The Secrets No One is Telling You

In today's episode we are digging into the reasons why women are initially drawn to coaching and why women are struggling in the legal industry. I jokingly titled this episode the Secrets No One is Telling You because in the legal industry it's nearly impossible to see that we are all struggling in so many similar ways but no one is talking about it! Today we unpack those secret struggles and shed light on the things I hear again and again in my coaching sessions.

Watch the full episode on our YouTube Channel: https://youtu.be/aTxtlIndvf0

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RELATED TO THIS EPISODE:  

• Feeling Unfulfilled: https://thelawyerlifecollective.com/feeling-unfulfilled/
• People Pleasing: https://thelawyerlifecollective.com/people-pleasing/
• Saying No: https://thelawyerlifecollective.com/saying-no/
• Are We Wired to People Please?: https://thelawyerlifecollective.com/are-we-wired-to-people-please/
• Preparing for Hard Conversations: https://thelawyerlifecollective.com/preparing-for-hard-conversations/

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Transcript

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You are listening to the Lawyer Life Podcast.

Episode No. 14

Why do lawyers use coaches?

Or, more accurately described as,

The secrets that no one is telling you.

Welcome back, everyone, to the Lawyer Life Podcast. If you are seeking ways to find more time, be more productive, build your client base, set healthy boundaries, demystify business development, and authentically sell your services, you are in the right place. If you're a lawyer who's looking to make a change to your practice or even leave law altogether and would like to learn more about all of those avenues from someone who's already done it, this is the place for you.

Hey everyone, I’m Autumn Noble, and I’m the founder of the Lawyer Life Collective, where we focus not only on all of these things but ultimately how to make your career as meaningful and fulfilling as possible. In the Lawyer Life Collective, we focus on one-on-one coaching, targeting your specific goals, and we develop a plan, execute, and help you step into your power as the amazing and inspirational woman that you are meant to be.

In today's episode, we are digging into the reasons why women are initially drawn to coaching and why we are struggling in the legal industry. I joke that this episode should really be called "The Secrets that no one is telling you" because oftentimes in the legal industry, we lose sight of the fact that we're all struggling in so many similar ways. The challenges that we deal with in the legal industry are not often common topics of conversation in the coffee room. It's rare that we are able to find trusted allies within the legal industry with whom to share our tales of woe. So for that reason, coaching can often feel like a long sought-after safe haven where all of the things you've been wanting to scream from the rooftops can finally get some airtime.

So today we're digging into the top six reasons why women come to coaching and the challenges that we work to overcome. There is no magic to the #6. In fact, I initially considered coming up with a list of 10 challenges, but my goal of keeping these episodes succinct has run out. As you will see, many of these issues are complex and they encompass various other related challenges. So in honor of being decisive and honoring my own judgment, 6 challenges is what we're talking about today. I'm hoping that in listening to these, you can at least walk away from this episode with some comfort that you, my friend, are far from alone in the challenges that you're facing. So let's go ahead and dive into No. 1, and that is lack of boundaries.

I want to start this episode talking about boundaries because it's an element that I see in nearly every coaching relationship that I've ever encountered, including my own. As lady lawyers, there is often a significant part of us that is drawn to helping others. The legal industry is a service industry after all. We tend to show up in helper roles, and at our very core, we want to be supportive to everyone around us. For this reason, it can cause us a tremendous amount of pain to say no when people ask for our time and our attention. It's even more painful to say no when the inquirer is someone that we know and respect and that we don't want to disappoint. It's very difficult for us to buy into the fact that we cannot, in fact, help everyone 100%. It's simply not possible.

But never mind the fact that while we're running around trying to help everyone 100%, we are implicitly relegating our needs to the back seat every time. Because it's so hard to please everybody else and do all these things for everybody else, the last thing we can even contemplate is doing what we want because we're so busy trying to get everything done for everybody else. The net result is that we set ourselves up for failure by buying into this possibility that we can, in fact, do it all, and we set ourselves up for that epic meltdown and burnout because we ignore our own wants and our own needs, particularly our needs to care for ourselves and honor ourselves. Never mind stopping for lunch or getting a full night's sleep.

