Leader Rising

Have you ever wondered what made happy people happy? And what about what made unhappy people unhappy? Truth be told, I've wondered it a lot. I've had good reason to. Over the 12 years of my legal career, I've spent quite a lot of time unhappy. I didn't want this to be my life. So I committed to coaching and to Leader Rising. I've been making progress. But some time in 2021, I had a big idea. I was going to write a book. A book that would help lawyers everywhere get happier, so that they didn't need to go down my deep rabbit hole to get there. And thus was born my dream of the Happy Lawyer book. As of the time of writing, I have completed 75 interviews of lawyers - happy lawyers, miserable lawyers, and lawyers in between. Some have been in private practice, others in-house, and a few had left law altogether. I pulled out patterns from among the happy lawyers and miserable lawyers. And I've taken these patterns, mixed them with my ~500 hours of coaching clients, as well as with my own life experience and the wisdom I've taken from many of the top personal improvement books, and I've created …. (I hope you're doing a drumroll over there

I have a friend who’s a lawyer and he loves buying himself nice things. Fancy meals, nice clothes, the whole nine yards. Growing up, his family didn’t have a lot of money.For him, treating himself was a sign that he’d made it.People seem to differ a little bit on how and how much it happens, but (I think) it’s generally accepted that what happens to you early in life shapes your views later. And there’s nothing intrinsically wrong with treating yourself, especially in his circumstances. So this would be fine if the story ended here.But it didn’t end there - he wasn’t happy being a lawyer and wanted to transition into a new career, but because he was spending as much as he was earning, he had no savings, no buffer. He had no way to transition and he was very down on himself.But Internal Family Systems, which we talked about last week and I’ve been really getting into, is non-pathologizing.It states that no matter who you are, no matter what your behaviors are - there is nothing wrong with you.Read that again. There’s nothing wrong with you. Even addiction, depression and anxiety - these parts of us - even when they lead to an outcome you don’t want - are in fact still looking out for us. They may be mistaken on what that takes, but they still want the best for us.From that perspective, you need to ask the question - how does the behavior serve you?For my friend, the behaviour serves him by making him feel like he made it. He looks around, sees luxury and thinks that those humble beginnings are far behind him.And being aware of your behaviors and motivations is the first step. How aware are you of the things you’re doing in your life? How do the things you do serve you? Join us this week as we discuss this and more.

I was bullied as a kid. Terribly.It was a formative moment for me. And I got over it.

During the summer of my first year of law school, I went backpacking in Europe with a good buddy. One afternoon we had just gotten to Rome and we didn’t have a place to stay.Of course, this was a little while ago, neither of us had a cell phone, so we were walking from hostel to hostel in search of a room. I remember being very focused. And I’m pretty sure my buddy remembers me being very grumpy. At some point, after we had checked out a couple places, my buddy said, “Let’s stop and eat something,” and I said, “No. Let’s just get there.” He persisted, and I eventually agreed. We stopped and ate. It was tasty, I was laughing. And joking. And having the great time I had come to Rome for. It was funny just how much it affected my outlook.In the book Transcend, Scott Barry Kaufman talks about food insecurity, which tends to produce certain negative behaviours. Not just in humans, but across birds, insects, and other animals.A hungry creature prioritizes food, and deprioritizes other things. And it gets focused (read: grumpy and hangry) in the process. This isn’t a bug - it’s a feature. They’re more likely to get food and survive.I just want to highlight this: when they’re hungry, their perspective on life changes. Everything is interpreted through that lens.But look, this isn’t about food. I have found that the analogy matches as we move to other aspects of life.The point comes back to what we were talking about last week - the hull and the sail of the boat - the deficiency needs and the growth needs. One of the deficiency needs I struggled with last week was self-esteem. I was deficient in that need. It is a fundamental need, just like hunger.And it starts to change your perspective.If you were to patch the hull of your ship first, some of the things you think are important now might not be important with this new perspective.What hole below the waterline have you been doing your best to ignore? Join us this week as we discuss this and more.

