Life & Career Coaching for Lawyers
Life & Career Coaching for Lawyers
Do you ever have those days when you come home and you are just completely mentally and physically exhausted? Like this exhaustion is just there hovering around you like a dark fog and despite getting enough sleep and not being overly stressed, you can’t seem to shake it?!
The cause behind that exhaustion may surprise you.
There seems to be a general trend that experiencing emotions is not permitted especially among female professionals. That being emotional is a sign of weakness. It’s understandable that we don’t want to break down in tears at the office but what are you doing with those emotions once you leave for the day and does it matter?
It’s not unusual for an epic meltdown to be the catalyst for clients to start working with me. As professionals, we are trained to balance and juggle so many difficult and challenging things. So why is it that sometimes, we just fall apart, despite our best efforts to keep it all together? The answer might surprise you.
As my clients learn to take more ownership over their feelings and their actions, one of the challenges they face is how to address negative experiences. Their immediate inclination is to shift to a new thoughts to try and feel better about the situation. But reality is that sometimes things will happen in our lives that we don’t want to feel good about. So what do we do?
Many of my clients describe themselves as perfectionists. They don’t want to do something unless and until it can be done properly. While that sentiment sounds noble and worthy, its impact on our lives is much more nefarious.
One of the drawbacks of living in a society where everyone is so interconnected and everyone’s lives are constantly on display, is that it blurs the lines of reality. Not only do these outlets influence our beliefs about ourselves but they perpetuate the belief that we should be happy all the time.
How do we handle the bad days?
When we ignore our negative emotions and bury them under anger, we ignore what is really going on. We deny ourselves our own truth. Without experiencing those negative emotions and those associated thoughts, we can never shift away from anger to something more productive…but how?!
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?
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?
I have been thinking a lot about our emotions and how it is so amazing that those subtle, invisible vibrations in our bodies drive everything we do.