The Lawyer Life Podcast

The Lawyer Life Survival Guide BONUS Episode

• Autumn Noble • Season 2 • Episode 37

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In this special podcast episode, we're offering a preview of The Lawyer Life Survival Guide. With an extra week this month, I didn't want to leave you hanging, so I’m taking this opportunity to share an exclusive excerpt from my book. Available on Amazon and as an ebook on my website, the Lawyer Life Survival Guide is divided into three sections: exploring your value, your practice, and your future.

Today’s focus is on chapter three, where we delve into what to do when you’re ready to quit—when it feels like it’s time to walk away and start fresh. This chapter is perfect for anyone feeling burnt out and unsure of the next step.

Tune in to get a taste of how to navigate those challenging moments and decide whether it's time to move on.

Free coaching consult/coffee and more!: https://autumnnoble.as.me

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ADDITIONAL RESOURCES:

Autumn G Noble (00:01)

Hey everyone, welcome back to the Lawyer Life podcast.

 

I'm coming to you today with a special release. Because there's an extra week this month, I didn't want to leave you hanging and waiting around for the next episode. So I decided to use this time to give you a little bit of a flavor of my new book, The Lawyer Life Survival Guide.

 

As you all know, the Lawyer Life Survival Guide is available on Amazon. It is also available from my website as an ebook.

 

The book is divided into three sections exploring your value, your practice and your future. Today I want to read you an excerpt from chapter three, your future and specifically what to do when you are so ready to throw in the towel.

 

If you ever find yourself ready to rage quit and walk out and start from a clean slate, chapter three of the Lawyer Life Survival Guide is a great place to start to figure out what to do when you are ready to just throw in the towel and move on.

 

Let's go ahead and dive into chapter three.

 

In this chapter, we start to explore where we are going and how to figure out what we want. We will take everything we have learned to move forward authentically in furtherance of our larger goals. We will start by exploring a common conundrum I What to do when you desperately want to quit? How do you know if it's the right choice? From there, we'll unpack

 

why decisions about the future are so damn hard. Lastly, we will dig into taking the leap toward our dreams and how to overcome the worries that can keep us playing safe.

 

When you are ready to throw in the towel. Occasionally I get a panicked email from a client telling me she needs to talk, that she's at the end of the line and a dramatic exit is imminent.

 

Autumn, today is the day. I have just had enough. I keep getting thrown into more and more projects and misled about the time commitments for all of them. No one asked for my opinion on the timeframes. They were promising clients and no one asked me about my ability to take on more work.

 

I'm drowning and they just keep pushing me down deeper and deeper. I can't take it anymore. They say they care, but they don't. Every time I tell them I can't do it anymore, they completely ignore me.

 

It's not possible to get everything done that they're asking of me without continuing to sacrifice my health and happiness. I haven't slept in two days. I worked every weekend for months And I can't do it anymore. It's just too much. I'm pretty sure I'm going to quit today. Can you talk?

 

These kinds of outcries are all too common in my work of coaching lawyers. For all of the reasons that we've discussed throughout this book, practicing law is a gauntlet of physical, mental, and emotional challenges.

 

Unless and until my clients make the conscious decision to start showing up differently, the practice of law will continue to bulldoze them and take everything they've got to give.

 

What's more, leaving law and finding other avenues of work rarely solves the problem. Our tendency to say yes, take on too much work, ignore our boundaries, and sacrifice our health and happiness for the sake of others are all practiced patterns. Patterns that will go with us to the next job unless we clean them up.

 

In response to the panicked email I received from my client Whitney that morning, I reached out for a quick call with her before she did anything that could not be remedied.

 

We talked about her rationale for leaving. We explored whether she had played a role in creating this professional hellscape. Whitney was frustrated that they continued to give her work without any exploration of her wants, needs, or capacity. No matter how many times she told them she was too busy for more work, they continued to pile on.

 

As a result, she was working endlessly to survive as the work kept building up.

 

Every time she told them she was having a hard time, they just assigned her to more matters as if they had never heard.

 

Well, that makes sense. I told her silence on the other end of the line.

 

and thus began our foray into quitting and thermostats. How do you know when it's time to quit or when the temperature has just gotten too high?

 

With respect to Whitney, I explained that of course they would continue to give her more She was good at what she did and everyone liked working with her. Every time she told them she was too busy to take on more work and they gave her more work, she took it, got it done and she did it flawlessly. She pulled all-nighters and sacrificed her private and personal life to follow through

 

on the work they were giving her against her will.

 

She had given them no reason to act any differently toward her. Whitney had taught them how to interact with her, and in doing so, came to understand that her cries for help were inconsequential, and that ignoring them would continue to yield the results they wanted.

 

They weren't being deliberately or intentionally cruel. They were following their own pattern of interacting with her, a pattern she conspired to create.

 

What's more, Whitney was wanting and expecting them to change so that she could have more balance in her life. She didn't want to have to push back, to stand up for herself, set boundaries, say no, show up differently. She wanted it to be easy, so she kept taking the work as they gave it to her without making waves.

 

She taught them that every time she cried out for help, it wasn't something to pay any attention to. why didn't she just say no to more work? Her worst case scenario was the fear, worry, and discomfort that would accompany pushing back. And she was afraid that everyone would be disappointed in her.

 

Once we distilled her scenario down to these realizations, Whitney decided she wasn't ready to give up. She decided that she was going to need to start showing up differently in order to create the life she wanted. She had to stop waiting for someone else to create it for her Because that clearly was not working. She was going to have to make her words mean something.

