Ep #42: How to Create Your Dream Job

The Joyful Practice for Women Lawyers with Paula Price | How to Create Your Dream Job

Many lawyers I speak to reach out to me because they’re unhappy with their current situation. They don’t love their job, and some even want to leave law altogether. Often, the experience that’s shared with me is that the path they’re on right now felt like the best choice, but it was never the one they truly desired.

 

Going to law school or working at the firm you do might have seemed like the right decision, but like in many areas of our lives, we sometimes grow out of our roles. Whether you’ve reached a career plateau, or you’ve convinced yourself there’s nothing better out there for you, you’re in the right place because this week, we’re diving into how to create the job of your dreams. 

 

Tune in as I offer my three-step process for creating your dream job. You’ll discover how to assess where you are today, and how you can apply this work to either enhance your current job or make a transition. I’m also showing you how to fall in love with the process of discovery and learning so you can put yourself in the driver’s seat of your career. 

 

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What You’ll Learn from this Episode:
  • The difference between creation and manifestation.
  • What it means to manifest your dream work. 
  • How I think about the job versus the work. 
  • Why you might be feeling stuck in a career plateau. 
  • How to find fulfillment and joy in your job.
  • What happens when you decide not to take action in a career crisis.
  • The 3 phases of creating the job of your dreams. 
  • How to put yourself in the driver’s seat of your career. 

 

 

Listen to the Full Episode:

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Full Episode Transcript:

You’re listening to The Joyful Practice for Women Lawyers Podcast episode number 42.

Welcome to The Joyful Practice for Women Lawyers Podcast. I’m your host Paula Price, lawyer turned certified executive coach. This podcast was created to empower women lawyers just like you to create a life and practice you love. Join me every week for a break from the hustle so we can focus on you, what you truly want, and how you can create it.

If you’re over the overwhelm, done with putting out fires, and ready to create a life and practice that brings you more joy, you’re in the right place. Ready for today’s episode? Let’s dive in.

Hello my friends. Welcome back to the podcast. I’m so glad you’re here with me this week. I’m delighted to reconnect with you, and I hope you’re having a wonderful, wonderful week. Today’s podcast episode is all about creating the job of your dreams. If that’s what you want to do, you’re in the right place. We are going to get into that.

Before we do that, I just wanted to share a little bit of an anecdote that is going to seem a little bit off topic, but I promise you there is a parallel. We are a family of four, and we live in a house. I can tell you all that this house was perfect when we moved into it. We were a family of three at the time. It had accessibility from the sidewalk, which is just what we needed because we were always pushing a stroller around.

However we’ve now reached a point where our kids are seven and nine. We’re all getting larger. Well, the kids mostly. My husband and I are kind of staying the same size. But we’re really realizing that for the next stage of our lives, we probably need to move into a bigger space.

So lately I have been embarking on a process. I keep telling my husband that I am manifesting our next home. The manifestation really got off to a kickstart last week when I bought this magazine really only because it had a spread in it of the most gorgeous house. It’s a mansion in the middle of Paris, and it’s lived in by the most elegant couple. They’re designers, and they have these two children that look like, well, like they stepped out of a magazine because they did. The children are wearing clean pressed clothing and everybody looks so perfect.

It’s not so much that I want that. I like our lives just as they are with the mess and the fun and the chaos and all of it, but their children are 14 and 12. They are about five years ahead of where we are. When I look at the house and I look at the décor, I know we’re never going to live in a mansion in the heart of Paris, or at least probably not in the lifetime. But there are elements of that house that I love. It really was the kick starter for what is now the process of manifesting our new home, which I will tell you all is not a super linear process of hopping onto MLS and clicking the buy button. It’s something much more subtle and nuanced than that.

The reason that I mentioned this is because when it comes to creating your dream job, it is so much more than being in a job and executing on the tasks that have been assigned to you. If you’re looking for a job, it’s so much more than clicking your button and submitting your CV and getting hired into the perfect role. It is so much more nuanced than that.

In today’s episode what I really want to talk to you about is okay, brace yourself, how to manifest your dream work. It’s a little bit different from the title that I’m going to go with, which is how to create your dream job. The two different words are manifest as opposed to create and work instead of job.

