“Type A” Lawyers and Retirement: When Is It Time to Step Away?

Episode Notes

Transcript

Dave Scriven-Young:

Hello everyone and welcome to Litigation Radio. I’m your host, Dave Scriven- Young. I’m a Chicago litigator in the environmental construction and architects and engineers practices of O’Hagan Meyer, which handles a full range of litigation matters with more than 285 attorneys and 21 offices across the country. On the show, we talk to the country’s top litigators and judges to discover best practices in developing our careers, winning cases, getting more clients, and building a sustainable practice. Please be sure to subscribe to the podcast on your favorite podcasting app to make sure that you’re getting updated with future episodes. This podcast is brought to you by the litigation section of the American Bar Association. It’s where I make my home in the A BA. The litigation section provides litigators of all practice areas to resources we need to be successful advocates for our clients. Learn more at ambar.org/litigation.

As litigators, we spend months and sometimes a year is preparing for trial, reviewing documents, taking depositions, filing motions, and preparing strategy. But how much time do we spend planning our future? When is it time to take a step back from the rush of trial work and start thinking about what we’ll do when we’re done practicing law? Well, our two guests today will help us to answer those questions and provide resources and things that we should think about when retiring from our practices. So our first guest is Charla Stevens. She’s a lawyer and business consultant who provides workplace training, independent investigations, strategic human resources, consulting and mediation and conflict resolution services. She previously practiced law in New Hampshire and Massachusetts for more than 37 years and spent the majority of her career at McLean Middleton, a regional law firm with more than 100 lawyers where she chaired the employment practice group and also represented schools and healthcare practices. Charla, welcome back to the show.

Charla Stevens:

Thank you Dave.

Dave Scriven-Young:

And our second guest is David Soley. He leads Bernstein Cher’s Real Estate Litigation Group. He’s the author of the American Bar Association’s nationally acclaimed Real Estate Litigation Handbook and is recognized by the best lawyers in America for his work in real estate litigation. David concentrates his practice in the areas of business, real estate and constitutional litigation. He regularly represents entrepreneurs and property owners and disputes over boundaries, titles, easements, mortgage priorities, partitions purchase and sales agreements, and other real estate issues. He’s also co-authored the ABAs, the Trial Lawyers Guide to Success and Happiness, and he’s the author of the Litigation Journal article Transitioning to Happiness Type A Trial Lawyers and Retirement. Good to talk to you again, David.

David Soley:

I’m honored to be here.

Dave Scriven-Young:

So David, let’s start with you and give us some context here. When should litigators start thinking about retirement?

David Soley:

They should start thinking about it immediately, and it’s not hard to do. It’s very simple. You go to the coastal Maine Botanical Gardens near Booth Bay, Maine. You sit the waterfall and you stop and you think, think about how you feel where you are. Being a trial lawyer is a passion and you have to take a minute all the time immediately to think in yourself. How are you feeling? Do you still have that passion? Are you excited to go to work? Are you excited to work with clients? Are you excited to go to court? If not, we all realize that we may very well not be around in 50 years and we need to move on if we’re not excited. If you don’t have trial, law is about passion. If you’ve got the passion, you’re ready to roll. If the passion begins to wane, you need to start thinking about your exciting future.

Dave Scriven-Young:

Well, in your litigation journal article, you talk about career burnout. I think all of us throughout the years have gone through kind of ups and downs in our practice. How do you know when you’re actually having career burnout as opposed to something else just having a bad day or you’re having other issues that you need to work on?

David Soley:

It’s in yourself. It’s there. It’s easy to recognize. You just have to go out and go inside yourself and get it. There’s a big difference between having a bad day and not wanting to go to work. It’s a big difference between having a bad day and not wanting to speak with clients, not wanting to go to court. And that is something that it involves soul searching, but it’s easy to do and it must be done otherwise. We end up in a situation where our life starts going in directions we don’t want to go. Being a trial lawyer is phenomenal, but it doesn’t last forever and we need to all the time take time for ourselves. Do that. Soul searching doesn’t take long except you have to go to Maine to sit by a waterfall and you just think it through. It’s a five minute type thought usually, and then you go with your gut just like you do when you’re in trial.

