Career Alternatives

3 Things I Wish I Knew About Navigating A Career Transition

Jeena Cho shares some of the things she learned on her journey to a new career, and she hopes it's helpful to you.

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Dear readers,

Thanks to so many of you that took the time to write in response to my quitting law. I received a lot of questions such as, “How did you know it was time for a change?” and, “Can you explain the steps you took?” In this post, I want to share with you some of the things I learned on my journey, and I hope it’s helpful to you.

1. What Are Your Underlying Beliefs About Work?

I spent most of my life preoccupied with “doing the right thing.” This meant getting good grades, being “successful,” and chasing after the big paycheck, while completely ignoring whether the work truly brought satisfaction, fulfillment, and happiness. I was going through life always chasing the next big thing. I was a planner, an overachiever. I’m not suggesting any of this is wrong or bad, but I do think it’s important to examine the intention behind your actions. Are you at your job because you really want to be or out of some sense of obligation to your parents, your family, or to keep up a certain image with your friends?

Additionally, I fundamentally believed law practice should be miserable. After all, how many happy lawyers do you know? The unhappy, abusive, and toxic attorneys I worked with perpetuated this belief. You may also believe work should be miserable, but change wasn’t possible until I decided I wasn’t willing to spend 40 or 50 years of my life living in misery. Again, I’m not passing judgment on those who want to live in misery — I’m just encouraging you to ask if this is right for you.

2. Pay Attention To The Good, The Bad, And Everything In Between

Once I decided something needed to change in my life, the next step was to start paying attention to my life — as is. I was working with a career-transition coach and she encouraged me to look at parts of my life that I enjoyed and the parts of my life that I loathed.

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When you’re miserable with work, that misery has a tendency to seep into every aspect of life. And because we are never taught ways of coping with the high demands of our job, the high stress, anxiety-provoking situations, there’s a tendency to simply disconnect. (Perhaps this is why so many lawyers have drinking problems.)

Paying attention to the details of everyday life is really challenging. However, I’ve found this to be a necessary step. After all, if you can’t identify and articulate the things that bring you joy (and misery), how will you know what to look for in your next job?

3. Start A Meditation Practice

When we’re under high levels of stress, the body goes into fight-or-flight mode. This is a helpful reaction if there’s a saber-tooth tiger chasing after you, but not so helpful when you need to think about your next career move. The more pressure we put on ourselves to come up with the “right” answers, the less able we become in accessing the prefrontal cortex (that’s responsible for higher levels of thinking and cognition).

Meditation allows you to create a quiet space, and cultivate the ability to notice when you’re in fight-or-flight mode. I have found that when it feels as though I’m completely lost, out of options, hopeless, or helpless, meditation was a safe space for me to go and explore these feelings. It gave me a space to realize that just because I think my situation is hopeless doesn’t mean that this is a factual truth. In fact, once I was able to calm my mind, additional possibilities emerged.

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Meditation is the practice of non-doing and non-striving. In our overly connected, incredibly busy, never-stopping world, it feels soothing to create a daily practice of simply being.

Feel free to drop me an email at smile@theanxiouslawyer.com with any career transition questions. I wish you a fulfilling, purpose-driven career.

P.S. I’ll be teaching an 8-week Better Lawyering Through Mindfulness course starting in January. You can get additional information here.

Earlier: A How-To Guide For Escaping Your Biglaw Job (Part I)
A How-To Guide For Escaping Your Biglaw Job (Part II)

Jeena Cho is the author of the upcoming American Bar Association book, The Anxious Lawyer: An 8-Week Guide to a Happier, Saner Law Practice Using Meditation (affiliate link). She offers training programs and coaching on stress management, work/life balance, and creating a sustainable law practice using mindfulness. She’s the host of the Resilient Lawyer podcast. She practices bankruptcy law with her husband in San Francisco, CA.

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