I remember feeling guilty about not being happy. I was earning decent money. I had a good work-life balance. I just wasn’t that happy.And what made it worse is that I then felt bad about not being happy with my life.I was focusing on the very pinnacle of the hierarchy of needs. I had safety, security, money, a steady job and other people have it so much worse.Who am I to not be satisfied with what I have?I finished this book Transcend by Scott Barry Kaufman. It’s a very interesting read, but what really jumped out at me was that he took Mazlow’s hierarchy of needs and reimagined it. As he does so, he does away with the pyramid. He says that has us thinking about it like a video game - tackle the first thing, beat it, forget about it. Tackle the next thing, beat it, forget about it. But that’s not how life works. We’re dealing with all of them at the same time.He posits that it’s more like a sailboat. A sailboat is split into two groups - the hull and the sail.

Apparently there’s science to support taking cold showers. At least, I’ve been told that there’s science. I haven’t actually looked into it.Instead, after I heard it was the bee’s knees, I decided just to try it. And as unpleasant as it is, I like it.It reminds me of that Mark Twain quote, If it’s your job to eat a frog, it’s best to do it first thing in the morning. And if it’s your job to eat two frogs, it’s best to eat the biggest one first.”I feel that way about the cold showers. I don’t do it for the health benefits. I do it to challenge myself. And I give this as an example of something I can do to challenge myself, even as I’m scaling back on other things.As many of you know, I burnt out last year. Hard. I burnt out so hard, I wrote a blogpost about it. I was re-reading it recently to admire my writing (don’t worry, I’m at least half joking) and I started to realize I was heading down the same path again. Some of the thoughts that were going around in my mind were:I can do this. I should be able to do this. This shouldn’t be that big a deal. I’ve done it before.But I use those thoughts to push away the warning signs. As CS Lewis says:Indeed the safest road to hell is the gradual one - the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts.And if you don’t realize the road you’re heading down, it can hard be hard to walk back uphill. But now, I want to take a step back. That said - it’s hard to do. These things I want to take a step back from have become part of my identity.It’s time for me to take a step off the path and figure out where I am, and where I’m going.What path are you on? Where are you going?Join us this week as we discuss this and more.

A little while ago, I had what started out as a particularly good Thursday. First, there are two things you need to know about my Thursdays:1. I’m not a lawyer on Thursday. I coach (and blog and podcast). 2. Thursday is the day Megan and I do weekly check-ins. Now this Thursday, I was crushing it. I had spoken to a new prospective client and things were going well. I had a real breakthrough coaching call with a different client, I picked up Ro from school and we had all eaten dinner together. Everything was coming up gold.And just as Megan and I sat down for our check in, she got a phone call, and took it.It wasn’t that long, maybe 10 minutes.I started out annoyed. And then I got pissed.

It’s okay to give up desserts, I wrote to myself. You don’t need to eat them because others do. Or because you used to, or because you love them.If they’re not worth the cost, then they’re not worth the cost.Computer games are desserts.

Even though I could tell at the time that it was sort of ridiculous, I couldn’t stop myself.I had just missed a supervision call as part of my coaching certification and I was going to be charged around $200USD. And I was just kicking the sh*t out of myself.You should (not) have heard the self-talk going on. Or worse, the emotions underneath the talk. We can often argue with thoughts, but feelings are a whole other ballgame.It wasn’t healthy.

A while back, I decided that law wasn’t going to make me happy. So I thought long and hard about what I would do instead.I came up with three options.I decided that if I could do it all over again, I would be a therapist, or a writer, or I would own a retail store.I remember saying to my coach, “Which one do I pick?”And she said, “Does it matter?”And in that instant, I realized that it didn’t matter which one I picked. I was stuck. All that mattered is that I start moving.Great, but that still doesn’t answer the question of what direction to move in.So I turned to Clayton Christensen in How Will You Measure Your Life and realized I needed to test my assumptions.My assumption was not that I would succeed. I believed I would succeed. It’s probably the same for you - we’ve got a history of setting goals and achieving them.My assumption was that I would like it.That doing these things would make me happy.So I tested them. I picked one I love. And I started to build the life that would make me happy.And then I burnt out. Hard.What went wrong?We discuss this and more on this week’s episode.

