How do we find purpose and fulfillment in law? What is a hero's journey and what does it have to tell us about finding fulfillment? So many of my clients come to coaching confused about their future. They pursued the respected path to lawyer-dom and, having arrived, they feel lost. They don’t know what they are supposed to do with their life or whether it's possible to find real fulfillment in law. In this episode, we start to unpack this age-old question--how do I find purpose and fulfillment in my career?
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New episodes every other Wednesday.
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How do we find purpose and fulfillment in law? What is a hero's journey and what does it have to tell us about finding fulfillment? So many of my clients come to coaching confused about their future. They pursued the respected path to lawyer-dom and, having arrived, they feel lost. They don’t know what they are supposed to do with their life or whether it's possible to find real fulfillment in law. In this episode, we start to unpack this age-old question--how do I find purpose and fulfillment in my career?
Watch the full episode on our YouTube Channel: https://youtu.be/rLyMjHZYz4s
New episodes every other Wednesday.
RELATED TO THIS EPISODE:
Free coaching consult: https://autumnnoble.as.me/freeconsult
WHERE YOU CAN FIND ME:
SHOP THE LAWYER LIFE COLLECTION on Etsy
ADDITIONAL RESOURCES:
You are listening to the Lawyer Life Podcast, Episode No. 17: Fulfillment - What is it and how do we get more of it?
Welcome everyone to the Lawyer Life Podcast. I am your host, Autumn Noble. I am an attorney and a founder of the Lawyer Life Collective, where we coach around all aspects of your lawyer life and career. Over the course of my practice, I've worked in firms of various shapes and sizes, from boutique firms to regional and national firms. I've also built and chaired my very own practice group from the ground up. I've had the privilege of teaching in business schools and law schools, and eventually transitioned my practice in-house with a Fortune 300 company, where I was able to build the Lawyer Life Collective before finally leaving to build my own firm. Now I teach all of my clients how to do the same thing. If you want to build your practice and your client base, establish some independence, get more time, get more things done, and generally just have more happiness and balance in your life and your career, you're in the right spot, and I am so happy that you're here.
In the last two episodes, we talked about taking action and overcoming fear to pursue a big goal or to simply change whatever isn't working in your life. As we move away from those explorations, I want to take a step back and look at the big picture. What is the point of all of these goals and moving forward through the fear? Where does this all go and what is the point of it?
In thinking about those questions, I've been reading the work of Joseph Campbell, who is best known for his book "The Hero with a Thousand Faces." Campbell is a renowned expert in mythology, and in his book, he introduces this theory that the myths from all around the world and historical religions and faiths and practices generally share a fundamental structure that he refers to as the monomyth.
The monomyth structure is divided into three events with various stages in between, but I'll try and simplify it here today. In the first stage of what he calls the hero's journey, we find our protagonist living a life that is typically mundane until there is this call to adventure, this call to action. By some chance, the hero will become aware of information or actions that call for them to go on a quest of some sort.
I like to think about this call to action as that nagging feeling that a lot of us carry around. We're happy and we're content, but we can't really help but shake that feeling that something is missing, that we're missing a bigger, more important piece.
The second stage of Campbell's hero's journey is the refusal of the call. Overwhelmed by the call itself, the hero refuses to act and makes excuses as to why they can't answer the call. This is usually the stage where I meet a lot of my clients with respect to their hero's journey. They feel like they're missing something, they feel like there's something else they're supposed to be doing. But they know that something's not right, and they know that they are called to action to address it. But for whatever reason, they have decided not to answer that call. So they come to work with me or to pursue a coaching relationship, and they're struggling with this tremendous amount of pain and dissonance because they hear the call, they know that it's there, they know something's missing, but there's that kind of fear of what does it mean to follow through on that, what does it mean to change the way I'm showing up, what does it mean to pursue a different career path in a different life? And so a lot of people that I coach come to me sort of in that phase because it is really painful to hear the call and not answer it and to know that you're living in that limbo.
The third stage in the hero's journey is that once the hero decides to commit to that quest, they usually get some type of supernatural power or special weapon that's going to kind of assist them along the way. Now this may not be a lightsaber or anything as sexy as that, but it can be guides, and support coming into your life at that moment when you really need them most to engage on this quest. And I mention that here because I want to come back to it later.
