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...

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...