Dave Scriven-Young:

And Charla, you made this transition recently. Can you talk a little bit about how did you know it was time for you to make a transition?

Charla Stevens:

I did. I retired from my law firm at the end of 2021. One thing that our law firm always asked us to do from the time we turned about 55 years old is to do a plan, a future plan, a transition plan. There was no right or wrong as to what it looked like, but how many hours are you planning to work in the coming five years? What’s your plan for transitioning your clients for other business relationships? Really wanting us to think about the future and what it looked like for us. And for some of us it changed and I was always of the mind that I would probably be done at 65 or maybe work substantially reduced hours, and a lot of things happened in that 2020 timeframe, including a global pandemic, which made me sort of reassess where I was. And I really think I was reaching that stage of burnout and managed to sort of put the brakes on that hugely fast paced 24 7 life, a little sooner than I expected to, but before it got to what I would say is a crisis or a really negative place, I did a few of those assessments that our employee assistance plan offered on its app and was sort of off the charts when it came to burnout.

And I found that I wasn’t enjoying a lot of things, a lot of things in life that I used to enjoy and was more stressed than I think I would normally have been stressed during times in a busy law practice and just decided that I really needed to take a look at where I was and make the decision to retire just a few years earlier than I had originally planned.

Dave Scriven-Young:

So Charla, tell me a little bit more about the burnout and the symptoms that you saw when taking those assessments, because I think a lot of people, a lot of litigators especially, have a hard time seeing those signs and taking that time and self-assessment to figure that out. So what were some of the symptoms for you our listeners can see in ourselves?

Charla Stevens:

Yeah, I mean I think like David mentioned, not wanting to talk to clients. I mean, I don’t think I got to that point, but I had always been a very empathetic person and really could talk to people, sort of figure people out. I mean, I did employment law, I did education law. I worked with a lot of people in very high stress situations, did a lot of crisis management and just found that I was less empathetic to people, less empathetic to clients. I didn’t like that in myself because that was not the way I was used to counseling people or practicing. I was much more stressed at home with family and friends. I didn’t think that I was having fun generally in life, not only just at work and thought that this is not where I should be at this point in my life. And it’s pretty hard to walk away at a point where you’re still on the trajectory in terms of your legal practice. I was doing very well in the firm. I was at my highest earning point in my entire career and just sort of looked at myself and said, how much is enough? And I don’t think it’s worth it to sort of be unhappy and stressed and having migraine headaches and not sleeping well. It just was not a place I wanted to continue to be,

Dave Scriven-Young:

And it takes a lot of self-assessment and self-awareness to figure that out. So David, now that we’ve figured out, okay, maybe it’s time to start thinking about retirement kind of the next phase of our lives, how should litigators start to plan for what we want to do in the next phase of our lives?

David Soley:

The most important thing to remember is that trial lawyers, all good trial lawyers have type A personalities like Charla and yourself. So rocking chair is out sitting still and admiring the landscape. You can do that, but that’s not the plan. Type A personalities must find type A retirement plans. And I’ve talked to over a hundred lawyers who have retired, many happy, some not. And the key is to figure out what your passions are. Trial law is about passion. It’s not the only passion that we have. You need to figure out what are your other passions, your hobbies, your missions, your causes Could be political, it could be religious, it could be being an author, writing books, but you need to reach into yourself and figure out what those passions are and you need to make a list and then you need to figure out what your top three to five passions are, and you should make a plan that those passions will be part and parcel of your retirement. If you like collecting orchids, you should be the president of the local orchid society. If you like traveling, you should make a lot of plans to travel to all those places you want to go to. But sitting in a rocking chair is absolutely out. And you also need to recognize that we’re all getting older and those passions are going to be harder to achieve later in life. So the time to do it is now before we all get into our nineties.

