Breaking the Cycle
Hi friend,
This week, I am delighted to share with you a podcast episode I recently recorded for the Thriving Lawyers podcast.
I am excited to share this episode not only because I am a big fan of the Thriving Lawyers podcast, and an even bigger fan of Chris Osborn, the delightful human who hosts it, but also because this episode – more so than anything else I’ve recorded to date – offers an honest, in-depth, and up-close account of the personal and professional journey that’s brought me to where I am today.
Chris and I explore how I went from being:
An indiscriminate overachiever desperately striving to please and achieve my way to feelings of self-worth →
To a grade-A+ law school gunner who’d describe myself (to my parents, at least) as feeling like a hamster in a pressure cooker who was so lonely it physically hurt →
To experiencing an extreme existential crisis after achieving the exact goals I’d been practically killing myself to attain →
To deciding to make a change but seriously struggling both to figure out how and then to actually implement the steps once I’d identified them →
To realizing that meaningful change would necessitate changing my relationship with myself in addition to (and, really, even more so than) my relationships with others and my external circumstances →
To pivoting to legal education and eventually to coaching, and developing a Positive Lawyering curriculum that captures the key insights, lessons, and strategies I’ve learned – and continue to learn … and re-learn – along the way.
While we certainly cover a lot of ground, my favorite parts of the discussion center around the pernicious relationship I had with my perfectionism for much of my life, and the sort of chicken-and-egg conundrum that, for many years, prevented me from moving beyond it:
Because my identity had become so bound up in my ability to perfect my work, I felt incredible pressure to devote all of my time and energy to studying/working in order to protect my feelings of self-worth.
But the more I devoted every ounce of myself to my work – at the expense of literally everything else – the less and less I had going on in my life outside my work, making it even MORE central to my sense of self.
Chris and I discuss how this vicious cycle continued unabated until the gap between the bar exam and the start of my first clerkship presented me with the rare opportunity to finally welcome something meaningful into my life – namely, my future husband Zach.
We explore:
How having something to lose, for the first time in years, forced me to decide whether and how to make space for something other than my perfectionism;
How it took multiple false-starts and many painful falls before I finally started to find my way; and
How my decision to stay the course was hands down both the hardest/scariest and the wisest/most worthwhile thing I’ve ever done.
As I promised when I first started this blog, my story is by no means linear or flawless - but it is honest, and it is my hope that listening to it may help spark or inspire something within you.
So have a listen.
And as always, if any part of this resonates with you, I encourage you to reach out to let me know. My favorite part about sharing my story — including the less-than-flattering parts — is the meaningful connection it enables me to forge with incredible humans just like you.
With love,
Jordana
