Scroll down to read along with the imperfect transcript
As a seasoned professional in our legal profession, I understand the struggles that often go unaddressed. This episode is about unlocking the secrets of expectations that have transformed my own journey, and I believe it can revolutionize yours, too.
Key Takeaways from the Episode
Reframe Your Narrative: Discover how shifting your perspective on expectations can liberate you from the confines of burnout and dissatisfaction.
The Four Types Unveiled: Explore the intricacies of expectations, from those you set for yourself to the unspoken assumptions that hold you captive.
Emotional Reconnection: Learn the art of reconnecting your intellectual and emotional selves, a crucial step in creating a more authentic and fulfilling professional life.
Toxicity Demystified: Understand that the real enemy isn’t the demanding profession or challenging partners; it’s the unrealistic expectations you impose on yourself and leave unspoken.
The Path to a Thriving Life: Gain actionable insights to release yourself from the chains of unattainable expectations, paving the way for a more joyful and thriving legal career.
Select Quotes from the Episode
“Mondays and Relentless Emails aren’t the enemy. The unreasonable and unrealistic expectations you have of yourself and the ones you refuse to articulate to others are the enemy.”
“Expectations are messages that we’ve received our entire lives from everyone and everything around us… The question isn’t about whether you know it, it’s what you DO with that knowledge.”
“I don’t want you to be like anyone else. I want you to be YOU. The sooner you get a handle on those unreasonable, unrealistic, and unspoken expectations in your life, the better your life will be.”
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Imperfect Transcript from this Episode
Alright, so let’s talk about what we came here to talk about: the expectations that are keeping you blaming your icky feelings on mondays and emails (and let’s be honest, on everything else around you, too) – and I’m going to reframe this for you in a way that will – hopefully – blow your mind. Once you know it, you can’t unknow it. Ready?
First things first, let me just say I’m DIFFERENT. I ask the hard questions and I never judge. I love asking questions that you’ve never thought of before, and reframing your thoughts so you can see how the story you’re telling yourself is keeping you stuck. I meet you where you’re at.
I really don’t like traditional advice. Yes, you have higher standards as a regulated professional. And with expectations – and we’ll talk about the four types in a minute – they will tell you what you THINK you SHOULD do, but my goal is to give you permission to do what you WANT to do. And YES, you can do what you want to do, because once you realize the expectations that are holding you back, you’ll never want to fulfill those expectations again.
Most coaches, most consultants, they look at where you say and think you are, and then they focus on getting you what YOU say you THINK you want. So, they try to get you from Point A to Point B immediately. But my approach is different. Because I don’t want you to just choose an arbitrary point in the future to work towards, because you THINK you’re supposed to be choosing that arbitrary point.
I don’t believe that you’re currently at Point A. Nope. What I think, is that you are at A POINT, and that there’s a ton of stuff to sort through – feelings, thoughts, habits, how you made decisions in the past, how you were working against yourself and what you really wanted out of life – and then once we get that clarity, then we know where your REAL Point A is … and then, and only then, can we be sure that the Point B you’re working towards is the REAL Point B for you – the one that will bring you a joyful and thriving lawyer life. Because my experience has been, and every client who’s ever come to me will tell you, that they’ve been going towards what they THINK they’re supposed to do, or someone told them they SHOULD do, and everytime they ge to that place, they look around and it feels empty. Like they don’t belong. Like it was all for naught. We’ll talk more about Sunk Cost Fallacies in Episode 9, but in the meantime, what I want you to understand is that until you start doing what you want, saying what you need, and getting CLEAR about who you are and what you want, you’re going to be stuck in a place that does NOT feel good at all. I call that the Big L – a big LOSS of life, of love, of laughter, of liberation.
The Big L. The separation of your intellectual self from your emotional self. You see, when we’re born, we’re connected – our intellectual and emotional selves are connected. But as we grow up, people teach us, train us, socialize us to disconnect our thinking from our feelings. Which is not necessarily a bad thing. You need to do that a bit for self regulation. However, my perspective, my experience has been, and this certainly is where my social work license comes into play, is that when we go to law school, we are taught to completely disconnect our emotional selves from our intellectual selves, so we can be quote-unquote, “zealous advocates” for our clients – so we can be sure that the voice that’s speaking up in court or pleadings or mediations or arbitrations is that of our CLIENT and not of our personal beliefs. But the problem, as I see it, is that no one teaches us how to RECONNECT those things, the emotional to the intellectual, when we leave our office, close our computer for the day. An entire profession is walking around disconnected from who they really are, and they’re disconnected from what they do. And I want to change that.
So when we’re talking about expectations, all of these things come into play.