Dave Scriven-Young:

Yeah, I love that. And lawyers, especially litigators certainly have a lot to offer society other than just practicing law. And so you mentioned being a president of groups or community organizations or getting involved in politics or what have you, maybe we didn’t have time to do that while we practiced or didn’t have enough time to do it while we practiced. And retirement gives us that opportunity to get into those situations, to devote our time and our talents to something other than practicing that will contribute to society.

David Soley:

Yes, it’s key that you figure out this is the time to do all those things you haven’t got to do that you have passions about, and you have to sit down, figure out what they are. It could be you want to be head of the church, the synagogue, the mosque, but this is the time to do it, to contribute and to take all the energy that you used for being a trial lawyer and put it to work in your retirement so that you can have a really happy, enjoyable time.

Dave Scriven-Young:

Charla. So tell us how you decided to fill your hours from return from practice. I mean, I talked a little bit about in your introduction, but would love to hear kind of more about how not only what you’re doing now, but how you decided how to make that transition to do something else.

Charla Stevens:

I’ll start with what I’m doing now and what I’m doing now is a lot of what I did when I was practicing law, but I have filtered out the things that were no longer bringing me joy, like litigating, like being adversarial, writing demand letters and responding to demands. So I do a few things that really fill my time, some volunteer, some professional in some personal, and I always had a good mix of that I think when I was practicing, but I did too much. I always did too much. I overscheduled myself. People refer to me now as the busiest retired person they know professionally I chose the things I love doing as a lawyer, investigations, training, getting strategic, talking to people about their workplaces, their businesses, their schools, consulting with how to make it a better workplace, how to empower employees and how to stay legally compliant, but also be an employer of choice.

And so I have a lot of fun doing the trainings and the consulting. And then I really enjoy investigations because they’re project based. You take on a project, you interview people, you talk to people, you use your legal skills, you use your personal skills, you write a report and then your work is done. Sometimes you’re asked to come back, but for the most part, your work is done at that point. It’s not hanging over your head. You can control your schedule. So I work probably about 20 hours a week on average in my own business, which means that I can set my hours and set expectations with clients that are fulfilling to me that in terms of scheduling and in terms of a mix of the other things that I do, I continue to do a lot of volunteer work. I’m on two nonprofit boards.

I’m on the board of Governors of the New Hampshire Bar Association. As you know, I do some volunteer work with the A BA, having just concluded my three year stint on council. And I’m a runner. I’m a marathon runner, and that is something that I always did when I was working. I’ve been probably doing it for about 15 years now. I always ran, but running marathons long distance and traveling to run marathons is something I’ve been doing more for 15 years. I’m still doing it. And it gives me, I think, more freedom to turn the marathon trip to Berlin, for example, to a vacation in Germany and Prague. So I managed to fulfill that other passion of traveling and seeing the world. So I’m spending a lot of time doing all of those things, and that makes for a pretty full life and one that’s pretty satisfying. It doesn’t mean that every once in a while I don’t sort of look back on things with nostalgia and say, oh gee, I’m missing out on that. But in reality, it’s a pretty fulfilling and comfortable way to spend my time. But as David said, I’m definitely type A and I am not somebody who can just chill and watch Netflix or take a walk in the morning and have that be the biggest activity of my day.

David Soley:

That’s brilliant advice. And I have noticed if I could throw in that every happy retired trial lawyer, I’ve talked to many, many, many of them all say the same thing, they are busier than ever before because they have that type A personality, they have that passion, and they’re pursuing their passions, and it’s the pursuit of passion that makes retired trial lawyers happy. I would also like to add that it’s not just about passion. Charla mentioned exercise and exercise and diet are absolutely critical. Even if it’s not a passion, which it is for Charla, she’s lucky to have that as a passion. As we age, our metabolism slows and to have a happy retirement and a long retirement, it is critical to make exercise and good diet a very, very important part of the retirement plan. Otherwise it limits the retirement. It limits your health, it limits your happiness and what you can achieve.

