First Flight Podcast: How Shy and Introverted Attorneys Harness Quiet Strength

Transcript

Adriana Linares:

Hello, welcome to New Solo on Legal Talk Network. I’m Adriana Linares, a legal technology trainer and consultant. I hope lawyers and law firms use technology better. Thank you to our partners in developing the New Solo first flight series for solo attorneys presented by Ops Insurance. They help solos and small law firms discover the best tools for their practices. The New Solo first flight series curates the best 12 episodes for new solos. We’re highlighting a portion of my episode with Heidi Brown about asserting yourself legal work can be extra tough if you’re shy. So Heidi has some great tips we can all use to get our nerves under control. Stay through to the end. When I visit with Rio Lainefrom Alps Insurance Rio and I take down the idea of fake it till you make it and look at how the six dimensions of lawyer wellbeing can be a useful framework for reducing your stress as a lawyer. And now my interview with Heidi Brown, professor at the University of Brooklyn Law and the author of the Introverted Lawyer. So let’s start with just talking a little bit about you. Are you a shy, introverted person?

Heidi K. Brown:

Absolutely. I am sort of the poster child for introversion and shyness and I’ll explain a little bit later hopefully that those are kind of two different things, but I am both of them.

Adriana Linares:

Oh my gosh. I was going to ask you too to help us define the terms so that if some of us have some of these characteristics, we can properly identify them.

Heidi K. Brown:

Yes. It’s a huge revelation when you do identify yourself either as introverted or extroverted or in between. There’s ambi versions, which I didn’t know existed until I started researching this, but introversion and extroversion are just the ways we process energy and the way we take in stimuli. Extroverts process energy by engaging with the outside world. Introverts absorb a lot of stimuli. We can get very exhausted from a lot of stimuli. It doesn’t mean we can’t perform at a high level, but we need to retreat to solitude or quietude to replenish energy. Whereas extroverts tend to gain energy from a lot of stimuli, shyness and social anxiety, totally different. That comes from a fear of judgment. So you can be a completely confident introvert, but just need when you run out of steam to go back to your office or your home or your car or the gym to quietly on your own to replenish. But for me, I have both. So not only did I need time alone to do my best work and to replenish my energy, I also had this fear of judgment and sort of a shame-based trigger that would

Announcer:

Make

Heidi K. Brown:

Me scared to perform. Yeah. So I had the layers of both of those and it took me researching introversion and extroversion, but also the difference between introversion and shyness and social anxiety to understand how to delve into an untangle, all of those different things and understand how I could work on each layer separately.

Adriana Linares:

Did you know these things about yourself before you went to law school or did you discover them during or after? And kind of a weird question, but did you pick law thinking, because I’m kind of shy, maybe I can just be a lawyer and I can sit in an office and do research and I won’t have to talk to a lot of people because some areas of the law do lend themselves to that. Not everyone has to be a litigator that goes into the Courtroom and puts on a show.

Heidi K. Brown:

To be honest with you, I had no idea what I was doing when I went to law school. Good. When I was in high school, I was a very good student in high school. I was quiet, but I was a very good student and my dream was to be the first female orthopedic surgeon to the Washington Red Skis football team. However, we had a St. Bernard dog growing up, and every time my father would tote me along with him to the vet and they took blood from the dog I would promptly pass out. So I had no medical career ahead of me. That

Adriana Linares:

Was not going to happen for you. Okay. Plan B,

Heidi K. Brown:

Plan B, plan B. In college, I double majored in foreign affairs and French. I took a lot of different language classes and I was a good writer, so I thought I’m going to apply to law school, but I really had no, unlike a lot of my students, as I teach law now, a lot of my students know they want to be lawyers. I didn’t really know much about the legal profession except that I thought it was a lot of research and writing and I was good at those two tasks, not so great at the performing and getting up and talking in front of people aspect of it, which I didn’t, I mean, I knew from television what lawyers in court do in film and tv, but I didn’t really know what law school entailed when I got there.

