“Tension is who you think you should be. Relaxation is who you are.”
— Chinese proverb
Total insomnia
Last weekend I went skiing with some of my best friends I’ve known since childhood. We rented a cabin right off of Lake Tahoe, in the mountains of California. Sounds great, right?
It was a great… but I have to admit, it started off really wrong.
I’m not sure if it was the elevation or the excitement of being with friends or something else altogether, but I had trouble falling asleep the first night.
A lot of trouble.
Total insomnia.
All of my buddies were asleep like babies, snoring, peaceful, relaxed.
And there I was, middle of the night, eyes wide open, awake on the living room couch.
All alone in the dark, my mind racing. Anxious. Nervous. Frustrated. Worried I’d be a wreck the next day. Trying to figure out what I had done to deserve this.
And I also tried really hard to fall asleep: I paced, I did pushups, I drank water, I looked out the window, I tried to meditate, I breathed in and out of my nose, I listened to recordings of falling rain, I considered making some tea, I rubbed my temples.
I tried a lot.
Trying too much
And that was my problem. It was 2:30 a.m. and I was trying too hard.
So I decided to stop trying. I become mindful that I was tired, and that my mind was just not cooperating at that moment.
I accepted that my mind was pent up with a mile-a-minute thoughts and some unexpected anxiety.
I accepted where I was, I accepted what I knew as certain and what was still unclear to me. I knew I had been through insomnia before in my life and it had all turned out fine, and I knew it would also be alright this time. I calmly pictured myself asleep.
I ultimately was able to asleep once I was able to relax. And I was able to relax once I stopped trying so hard to figure out why I wasn’t relaxed.
Relax into leaving
The same goes for leaving the law. There can be a lot of anxiety and worry and pent up negative energy as we consider leaving the law.
We want to know why we are in this place to begin with. We want to know exactly what to do to succeed in leaving the law. We want guarantees that it will work. We want to get it right the first time.
We also are overwhelmed by how much work we anticipate it being. We’ve grown up with the ideas of “no pain, no gain” and that nothing gets done without hard work. We think if there is no stress involved, it must not be acceptable.
And so we often choose to meet our life goals (paying off our debt, becoming partner, making money, leaving the law) in a worried, hurried, stressful way.
But what if, when it comes to leaving the law, we don’t need to be that driven. Or we don’t need to be that productive. Or we don’t need to be measured by some standard.
What if leaving the law is about shifting our mindset to needing less … that can help us choose to meet our goals in a relaxed, confident way.
We don’t need to figure it all out. Instead, let’s relax into leaving and being happy and let the process organically begin. Let’s calmly picture ourselves doing something else we enjoy. But it’s not for everyone. It’s only for people who want to leave the law now.
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.