Dave Scriven-Young:

And I was just thinking about it, David, the litigation section spends a lot of time focusing on mental health and wellness for people who are practicing law. And perhaps part of that mental health and wellness is not only having certain practices while you’re at a law firm or still practicing law, but also part of taking care of yourself is making that transition to retirement. And then in order to continue having that full retirement, you have to keep taking care of yourself. So still a big part of what we need to do as lawyers and as litigators. Correct?

David Soley:

Absolutely. And mental health is also very important. I’m not a medical doctor or a therapist, but lawyers love stress. They love challenge, but there’s a point where stress becomes what I personally call distress. And that’s the burnout that Charla was talking about, and that’s the balance that we need to have. We love stress, we love challenge, but overstress is unhealthy and we absolutely don’t want that. And that’s where we need to talk about shifting priorities. A lot of people who specialize in retirement planning talk about financial issues. What I’ve found is fortunately we’ve picked a profession that doesn’t have a lot of financial challenges. The challenges we have are passion, exercise, good diet, and pursuing things that we want to do in retirement.

Dave Scriven-Young:

I will say with respect to finances, and there’s been a lot written on this over the years is yes, lawyers make a lot of money, but we don’t necessarily save it or plan for the future. And certainly we may be, and I’m as guilty of this as any, right? You have kids going to college growing up, you want to give them everything that they need and desire. And so you maybe don’t spend enough time thinking about your own kind of transition. And so it’s really critical I think having this episode, no matter who’s listening, because in order to have a successful retirement, we need to start planning, as you said, David, start right away. But yeah, I mean finance is especially, yes, typically lawyers make money, but in order to do that, certainly planning is part of that.

David Soley:

It’s a good point. And I always believe it’s not how much you earn, it’s how much you spend. That’s really the issue, isn’t it? I mean, that’s certainly what I tell all my kids. And I had thought that I was finished with college payments 20 years ago, but my daughter who’s in her thirties just decided to go back to university. So I’m dealing with that now. But clearly spending is the issue. People who are retired spend a lot more money than people who are working full-time. When you go on vacation, you spend more money than you do when you’re too busy to spend money. So it is something to consider. I know that experts basically say, look how much money you have and spend 4% of it a year, which hopefully won’t impact much your principal balance. That is the general rule of thumb. But what I’ve found with the lawyers I’ve talked to is fortunately most of them, because lawyers are well paid for whatever reason, they have ended up saving enough money to have a happy retirement. The issue is not the money so much as what to do and how to be happy.

Dave Scriven-Young:

Got it. And Charla, bringing you back into the conversation. So tell us how you kind of plan in terms of your finances, physical and mental health. I mean, it sounds like you’re a runner and I’m sure you’re getting paid for a lot of the, or hopefully for all of the HR consulting work that you’re doing. So we’d love to get your thoughts on those issues.

Charla Stevens:

Yeah, I firmly believe that you need the help of the right professionals when you’re in that transition phase or in that planning phase. And I’ll say the top three professionals you need are a financial planner, a therapist and a coach, a business coach, a life coach, a job coach. You may not need to work extensively with all of them, but you need to make sure that you have a financial plan in place. My daughter was educated and married, so for the most part, I was not financially supporting her anymore. So we had to look at what are my husband’s and my needs and what are our goals and desires for retirement? And I wanted to be able to travel when I wanted to and be able to go back and forth between New Hampshire where I live and Florida where we have a place and relatively modest and conservative.

I didn’t need to be crazy about what I did, but she looked at all of our spending and then what we plan to do in the future and developed a plan. And I would ask her every year or so, do I have enough or is it time? And she actually said, you can do it now. And I had worked with a therapist about the burnout issues because I think frankly, many lawyers are reluctant to get that type of help. And that’s one of the things that we focus on in the Mental Health and wellness committee, of which David and I are both a part is when you need help get it, there are resources out there. I think you need to talk about how you’re feeling about your plans for the future. And the coach I think is a great way of developing a plan for what does this look like?

