Conversations With Cady

Anxiety sucks. I can’t remember when I started to feel anxious. I don’t really remember dealing with it until after law school. After I graduated, I had big goals and I thought that I could only accomplish them by perfecting the craft. I put a lot of pressure on myself to perform. My best was never good enough. Only perfect was acceptable. This pressure may have led to the uneasy nervousness I now associate with anxiety.  Anxiety manifests in many ways for me. Early on, it caused me to lose sleep. My brain raced for hours on all the things I had to accomplish the next day or all the ways I could have done something better that day. I ruminated on the emails I sent, the demand letters I drafted, and the meetings I had with clients and my superiors. It was all consuming at night and I constantly feared I could have done something better. At night time, I lost control of my thoughts and regularly spiraled into the negative and worst-case scenarios. A few years into my practice, I star...

Early this year I found myself crying after a hearing that was continued to a later date. I had prepared for weeks. I researched, wrote an outline of my argument, identified the questions I wanted to ask the witnesses, and was overly prepared to appear before the judge. It went fine but we didn’t finish. We were required to reschedule the remainder of the hearing nearly two months later. I was deflated. I had put so much time and energy into prepping for this hearing only to have no resolution. The end was delayed. All I could see was the many more hours I would now have to put in to prepare for the continued hearing. The many more days and nights this matter would be floating around in my head. It felt like I could not focus on anything else or rest until it was over.  That, my friends, is burnout. It is working too much, expending endless energy on certain issues, personal matters, clients, or cases that you literally cannot function. You begin to distort your own reality. You sa...

I am not a patient person. It has never been anywhere near the top of my virtues. As I have grown, though, I have realized that there is nothing in life that you can't work on (we do train muscles after all). So, I am practicing patience daily. Here's how: Gratitude: I sit in gratitude for where I am in my life and how far I have come.  Journaling: I explore patience through writing in my journal (and on my blog of course). I think about the ways I was patient during the day and the ways I could have employed more patience. I consider the people I impacted by being impatient. I forgive myself in the moments I lost my cool and treat it as a learning experience.  Listening: I listen with intent. I hesitate to interrupt the conversation or to jump to conclusions. Through coaching, I listen and let clients come to their own solutions. It takes time for people to discover themselves and identify the best routes forward.  Meditation: Sitting in silence trains the patience muscl...

Timelines are arbitrary. There is no right time to do anything - to settle down and start a family, to go to school, to start a new business. I try to wrap my head around the many timelines I set in my life. I am at a loss. I cannot for the life of me tell you why I said I wanted to do something by a certain date. Why did I want to be a partner in my own firm by 30? Why did I want to have 20 clients by the end of the year? Some may say I am an ambitious goal setter. Some may say that by having goals, I was motivated to work harder.  That's bullshit. I have never worked harder because I had a goal I was trying to meet. I was not more motivated. In fact, the only result of timelines was disappointment. I was sad that I said I was going to do something by a certain timeframe and then did not. I felt guilt and shame. I let myself down.  Again, that's bullshit. Timelines are unnecessary when you are not guaranteed the next day. So you didn't meet your goal? So what? Life goes on...

Sometimes, and more often lately, I am overwhelmed with sadness. I read the news and understand all the fresh, deep pain people experience all over the world. Some days, it is hard to work. To act like it is a normal day after tragedy haunts neighboring cities. To go to the gym, to have my tea, to login to my computer. Everything feels so heavy. My heart aches for my fellow humans.  On days like these, I try to focus on how I can help. How can I bring more light and positive energy into this world? To start, I focus on my community. I am kind to the people I encounter. I check in with my friends and colleagues and see how I can be of assistance to them. I sit with myself and my thoughts. I reflect and journal about the sadness and pain. I try to feel as much as I can. I write. I write for you and for me. I process.  Bad things happen. Bad things that most of us will never fully understand. The only thing that we can do is come together - be there for one another. We can encour...

At this moment, I am a woman learning about who I am and what I want from my life. I am a ten-year practicing lawyer. I am a student. I am a friend, girlfriend, daughter, sister, and aunt. I am curious. I am an athlete and also, a coach. I am anxious. I am Type A. I am a traveler, reader, bubble bather, sunset watcher, and writer. I am an empath. Sometimes, I am happy and sometimes, I am sad. I am growing.  It is hard to say how I got to this point. How, at 34, I started questioning my "life plan". Through a pandemic and a lot of isolation, we have all been provided time, perhaps too much time, to think about our past, our present, and our future selves. I've considered what brings me the most joy. Here is what I know -  you do not have to do something just because you are good at it. You do not have to do something because you have the education, experience, and resources to do it. You also do not have to do something because it is expected from you.  The truth is that t...