Adriana Linares:

So how did you figure all this out about yourself and even get to the point where as someone who I read on your bio, you were afraid to speak publicly. You are now a professor who speaks publicly all the time, and you got yourself to the point where you wanted to write a book through the A, BA, it’s called the introverted lawyer that you wanted to share your, how did you get there?

Heidi K. Brown:

It has been a long, interesting circuitous serpentine journey. When I was in law school, I thought law school was going to be just like college. In fact, I went to the same institution. I went to the University of Virginia for undergrad, and then right out of college I was 21 years old. I set foot in my first law school class and it was nothing like college. In college, I loved school, I loved being a student and for some reason I was never afraid to speak in my foreign language classes. Speaking in a foreign language was not intimidating. I wasn’t that good at it at the time.

Adriana Linares:

That’s weird.

Heidi K. Brown:

I wasn’t afraid to make mistakes. In my first law school class, I had done all the homework. I’d done all the reading. I always joke about how I would have highlighter ink all over my hands from staying up all night reading my case books. But the moment that a professor would call on me cold call me in front of 80 of my classmates, I froze and I write in my book, I have a very robust blushing response. So I would turn bright red. I was sweating, my God, I was basically a hot mess in all my law school classes and I was terrified. I thought, what if I’m not cut out for this? Again? I loved the research, I loved the reading. I loved my legal writing class, but I really struggled. Anytime I was called on or had to do a simulated oral argument or a simulated client interview, I just froze. So I thought, oh my goodness, am I just, can I not do this? But the mantra back then, fake it till you make it. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard fake it till you make it. But back then I was very unselfaware. I did what everybody else was doing. They were all much better at it than I was. I would love to retreat into the library and do my work, but I thought there was something wrong with

Announcer:

Me.

Heidi K. Brown:

So fast forward, I ended up getting an amazing summer job at a firm that just happened to specialize in construction litigation. So not only did I pick litigation, which at the time I didn’t know the difference between litigation and transactional work. Neither of my parents are lawyers. I don’t have lawyers in the family. Not only did I pick litigation, but I chose the hard hitting field of construction law. But I loved the work. Again, the summers I worked there, both my summers and law school, the assignments were fascinating. We had to learn about architecture and engineering, read blueprints, and I did the work. Well, mostly I was researching and writing. So fast forward, I ended up getting a job there out of law school. I took theBar, I passed theBar, started working, and immediately the firm threw us into performance activities. Go to St. Louis, fly to St.

Louis and take your first deposition, go to court, make this oral argument, negotiate this scheduling order with hard, tough opposing counsel. I was again like a deer in the headlights. So getting to where I started researching introversion about 15 years. So I tried to fake it for 15 years. Holy shit. And did well in the writing aspects of my job. Yeah, exactly. I used to say that basically every day I did well in the writing aspects of my job. I was a brief writer, but anytime I had to take a deposition or go to court or negotiate, I had just extreme high levels of stress. So I ended up going out to California to work on a big power plant litigation that we had that was taking two or three years to go to trial. I moved out there just because was I wanted the great West coast adventure, great west coast experiment, and I ended up being invited to teach legal writing while I was still litigating. So I walked into my first law school classroom as a professor, terrified. I was again terrified. And what I observed though over that year was that my best legal writing students, my most creative problem solvers, my deepest thinkers were also my students who were the most afraid to raise their hand in class, to get cold, called to do oral arguments. So that’s what prompted me to start researching some way to help the next generation of lawyers. But first, I had to understand myself. I had never studied my own

Habits and my personality traits.

Adriana Linares:

Well, most that’s what led to

Heidi K. Brown:

The research, right?

Adriana Linares:

I don’t know who sits around going, I have nothing else to do. I’m going to study myself. Well, that’s amazing. So in an effort to make the environment better for others, you found it all within yourself too.