What do you want to be doing? My hope with the consulting work that I do is that I would make a little bit of extra money so that I could fund my travel habit and pay for race fees and running shoes and those extra little things that cost maybe a little bit more than the average person may be spending on a monthly basis. And so it does that. It gives me a little bit of income, certainly not what I earned at the law firm, but enough gives me some flexibility to make some choices about what I want to do. And it’s worked out quite well, but I spent some time talking to people about it, the financial pieces, I wanted to make sure that they were in place so that I wouldn’t be worrying in the future whether or not I could take a trip or buy a new bike or get a new car if I needed a new car.

Sort of basic things that were important to my life and being type A and being a planner, it was a relief to know that she thought somebody who was a professional thought that I was okay because if I’d relied on myself, I’m not sure I would have been equipped to make those types of decisions. So there are plenty of good resources out there and take advantage of them. You may only need a couple of months with a coach, but it’s a great thing to examine where do you want to be? What does it look like?

Dave Scriven-Young:

Well, and you mentioned earlier in the episode sometimes that you missed what was going on in the law practice. Is there a grieving process or kind of an emotional toll that hits when you’re making that transition? I mean, I’m kind of going through something similar with my kids. My youngest son just went to college, and so my wife and I are empty nesters at least from the moment until they come back for the summer. But we’re definitely dealing with kind of a little bit of a grieving process. I wonder if it’s kind of a similar process when you’re transitioning to retirement, how you’ve been or how you felt making that transition.

Charla Stevens:

Yeah, I mean, think about the amount of time that you spend with clients, work colleagues. I was in a hundred person law firm, so I had plenty in terms of colleagues and resources. So I make that first adjustment to setting up an LLC and getting a business credit card and opening a credit bank accounts in my business’s name and learning to market. I mean, I was always a good marketer, but I didn’t know how to do the graphics and things like that. So all of a sudden you’re doing everything on your own. So there’s that sort of disconnecting from that piece, missing the IT and marketing departments and your work colleagues that you could go in the office next door and have a chat about a particular case or a situation that you were dealing with and people that you spend some social time with.

Two, because I worked for 21 years in the last law firm that I worked in, so I was there a lot of time. I had friends, I had associates, I mentored. So that definitely is that process of missing out on that. And I had about a little over a year in terms of the definite notice of this is when I’m leaving. So I had time to work through some of those things. But I always tell this story of we used to have our partners retreat at our place in the Lakes region in New Hampshire annually in the fall. And I have a friend who has a lake house and I have to pass that location of the retreat every time I go to her lake house. And the first time I passed it on the way to go visit my friend, I just started bawling and I was like, you hated going to those meetings.

Why are you crying? And it was just the thought of that’s something I’m never going to do again. And that was really tough. It’s a chapter that closes. But I’m lucky in that I maintain relationships with a lot of those colleagues, my former assistant who is the most wonderful person in the world, and I miss every single day. We get together for coffee, we get together for drinks, and there are a number of my friends from the firm that I still catch up with from time to time. And you’re not in it and you’re not part of the big picture anymore, but you still have those. And I think it’s important to maintain those friendships to the extent that you want to and just not completely walk away. You can’t be one of the crew anymore, but you can certainly be friends with them and spend quality time with them.

David Soley:

On the other hand, many retired lawyers told me that there was a wonderful release from distress when they retired. We don’t realize it when we’re working. We don’t realize. I’ve been done a trial of a month for probably 40 years. People are constantly calling us with serious problems. We’re going in many directions all the time. We’re not sleeping, we’re not getting the amount of sleep that we need to get. And I’m not sure we realize it, but all the lawyers, many of the lawyers I’ve talked to have retired, said, you know what, David? I woke up and I realized all of that distress was gone, all of the panic was gone and my life was mine. So there’s that piece as well.

