Sarah Cottrell: Hi, and welcome to The Former Lawyer Podcast. I'm your host, Sarah Cottrell. I've practiced law for 10 years and now I help unhappy lawyers ditch their soul-sucking jobs. On this show, I share advice and strategies for aspiring former lawyers and interviews with former lawyers, who have left the law behind to find careers and lives that they love.

Today I want to talk about changing your mind. And more specifically, I want to talk about the way that many lawyers think about changing their minds and the shame that people feel about changing their minds. So here's what happens. People start practicing as lawyers. The ones that are like, this is not for me, tend to be the types of people who were raised to think like you shouldn't quit. And once you put your mind to something, you should continue to do it, et cetera, et cetera. And there's often this sense on top of that, even if that isn't how someone was raised, that like, well, I made this decision and there's some sort of like shame in deciding to leave, because there's something shameful about admitting that I was quote unquote wrong with my original decision. And here's the thing, like, first of all, super relatable, right? Like, I completely have the kind of personality that is geared in this way where, like, perfectionism, et cetera, et cetera, right? Like, I am not in any way saying, like, I can't believe that you feel this way, it's so inexplicable and, like, whatever, whatever. At the same time, I think it's very hard for those of us who have this perfectionist streak to recognize that this way of thinking about changing your mind is actually irrational.

And here's what I mean. For all of us, the decision that we made to become lawyers was made at a certain age, in a certain stage, with a certain amount of information, right? And indisputably, as time goes on, as you have more experience, as you work as a lawyer, et cetera, et cetera, you have more information at a later date than you did at an earlier date, right? And I think there are other contexts where we would say, well, of course, if someone gets new information that they didn't have previously that makes them think differently about something, then they should change their mind, right? There are various scientific advancements that have happened, where we thought things worked one way and then there was new information provided, via scientific discovery, experimentation, et cetera and eventually, you know, that changed the thinking, right? But for some reason, those of us, who became lawyers, don't think that that's how it works when it comes to our own experience. Like, we have this expectation that when we were, you know, 18, or 21, or 25, or however old we were, when we went to law school, even if we were much older, that we should just have… basically we should have known all of the information. And even though we didn't know all of the information, when we get new information, which is our lived experience of practicing law and being like, this does not feel like the right fit for me, we have a sense of like, it's not just as simple as being like, oh, I have new information and I now know that this is not the right fit. I think there are a couple of reasons for that. So as I mentioned earlier, I think one of them is just that a lot of us, who are those like good student type of kids, who ended up in law school, were probably taught some variation of like you know, like once you commit to something, you like follow through or like, you know, maybe even something a little bit more mind over matter, like you can decide to do something and then you can do it and like, regardless of what happens and et cetera, et cetera.

Well, the problem with the whole idea of like, oh, you shouldn't be a quitter, like once you commit to something, you should do it is that like, that is not something that should be applied to everything in life indiscriminately, right? Like there's a difference between teaching your kid about like responsibility and following through on commitments and essentially treating your job as though like that's the only commitment that matters, right? And this is even the case if you're like raising kids, right? Because yes, you want to teach kids that your commitments matter, but one would hope you do not want to teach kids that like and it doesn't matter what effect it's having on you. Like, if it's having terrible effects on your mental, physical and emotional health, like, that shouldn't matter, that shouldn't weigh, like, you made the decision and, like, there's no quitting. Like, I think we can see how that is not a great approach, when we think about it with someone else, or a different kind of context. But then when we find ourselves thinking about our own careers, we do have this sense of, like, well, I chose this and to decide that actually this isn't the thing for me, or to decide that this isn't the right fit, or to decide that I want something different, is mentally weak or morally deficient.

And it's not mentally weak or morally deficient. It's just you looking at the information that you have now, which is more information and different information than the information that you had previously, and making an informed decision. Making informed decisions, I think, is something that everyone who's a lawyer can get on board with. Because the reality is that, like, for a lot of us, when we made the decision to go to law school, it was not an informed decision. We thought it was, but we did not have the information that we now realize would have been helpful. And look, the reality is that for a lot of us, we can look back and say, like, my college-age self, even if someone had been able to give me all of this information, probably would have thought that somehow, like, I was the exception or, like, whatever. And, you know, that's probably true for a lot of us, right? Because we were all young and slightly silly at one time. But I think that it's a mark of maturity, to be able to look at decisions that you've made and to decide to do something different and for it to not have to be like, this was a horrible choice and I am a bad person for making it, right?

I think there's child-likeness about that way of thinking. You know, when you have kids, everything is like good or bad, right? Like in a movie, there's like, there's a bad guy and there's a good guy. Like there tends to not be a lot of shades of gray. And part of that is because kids do not have a fully developed prefrontal cortex that is able to like process and integrate like the finer details and the nuances of things that are not completely clear cut. But you, lawyer, adult lawyer, are able to do that. And if you find yourself with this sense of like, but if I change my mind, that's bad. Or like, I should feel ashamed, because somehow I should have had all of the information, when I made this decision. That's just not based in reality. That is holding your past self to a standard that no human can be held to. And I think that it is important to mention, as with so many things, that if you find yourself really stuck with this sense of like, I can't change my mind. It would be wrong to change my mind. I feel ashamed of making a bad decision or something like that. Those are all things that probably go beyond just like your feelings about your career and would be a great set of things to talk about with a therapist, because lawyers should be in therapy. There we have it. The fun fact that I like to share in basically every episode.

So if you're someone who feels ashamed of the idea of changing your mind, that you need to stick to your decision, whatever your decision was. And if your decision was to be a lawyer, then that's what you need to do. I would just encourage you to think a little bit more broadly about it, to think about whether you think that someone should not change their mind, in light of new information that they've received and whether that sense that you have of, like, I should feel bad, or I should feel ashamed for having made this decision, because it was, like, not the quote-unquote right decision. One, whether that's accurate, but even apart from that, whether that is helping you to make better choices about your career going forward or not. And if it's not, then it's worth addressing, so that you're able to make the best choices for you and your career going forward. Thanks so much for listening. I'll talk to you next week.

Thanks so much for listening. I absolutely love getting to share this podcast with you. If you haven't yet, I invite you to download my free guide, First Steps to Leaving the Law at formerlawyer.com/first.

Until next time, have a great week.