So at this point, the hero has decided to answer the call and they're crossing the threshold. That's the next stage in the hero's journey. This is the moment when the hero actually embarks on the journey and enters the initiation stage of this quest. This is the fun stuff. A lot of it we talked about in our last episode. We're met with all sorts of trials and tests that really challenge our commitment to that goal and the journey that we have accepted.
The final stage, or the final part of this stage, is the apotheosis, and that's the spiritual death and rebirth of the hero. Having a greater knowledge of who they are and their purpose and the meaning of the journey for themselves. Following that period of challenges and temptations and the rebirth, the hero returns home transformed, changed by their experiences, and armed with new knowledge and insights that they can use to benefit their community. This then concludes with the freedom phase, freedom to live. The hero has achieved a state of freedom and enlightenment, often living happily ever after in a state of balance and harmony.
Now, I'm not meaning to dramatize our pursuit of fulfillment and happiness, but I do think that Campbell's work is really illustrative of where I meet people on their journey and my own experience finding more purpose and fulfillment in my own life and my career. The journey really begins with us having an awareness that we are called to do something more and then being willing to act upon it.
In several interviews about his work, Joseph Campbell is asked how are we to embark on our own hero's journey and what does that look like for humans trying to find more fulfillment and purpose in their life? And his response was really simple: to follow your bliss, whatever that may be. For Campbell, pursuing your bliss meant elevating your own personal experience and what you know to be true at a very deep level within you, holding that above and without regard to whatever the monolithic system is telling you is true, and without regard to the stories that you may have inherited from your culture and society. Sounds pretty simple.
So if my hero's journey is simply following my bliss to greater purpose and more fulfillment, why is it so hard? And why is it that more of us are not embarking on this hero's journey? The first impediment I see in this pursuit of purpose and fulfillment, or call it a hero's journey, is that we make the job the singular vessel for that purpose and fulfillment. Ultimately, I think the question that we have to ask when we find ourselves struggling with fulfillment is simply, "Okay, what if my job was just a job? Then what? Where do I go from there?" Really forcing us to step back and question that understanding that the job and your purpose and fulfillment have to come together in a package. What if it's just a job that makes it possible to find fulfillment elsewhere? Maybe it's a job that you don't love, but it's actually in furtherance of a greater purpose that's aside from the job. Or what if the job is just a means to help you find that bliss?
As I got to thinking about jobs and purpose and fulfillment in general, I could not help but think about our culture and how we discuss these types of topics with kids and how we prepare kids for their life and their own pursuit of purpose and fulfillment. We have been taught from a very young age that our purpose and our job are really closely wed together, and what's more, that job signifies our value to the rest of the world.
Consider one of the most common questions that we ask small humans: "What do you want to be when you grow up?" We ask that as if these kids are supposed to have some innate knowledge of what they're supposed to be. But what's more, those of us asking the question put a tremendous amount of judgment on the children's response. There's a tremendous amount of pressure and judgment that accompanies that question. Think about it. If a child were to say, "I want to become a doctor or a lawyer or the president or an astronaut," people automatically think, "Gosh, this parent is really pushing their child to pursue big, important goals. This kid must be really smart. They're on the right path." By contrast, if we ask that question of a child and they say, "I want to make art or I want to be a trash collector," the parents of that child are gonna kind of cringe a little bit. You can usually see it visibly, or they roll their eyes, and everybody else in the circle just kind of tries to keep their face neutral, but inside there's a lot of smug, judgmental thoughts about the parenting and the value of the kid and where this kid's life is going. It's not a judgment. I'm not trying to be judgmental of parents and people that ask these questions. I just think it's an interesting observation that for some reason, we want to hear what kids say about this topic, and whatever they say, we take back and we have judgments about that. Some answers are good and some answers are bad.