Charla Stevens:

I’ll tell you that one thing that it took probably a good year and a half before I got used to not having to write down every single thing I did every day and track every minute of my time and feel as though I was guilty for being in a board meeting for two hours because I wasn’t doing billable work and kind of justifying my existence, not only to other people, but to myself. I mean, that’s a huge sword that hangs over lawyers, but it took a long time to disengage from that and realize that I didn’t have to do that anymore, and it was a tremendous weight lifted.

Dave Scriven-Young:

And Charlie, you mentioned the use of a business coach and I think people would be fascinated to hear about how that came to be and what you use that coach for in order to create your business.

Charla Stevens:

Being in the HR field and the employment law field, I often if I would do an investigation or be working with a client, working through a difficult employee situation, would recommend a coach for someone who was struggling, especially an executive or a manager. And there are a lot of different kinds of coaches. There are executive coaches and business coaches in terms of learning how to market and build your practice. But the person I worked with was somebody that I knew and had presented with. We did some presentations during the pandemic about how leaders should lead in a time of crisis. And so she and I had this connection. You really have to look at what is the type of coach that you need, what is it that you’re looking for is your objective and what you want from them. Basically what I was looking for was somebody to help me sort of craft a plan like for the next six months I’m going to do this, and for the following three months I’m to do that.

And it’s going to be disengaging from boards or volunteer relationships that I no longer want to be part of or need to be part of because I’m not working at a law firm anymore. So do you want to be on this board? Is it giving you joy? Do you feel as though you’re making a difference or is this something you’re doing because it’s a good thing for a partner in the law firm to be part of this group? Why are you doing what you’re doing? Is it giving you joy? Do you want to continue to do it? Because I did offload a lot of different relationships and sort of responsibilities in the year leading up to the retirement transition, those relationships to other people in the firm. I mean, I really tried to be deliberate and organized about it because I think it helped me to think I built up these relationships.

I don’t want to see them die, but I don’t need to be the one that has this relationship anymore. So the coach really, really helped with that and really helped with not so much like you have to spend this percentage of your time doing this, but really what do you want this to look like? And I think actually we were pretty successful. It’s pretty close to what I imagined. It will not continue forever. I will at some point decide that I don’t want to do the consulting anymore. I’m kind of done with it. I’ve done everything, but I’ll continue to do things like maybe write or podcast or just volunteer. So it will change. It won’t be the same. It’s been two and a half years now and I could see a couple of more years with this path, but maybe at some point I’ll need to reengage and talk to somebody about what the next step of my future looks like.

Dave Scriven-Young:

Yeah, we’re always transitioning. David, are there any other resources that are available to folks? And we talked a lot about different professionals that we can engage to assist therapists, financial planners, business coaches. Are there any other resources that you might mention for folks to check out

David Soley:

Family, and I’m sure Charla and she mentioned that’s who she checked in with as well. But family is key and what a wonderful opportunity to retire and spend more time with family. And many of us have children and grandchildren, and we might not have been able to see them as much as we wanted to in the past, but now it’s a great time to check in with them, see what they think and how they’re feeling. I know a lot of people I talked to spoke to rabbis and priests and religious leaders as well, just to make sure they’re on sound footing. A coach that Charla mentioned sounds like a brilliant idea as well. And a lot of people trust therapists because basically we’re going to this next step because we’re looking for happiness and joy and passion, and we want to make sure that that’s what’s going to happen. We have a limited window before we’re in our nineties and can’t do what we want to do. So we need to really live to the fullest and talk to anybody that makes sure that your heart tells you to go to.

Dave Scriven-Young:

Love that. Charlene, David, we’re at the end of our time together. I just wanted to get your last thoughts on these issues. Sharla, we’ll start with you.

Charla Stevens:

I think what I would say is don’t be afraid. Don’t be afraid to seize the happiness and there’s going to be an adjustment. But if this is what you want to do, you can do this.