Let me just clarify that right now. Create versus manifest. They are pretty much the same thing, but I think manifest carries with it a little bit of a reputation for being somewhat woo. But I love the word because really what it means to me is that there’s two parts to the process. One is this highly creative initiative part, and the other is the action part. So we’ll get into this, but I would invite you to think about that. Whatever role you’re in right now, how might you go about creating or manifesting the perfect role for you?

The second piece is the job versus the work. I think we all relate to the word job. We kind of understand what that means, but work itself, to me, is a little bit more nuanced. I have a client a few years back who used to talk about their work in bifurcated way. On the one hand, there was their professional work which was their work as a lawyer. On the other hand, their had their work, their work in the world which was as a writer. They distinguished between these two types of work.

Ever since then I’ve always of work whether it’s my work or somebody else’s work as falling into a category either of work as in this is your work in the world. It’s something that speaks to you at quite a deep level. Or work in the world or work that is maybe a little bit more perfunctory, right? If I look at my work, I mean I suppose you could say that it all blends in and that it all contributes to the greater work. There are certain jobs, for example, that you might do like folding laundry that I don’t know. Okay fine, I fold a lot of laundry.

In your work say maybe it’s invoicing, maybe it’s sending the emails, maybe it’s dealing with admin. That is work, right. It’s kind of a job. It’s part of the job description. Versus some of the work that is more meaningful to you. Maybe that’s where you get to help a client in a very significant way. Where you have that sense of fulfillment. You’re making a real change and impact in their life. That brings something that is completely different to you relative to what we might consider a job.

So I just wanted to clarify that a little bit. That what we’re really talking about here isn’t just how to get a job or how to get the job you want or how to take your job and turn it into the job you want, although we do get into that a little bit. Really what it is based on where you are right now, how can you create or manifest the work of your dreams?

So the reason I wanted to talk about this today is because a lot of lawyers reach out to me because they are not happy with their current situation. For some of you that means that you’re in a job that you feel like you don’t really like. It maybe that you want to leave law all together. Often the experience that is shared with me is one of choosing a path that seemed like the right path, but was never really the path that you wanted.

So for example the choice to go to law school seemed like the right choice relative to the other options. The choice to work at the firm that you’re at now was the result of having applied for a job as an articling student, and that worked really well. So then you were hired on, and you’ve continued on in your group, but without really feeling like this was the work that you were called to do. It all worked for a while.

It all works for a while, but at a certain point it becomes really uncomfortable. You start to feel stuck. You start to feel like this isn’t what you want to do. Maybe you feel like you’ve reached a career plateau. That’s when I hear from you. The reason that I think this happens, I have a number of theories.

One of the theories is that for lawyers, especially, we are used to operating in an environment where there are a lot of rules. There’s rules about the grades that you need to get to enter into law school. Once you’re in law school, there are exams. There are tests. When you want to become a lawyer, you must pass the bar exam. You must complete the checklist. Then your professional work is then completely based on the operation of rules and following the rules. Maybe sometimes you’re pushing the rules, but there are rules all around you.

So when it comes to your job, you may see your job as something that is equally fitting into a rule book. So your job, for example, may be something that you see as a list of bullet points, and you execute on those bullet points. Or if you’ve chosen a path, right, maybe you decide that you want to become a litigator. Then you find that you’re really called to solicitor work. You may feel like because you’ve picked path A, path B is no longer available to you. So you may limit yourself based on the perceived rules that are out there whether or not they actually exist.

Now for a number of clients who come to work with me, they feel stuck. They have been living with this problem for quite some time. How typically they may try to cope with it, how you may try to cope with it, is to convince yourself that this is fine. This is good enough. This is the right path for me. There’s nothing else out there that will make me any happier. Maybe you accept it that this is the golden handcuffs, right. I have this good job. It pays me really well. It’s comfortable. I really like my colleagues. It’s never going to be the thing that I truly want, but it works for me.

What ends up happening is that you may end up deferring making a move, making a decision, trying to alter the status quo until someday when. This is fine. This strategy will take you so far. It will take you a number of years. It may in fact a strategy that you can employ for the rest of your career. If you can do that and that’s what you chose to do then that’s entirely your decision, and it may be the best decision for you, but it’s not necessarily the best decision for everybody.