Heidi K. Brown:

Yes. It was quite an interesting journey to read. I basically read 26 books about introversion, the difference between introversion and extroversion, but then that led me to understanding that shyness and social anxiety, which is a more intense version of shyness, are totally different from being an introvert. It was like a light bulb had been turned on after 15 painful years of trying to make my way in the profession, I realized, oh wow, we quiet individuals, whether you’re introverted or you’re shy or you’re socially anxious, quiet individuals bring incredible assets to our profession that are often overlooked. And then because we don’t talk about that, we don’t know how to amplify our voices authentically when we need to make ourselves heard, because obviously we don’t have the luxury to always be quiet and sit in our offices with our doors closed or squirrel away to the library. We have to speak and make ourselves heard because we have important things to say, but we don’t talk enough about how to do that.

Adriana Linares:

There are probably listeners who don’t realize they are either shy, socially anxious introverted, or maybe even extroverted, but yet shy, like the combinations that you talked about. Are there some telltale signs that you could rattle off that a listener might go, oh, wow, huh, that is me. Or, yeah, I do behave like that. Do you have some ways you can help us figure out if we are have any of those characteristics?

Heidi K. Brown:

Yes. I’ll first talk about introversion and extroversion. So introversion again is the way some of us process stimuli in a particular way in which it takes us a little bit of time to listen to a question. We want to ponder the question, we want to think about it. We’re sort of vetting and testing our ideas and theories and solutions to problems. We do that internally. So sometimes in a meeting, I notice when I’m in a meeting, I’m usually the last to speak. My brain is full of ideas, but I’m going through the process of testing even the language I’m going to use. Extroverts do this totally differently. They process thoughts and ideas and solutions out loud.

Adriana Linares:

Are you calling us

Heidi K. Brown:

In a good way? Extroverts can be blurts, but you imagine in a Courtroom or in a negotiation or in a law school classroom, the extroverts tend to get a lot of the attention because they seem more engaged.

But actually the introvert can be just as engaged and is thinking really deeply about the problem or the opportunity in front of them. They just take a little longer to step into the conversation. So that’s one sign that if you like to sort of think through if you prefer writing to speaking, the chat feature on Zoom is just like a miracle worker for introverts. I’ve seen it in the classroom and meetings because we can think, put our ideas in the chat and then hit send or hit enter, and there this amazing impact without having to interrupt someone. That’s another telltale sign. If you resist interrupting people or you feel like you get sidetracked when people interrupt you. That’s another somewhat introverted trait. And then as we mentioned, energy replenishment. As an introvert, I can go full steam ahead for hours and hours and hours in a very highly stimulating environment, but then I hit a wall and I need to run.

I actually have this, I’m a big fan of the band U too, and I have this awesome t-shirt that has a lyric from their song, and the front of the T-shirt says, I want to run, and the back says, I want to hide, and that is my introversion T-shirt. And then shyness and social anxiety, that’s completely different from the energy management or stimuli processing that we were talking about. Shyness and social anxiety manifests through a fear of judgment, and that can take the form of public speaking anxiety. I had public speaking anxiety, extreme levels of it in law school in practice, and as a new law professor, and still sometimes now I do a lot of public speaking, which I find hilarious and ironic that I wrote a book called The Introverted Lawyer, and now half of my career is public speaking.

Adriana Linares:

I think that’s amazing.

Heidi K. Brown:

It’s fun. It’s fun, but I have to untangle. I like the word untangle, not just conquer, but really dig into why I have this fear of judgment and why I get embarrassed if I blush in a presentation and untangle all that fear of judgment and realize I have systems that I undertake each time I’m stepping into a performance scenario. And I just remind myself, if I reach one person with my message, I’ve done my job and then I step in and work on it.

Adriana Linares:

Did you ever have a mentor during those law firm years that ever said to you, Heidi, you’ve got a lot of talent, you’re just kind of shy, get that out of the way? Or was there anyone that ever encouraged you along the way to, I think we talk about mentoring a lot in law firms. I’ve been around law firms for a really long time. Unfortunately, I see very little mentoring. So I’m just wondering if you ever had an experience like that or maybe we have some listeners who are the partners or the more senior associates that you might be able to help them recognize younger attorneys or even older attorneys. You don’t have to be young to have not figured out that you have these characteristics, something you might say to them that would be helpful.