Add to that the fact that many of us utilize grit and tenacity to create all of the success that's led us here, but it's that grit and that tenacity and that willingness to push harder that rises up and meets this new taskmaster that we call the legal profession. In this space, that new taskmaster is going to happily take as much as we are willing to give. And as people who are not skilled at protecting our time and protecting our energy and attention through boundaries, the need to suddenly develop those skills and create boundaries becomes essential to our own survival in this industry. It's during this phase of our professional lives that we have to rein in that grit and find a better way. We must no longer be driven by this idea that we have to keep accomplishing and pushing really hard. Instead, we have to start rethinking what we're willing to give and reconsidering what we want to motivate us.

This realization can be incredibly jarring and painful because it brings with it a whole new line of painful inquiry. Who am I if I'm not someone who's constantly giving it 110%? Who am I if I'm not always a team player who's available whenever they're needed? When you realize that you are giving more than you want to and your historical pattern of pushing harder and harder no longer serves you, it is a calling to reevaluate your motivations and reconsider how you want to show up and who you want to be during this next season of your life. This will likely require you to develop some skill at setting and maintaining boundaries, not because others will like it, but because it's the only way for you to show up in accordance with those truest intentions and those decisions about who you want to be and how you want to show up during this time.

Challenge No. 2: Fear of failure. This is a massive topic and it has offshoots in various other challenges that I often see in coaching, including imposter syndrome, people pleasing, and perfectionism. All of those tendencies are rooted in this idea that if we don't keep the people around us happy, if we don't show up perfectly, or if people realize that we are fallible humans, they're going to judge us and see us as a failure, and there's a part of us that's going to agree with them.

The real motivation behind imposter syndrome, people pleasing, and perfectionism is this idea that we want people to believe that we are infallible, that we can't do things wrong, that we want everyone to believe that we can do everything flawlessly and seamlessly in every moment. The rationale is that if we can achieve that, we never have to experience the pain that comes when we let those standards slip, the pain that comes when we fail or when others judge us because we make a mistake, or when we simply can't do it all. Self-judgment, guilt, and shame, all of those emotions typically accompany any type of perceived failure as humans. None of us want to live with those emotions day in and day out, so instead we go out of our way to avoid them and we do this by seeking to please everybody around us, to show up perfectly, and to keep everyone from realizing that we do mess up sometimes, that we do make mistakes.

Part of the work that we do in coaching is not only embracing the impossibility behind that logic, but also recognizing that life is Yin and Yang in all ways. Some days we're going to show up as our best selves and put forward our best work, but those days will always yield to other days where we don't and we make mistakes. Just as sunny days have to come to an end and storms have to come to an end, they all have their time and their purpose. We too, as humans, yield growth from those dark times too, and they must come. Our goal is not to avoid those negative emotions that come from any type of perceived failure or lacking or mistake, but rather to learn how to experience those parts of our lives so that we no longer have to run away from them or try to hide them behind guises of perfectionism or through people-pleasing.

I firmly believe that people pleasers are liars and that perfectionism is a mark of a scared person. In both cases, we lie to try and manipulate how others think about us in order to avoid disappointing others or having them judge us or think that we're not perfect. It assumes that this facade is better than the reality of who we are as human and flawed. In coaching, our work is to embrace who we are as humans and recognize that failure and guilt and shame and embarrassment that come with those failures, they're all part of this theme of Yin and Yang of life, and that life is so much easier when we embrace that truth instead of running away from it and trying to avoid all of those emotions attendant to perceived failure.

Imagine what your life would be like and how you would show up differently if you could no longer be concerned so much about making a mistake or failing or having others judge you or talk about you. Imagine how much more confident you would be if you knew that you could try anything and fail and keep going and never be sidelined by your own judgments or perceived judgments of others. That is the direction that we start moving in through coaching, and that is why fear of failure is such a common part of what we see because it's usually at the root and core of a lot of our sort of self-preservation tactics like people-pleasing and perfectionism.

No. 3: Time management. Time management was a topic of our prior podcast episode, so I'm only going to mention it briefly here, but this topic is closely interwoven with the prior two challenges that I often see in coaching: lack of boundaries and people-pleasing and perfectionism pursuit. Those tactics often lead us to be overwhelmed and overloaded. In order to better manage our time, we have to flex those boundaries and let go of people-pleasing and perfectionism in favor of something bigger. When we are able to more intentionally focus our time and prioritize our efforts, not only do we create better work, but we as humans show up better and happier and more at peace and less angry. We're more in control of our lives.

