How do lawyers waste their gifts?
How do lawyers waste their gifts?
Every now and again, I hear something which causes my head to explode 🤯. Something which immediately resonates on a deep level. Well it happened again when I heard this:
"Unused creativity isn't benign. It metastasizes.” -- Brené Brown
It's given me a different framework to look at my own creativity in my life, and how (and if) I express it on any given day or week.
As much as it may be true about creativity, I believe it's also true about your "gifts". 🎁
I'm now 47 interviews deep into my research for my book The Happy Lawyer and one of the strong patterns I've noticed between happy lawyers and unhappy lawyers tends to be in the use of the person's gifts. Basically - do they feel as if they get to use their gifts on a regular basis?
If no, there's some unhappiness (if not outright misery) and, if yes, there's some satisfaction (if not outright contentment).
My gut tells me that this is a causative distinction rather than a correlative distinction. The more you use your gifts, the more satisfied you are. The less you use your gifts, the less satisfied you are.
🎁🤔
A lawyer I spoke to loves to solve complex problems, and feels like he gets that in his practice. But it doesn't need to be tied to the law, a different lawyer I spoke to doesn't care much for the law, but she loves working with people. She's much happier in a managerial role because she gets to deal with people on a regular basis. What others view as a necessary evil of managing a team, she views as one of the best parts of her job.
😊
The opposite is true too. A lawyer who I spoke to who loves to be creative feels as if there's a part of him suffocating without oxygen. A different lawyer (who is collaborative and solutions-focused) finds life so difficult in a zero-sum litigation practice.
😞
This can be true even if you don't know what your gifts are. Some people didn't even think in terms of "gifts". If that's you, I can guarantee you have gifts. We could talk about gifts for hours, but for a start why don't you look at the intersection of what you like and what you're good at.
A positive point here is that the longer you tend to walk your path, the greater your mastery and often the more you tend to like it.
It’s worth considering the following:
What do you think your gifts are? What do YOU do better (and enjoy more) than the average bear?
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