Heidi K. Brown:

I think reflecting back, I got great mentoring on the substantive and tactical aspects of my job. I got great mentoring and writing and legal strategy. I got zero mentoring in terms of tapping into my authentic strengths, and there was a lot of messaging around grow a thicker skin. I literally heard that message, how does one grow a thicker skin? It was the message, and these were well, well-meaning people, very strong personalities, a lot of yelling involved, and I admire their strengths. I had totally different strengths, and when I was coming up through the ranks, there was not a lot of mentoring around how to recognize the assets that you do bring to the profession and at the same time learn how to. I like the phrase, amplify your voice authentically. I knew I needed to amplify my voice, but what I learned was their version of that was mirror the behavior that was being displayed across the table, which in my couple decades of law practice, I worked in very male dominated industry construction law. There were very few women that now it’s changed. But back then, all my opposing counsel were these angry men, very strong personalities, and I was this quiet, younger female, and I thought I had to act like them,

And I now wish I could go back and redo all of those performances because I would’ve done it in the way that I know how to amplify my voice now, which is not yelling, it’s not swearing, it’s not pounding tables. It’s just being smart and sticking to my written plan, relying on my writing, and then doing a lot of the physical stuff that I’ve learned how to do to calm my shyness and social anxiety, to take all that energy, that anxious energy, and convert it into power.

Adriana Linares:

I love it. Well, let’s take a quick break, listen to some messages from some sponsors, and when we come back, I’m going to ask you what some of those techniques are. You’ve given us a couple of ideas of ways to identify those characteristics, whether it’s in ourselves or someone we work with. What are some ways to, I don’t want to use the word combat, those characteristics, because you don’t want to combat them. You need to figure out, like you said, how to find your voice and then amplify those strengths. So what are some of those suggestions that you make in your book or you give to your students?

Heidi K. Brown:

Yes, I feel like the terminology is untangled because we’re kind of

Taking all this stuff apart and then putting it back together in a constructive manner, and that really requires some self study first and then action. So what really helped me in researching my introverted lawyer book, I did a deep dive into the research about introversion, but also shyness and social anxiety and the themes that kept popping up were really getting to know what’s happening in your brain, but also and your body when you step into a performance scenario. So there’s a mental reflection piece and then a mental action piece, and then also the physicality of it. That was so huge for me.

I thought my performance anxiety all came down to my emotions, but as I started studying this, I realized, oh, there’s a whole physical dimension to this, but if we’re unaware of it, we can’t do anything about it. So that the second half of this plan that works for me is to do a physical inventory, do a physical self-study, and once you’re more aware of your ality, transform that into a physical action plan. So the mental piece, and when I talk to law students and lawyers about this, sometimes they feel like this is a little touchy feely, but I promise it has worked for me.

Adriana Linares:

I think they’ll take any suggestions they can get.

Heidi K. Brown:

So whether you’re grappling with introversion or the shyness and social anxiety, this really can apply to both because whatever it is, sometimes we feel like we’re a little out of sorts in a performance scenario. So what helped me was to first listen to my internal soundtrack, my not so helpful soundtrack as I was either anticipating a stressful performance scenario or as I was stepping into one, and I realized that for literally decades, I was telling myself the most unpleasant things. But listening to it is important, not just pretending, not just fighting through it, not just pretending. I finally had to listen to it and write it down, and it was unbelievable. It was like, what are you doing here? Why did you say yes to this? You’re going to turn red, they’re going to think you’re incompetent, all this negative stuff. So you write all that down. But then I had to realize that those were just outdated messages that maybe well-meaning teachers or coaches or authority figures in my life had had given me constructive criticism in the past. But I had somehow absorbed all that and written this script for myself, which was just really unhelpful. So I had to reboot that entire program,

Announcer:

Reprogram

Heidi K. Brown:

Totally like delete the soundtrack, let’s write a new one. But it had to be quick enough for me that when all that self-doubt stuff would start to creep in, I’d have to catch myself and realize, oh no, wait, wait. Okay, and then for the next 30 seconds, you’ve prepared for this. You’ve done the work. You know what you’re talking about. You care what you’re talking about. You don’t have to talk like speak like everybody else. You can say this in your own voice, even if you make a mistake or your voice shakes, now, get in there and do it.