When we go to law school, for example, many of us arrive with the impression that becoming an attorney is a calling, it's a purpose in and of itself. After all, we're becoming lawyers. You don't use that language when describing an artist or a trash collector. You don't say, "I'm becoming an artist" or "I'm becoming a trash collector." You say, "I'm becoming a doctor" or "I'm studying to become a lawyer." We talk about certain professions as if their pursuit requires us to become something else, to transform, and in that transformation, we give a lot of value to those endeavors. There are better choices for kids than others. We are not engaging in this type of transformation, but what if this is where we really start to misstep on this journey of purpose and fulfillment? What if getting a law degree or any other advanced degree or any degree for that matter, what if it was just another round of learning like everything that came beforehand? What if having a law degree didn't transform us but rather left us with the exact same choice that everyone else makes at some point in their life: Is this my job? Is this my career? Or is this my calling?
It seems that for certain professions, we assume that the job title equates to one's calling. But what if that wasn't the case and what if that's what's causing a lot of these problems that we're seeing? Just because the goal is lofty and difficult, it doesn't mean it has to be your career or your calling. Just because law school is three additional years and it's challenging doesn't mean that it has to be your one and only, that thing that calls you in life, and then when you don't feel it, something's wrong with you and something's off. It could simply be just a job, a stepping stone, just another one-liner on your CV. Your job can just be something that pays the bills so that you have time to pursue your purpose. Sometimes those things merge into one, but not always, and that is okay. It's okay if your legal career is just a job and you don't get any purpose out of it, but it affords you the opportunity to do other things to bring you purpose. We can simply enjoy the things that light us up and see where the path takes us. We don't have to contaminate it by trying to make it something it doesn't have to be like a formal profession. We can have our passion and we can have our profession. Sometimes people are lucky enough to have both, but it doesn't have to be that way.
So, I think the first step into finding more purpose and fulfillment is really divorcing ourselves from that notion that the job has to be the only place to find that fulfillment and purpose. Any job can be a job, a career, or a calling. There is a choice to be made, and the same goes for any of those advanced careers as well. So many of my clients come to me and they tell me that they're confused and they pursued that more respected path, right? They had the right answer when they were kids, and now they're there and they feel kind of lost. They don't feel like there's a lot of meaning in their work, but they don't know what they're supposed to do with their life. So, we set aside the job and the title and just choose to work from a clear slate and consider the possibility that your purpose and your fulfillment may not have anything to do with your day-to-day job. As Joseph Campbell has indicated, your purpose and the path to fulfillment and your own hero's journey often begins with finding your bliss in small actions. It's those parts of your day that get you really excited and get you excited to get out of bed.
So, this is where we start. How did I get where I am? This job, this career, this path - was it bliss that brought me there? Was I chasing something that I enjoyed? And by the way, what the hell is bliss anyway and where do I find bliss? So, let's start with how did I get here? We start the fulfillment exploration by first looking at where you are now and asking how we got here. Were you following bliss? Was there something that you are passionate about that going to law school gave you more access to? In doing that, what did you think your purpose might be? What was the experiment you were conducting when going down that path? And did you achieve that? Did you get more of that bliss only to find that okay, maybe it wasn't really the thing or maybe I don't really enjoy that as much as I thought? But what happened when you got there and most importantly, what was it you were seeking to achieve that didn't fulfill that purpose?
Because I work mostly with attorneys, many of my clients posit that they wanted to go to law school, graduate, and get a good job at a prestigious firm because they wanted to make good money, they wanted to be respected, they liked the challenge, they wanted a better life than their parents had, or they wanted to be seen as successful, or they wanted their parents to be proud, maybe they wanted to prove themselves to others who doubted them, or they didn't want to be a failure. I hear reasons like that a lot. Sometimes it was just the next natural thing. But when we look even one layer deeper and explore why a lot of those reasons are so persuasive, we're left with the core of the issue. Many of us pursued law school and a higher professional degree because we wanted to feel valued, we want to feel proud of ourselves, we want others to be proud of us, we want to feel like a success. And that is really the problem, and that's why we start there.
