Life & Career Coaching for Lawyers
Life & Career Coaching for Lawyers
One of the primary reasons that my clients struggle with the practice of law is that they often feel like their life is out of control. We want to believe that we don’t have any control. We want to believe that work overload just happens to us and we have no role to play in it.
But that is only true if you decide to make it true.
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.
As a basic premise, we as humans have the right to determine how we spend our time, where our energy goes, who we have relationships with. We have complete autonomy over our lives. We know this at our core but when it comes to implementing it and OWNING it every day, we give away all of that power.
With my clients, I most often see this happen when we start envisioning changes they want to make in their life.
How eliminating two simple words from your vocabulary can change your life.
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?
I rarely encounter a client that isn’t struggling in some manner to connect with her purpose. After so many years of working toward this goal of becoming a lawyer, that life isn’t often everything that we thought it would be. We are left looking for something more.
So how do we find our purpose?
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?
So many of my clients back themselves into a corner, agreeing to do things that they don’t REALLY want to do, things that they shouldn’t do, things that ask them to color outside the lines. They agree to do it because they feel like they “should” help as much as they can. But then as they settle into the work, they are fuming. All because of this word “should.”
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?
Perfectionism is a way to stay stuck. To convince yourself that your efforts are noble. You simply want to do it right and you can’t move forward until you do that. It seems valid. It seems reasonable. But this is simply fear masquerading in a more “honorable” outfit. The fear of failure, dressed as perfectionism.
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