Adriana Linares:

Awesome.

Heidi K. Brown:

And sometimes I would literally write that down,

Announcer:

And

Heidi K. Brown:

In the early days, I’d write it on a post-it and stick it on my laptop or stick it on my deposition outline. Actually, I wish I had stuck it on my deposition outline. I never did this when I was actually taking depositions, but my teaching outline and remind myself, okay, you’ve done the work. You know what you’re talking about. You deserve to be here. Who cares if your face turns red? Oh, and I read an amazing book by this author Erica Hilliard. This gets more into the physicality stuff, which I’ll talk about in a minute. But she wrote about blushing. I’ve never read anything more helpful about blushing than Erica Hilliard’s book about shyness. And she said, blushing is life coursing through you. So when I first read that, I laughed out loud and I’m like, oh, cool. It’s a lot of life alive, really alive.

I’m alive. Yay me. So now when I blush, because I still blush a lot, I immediately think, thank you Erica Hilliard, but I immediately think I’m alive. Yay me. And then I forget about it and it goes away in a couple minutes rather than firing up for another 45 minutes. It used to. It’s such a powerful feeling when you realize that you really can delete that outdated soundtrack and write a new one. And even if you physically write it out and have it with you tucked into your notebook or in your laptop or in your phone, it’s totally fine. The next part though, is even more exciting because it’s less touchy feely. I find that the physical stuff is a little easier to handle for people that are new to this. So what I realized, I had to do the same thing physically as I did mentally, and notice what was happening to me physically. When I would anticipate a performance scenario or when I was stepping into one, and in addition to my face firing up a lovely blush, I would start sweating. But what I realized is that my body’s instinct was to protect me from what it perceived as a threat, because our bodies don’t know the difference between you’re swimming in the water and you see a weird shadow,

Announcer:

That

Heidi K. Brown:

Kind of fear versus walking in to speak in front of 700 people. Our bodies think it’s the same type of threat. So what happens to me is that my shoulders cave in, I instinctively cross my arms. If I’m sitting, I cross my legs, but all that, it is like my body’s trying to get as small as possible so it can slink out of the room unnoticed. What I realized was that that whole getting small thing just exacerbated my rapid heartbeat, the sweating. I couldn’t breathe. I wasn’t getting enough air. My energy, I’m full of energy. I’m a ball of energy when I’m in that situation, but the energy has nowhere to go because I’m constricting my physical frame. So I learned, I listened to, I know this Ted Talk has gotten some controversy, but Professor Amy Cuddy

Gave a TED talk about power poses, and I know it’s a controversial TED talk because there’s some, there’s difficulties with replicating the science or whatever. But I do that I realize just like I had to catch my mental soundtrack, I realize now when my shoulders are caving in, when I’m crossing my arms, when I’m feeling the blush come up my cheeks and I realize, oh, wait, Nope, just got to recalibrate. Throw your shoulders back whether you’re seated or standing, put both feet on the floor. Stand like an athlete or a performer. Open up your hands. If you can do a power pose, put your hands on your hips. I also like the one where you put your hands behind your head and you feel really strong. If you can do the starfish, make yourself as big as possible. Whatever works for you, everybody’s different.

