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You Have A Choice To Make

I have learned recently that there are two types of emotions in the world: Love or fear.

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I have learned recently that there are two types of emotions in the world:

Love or fear.

Love or fear.

Everything else is a sub-element.

Love is confidence and support and collaboration and love. It is worthiness and desire and faith. It is connection and abundance and pure and helpful and value. It is backbone and morality and heartfelt and determined and giving. It is growth and daring.

Fear is the anxiety and the confusion. And frustration and lack. It is depression and corrupt and rotten. It is misaligned and worry and suspicion and insecurity and unworthiness and playing small and concern. It is stunted.

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Both emotions play integral parts in defining who we are and the decisions we make.

We fully know we are acting out of love when we realize that we are not acting out of fear.

But it’s fear that keeps you dragging yourself into your attorney job you can’t stand. It’s fear that results in your stress, in your 60+ hour workweeks, in your addictions to numb the pain.

We unhappy attorneys produce these fears ourselves

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It’s a fear that we are not worthy of success.

It’s a fear that we are not good enough.

It’s a fear that we are not special.

It’s a fear that life will be really hard for a long time.

It’s a fear that we will never reach our potential.

We attorneys have done everything “right” for so long, got the good grades, passed the tests, got into the schools, played by the rules, climbed the ladders, and have succeeded in other people’s eyes.

But we are not happy and we are confused as to why and we are frustrated and we don’t like feeling this way any longer.

To leave the law, I chose not to live in fear

It’s so difficult, it’s so difficult to not let fear in. But those of us who have left the law have slowly trained our minds to not live in fear, to not act in fear.

And it wasn’t an angel who trained us, and we didn’t win the lottery and come awash with money, and we haven’t all gone on any medication.

We began to have faith. We began to have faith in ourselves. We began to know, deep down, viscerally know that we can do it. We began to see that we are worthy … worthy of success and happiness and light and purpose and ease.

Faith is about not settling for anything less than what you want. It is about having a desire and making sure you see it through. It is knowing that everything will be alright.

Everything will be alright.

I can do this.

I deserve this.

“There are two basic motivating forces: fear and love. When we are afraid, we pull back from life. When we are in love, we open to all that life has to offer with passion, excitement, and acceptance. We need to learn to love ourselves first, in all our glory and our imperfections. If we cannot love ourselves, we cannot fully open to our ability to love others or our potential to create. Evolution and all hopes for a better world rest in the fearlessness and open-hearted vision of people who embrace life.” ~ John Lennon

Don’t pull back from life.

Casey Berman (University of California, Hastings ’99), a market research consultant, investment banker and former in-house counsel based in San Francisco, is also the founder of Leave Law Behind, a blog and community that focuses on helping unhappy attorneys leave the law.

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