On our way home from the park yesterday, we stopped at a different park. And ran into some neighbours who were there with their kid. She kept playing quietly with some toys she had found. I was chatting with the parents, and after a few minutes, I looked around and saw that Ronan was watching a group of older kids play a bit rough on the twirly-go-round. He looked conflicted. I mentioned it. After a moment, while I was still talking with one parent, the other one went over to their daughter. Next thing I know, she's walking over to my guy: "Ronan, do you want to play with me?" I don't even know if he said yes, but his body definitely did, as he stepped forward with a bashful smile. It was yet another lesson in the importance of reaching out. That little girl made such a difference in Ro's day. Who is someone you care about that you haven't spoken to in a while? What if you were to drop them a note right now saying that you cared? We discuss this and leadership within a team setting at work on today’s podcast.

I turned to my father-in-law. “You’re going to need to put your plans to build your buggy on hold,” I said, “after I win the LOTTO MAX tonight, I’m going to build a hobbit house. And I need you to be the general contractor.” I was serious. Let’s be clear - I knew I wasn’t going to win the lottery. But when we buy a lottery ticket, we allow ourselves to dream about what we would do with the money. You see, up until recently I believed this was a good thing. I thought it was a benefit - you get to daydream about all the things you would do if money was no object. This week, however, I paid attention to how I felt when I talked about what I would do with the money. What I found is that it opens up the gap between that future, where I have all this money, and my current reality. It paints a picture that I don’t have enough right now. It makes me focus on what I don’t have. “Who you are - what you think, feel, and do, what you love, is the sum of what you focus on” - Winifred Gallagher And here I was focusing on what I didn’t have. That is not ideal. Most of us ask ourselves: is it worth it in terms of the money? What we should be asking ourselves is: is it worth it in terms of our attention? What are you focused on? Join us this week as we discuss.

I was annoyed at my coach. She had just asked “What would you need to want to wake up tomorrow and attack the day?” I knew it was a leading question. I knew she wanted me to say “to leave law,” so she could follow up with the question: “Ok, will you leave law?” I knew I was too scared to, and I didn’t want to face it. You see, in that moment I tried to think about what else I needed to wake up and look forward to the day, and the answer was nothing. I had everything I needed. I had a life many would envy. But I wasn’t choosing to be grateful. I wasn’t choosing to be happy. Jim Kwik asks “What if the only things in your life tomorrow were the things for which you expressed gratitude today?” We tell ourselves we want to feel grateful, but do we actually do it?  Do we actually create it? There are two big levers we can pull on that can help increase your feeling of gratitude about your life: Increase the gratitude you feel. Cut down on your gratitude vampires. Join us this week as we explore next level gratitude. And maybe ask yourself:  What is amazing about your life? What are you grateful for?

“Go ask that girl out,” my friend said to me one night in a bar in undergrad. I was scared. You see, I had only been on a couple dates.  What if she said no? I thought. Or worse - what if she said yes?  I had no clue what to do! Far easier to accept being rejected than to succeed and fail when the stakes were higher. Fast forward to my law career. I was aiming for my targets. Not above them, but to try to hit them exactly. You see, I wanted to work hard and do well, and I also wanted to enjoy life. But I was constantly looking over my shoulder, asking myself “is this… okay?” Will I be found out? I felt like an impostor.  You see, impostor syndrome can show up in a lot of different aspects of our lives. We can all feel like we don’t belong in certain situations, whether they be in our dating lives or in our workplace. Know that it’s normal. When you’ve just been promoted and you think “they picked the wrong person,” that’s normal.  When you go on a date with a beautiful new woman and you think “she’s outta my league,” that’s normal. When you’re looking up at a monster of a task and you think “I don’t know if I can do this,” that’s normal. Imposter syndrome is not only normal, it can be helpful. What is it trying to tell you?  Join us this week to discuss.