That is another just 32nd reboot or recalibration. And I realize, okay, I can calm my own heart rate down. I can feel more powerful. And I don’t know if you’ve ever read the book by choreographer Twila Tharp. She wrote a book called The Creative Habit, and she likes rituals and routines because she says they remind her, and I’m quoting her, she says, I’ve done it before. It was good. I’ll do it again. And so when I add the mental soundtrack on and layer on the physical recalibration, I think of Twila Tharp’s statement. I’ve done it before. It was good. I’ll do it again. And then those two things just set me up, and then I walk into the presentation, and then it doesn’t always go perfectly, but it goes way better than it used to.

Adriana Linares:

And plus people are truly so forgiving. Anyway, before we move on to our next segment, I do have one more question I want to ask you. You have used the word a performance several times, and I want to clarify. That can be anything from a one-on-one deposition to giving a speech to 600 people. Right,

Heidi K. Brown:

Completely. Okay. To me, a performance is anytime you’re interacting with someone else, it can be one person, it can be three people, it can be 700 people. If you think it’s a performance, it’s a performance.

Adriana Linares:

You have talked to us about figuring out who we are, some of us that might have some hidden characteristics we haven’t identified, and then some tactics for using those strengths once we’ve identified them. Overall, mental health and wellness is important to you. So everything you’ve told us and taught us so far, I know is a small piece of a bigger picture. Back to being kind to your mind, I think. What things do you see in attorneys, either behaviors or stories that you could share with us? Just a couple of ideas on securing our health from a mental standpoint.

Heidi K. Brown:

I wrote a little article for the ABA Journal a couple years ago about trying to treat ourselves like athletes or if the athlete model doesn’t resonate with people like performers, because that’s what we do.

And I like to look at it this way, that athletes and performers, whether they’re rock stars or singers, musicians, dancers, comedians, they don’t just focus on the one skill that makes them awesome on the stage or in the arena. They focus on a lot of different things, especially athletes. They don’t just focus on one physical skill. They focus on nutrition, they focus on mental strength, they focus on emotional strength. I think we need to do that as law students and lawyers or members of the profession as well, because that’s going to make us stronger on the mental health and wellbeing front. We cannot just focus on our intellect. And so I’ve been trying to take this approach. There’s a task force on lawyer wellbeing that identified six dimensions of lawyer, wellbeing, intellectual, occupational, social, physical, mental, and even spiritual. And I loved that they listed those six things.

So I’m working on a new project where I’m adding four more because I want us to treat ourselves, give ourselves regard as athletes or performers, because when we enter into the arena, whatever our arena is, whether it’s dealing with a person one-on-one or walking into a conference room where we know there’s going to be confrontation or not confrontation, we want to be nice to people and come up with solutions or the Courtroom. We cannot just rely on one dimension. We have to build up our strength in all these different dimensions. So that’s the approach that I think would help our profession.

Adriana Linares:

I totally agree with you. So simple.

Heidi K. Brown:

It is simple, and people think that it’s going to be incredibly time consuming. It’s actually not. If we make a conscious choice to understand these different dimensions of ourselves and then kind of get excited about building up are one of the dimensions I’m adding in this project that I’m working on now is our creative or artistic dimension.

Announcer:

How

Heidi K. Brown:

Much fun can it be to treat ourselves like artists? And then how can that have ripple effects into our intellectual dimension or our social dimension or our spiritual dimension? So I think they interact a lot with each other as well, but instead of only caring about our intellect, we really need to take time. Not a ton of time. It could take 10 minutes a day or half an hour a week, but if we build up these other dimensions, then when we hit speed bumps or obstacles in a particular dimension, all the other dimensions can rise up and help us get through that challenge. Our job is not easy. I mean, I’m not trying to say we should all sit in a park all day long, but stare at nature. We have tough things we need to accomplish, but maybe sometimes if we did sit in the park for 10 minutes and get peace of mind, we will be able to step into that tough situation and be like a clutch athlete that journalists write about all the time.

