During the early days of my legal career, I envisioned becoming the head of my practice area and a member of the management committee.

Yet when I was approached about the potential for taking a leadership role within the firm I said “no thank you”. Circumstances had changed (which changed what I wanted).

When I first started my coaching/consulting practice, I thought my message would resonate so much that I'd be traveling the national speaker circuit by now.

Obviously, that's not how it has turned out. And I'm happy FOR it.

Although I DO speak, I travel sparsely on purpose. My original vision for my current business isn't what I want in this stage of my life and I've realized the original vision was my ego talking (not my values).

How about you, Friend?

Did you once have big dreams about where you’d be by now that haven’t come to fruition? How do you feel about it?

What you envision at the outset of your career isn’t likely going to be how it turns out. Because circumstances will change, you will change, and opportunities will change.

But it's important to know you can still achieve much and be happy with where you are IF you know - and follow - your values the entire way.

We lawyers often start our careers guided by a bigger purpose, wanting to make an impact through our work.

But we're also high-achieving people-pleasers. And so, we check every box along a path that's laid out before us by others.

Although this usually brings paper success it's also why so many seemingly successful lawyers end up unhappy and disillusioned with the legal profession (something I call the Lawyer Paradox).

Since the world is filled with high-achieving people-pleasers, I'm sure we aren't the only ones who work hard to get to the top of a mountain we realize we didn't actually want once there.

How do you ensure you never end up in this place? Or are you there now and need help getting back onto your track?

That's what we cover in todays Life & Law Podcast episode. Listen >>>here.

XO,

Heather