All of those motivations are implicitly rooted in this belief that we are not enough yet, we're not important yet, we're not valued yet, we're not someone to be proud of, we're not successful. What's more, when we are looking for something outside of ourselves to give us all of that, to make us feel important and valued and proud and successful, it is a recipe for a never-ending cycle of letdowns. And that's what a lot of people really come to realize when they first start working with a coach. You know, I went to law school because I wanted it to make me feel successful, respected, confident, and it didn't give me any of those things because the truth of the matter is that nothing outside of you is ever going to give you those things. Like that law degree is not gonna zap those feelings into you. The reason that we feel so good when we accomplish that goal, like a law degree, is because for that little piece of time, that little sliver, we allow ourselves to believe, "I am successful, I am respected, I've done the thing, now everything's gonna be great." And we believe it for that moment, and then the job starts and things start getting a little hairy and things start getting hard, and it becomes more and more difficult to go back to those beliefs and feel that way again because the whole time we've been on this journey, we've been believing, "I need that thing to make me feel that way," because implicitly, I don't believe I'm there yet, I don't believe I'm good enough yet, I don't believe I'm successful enough, I'm not worthy of respect yet. We're so good at believing all of those things the whole way there. It's no wonder that when we get there, our ability to think the opposite, "I am good enough, I am something to be respected," it's fleeting because we don't have a pattern of believing that. What we have is a pattern of believing that we're not any of those things yet, and that's the rub.
We cannot achieve any type of life that's fulfilled or purposeful from a place of lack and self-judgment. That energy just never serves us, and those negative beliefs about ourselves, they just continue to generate more and more self-doubt because now we've gotten the thing and I still don't feel worthy and respected and confident, so what's wrong with me? And on and on this goes. Many of us believe that without more, without that thing, we aren't good enough, and we have to find that missing piece to become whole and worthy. Often, that missing piece is the job or the marriage or the career or the house. Instead, when we explore worthiness and fulfillment, we have to start from believing that possibly all humans are worthy and whole just as they are, and that includes all of you out there listening. You're worthy in value just as you are. You are someone to be respected. You are someone who has things to feel confident about, something to be proud of, without anything else needing to be added to who you are. And I know that a lot of us don't believe that, and I totally get it. But what if it were true? What if you didn't need to do anything to become whole and complete? What if you didn't need to get anything to become more worthy? What if you were already all of those things? Then what would you do with your life?
To put it another way, if we set aside all those motivations that have previously driven us - "I want to feel successful, I want to feel accomplished, I want people to be proud of me" - we put all that aside. If you really believe that you are already important, valued, something to be proud of, and successful, what would motivate you? If you already had all that, what would you want to do with your life? If you already believe all of those things about yourself, over time you can develop patterns of thinking to really trust and believe that you are good enough and worthy just as you are. Most of us aren't there yet, and that's totally okay. I think it's a lifelong journey. But we have to acknowledge that those lines of thinking are part of what makes this endeavor so challenging. We think that there's something that we can get to finally give us all of those things, and that's just not the case. But it's a kind of self-love and self-trust that we weren't really taught, but it can be learned.
Why is this so important, Autumn? We're talking about fulfillment and finding purpose. This is important because if you can truly take ownership of your own innate worthiness, what you choose to do with your life becomes a lot less important. There's no longer any monumental purpose to be found. It's just you, perfect and whole and good enough, and the things that you really enjoy doing with your life, it becomes a whole lot more simple when you remove all of that pressure from the things that you do. You are now free to choose whatever you want to be your purpose. You can just decide what you want to be your purpose today. It's not a monumental decision because it doesn't add any intrinsic value to who you already are. You can simply choose the type of contribution you want to make to the world tomorrow, next week, next year. You can choose something different. It doesn't mean anything about you. You are simply a complete and lovable human making decisions about how you want to spend your time and what's important to you in that moment, and nothing more.
Many of us go on a journey seeking our purpose, believing that the purpose resides outside of ourselves, then we have to accomplish something or we must be actively seeking our purpose. It's like waiting out there and we just have to find it, and then everything's gonna click, and it breathes a tremendous amount of pressure. If you find your purpose, then you're a successful contributor to the human race, and if you don't, well then I guess you're just wasting your time here. That's the dichotomy that we sort of set up when we feel like this purpose is something that we have to hurry up and find so that our life has some meaning. Instead, when we choose to believe that we are whole and complete and that nothing outside of ourselves can make us more complete, we can decide to make our purpose whatever we want it to be, what that purpose is towards that greater fulfillment.