What I see happening in the clients that I work with, what happened for me is that sometimes you’ll feel like you are growing out of your role. Much like my family and I, we loved this house that we’re in when we moved into it. It was perfect about 10 years ago. Things change. We evolve. We’re growing. We’re literally bursting out of the seams.

The same thing might be happening to you professionally. You may be in a role where you’re not able to fully express yourself. You’re not fully able to grow in the direction that you want. So you’re feeling that discomfort of wanting more. It might start with a nudge. It might start with noticing here and there until that gets louder and louder and finally you have to do something about it.

When that happens, sometimes it can be painful, right. That’s maybe when you start to feel burnout, you start to feel resentful about the work that you’re doing. You stop finding the joy in your work. It might also lead to self-sabotage. I did an episode about self-sabotage a few weeks back. You can look that up if you’re interested. That is what may happen if you feel that the job that you have right now, the work that you’re doing right now isn’t right for you, but then you decide not to take any action on it.

So what happens is some people end up reaching a crisis point where things really exploded on them. Then they have to make a decision. I can see that happening potentially in our house, right. When we’re really all falling on top of each other, then we’ll need to make a move. We’re not quite there yet, but I could see it happening.

In a professional context, you might ask yourself what that looks like really, right? What would a crisis point look like? It may be that you get stuck in a rut. That’s super common, right, where everything is ticking along, everything is just fine. You don’t love it, but you don’t hate it. You don’t really want to change anything. So like I said, that can go on for quite some time. It may be that you want to leave. You’ve actually started to make that decision, but you don’t know where to start.

That’s where a lot of clients reach out to me. That may be you. In which case I think you’ll find this episode really helpful because what I’m going to share is often what I share with clients who are going through this transition.  Some people know that they actually really love their organization. So they don’t necessarily want to leave, but they know that they need to make some changes to role that they’re in currently.

So the good news is that today we’re going to talk about some ideas. We’re going to talk about some solutions. We’re going to talk about how you can go about creating the job of your dreams. So really what we’re doing, we are manifesting the work of your dreams. What is it that will really fulfil you? What will really light you up? How are you going to get one step closer? It doesn’t necessarily mean that you need to leave your current role. I would invite you to think about where you are today and to think about what it is that we talk about today that you can apply to enhance the work that you’re doing currently.

So there’s really three phases to this process, and I’m going to go through each of them starting with breadcrumbs and discovery. So when clients come to me and they talk about wanting to make a transition, the answer isn’t usually hey here’s a list of jobs. Why don’t you go apply for them? The answer is much different. What it really begins with is a discovery process of the individual. That often requires looking at the breadcrumbs and identifying what it is about past experiences that you really enjoyed.

You may look at your role, for example, and see that there are elements of it that you absolutely love. Maybe you really love drafting. Maybe you really love the times that you’re working on a team. Maybe you love the times where you’re able to take on a leadership role. Maybe you love the times where you’re not taking on a leadership role.

I would invite you to look at all the different experiences that you’ve been having. Maybe you like the technical side of law. Maybe you like the more sort of thoughtful and creative side of law. Whatever it is that resonates with you, I invite you to really think about what it is that you love. Then I would invite you to start looking for it. This is really the discovery process.

So in my current house search, the way that I’ve started that discovery process, it really did start with that magazine clipping. Now I’m out in the world investigating. I’m looking at homes. I’m examining them. What is it that I like? What is it that I don’t like? I’ve started talking to people randomly. I’m sure that my neighbors really appreciate all these questions. That is how you start learning about what you like and what is available because ultimately what you want to do is to create a match.

Now when I transitioned out of law into my coaching practice, I underwent a very robust discovery and breadcrumb following process. It all started in 2015 when I first discovered coaching. From that point forward, I did a ton of research. I looked up lawyer coach. I actually found out that such a thing existed. I didn’t know it did before I consulted with Google.

I learned the names of all thought different lawyer coaches probably in North America. I made lists. I printed out their bios on their websites. I investigated other lawyers who have left practice to enter the profession on coaching or counseling. I starting to reach out to all different people. I looked at programs. What kind of coaching training was available. I did a ton of research. I spoke to a lot of people.