The MOST IMPORTANT thing FOR ME is that everything comes down to expectations. There are four main types – and before I get into them, let me just first define an expectation. Expectations are messages that we’ve received our entire lives from everyone and everything around us. Our parents, teachers, friends, the media, commercials on tv, heck even TV! Books we read in school and for fun, strangers on the street, our clergy … expectations came and come from everywhere. Even today.
And the sneaky thing about expectations is that you don’t even realize that you have them, you don’t even realize they’re at the root of an issue until it’s brought to your attention – you’re asked the right question, someone points something out to you – and your mind is blown. And you can never unknow that thing ever again. And the question isn’t about whether you know it, it’s what you DO with that knowledge.
So, the four types of expectations are (1) the
expectations you have of yourself, (2) the expectations that you have explicitly stated you have of others – and you’ve told them what those are completely and honestly, (3) expectations that others have explicitly stated that they have of you, and (4) my very favorite, where all that stuff before Point A lives, the expectations that you THINK others have of you. Now, this last one is my favorite because it’s where all the ick and yuck and muck lives – it’s where you got sidetracked in life, when maybe you were a kid and wanted to be an astronaut and someone told you that was unreasonable and you should pick something practical, or you wanted to be a musician or sculptor or painter or interior designer and someone said that’s unrealistic because you won’t be able to make money so choose something more safe and secure. Most of my clients, most lawyers that I meet in fact, are repressed creatives. They often did not actively choose the law because they LOVED it and WANTED it – if they did, they’re usually criminal defense attorneys and public defenders or federal prosecutors. Otherwise, I’ve not met one single lawyer who said, yep, I wanted to be an insurance defense lawyer, billing 1900, 2200 hours a year so I never get to see my family or friends or have a Saturday to myself. Never.
So, when we’re talking about having a case of the Mondays and blaming our stress on relentless emails and wacky clients and ridiculous billable requirements, it’s not really about those things. It’s about expectations. The expectation that you have of yourself that you can’t let go of something that feels safe and secure, even if it’s not. The explicit expectation that you’re going to meet your billables, and the unspoken expectations that you’re supposed to bill MORE than the minimum to prove your worth. The explicit expectations of help or support that we never tell others, hoping they notice we’re drowning and need them – waiting for them to notice that we’re burned out. Well, they’re going to notice, sure, but more than likely, they won’t say anything about it because it doesn’t benefit them – or they’re drowning, too, and don’t want to look like hypocrites. You see, when you’re running a big law firm, and sometimes this is the case for small and medium firms, too, let’s be honest, it’s about the bottom line. The purpose of a business is to make money. There’s nothing inherently wrong with that. It’s the expectations surrounding HOW we make money that’s the issue. And like I said, we’ll talk more about the dark side of billables later on in episode 6, but if you don’t tell people what you expect of them, they can never rise to the occasion – and they can never negotiate what works for them – and they can never fulfill your needs. And this isn’t just at work, either. It goes at home, with friends, family, your partner – everyone. And the final big type of expectation, my favorite, is the expectations that we THINK others have of us – which, spoiler alert: aren’t real. They’re fake. They’re assumptions.
We find these when we do what we think we’re supposed to do, think what we’re supposed to think, say what we think we’re supposed to say – yes, I’ll take on more work even though I’m exhausted, or yes I’ll help out even though I’m going to miss my daughter’s tball game, or yes I’ll show up at that party even though I’m dead tired and I don’t give a dang about anyone there, or yes I’ll volunteer to head that committee or be on that Board when I have NO CAPACITY left. These fourth types of expectations are the easiest to let go – they’re hard to uncover, but once they’re uncovered, you can let them go in a snap. Because once you see them, you can’t unsee them. And, if you wanna dig deeper into these four, I have a playlist from my other podcast, “What Would Sheila Say?” that I’ll share in the show notes for you. You can listen to those later on. See what resonates for you.
I don’t want you to be like anyone else. I want you to be YOU. Mondays and Relentless Emails aren’t the enemy.
Even the absolutely insane partners and owners of law firms aren’t the enemy; you can hate the toxicity of the practice of law, but the toxicity is based in expectations.
Generating business, paying bills, meeting billables, having stress from so much paperwork and quick deadlines; struggling with having to bill hours and a never ending mountain of paperwork – it’s all overwhelming. And yes, there’s exploitation. Yes, there’s oppression. This will tie into our talk later on about how we make money – the dark side of billables – in episode 6.
But those aren’t really TRULY the enemy. The unreasonable and unrealistic expectations you have of yourself and the ones you refuse to articulate to others are the enemy.
And the sooner you get a handle on those unreasonable, unrealistic and unspoken expectations in your life, the better your life will be. The more joyful and thriving life you can have. And I want to help you get there.