I've asked a lot of attorneys to conduct this experiment and from that experiment and seeking their own bliss to develop their own unique purpose statement based upon their findings, and here's where some of them landed. And as I said, you just decide and choose something that resonates with you. Some examples: "I choose to be an example of what's possible." "I choose to use my writing to inspire women." "I choose to be an effective and inspirational leader." "I choose to help women connect with their value and their worth." "I want to show other women like me that they can do anything that they want to." Those are purposes that have been chosen with intention and a lot of inner reflection. Fulfilling any of those purposes can take a number of different forms. Living in accordance with those purposes may not even require you to change your job or your career plan. It will simply ask you to show up in a certain way and dedicate your energy towards that purpose. You might choose one of those purposes or something similar to the ones I just mentioned and realize, "Okay, if that's my purpose and if that's in furtherance of what really lights me up, maybe my job is okay. Maybe it's just fine. Maybe I can stay here and pursue my purpose elsewhere." Or maybe it means I have to let go of some of the things I'm experiencing at work and put my energy elsewhere, and maybe that's enough to help me fulfill my purpose for now, and then we'll see where that leads us. Sometimes choosing a purpose, like in my experience, will call you to change careers and change your job. That is not always the case. But like I said, I think once you recognize the calling, I do think that the universe conspires to help you make that choice and will bring opportunities to you in furtherance of you honoring that calling and being willing to answer.
When I think back to my own experiment finding my bliss and my decision to leave that firm, I think about how it could have gone differently if my purpose had been different. For instance, I think if my purpose had been to show other women that they can lead in a law firm, I think I could have stayed in a number of my past jobs and made it work. I didn't need to love the work to be able to support and inspire women to be leaders in their legal communities. I just needed to be where my people were. But for me and the purpose that I chose, it wasn't it and it didn't work. My purpose was to use my voice and my writing to empower women to keep fighting for change and to find their own unique happiness. That was the purpose that I chose, and that purpose drove me to leave several lucrative and respected positions because they didn't provide me the ability to live out my purpose. And it's as simple as that.
So here's your challenge: If you are not feeling fulfilled in your work or your life right now and you're seeking more meaning and purpose, engage in these few simple steps. First, consider whether you have an expectation that your job will fulfill your purpose. If that's the case, explore what you would do if your job were just a job, a means to an end to pay your bills. Second, explore how you got where you are. Why did you choose your path? Why did you make those decisions? Were you looking for something? Were there elements of your journey that looked like purpose that was maybe outside of yourself? Were you chasing some part of your own bliss that led you on that journey, at least initially? And what do all of those pieces say about your belief in your own innate value and worthiness? You might find that part of your path was driven by a pursuit of external things to give you some type of internal emotion and belief in yourself, and that exploration and asking that question, "How did I get here? What brought me here?" is gonna bring you face to face with those notions that you might be missing something. That's important work and an important insight for you to have as you start on this journey.
Last, once you've done that exploration and dispensed with the idea that there's something outside of you that's gonna give you that purpose and fulfillment that you're looking for, the question is, Joseph Campbell says, is simply, "Are you willing to explore your bliss? Are you willing to embark on your own hero's journey?" From there, spend 5 minutes every day for a month just thinking about what you liked about your day, what were the parts of your day that made you feel alive, what were you excited about, what parts of your day completely sapped your energy and left you feeling drained? With that clarity and that information about what brings you some joy, the question simply becomes, "How can I live more in alignment with the things that truly bring me joy? What do I need to change? What do I need to not change? Can I distill all of that down to one sentence as my purpose that will guide my next steps?" In doing so, make a commitment to believe that you're already enough, complete, whole, and lovable. And if you could believe that and embody that, what would you do with your life? That, my friends, is the first step in fulfilling your purpose. It's often the very first step in your own hero's journey.
Thank you everyone for joining us on today's episode. For more information on purpose and fulfillment, be sure to check out the show notes where I've listed additional resources and reading to take this discussion even further. Also, if you are struggling to find more purpose and fulfillment in your life, take advantage of a free coaching consultation to regroup and start taking meaningful action. You will find that link in the show notes as well. Be sure to check out the Lawyer Life Shop for lawyer goodies and gifts to tide you over until our next episode, where we will explore imposter syndrome and the simple mindfulness trick that will change everything. Until then, thanks for listening and thanks for sharing with your friends.