I found mentors. I found people who are now my colleagues. I went out on a mission to really figure out if this was something that would resonate with me. What was the experience of others? What would I need to do to get to the position that I thought that I wanted to be in? Would this really be right for me?

Whenever lawyers come to me and they want to make a transition, I invite them to do exactly the same thing. To identify what it is that you love about you current role, and to start looking at what opportunities are out there. Who it is that you would want to speak with, who is doing something that you absolutely admire? Can you reach out to them? Can you initiate contact? What can you learn from them?

As you go through this process, what you will find is that bits and pieces will start to really resonate with you. One example that I give, which I invite clients to do, is to start looking at job boards. Look at different careers and different job postings. To look within the posting and to find the line, the bullet point that resonates with you. Because that is one of the breadcrumbs that you can follow when it comes to creating or manifesting your dream work. So that is the first step is to follow the breadcrumbs both in terms of what it is that you have loved in the past and what it is that you think you’re going to love in the future.

Now the second phase is where you transition from the research phase into the active investigation. This is where I would encourage you to set up information interviews. So you the people out there. You realize there’s a number of lawyers who have a job that you think is really interesting looking. There’s something about it that speaks to you. Maybe you don’t know quite what that is. Then you invite them to have a virtual coffee with you, and you learn about them. There’s lots of ways of approaching those conversations. I’m not going to get into that today.

What I’m inviting you to do is to be active in the search for your role. It may mean making applications for jobs. So if you’re looking for a job outside of your organization, it may mean that you dust off your CV. You start putting it out there. As you interview, what you’ll learn is that there are jobs that really resonate with you where you think oh, this would be such an amazing job. I’d absolutely love to do this.

You may find that you go for interviews and there are jobs where you know the minute that they accept your CV and invite you for an interview that there’s something that’s not quite right about it. And I invite you to really follow your gut on this one because your gut is going to tell you a lot about whether or not the opportunity that you’re following is, in fact, when that will be fulfilling to you. One that you’re really going to enjoy.

Now, not everybody wants to leave their job. So you may be in your job, and what you really want to do is make a shift in terms of the work that you’re doing. Maybe it’s the role that you have, maybe it’s the title, but maybe you want to shift a little bit. In which case, I would invite you to start figuring out what that might look like.

So you might look at other organizations, for example, to see, is there a role that you would like to have in your organization that you see somewhere else that doesn’t yet exist where you are? Because that role might unfold itself over the next few months, over the next few years. Maybe it’s something that you create and propose to somebody. That is possible.

Maybe it’s the way that you work, right? Maybe you’re in a role where you’re full time and you want part time. Or there’s some other piece that you want to take on or some piece that you want to let go of. Again, it’s being really intentional and thinking about what it is that you want, and who within your organization might you start a conversation with?

Maybe there’s somebody in your organization whose role you really admire, and you may want to have a conversation with them about it. It doesn’t mean that you have to go up to them and say, “Hey, Angela, I really want your job. So can you give it to me?” Obviously, but you might not even necessarily need to let that person know that you admire their job. You might just ask them. “So tell me more about your job. It looks really interesting. What do you do? What do you like about it? What don’t you like about it?”

There is so much information that you can learn when you start talking to people. What is likely to happen is that the information that you gather, well, then it all comes together, and you will find a way of using that information to reach that next stage.

So what do I mean by that? Well, let’s go back to the real estate example. I don’t know why I want to do that, but that’s what we’re doing. Is sometimes the conversations that you have ultimately lead to the destination that you want.

So if I go back to that magazine clipping where this family lived in a gorgeous mansion in the heart of Paris, it turns out the way that they found that mansion wasn’t by going online and finding a real estate listing. The house itself was the estate or part of the estate of an American heiress who, I gather, had deceased about 10 years ago or prior to the time that this family learned about the house.

The woman who now lives there learned that there was an estate sale of assets, not necessarily the home. A person that she was speaking with said, “Oh, yeah, yeah. No, there’s this house. Not only are they selling off all these wonderful artifacts or whatever.” Whatever it is that an American aristocrat living in Paris would have to offer in an estate sale. You can use your imagination for that one.