When we let people-pleasing and perfectionism dictate how we spend our time from day to day, it can feel very disempowering, which often leads to bitterness and resentment and anger at everyone around us that we sort of blame for feeling this way. How we manage our time is truly a reflection of how well we utilize boundaries and invest in creating the life that we truly want without regard to what others may think about it. If you are struggling to get it all done or you constantly feel like you're running out of time, it's a huge red flag that you are not honoring your boundaries and you are likely being driven by people pleasing and perfectionism, which is really just that fear of failure in a cuter outfit. You won't get a handle on your time until you do that deeper work.

No. 4: Feeling unfulfilled. I rarely encounter a client that isn't struggling in some manner to feel more fulfilled or connect more with her purpose. After so many years of working towards this goal of becoming a lawyer, that life isn't often everything that we thought it would be, and that can be a really painful realization and leaves us looking for something more. Most of my clients posit that they wanted to go to law school and graduate and get a good job at a prestigious firm because they wanted to make good money, they wanted to be respected, they wanted a life better than their parents had, they want to be seen as successful, they want their parents to be proud of them, or perhaps they want to prove themselves to those that doubted them and they don't want to be seen as a failure. Many of us can relate to a lot of those justifications.

But when we look one layer deeper and explore why all of those reasons are so persuasive, we are left with the core of the issue. We pursue this route of lawyering because we want to feel important, we want to feel valued, we want to feel proud of ourselves, we want to feel like a success. These types of motivations are not limited to our careers either. A lot of us get married because we want to feel loved or we want to be happy. We buy a bigger house because we think it'll give us more peace and make our family more cohesive and happy. We have kids because we think it will make us feel more fulfilled.

Therein lies the problem. That's the key to our lack of fulfillment. All of those motivations, they're rooted in this belief that we're not yet enough, we're not important, we're not valued enough, we're not someone to be proud of, we're not successful without all of those things that we're pursuing. What's more, we're looking for something outside of ourselves to make us feel important and valued and proud and successful. But that is impossible. The house, the job, the car, the paycheck, the money, the children, they can't implant feelings of purpose, fulfillment, and happiness into you. That pursuit is a recipe for a never-ending cycle of letdowns.

All we have to do to know that this is true is simply look at our society's most successful, most famous, wealthiest humans whose lives are often riddled with nasty divorces and drug and alcohol abuse. They have all of the things that we're pursuing, yet they seem also to be lacking that critical piece of happiness and fulfillment. All of those things that they have gotten, it didn't create it for them because it can't. You cannot achieve the life of your dreams from a place of lack and self-judgment of yourself, from a place of believing that we need something more outside of ourselves to finally believe that we're good enough, that we can finally feel fulfilled.

That energy of lacking and self-judgment is never going to serve you because those negative beliefs about yourself, they're only going to generate more self-doubt and it creates a pattern of thinking around our lives, about our lives not being meaningful and not being good enough as they are. Those patterns of thinking, they'll come with us no matter what wealth or assets or success we accumulate because we get really good at believing that we're just going to need more. So we accumulate more and more and we are still stuck with that pattern thinking that we aren't good enough without something else, and that “something else” just keeps changing.

Would you choose to consciously believe that without more, you aren't good enough and that you must find that missing piece to become whole and worthy? Probably not. But is that what you're pursuing and achieving implicitly suggesting? Is that really what's driving it and how is that working out for you? I truly believe that all humans are worthy and whole just as they are. That includes you, my dear listeners. You're worthy and valuable just as you are. You are something to be proud of already. You are successful. You are good enough now and nothing more is needed.

And I know that most of us don't really believe that, and I totally get it. But what if it were true? And how would your life be different if you already believed that you were good enough without more? If you believe that you could create your own fulfillment despite the job, the house, or the kids, what then would you do with your life? That is some of the deeper work that we do in coaching because often times when my clients show up to work with me seeking purpose and seeking fulfillment, those things are tied to something else. And so we work to really deconstruct those connections and figure out what if we believe that we were good enough and how can we get to that space of creating those feelings of pride and success and fulfillment now and then whatever we do with our life is sort of a separate issue entirely, but we're not pursuing anything in order to give us those feelings.