Adriana Linares:

And I like your athlete comparison because when you’re an athlete, even if you are performing an individual sport, you still have a team around you and behind you. And I want to encourage listeners, if you’re having a struggle, there are resources out there for you, for us, whether it’s through the A, your local bar association, through organizations like task forces that you’re running, Heidi, that you really want to get out there and address that and just make your life easier on yourselves. So I look forward to your third book, which I think you said the subtitle had to do with the Multidimensional Lawyer, right?

Heidi K. Brown:

Yes. So this new book is called The Flourishing Lawyer and Multidimensional Approach to Performance and Wellbeing. And my first two books, I was writing about a lot of these principles, but I didn’t understand that there was a field of psychology called positive Psychology. After my Fear book came out, I applied to the Master’s in Applied Positive Psychology program at the University of Pennsylvania. I went through that program and I learned so much about the science of wellbeing and the science of positive psychology and the concept one of the chief founder, but also a collaborative founder of Positive Psychology. Dr. Martin Seligman wrote a book called Flourish. And so the concept of flourishing and thriving, it’s not just about feeling good all the time, it’s about functioning well. So they look at it as a two-pronged approach. There’s hedonic wellbeing, which is just feeling good, having good emotions, but then really they call it EU wellbeing. And that’s the functioning well, and that’s where all these dimensions come in. We can’t function well as human beings if we only focus on one dimension. We have to nurture and cultivate and foster multiple dimensions of our personas, and it makes it fun. We can tap into things we didn’t even know we are capable of doing,

Adriana Linares:

And life should be fun and lawyering should be fun. So if you’re not having fun lawyers, we need to figure out how to help you have more fun out there. That was Heidi Brown, professor at University of Brooklyn Law and author of the Introverted Lawyer. I hope you enjoyed visiting with her. Again, it’s a good reminder about things we can do to build our confidence as part of the New Solo first Flight series presented by Alps Insurance. I’m joined by Rio LaineAlps, director of Strategic Partnerships. Rio helps a lot of attorneys build their practices through Alps, insurance Resources, Rio, you’ve met a lot of solo attorneys just like I have, and many that are probably Heidi. And then also the attorneys are probably at the polar opposite of what her personality is like. But what do you think of Heidi and how she overcame her shyness?

Rio Laine:

I found it so inspiring, and I think her story really, really resonated with me in so many ways. For starters, when she talks about that notion of faking it till you make it, we’ve all done that or said that, and we kind of laugh about it. Oh, I’m going to fake it till you make it, but sometimes that doesn’t work. And what if the thing that you’re trying to fake is something that is just fundamentally not a part of who you are or how you operate in the world? She talks about how she had mentors saying, oh, well, you got to be more aggressive. You have to be more assertive, and this and this. And she’s like, well, that’s just not who I am. I mean, I can show up for myself and be the person that I want to be, that just looks differently for me. And also the fact that it wasn’t really until she saw her students struggling, that she was able to kind of recognize those challenges within herself and be like, oh, actually, maybe I just work differently and maybe my brain works differently, so I am going to figure that out and see if I can make some changes. And that was really, really inspiring.

Adriana Linares:

I think it’s hard sometimes to recognize the courage that you have in yourself till later or maybe never. And for me, listening to Heidi was about the courage that she had to muster up, which maybe she thought she couldn’t or didn’t have, but eventually it came out and it was the best thing for her to do for herself. And I know that in today’s world, it can be hard to find the courage to either just be yourself or stand up for yourself, especially if you happen to be at a firm where there’s a lot of pressure or you put a lot of pressure on yourself. So I love her for that.

Rio Laine:

And I think especially as women, I mean, we are taught really to not take up space. We’re taught to be quiet and to take a step back. And it’s really nice to hear her that she was able to recognize that she can take up space. It just maybe looks differently for her than for other folks in her law firm.