Whatever it was, there was also this mansion that had been left unattended, unlived in for 10 years. So it was just ready for somebody to come along and move into it and redesign it and do all the magical things that were required to turn it into this gorgeous home.

So that never would have materialized if the person looking was just looking on whatever the French equivalent is of MLS to find the next home. That experience had to happen by the coming together of all these different things, right. Conversations, ideas. The house, when this woman stepped into it, she describes it as having this feeling of belonging, right. That this was where she belonged.

So when it comes to you and the work that you want to do, I would invite you to think about that as well. So you have these conversations. You meet with other people. You start talking. You start realizing what opportunities are out there, whether they’re inside your organization, whether they’re outside of your organization. As you learn about those opportunities, as you make it known that you’re interested in doing that kind of work, what ends up happening is that in a very non-linear kind of way, you end up finding work that is exactly the work that you would love to do. It’s your dream job.

So that is step two is the active investigation. What I have observed is that the more investigation you do, the more conversations you have, the more you commit to that process, the more likely it is that you are going to find the work that you love.

Now, this brings us to the third step, which is execution. It’s really wonderful to be able to dream up what you want. It’s another thing to speak to people, to apply for jobs, to start getting some traction. But ultimately, in order to manifest your dream work, you must take action. You must make a decision. You must choose to go down that path. That might look so different depending on where you are right now.

It might literally mean transitioning from one job to another. It may mean starting your own practice. I did a podcast episode with Amy Grubb and Ashley Syre a few weeks ago. If you are interested in going solo, I highly recommend it. It’s such a valuable podcast episode. They share so many wonderful insights.

But what it requires of you is to make a decision. It may mean cutting off other decisions. So in my own experience, when I decided to go from being a lawyer to a coach, and this was a process that took quite a few years actually. It wasn’t overnight. But it was successively making decisions that brought me closer to coach and further away from lawyer. Why? Because I knew that I wanted to be a coach. That, to me, was my calling. So I had to make decisions that would do that. Every time I decided to go more coach then I had to go less lawyer.

If you’re a lawyer who is thinking of transitioning, I share this message with you in particular because I know for lawyers who are looking at something different, that is a very difficult choice to make. There’s a lot of shame sometimes in moving away from the practice of law. There’s a lot of perceived stigma that once you step out of that identity as a lawyer, it may be really hard to figure out what that next identity for you is going to be. That can be really difficult.

What I invite you to do here is to make decisions that are going to bring you closer to the work that you ultimately want to do. What I invite you to consider here is that even if what you’re doing is stepping into a new job, that the process itself is not one and done.

If you’re in an organization and you’re shifting roles, you might notice that the process is more gradual. Because you may be slowly taking on more new things and slowly letting go of things that no longer are in alignment with that. If you start a new job, you might think, “Great, I’ve started this new job. That means everything’s going to be perfect.” But what ultimately happens is that in that new role, you’re going to continue to need to refine and adapt.

If you go back to earlier podcast episodes, there’s episode number three where we talk about how to find the joy in your work. So much of that is about realizing that joy in your work isn’t about having the perfect day every day. I wish it was. I wish for all of it that it was.

When it comes to the definition of joy or the definition of happiness, there’s a wonderful definition that the ancient Greeks had about happiness. They define it as happiness is the joy you feel when working toward your potential. What I would invite you to think about here is that you are continually working toward your potential. In that sense, when you can fall in love with the process of building and learning and continually adapting, that is when you’re really going to experience that joy in your work.

The other episode that I would refer you to is the one about integrity, right. Being in integrity with yourself. Because the more you can align yourself and the more you can align yourself with your work. That is when you’re really going to experience that sense of joy and fulfillment, and knowing that the work that you’re doing is the work that you’re meant to do. That’s when you start to create your dream work.

So even once you’ve made that transition, whether it’s the new job, whether it’s an adapted job relative to the one that you have already, you’re going to need to keep on refining it. So what does that mean? It may mean that you need to develop new skills. It may mean that you need to keep learning and growing in your legal practice. I’m imagining, and I’m pretty sure that you’re doing this already. You’re going to keep on learning and developing and getting closer to the work that you truly love.

