Health / Wellness

Your Various Jobs and Entire Career Will Have An Expiration Date, But Your Everyday Actions Will Not — Practice Courage And Be Kind

At the end of this COVID-19 pandemic, who do we want to be?

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“Working on the weekend like usual / Way off in the deep end like usual / They swear they passed us, they doing too much / Haven’t done my taxes, I’m too turned up.” — Drake

For those in Biglaw or following the uber-competitive, but rather frictionless path to Biglaw — and have already secured an offer post-law school graduation — this article may not seem relevant to you. But sometime in the future, it may be something you’ll want to reference.

For those who run their own practice or wandering down a non-traditional legal path, this post may be especially timely.

Regardless of where you are in your career, it is important to take stock of your personal inventory and be intentional about your long-term trajectory. But I’m not sure I’m telling you anything you don’t already know — as a lot of this advice may seem like I’m preaching to the choir.

On Wednesday, I hosted my 22nd presentation for my former company. The theme was “Advocating for Your Career and Self-Care.” My guests were Kurt Merriweather, Vice President of Strategy and Transformation at Walk West, and Nickeyea Wilkinson, my former colleague who was featured on ATL a few weeks back.

Merriweather, whose presentation can be seen here, discussed the power of being different in charting your career and company impact. The key takeaways were:

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  1. Honestly determine where you are (From) and boldly plot where you want to go in your career journey (To)
  2. Establish a team of personal board of advisors that are the best in your industry
  3. Ask ourselves how colleagues, customers and the company are experiencing unique value because of our presence

Wilkinson’s fireside chat can be viewed here. Wilkinson also told her story in the ATL article “We are Failing Women Of Color and It Is Fatal — A Discussion with Hampton, NCCU Law Alum Nickeyea Wilkinson and Howard, NYU Alum Ashlee Wisdom.” As Wilkinson shared with us:

Silently, I endured many years of physical and mental anguish because of fibroids. Realizing that there is a need for support motivated me to create this video, along with several others.

These videos [that make up my video project] are small ‘snippets’ of a larger documentary on the ‘black women’s experience’ with fibroids that I want to create. I hope that the videos will encourage women to open up about their own health issues, spark conversations, and garner support from leaders representing both the private and public sectors of healthcare, technology, and academia.

I hope to share my story and connect with other women who may share similar experiences and/or conditions. It is now my mission to spread awareness about women health issues, particularly issues impacting women’s reproductive health, as well as voice my concerns about the lack of information, research, and support, especially as it relates to fibroids.

Fibroids have been donned the ‘black women’s disease’ because of how disproportionately fibroids affect black women. I often feel that there is an angle or narrative echoed when we are discussing health issues that greatly impact minorities. And, too often, such discussion does not reflect the minority’s perspective. I want to change the narrative and create opportunities for open and honest discussion.  My voice is a result of my own silence. While it is my ‘right to remain silent’ and keep personal health experiences confidential, doing so does nothing for the greater good.

I believe that our life purpose(s) is married to our desires and experiences. Beyond having a flourishing legal career, I desire to be a wife and a mom. The fact that I am dealing with issues that can impact my fertility, is a threat to my desires.

However, I am an incredibly optimistic person and a woman of faith. I will use my experiences with fibroids and ovarian cysts as a testimony and an encouragement tool. I do believe that sharing my story and advocating for other women, is one of my life’s purposes. Everything does happen for a reason!

Please seek out opportunities to advocate for your health. Share your individual story. You never know who your story is giving a voice to!

My talk on #SocialCapital is available here. It was the first presentation I ever gave at the company, so I thought it apt to also be my last presentation at the organization as well. It’s a very condensed presentation of the one I did for the 12th Annual Legal and Inclusiveness Conference in Denver, Colorado in 2018.

Borrowing significantly from Reid Hoffman’s and Ben Casnocha’s book “The Start-Up of You” (also mentioned in past writings here and here) and Cal Newport’s book “So Good They Can’t Ignore You,” I coaxed the audience to think of their career as a startup.

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These two excerpts from Hoffman’s book are the core foundation of my #SocialCapital talk:

All human beings are entrepreneurs. When we were in the caves, we were all self-employed … finding our food, feeding ourselves. That’s where human history began. As civilization came, we suppressed it. We became ‘labor’ because they stamped us, ‘You are labor.’ We forgot that we are entrepreneurs. — Muhammad Yunus, Nobel Peace Prize winner and microfinance pioneer…

Whether you’re a lawyer or doctor or teacher or engineer or even a business owner, today you need to also think of yourself as an entrepreneur at the helm of at least one living, growing start-up venture: your career.

It is no secret, we as a society are going through a very difficult time — to say the least. Uncertainty abounds and it is breeding anxiety, fear, and xenophobia. We need to remember our various jobs and entire careers will have an expiration date. But our everyday actions will not.

In times like these, I often think of Maya Angelou’s words: “I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel” and “courage is the most important of all the virtues. Because without courage, you cannot practice any other virtues consistently. You see — you can’t be consistently kind, fair, humane, or generous. Not without courage. Because if you don’t have it, then sooner or later you’ll stop and say — the threat is too much, the difficulty is too high, and the challenge is too great.”

In dealing with fear and anxiety, we cannot just put our heads in the sand and ignore what is happening around us — staying entrenched to the “business as usual” mindset. Now more than ever, we must be vigilant in assuring we progress as a society. At the end of this COVID-19 pandemic, who do we want to be? When it all said and done, there will be a lot said, but how much will actually be done? Our country is struggling to breathe. When it’s resuscitated, will it be better off? Or will the actions and means we undertook continue to haunt our dreams? Justice isn’t self-executing, it must be fought for every step of the way.

It is indeed important for us to be intentional about our respective careers and long-term prospects. But it’s also critical we help each other, especially those who are most in need, during this tumultuous time. As best-selling author Brad Seltzer famously implores: “Everyone you meet is fighting a battle you know nothing about. Be kind. Always.”

Please join us in wishing David Lat — who has shown “mild improvement” in recent days, but whose prognosis is still uncertain — a speedy recovery from COVID-19.

Renwei Chung is the Diversity Columnist at Above the Law. You can contact Renwei by email at projectrenwei@gmail.com, follow him on Twitter (@renweichung), or connect with him on LinkedIn. 

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