Adriana Linares:

And I’ll say that I cannot tell you how many times I talked to attorneys and everything is I, and then they assume that that’s just exactly how every other attorney should do it, would do it, could do it, and can’t imagine it being any other way. If you’ve listened to my podcast for a long time, first of all, thank you. But you will hear me mention many times about the Toastmasters Club. So Toastmasters, if you have not ever joined or been a part of Toastmasters, I did it when I was in my early twenties getting started trying to figure out how to communicate and talk to people. It was one of the best things I have ever done for myself. And it’s a public speaking club. It teaches you not only how to give speeches, but how to be sort of more eloquent when you’re in a dinner group.

But the point of that being that when I tell people to find a Toastmasters club today, I have to be very clear and say, look, there’s probably five of them in your local area, and you have to find the one that fits your personality. They all have different personalities. They’re all a different vibe. I think that’s the same advice I would give to finding a mentor. If you connect with someone and you aren’t vibing the way it feels good for you, find another mentor. Mentor. So one of the last things I want to ask you about, because Heidi mentioned it, and of course we hear about it so much, is imposter syndrome and trying to overcome that and really define who you are, and then feel good about putting that out there in the world. And I’ve always been really impressed with the lawyer wellbeing committee that Heidi mentioned and her points about how important it has been to her. I want to encourage everyone to go and learn more about them, but specifically the six dimensions that define lawyer wellbeing. And I know Ria, this is something important to you, so I’m just going to ask you to pick a couple of these to talk to us about. And those six, just real quick, are occupational, emotional, physical, intellectual, spiritual, and social elements of being a multidimensional and yet healthy attorney.

Rio Laine:

I’ve always found imposter syndrome to be such a fascinating thing because yeah, you can be the most successful, seemingly well put together, intelligent, just high achieving person, and still feel like you are just faking it. And everyone’s going to find out. And I really liked what Heidi said about how she flipped the script on that. And it really comes down to changing your internal narrative, like listening to the story that you tell yourself, asking yourself, well, why am I thinking these things? Why am I saying these things? And then flipping that. And that’s something that I think there’s a lot of stigma and resistance amongst lawyers around doing that kind of internal thinking about yourself. Because as a lawyer, lawyers really have an expectation to have it all figured out, right? You got to be the authority. You are intelligent. You went to law school, you cannot be air quotes weak.

You cannot show any cracks. And so I think it’s so important though, to going back to this multidi dimensions of being a lawyer, to understand that that is a really important part. The narrative that you tell yourself and what’s going on in your mind, in your emotional state is so important to your overall wellbeing and how you perform in the world. It’s something that I think we really need to work harder to break down the stigma around. Because I mean, just thinking back again about imposter syndrome, we’re all feeling that everybody, you’re not alone. And the more people that are able to come out and say, Hey, I’m struggling with the things that I say about myself. I’m struggling with my mental health, or I’m struggling with social connection and belonging. I’m struggling with feeling satisfied in my job, in my profession, the more people that can come out and say those things, I feel like the better it’s going to be for everybody.

Because then it gives people a chance to find that common ground and connection and to say, Hey, yeah, maybe it is okay if I’m struggling in this moment and maybe I can do something about it. And that’s okay. And that’s all right. And it’s okay for me to move forward. And at Alps, our COO, Chris Chris Newbold, he does a lot of work around lawyer wellness and wellbeing. That’s something that’s very, very close to his and to our hearts in general. Because when lawyers are struggling and suffering, they are often doing it alone. That impacts everything. It impacts the world. It impacts their clients, it impacts access to justice. It has a greater far reaching impact on the community when they’re struggling. And so the more we can do to encourage lawyers to come together and to support each other and to be okay with struggling and be okay with doing the work needed to do better, I think the better it is for everybody.

Adriana Linares:

Well, thanks for listening to New Solo first flight series presented by ALPS Insurance. I hope you found it helpful that you tune in for the whole series. If you like what you’ve heard today, make sure you share the New Solo podcast with other attorneys who might find it helpful. And if you haven’t yet, be sure to subscribe to New Solo and Apple Podcast or Spotify. See you next time

Announcer:

From nine to five. Clock me. Sure. I was thinking this was the way to go and you put up your, I.