When you continue to check back with yourself, what you might find is that you continue to really appreciate and love the work that you’re doing. What may happen is you may find that eventually, it’s no longer just you who’s going out into the world looking at people who seem happy and asking them how they got to be where they are. What you might find is that over time, other people start to come to you to ask you how it is that you got to the place where you are.

So those are the three steps. Number one is that breadcrumbs and discovery, what is it that you love? Number two is active investigation. Number three is execution.

Before I move on, I just wanted to share with you that one of the really cool things that happens when you do this process is how things come full circle. So I was recently cleaning up my office, and I came across some of the printouts from my earlier research. I came across some notes from my earlier research. What I learned was that I’ve now been in contact with or I’m in a group with or I’ve worked with a lot of the individuals who I identified way at the beginning of my search as people that I really admired and wanted to emulate my work after.

So maybe if you go through this process, keep a folder with some of your notes and some of the clippings and some records of maybe the interviews that you had and see what happens. Because it may be that a few years down the road, you discover that all those things that you had hoped for, all those people that you’d hoped to meet, all that work you’d wanted to do, all of a sudden you realize that you made it a reality.

So the reason that this process works. Well, number one is it really puts you in the driver’s seat of your career. Again, going back to that rules oriented approach is when we’re used to seeing things as being governed by the rules. Here’s the process. Here’s how it works. Here’s the job description. Please go execute in relation to the bullet points. What we’re missing is that magical ingredients that comes when we insert ourselves into that equation and bring to it the gifts and the ideas and the talents that we have that other people may not know about.

I mean, a job description is really somebody else’s best guess at what the role involves. But what if you go into that role, and then you have ideas for it that are beyond the bullet points? How much more amazing could that be not only for you, but for the organization that you are a part of?

Number two, the reason that this process will work is that you’re focused on what lights you up. If you look at the work that you’re doing right now, and maybe you give it a percentage, maybe 50% is okay. 50% is amazing. I don’t know. You decide. If you look at the work that you’re doing that you’re not particularly excited about and you’re doing it well, I would invite you to think about how much better you might be doing when the work is what you truly love. How amazing is that to think about? That if you were so much more connected, what would you be capable of producing?

So you may be asking yourself, what does it take? What does it require of you in order to create this dream job, this dream role? Number one, you must let go of the notion that somebody else is going to do this work for you. Even in the most well intentioned organizations where they are actively supporting you and trying to help you grow, this work really must come from within. You really must take ownership of where you want your career to go, what kind of work you want to do.

As you go through that, I invite you to consider that you are not limited. You’re not defined by bullet points on a page. This really goes to who you are as a person, what kind of an impact you want to make through your work, and how you want to do that within your organization or within another organization.

It also means you’re going to need to be proactive in creating your dream job. It means you’re going to need to seek out opportunities, whether they’re opportunities within the organization you’re in right now or if it means asking for what you want. Or if it means just thinking about it on a level that is much more aligned with what do I want to create versus what is available to me.

The concept that comes to mind here, for me at least, is looking for a job and saying okay, well, maybe I’ll go over to the list of jobs and look at those jobs and see which one best suits what I want. That’s one way, but you’re still looking at what is being offered to you as opposed to what it is that you want to create. I would invite you to shift the locus of creativity over to you so that you’re not just looking at what’s being offered. You’re looking at that, and almost viewing that as a base line for the work that you’re truly going to create.

Another skill you’ll need to have is to allow for the risk that what you want isn’t necessarily available right now where you are or even at another organization. If that’s the case then the next step is to go out and create it or find it or a position where there’s the opportunity to grow into that.

Another skill you must have, and so many of my podcasts really come back to that same point, is the willingness to be uncomfortable. To trade off the discomfort that you may be feeling right now in your current position where you feel like you’ve outgrown it or you’ve hit a plateau or you want to move forward, but you just don’t know how. That in itself is uncomfortable, but making a change is also uncomfortable.

So what you will need to do if you want to make a change is to allow for that additional discomfort knowing that regardless of what that next step brings you, it will bring you closer to the career path or the work that will fulfill you.