No. 5: Difficult conversations are often something that drive people to coaching. How to prepare for and initiate difficult conversations is often one of the more actionable types of topics that we tackle in coaching. Sometimes it's not even the clear goal of coaching, but it becomes evident as we unpack other intentions. And I'll explain.

So for instance, it's very common for an attorney to begin coaching because they're just fed up. They're fed up with their firm and their bosses or they're frustrated with their boss's complete disregard for their attempts at boundaries or they feel like they've been thrown under the bus unfairly and they feel like sometimes the way that they're being treated is just not acceptable. Given all of those reasons, they've simply decided to move on to a new firm. So they come to coaching wanting to make a plan for that next thing.

While many of those reasons for leaving a firm are perfectly viable justifications, what we often uncover in coaching is that our struggles with those issues is more closely rooted to our own unwillingness to stand up for ourselves, use our voices, and ask for what we want, then it has to do with the firm or the job itself. When we leave a firm without having those difficult conversations and seeing if there's a way for us to make it better for ourselves, we set ourselves up for this Goldilocks effect where we're simply moving from one firm and one boss to another, looking for one where the people are kinder and your boundaries are honored and people speak to you with proper dignity and respect.

And while some of us might get lucky and find those firms, what many of us find is that regardless of where we go, our need to develop those skills and those tools for having difficult conversations will always remain and just follow us wherever we go. So whether it is a difficult conversation with your boss around how he treats you or talks to you or values your time, or it's about asking for a promotion to partnership early, asking for more work that you actually want, asking to change practice areas, or negotiating a higher salary, maybe it's changing a supervisor and putting that request through, in all of those instances, we spend a tremendous amount of time in coaching strategizing and planning our way through those conversations.

If there are aspects of your life, personally or professionally, that are frustrating you and you find yourself avoiding them or wanting to get away from them, like end the relationship or change jobs, and you're wanting to do it quickly, consider whether part of that urge is also a desire to avoid having a difficult and authentic conversation. How would your life be different if you were able to show up for yourself, speak your truth, and ask for what you truly wanted and be honest and open in that relationship as opposed to ending it or just moving away from it?

I truly believe that this is one of the most important skills that we work on in coaching because it shows up in all aspects of our lives and often the avoidance of these conversations is what's driving a lot of big life changes. When we're able to show up for ourselves, use our voices, and have those conversations, it often becomes much less necessary to run away from relationships or circumstances or utilize that Goldilocks approach. Instead, we work on and we practice showing up for ourselves and further developing the relationships with those around us by being honest and authentic about what we want and what we need.

Sometimes those conversations are very successful and sometimes they're not, but who you become at the end of having them, that's really all that matters. And that's why we focus on it so much in coaching because when you're able and willing to start using your voice and having those conversations, you might still change jobs, you might still leave that relationship, but who you are when you leave it and what you're willing to put up within the next one is very different, and you at least leave knowing that you tried and that you spoke your truth and were honest about what was going on. And that is truly what matters and the only way that we could potentially change all of those things that we see in our careers as toxic.

Last but not least, No. 6: Decision making. And full disclosure, I wanted to stop at five topics, but I could not exclude this one. I really wanted to include decision making because it is something that is so interwoven with many of the other challenges we've already discussed, but it's also deeply entrenched in other challenges that arise in coaching, and that is making decisions and having your own back.

Whether you are setting a boundary or making a big change or standing up for yourself, using your voice, or simply deciding to be honest with those around you, there are going to be opportunities for you to second guess your decision and judge your actions. We spend, or should I say waste, a tremendous amount of energy second guessing, unpacking, and unraveling, and challenging all of our past decisions. But because of that, we can paralyze ourselves from making new decisions in our present state because we know how much scrutiny we will levy on ourselves once the decision has been made.

Furthermore, when that backwards-looking scrutiny yields the possibility that we made the quote-unquote wrong decision or we should have chosen a different course, the horrible and cruel judgment that we levy on ourselves for our poor decision making is incredibly painful. That just makes it even more difficult to make any new decision moving forward or in your present state because we know how terrible we will be to ourselves if we later decide differently when we're just second-guessing those prior decisions.

