Most of the time Morning Pages, tool #3, are whiny, boring and seriously petty. And then, in the midst of the stupid, magic happens. A sentence will pop out that you didn’t even know you were thinking about. A sentence that can change your life.
Here’s the real tip-off that you’re faking law: Inconsistent performance. Yes, you can do the work. Sometimes. When you can summon up the mental stamina, the stars are in proper alignment, you have had enough sleep/food/time away from work/whatever.
What if you got off the prestige/ conspicuous consumption/ externalization train, and thought about your life through the lens of the things that are important to your soul, rather than the things that you make important out of fear?
Finally, we are past the day (Feb. 15) when nearly all New Year’s Resolutions have gone up in flames. Now that all of that externalizing has burned itself out, it’s time to get down to what’s truly important in your life and your work.
When lawyers make a mistake, they don’t ask themselves what they could do better or differently next time. Instead, they switch to radio station K-FKD, and just sit in their own little hellish corner and berate themselves. In effect, lawyers hide from opportunities to learn and improve.
The key reason pessimists need to work their way toward optimism: If you’re joined at the hip to the harsh reality that life can routinely dish up, your dreams don’t have a place to exist. They die. Ultimately, refusing to dream costs you a life worth living. A life without dreams is a gray, dim walking death.
Pessimists don’t persevere at the same rate as optimists, which means pessimists often don’t achieve goals that are achievable. Like, say, finding an alternative legal career that gives you fulfillment and high satisfaction. The chief way that pessimism shows up is as learned helplessness. I’ve noticed that law firms are superb at teaching learned helplessness.