Then finally, you have to be willing to believe in yourself and your ability to create. This can sometimes be really challenging, especially if what you want to create doesn’t exist yet. If the role that you want hasn’t yet been created. But I think, in a sense, the pandemic was an opportunity for so many of us to see that there are so many different ways of doing things that we never really imagined were possible before. So this exercise of believing that that work is out there for you is maybe a little bit more palatable because we’ve seen it happen elsewhere.

So what will happen if you do this work? Well, I look at clients that I’ve worked with who have gone through this journey where they’ve taken their current role, and they’ve decided that it wasn’t working for them. They decided to transition to something different.

I can tell you that the next step for them is usually that they have found themselves in a spot where they feel so much more in alignment with what it is that they want. They’re able to act on desires. They’re able to create changes. They’re able to do the work that really resonates with them. So that is one of the things that you can create when you are intentional and deliberate.

If I look at my own practice, I can tell you that I’ve found a level of fulfillment and joy in my work that is unlike any other experience that I’ve had for work as a professional. I really loved being a lawyer. I loved a lot about being a lawyer. I also knew that there was something else out there for me. This truly is work that resonates with me.

What I want to say about that, for all of you who are thinking about making a transition, looking at your job right now and saying, “You know, it’s really not for me”. Is that even when you find work that you love, and maybe you’ve already experienced this. So I’m telling you something that you already know.

But even when you find work that you love, unless you’re a unicorn, and maybe you’re a unicorn, chances are you’ll have very difficult days. You’ll have challenges. You’ll have things that you don’t want to do like paperwork and admin and taxes and structuring and planning or whatever it is. I actually like planning. So maybe I shouldn’t have thrown that in.

But there may be elements of your job that you do not like, but because you love the work that you do so much, all of that becomes part of the package. You’re able to fall in love with that whole process. You’re able to see how fulfillment is really you getting clear and focused and putting one foot in front of the other, and slowly, steadily moving toward your potential. Again, we’re going back to the Greeks. That in itself is the joy in your practice. That is the joyful practice.

So my friends, I really hope that this episode has resonated with you. I hope that for each of you, whether you’re just looking to expand or build on what you’re already doing in your current role. Or if you really are looking at making a transition whether it’s to a similar role, whether you want to leave law altogether, whatever it is for you. What I’m inviting you to do is be so intentional and deliberate and courageous to see what it is that you want and to go out into the world and created.

The reason this is so important is that there are people out there who will benefit from the decisions that you make. You have no idea right now who those people are or maybe you do, but you may have no idea who those people are right now. But when you follow your instincts, when you follow the breadcrumbs, when you surround yourself with people who are in alignment with what you want to create, who are supporting you, who are seeing the same things for you, you will find that your world opens up in magical ways that you never would have thought possible.

It is so much different from going to the job board and picking A, B, C, or D. It is so much more of an intuitive process. It is so much less linear. I assure you it gets you to the result that is in alignment with what you want.

So my friends, thank you so much for joining me again this week. It has been a pleasure connecting with you. Please, if you would like to connect, reach out on LinkedIn. Send me an email. If you enjoy this podcast, please rate and review. I came across a review. Just as I was recording this podcast episode, I was checking on my phone to see what number it was. Can’t believe we’re at 42.

There was a note from somebody, and the title was “Better than a book!” I can’t tell you how heartwarming that was. So please, if you leave a rating for me, that would be amazing because it will help other people find the podcast. That’s how the algorithms work I’m told. So please do all those things. I am just delighted to connect with you again. Have a beautiful week. I look forward to connecting with you again soon. Bye for now.

If you enjoyed today’s show and don’t want to miss an episode, subscribe, and follow the show wherever you listen to your podcasts. If you haven’t already, please leave a rating and review. Your feedback will help me create a podcast that’s tailored to your needs and goes straight to the heart of what matters to you. For instructions on how to subscribe, rate, and review the podcast, visit www.thejoyfulpractice.com/podcastlaunch. See you next time.

Thank you for listening to this episode of The Joyful Practice for Women Lawyers podcast. If you want more information, visit www.thejoyfulpractice.com. See you next week.

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