thoughts/assumptions serving you? Are they blocking your happiness?

You have the freedom to believe whatever you want but you must ask yourself whether those thoughts deserve real estate in your brain. It’s your future. What thoughts are you using to fuel your journey?

You have a job that pays the bills. You have a home. You are healthy. You have family and friends who care about you.

Despite seemingly having all the ingredients to live a satisfied life, you just can’t seem to find happiness.

It always feels like something is missing or you catch yourself constantly wondering is this it?

Most of the women that I work with come to me to work on this very issue. They want to be happier, they want to feel better.

They believe that I can help them complete a task of some sort that will lead them to the elusive happy-land they have been seeking.

Unfortunately, when we learn to understand why we feel the way we do, we also come to realize that there is nothing that I can do to make you happier.

There is nothing anyone can do to make you happier.

You are going to have to go this one alone.

In our society, so many people blame their unhappiness on things outside of themselves:

I’m unhappy because I hate my job.

If my spouse was more affectionate, I would be happier.

I’m unhappy because I don’t make enough money.

I’m unhappy because I’m always broke.

Circumstances outside of us have no way of imparting feelings upon us. There are no magic feeling zappers that other people use to control how we are feeling. People cannot reach out and inscribe emotions onto your brain.

Your feelings are created by your thoughts and the often-times nasty things swirling around in your head.

If you are unhappy, it might be because you spend 99% of your time thinking about how much you hate your job, or how your partner isn’t good enough, or you don’t have enough money. Those thoughts feel terrible.

Those thoughts will never create happiness.

People are so incredibly wed to this notion that circumstances create our feelings. When I explain this concept, they get so defensive. They want to tell me how terrible their boss is or how broke they really are, because once I really understand their circumstances, I will get it. Then I will see that their bank account balance is what is making them unhappy.

Nope. Your bank account balance is just a circumstance. When you see that balance and think how am I going to pay the bills, that thought is what is creating unhappiness. That thought only leads to worry and a whole parade of terrible emotions, insecurities and does not create any good results.

If circumstances were able to change the way we felt, then we would all feel the same way about your bank account balance. But we don’t. There are undoubtedly people on this planet who would see your bank account and think wow, that’s a lot of money or I wish my account was that big. They might feel jealous or envious of your bank account based upon the thoughts that come up for them. The point is, the circumstance is neutral. Your thoughts about it create your emotions.

The same is true for happiness. If you want to be happier in your life, take a look at the thoughts you are carrying with you. Do those thoughts invoke happiness?

If your thoughts are breeding negativity and pain, it’s important first to understand that your brain is just running some old patterns, rinsing and repeating thoughts it is comfortable with. That is what brains do—they want the easy route, the neural pathways that they know and are good at running.

Second, try to shift how you are viewing and characterizing the circumstance. Instead of agonizing over the job you hate, consider thinking I am a good employee and you are going to miss me when I’m gone or I am using this opportunity to learn how to use my voice or this job is a stepping stone to get me one stop closer to my dream job.

I call this truth shifting. Find a better truth to focus on and ditch the old one. The key is that the thought has to be something you believe: something true.

Any of those thoughts will create feelings of motivation, inspiration, focus and excitement. Spend more time in that space and less time in the space where you are feeling depressed and unhappy about your job.

Imagine what you could create and who you could become if you learned to create positive emotions instead of letting your brain keep you stuck in a mental rinse and repeat cycle of negativity.

The next time you find yourself wanting to be happier, think of it as an opportunity to sit with yourself and examine your thoughts that are creating those emotions. The truth might surprise you.

Need support? Schedule a free coaching consultation and learn about how to take this basic concept to the next level.

She wanted me to say Yes! I have made her life a dream. I can solve ALL of your problems too, I promise. I can make you happy. I can make your life happy.

But that wasn’t the truth. There is no happy ending. There is no happily ever after.

The truth is that even when we achieve our dreams, we still feel like crap half of the time.

I remember when it first set in for me. I had a job at a big, fancy firm, and I was riding the elevators one evening and I realized This is what I went to law school for. This is what all those late nights and missed parties were for. This is what my life is going to be like for the next 50 years. I will never forget the feeling I had that night as I rode the elevator down to the first floor. It was such a heavy and depressing reality. I thought becoming a lawyer would feel differently. I thought I would feel different. That I would feel happy and successful and confident. I didn’t.

I didn’t feel any differently than I had always felt.

It was a such a poignant experience. I was faced with the reality that my big accomplishment did not change anything. I felt the exact same as I did all those years prior.

The foolish man seeks happiness in the distance, the wise grows it under his feet.

James Oppenheim

Our happiness is not created by achievements or by people and events outside of ourselves. Accolades do not create happiness. What we think about ourselves having received that accolade is what creates happiness.

Consider this: If you won an Academy Award for your role in a movie that you were never in, would that award make you feel happy? Of course it wouldn’t because it wouldn’t generate any positive thoughts for you other than confusion. But if you were in that movie and received an Academy Award, you would feel happy because you would be thinking I have finally made it. This proves that I am an amazing actress. The award itself conveys nothing—if it did then even those who had no relationship with the award would feel automatically happy once they receive it. The happiness comes from what we are thinking.

The problem is that when we look for happiness externally, it is fleeting. People will forget who won Academy Awards and years later, few people will think of you when you think of that award or accolade. So the cycle begins again.

The cycle of finding another external goal to re-create the feeling of happiness.

It is a never-ending cycle. I see it so often in my clients who achieve massive goals to become doctors or lawyers or acclaimed scholars only to find that they still aren’t happy. The achievement didn’t bring them happiness.

Happiness comes from within. It comes from how you think about yourself, your relationships, and your life. Achieving a goal will not suddenly make you happy. It won’t solve all your problems.

You will still be a human and your human life will always come with its own struggles, at least 50% of the time.

So, the truth is that no, I don’t have clients that achieve all their goals and are suddenly happy. Rather, I have clients who achieve their goals and completely miss it. They are so busy looking for more and still trying to feel something different that they don’t even take notice of all they have accomplished. They don’t take time to celebrate how far they have come because it was never really about the accomplishment. It was about how they thought they would feel once they got there. When they don’t get that feeling, when they don’t suddenly feel happier, they just keep on moving and searching. They don’t even notice the accomplishment.

As a coach, part of my job is to make sure that you take a breath and celebrate all those victories and all those goals. Celebrating yourself with loved ones can bring its own happiness and good memories—maybe even more so than the goal itself.

If you are striving toward some big goal, make sure that you have not convinced yourself that goal will make you happy or will make your life easier.

In order to find happiness, you have to look within and develop that relationship with yourself.

Without that relationship, no achievement is ever going to make a real impact in your happiness. If you aren’t doing your inner work, all that outer work will go un-noticed and will leave you feeling deflated. Learn how here.