So many of the attorneys that I work with struggle to make and execute on decisions. There's a part of us that believes that there's a right decision that must be ascertained before we can move forward, and we talk about that a little in one of our earlier episodes on how to know when it's time for a change. But even without this notion that there's a right decision that we have to figure out before we can act, what typically keeps us from acting is the fear of making the wrong decision because we know how terrible we will be to ourselves if we later conclude that the decision was improper.

When we have a pattern of being hard on ourselves for every quote-unquote wrong decision, we are much more likely to avoid making any decisions at all and just stagnating ourselves. Instead, if we know that we will torture ourselves for making a wrong decision, it seems a lot safer to simply make no decisions at all and stay where you are in life. This tendency really just stagnates us and that self-judgment really keeps us stuck even when our own inner knowing is convinced that a change must happen.

Instead, the work that we do in coaching is to invest in ourselves and commit to having our own backs, to knowing that in order to evolve, we have to make decisions and we have to move forward in life. Later regretting a decision is simply a risk attendant to acting. We must act knowing that someday we might want to unravel that decision or someday we might think we shouldn't have made that decision, but we embrace that possibility and commit to treating ourselves kindly in the event we later disagree with a prior decision. We honor the fact that when we make a decision, we always do so with the best information available to us at the time and for reasons that resonate with us in the moment. Period. We then acknowledge that facts and circumstances following any initial decision are likely to change and those changes might impact how we want to move forward, but that does not give us a free pass to judge those prior decisions. It does not mean that we should have known or that we should have acted differently. We embrace the fact that we don't have the ability to foretell the future and instead we just allow ourselves to be human and trust that we can make decisions at the time with what we have available to us, and that's good enough. And in the future, we can make different decisions if that's what we choose to do.

There is no judgment that's necessary or required here. It's a very simple process, but it can truly be life-changing because at the root of this decision struggle is fear of failure and the fear of making the wrong decisions. And so you can start to see how all of these topics are really closely interwoven. If you find yourself unable to make or execute on decisions, it is likely because you are struggling with your own self-judgment and your own fear of failure. It's likely that you have a pattern of treating yourself terribly when you make the quote-unquote wrong decision. That is the type of patterning that we work to unravel in coaching.

I wanted to work through this brief list today to give you a sense of the types of things that we work through in coaching, but more importantly, to let you know that if you're experiencing anyone or all of these challenges, you're not alone. I think that one of the most beautiful things that I get to witness in coaching is the sudden awareness that we're not broken and that there is nothing wrong with us and that the challenges that we're having, mostly in secret and in private, those challenges mean very little about us as lawyers and our ability to be successful, but actually mean more about us as humans. We are all fighting the same battles and overcoming the same types of human challenges and discomforts.

I hope that if you take nothing else away from this episode today, please know that truly you are not alone in any of these challenges. And on that soft note, my friends, we are concluding this week's episode. As always, I've included various links in the show notes related to each of these topics in the event that you want to dig into any of them a little bit deeper. If any of these topics resonate with you on a really personal level and you'd like to get some additional support unpacking them, do not forget to sign up for that free coaching consultation, also linked in the show notes. I promise you it is not an opportunity for me to give you a 30-minute hardcore sales pitch. It's really a chance for me to talk to you about what's working and what's not working and share with you whether or not I think coaching can solve those problems for you.

In our next episode, we are going to explore why we aren't taking action on our goals. For this episode, think about all of those things that you want in your life that you don't have yet. Do you want to go to the gym more? Do you want to meditate more? Do you want to learn to play piano or polish up your Spanish skills? Leave the practice of law altogether? Work less or get that side business dream started? In this episode, we are going to unpack why we haven't done all of those things and how we can start taking meaningful action towards those goals.

In big news, if you haven't checked it out already, the Lawyer Life Collective has a shop on Etsy where you can find spicy and fun lawyer swag for any occasion. It's a little sweary, it's a little classy, but it's infinitely better than your law school gear, I promise you. By the time this episode airs, the holidays and the year-end will be in full swing, so get yourself some confidence-boosting goodies to kick off the New Year or to enjoy the holidays, like my favorite super-soft tank "Being Me AF'' or the Lawyer Life crop hoodies that are buttery soft and cozy enough to get you to the gym in the middle of the barren Arctic tundra that is the Midwest in the winter.

Thanks so much for being here, and again, as always, thanks for listening and thanks for sharing with your friends.