 

When she said she was too busy to take on more work, she was going to have to own that and follow through on it.

 

She realized they were never going to change, but this was an opportunity for her to choose differently and show up more in alignment with who she wanted to be.

 

Despite her fear of disappointing and potentially upsetting people, she realized that she didn't like the alternative.

 

was and wanting to quit every other day. She realized that her worst case scenario fears were actually less terrifying than the life she was currently living. She could show up, fight, and maybe get fired, or she could maintain her course, burn herself out, doing shoddy work in the process, destroy her health,

 

and relationships and reputation, rage quit and give up on her dream of lawyering for good. Suddenly, the path ahead of her was clear. She was not going to quit. She wasn't going to let her unwillingness to feel discomfort rob her of a career she actually enjoyed and a dream she wanted to fulfill.

 

Later that day, I got an email from Whitney merrily accounting the story of her day. She had said no. She'd stood up for herself. She'd had uncomfortable conversations and made it clear that she was no longer willing to work more than everyone else. She was high on the ecstasy that comes with speaking your truth. She realized that they were never going to change to make her happy.

 

and she realized that leaving was the easy way out. she realized that she was leaving because she didn't want to push through the discomfort of setting boundaries.

 

She didn't like that reasoning and so she decided that day to start pushing herself and exploring those discomforts instead of letting the discomforts escort her out the door.

 

In sum, realized that she didn't like her reasoning for leaving and she refused to be afraid of her worst case scenario because maybe it wasn't that scary after all.

 

When it comes to firms and life, one of the most important things we can allow ourselves to do is to examine why we are acting or not acting, regardless of the context.

 

In Whitney's case above, she was acting impulsively because she wanted to stop feeling overwhelmed and unappreciated.

 

compulsion had a lot to teach her about her own work and about facing discomfort in furtherance of creating a better life, chasing an uncomfortable dream. Like Whitney, many of my clients are driven by a sudden urge to quit their horrible job and find something better. Behind that sudden impulse is often a desire to reach for the easy button.

 

They are hoping that if they just keep changing jobs, eventually they will find one that is a good fit.

 

Truth, the Goldilocks approach to professional satisfaction never works. Instead, when we contemplate actions in pursuit of a brighter future, we must make sure that we aren't actually running away from our own discomfort. If that's the case, the future will never feel any better until we learn to tackle whatever we are running away from.

 

Truth, many of the things we do or don't do in our lives are because we are chasing or avoiding a feeling as discussed in chapter 1. We change jobs because we don't want to feel frustrated anymore.

 

We get married because we want to be happy. We don't speak up because we don't want to risk embarrassment. We don't ask for more money because we don't want to feel ashamed if they say no.

 

We don't ask for help because we don't want to feel embarrassed that we can't do it alone, or we don't want to feel guilty for being inadequate.

 

We don't leave bad relationships because we don't want to feel lonely mistake.

 

We spend a significant amount of our energy in our lives calculating how certain events may or may not make us feel, and then we choose to act or not act based upon those estimates. It seems logically self-protecting. Why would we set ourselves up for failure or embarrassment?

 

Why would we take any action that would make us feel terrible?

 

concept comes into play in the context of life changes because we can often be persuaded that if we get a different boss, a new job, leave our spouse, or move into a new house, we will be happier. We invest in the notion that if we change things outside of ourselves, our life will improve. If we move around the chess pieces that make up our life, the game will be different.

 

We are chasing a feeling and trying to create happiness by changing the circumstances in our lives. If that is your thought process for making a change, I implore you to stop what you are doing and take some inventory.

 

Changing around the chess pieces in your life will never create lasting happiness. It doesn't matter where the pieces are or what pieces you have. The player, that's you, will remain constant. That player is the only part of the game that experiences your happiness and is the only part of the game that can create that happiness for you.

 

You can upgrade to prettier game pieces. You can dispense with all of your pawns. You can light the chessboard on fire. None of that will change the fact that the board and its pieces do not create happiness for you. Your happiness or unhappiness exists with or without those game pieces because it is something you bring to the game. If you aren't enjoying the game,

 

i.e. life, despite its pieces, it won't matter what you do with those pieces. You will still be you, unhappy, playing the game, or wishing that you hadn't lit the board on fire.

 

We know logically that we are not supposed to chase external things to make us happy. is often difficult to recognize when we are, in fact, chasing the external and hoping for internal changes. How do we get wise to our tricks?

 

You will know you are chasing the vibes if you are in a hurry. If you are rushing to jump into a new job, relationship, house, or whatever it may be, that's a huge red flag that you're running away from something and expecting the next thing to fix your current negative experience.

 

When my clients come to me and are in a hurry to get out of their current situation, my question is always, why now?

 

If you enjoyed this excerpt of the Lawyer Life Survival Guide and want to see how chapter three ends and gives you tips on navigating potential career changes, job changes, life changes, and planning your future, to Amazon and grab your copy today or hit the LawyerLifeCollective.com and download it as an ebook and get started immediately.

 

will resume our regular podcast programming. And listen up, November we are unpacking relationships and all of the humans. So the podcast episode, the newsletter, the blog, all of the tips and tricks coming out throughout November will be focused on dealing with all of the lovely humans in your orbit.

 

If you are not currently signed up to receive our newsletter, head over to the lawyerlifecollective.com and get your name on the list to get monthly free downloads, tips, tricks, and all of the resources that you need related to each monthly topic.

 

Until then, thanks so much for listening and thanks for sharing with your friends.