David Soley:

And now is the time not to retire necessarily. But now is the time to decide what the plan is for retirement. I did also talk to people that were faced with retirement before they were ready, and that’s not good. We need to always be thinking what the next step is. We love what we do, but we’re not going to love it forever. And it’s important for our own sanity and for our clients and for our firms to make sure that we are not practicing after burnout. We need to figure out when the burnout’s going to happen. We need to figure out what our plan to deal with that is before it happens. And we need to have a good plan in place. Now, even if you’re in your twenties and thirties, planning is key because a happy retirement for a type A person is going to involve a plan discipline that needs to be worked out. It’s not something you can just read a book and do.

Dave Scriven-Young:

Excellent. Well, thank you so much for being on the show, Charla, Stevens and David Sole. Thanks for coming back on the podcast. Appreciate it.

David Soley:

Thanks so much for having us. Thank you.

Dave Scriven-Young:

And now it’s time for our quick tip from the A BA litigation section’s mental health and wellness task force. And I’ll be the one giving the tip today because I have a personal story to share. For the past nine months, I’ve been on a weight loss journey. I actually lost 70 pounds in seven months and have maintained my goal weight for the past two months. And this was one of the most challenging journeys I’ve been on in my life. And it’s amazing to think that I’ve actually reached my goal because like so many Americans, I’ve struggled with my weight for many years and have tried and failed many times to lose weight and get into shape. I did several stints with Weight Watchers and even tried intermittent fasting, which was interesting. And this time was different though because I actually hired an online coach to help me.

So a little bit about my coach. His name is Landon with two Ns. He’s more than 20 years younger than me. And the social media content skews younger as well. But when I saw his content from an ad on Instagram, I think I got interested in a hurry because not only was he very fit of course, but he also had a great story. He was a model growing up and had learned a lot of things during that process about losing and keeping weight off. And I’ve learned more from him in a couple of months than I’ve learned during my entire life about nutrition and fitness. So he set me up with several daily goals, so number of calories and percentages of what my food should have in terms of protein, carbs, and fats. He also set me up with workout plans so that I’d be at the gym six days a week, which was exactly six more days per week than I was going before we started working together.

And he asked me to send him my weight details about exactly what I was eating and a journal of my workouts every day. And it’s really that accountability that kept me away from the cookie jar and kept me going to the gym day in and day out. So I learned a couple of things during this process. First, I learned that I’m the type of person who needs to do something as quickly as possible. And I realize now that my earlier attempts to lose the weight didn’t work because it just took too long. I’m the type of person who gets bored. I thought it was going to take basically my whole life to lose this weight and I didn’t want to die it my whole life. So speeding up the process by doing everything in that seven month window really kept my focus and allowed me to see the light at the end of the tunnel.

The second thing I learned is that I really needed someone to keep me accountable for my results. And that’s where my coach came in. I remember texting him on a really bad day when I was hungry, tired and cranky, and he called me right away and gave me encouragement, but also a little tough love and told me that those feelings would pass and they did pass. And then I guess the last thing I learned is, is that there’s a lot of diet advice everywhere. And I’m not a doctor and I’m not giving medical advice on this program. The joke, of course, is that you have diet advice that actually contradicts other dieting advice that you might see out there. But what I’ve come to realize is that everyone’s body and metabolism are different. And just because a diet doesn’t work for you doesn’t mean it won’t work for someone else.

And certainly I think that’s why there are so many different diet plans out there is because there’s a plan for everyone. You just have to try and figure out which one is right for you. And in fact, some of a piece of my own coach’s advice didn’t always work. For example, he said one of his points was, well, it doesn’t matter what time you eat because it’s all just calories. Well, that piece of advice didn’t work for me because I always seemed to gain weight the next day if I ate late the night before. So take all of the advice you get with a grain of salt and certainly try to apply that specific advice to yourself and to your body and your metabolism and the way that you operate. So I would say for anyone struggling with their weight like I did, give yourself a ton of grace.

Just because one program hasn’t worked for you, another program might just help. And you should really be thinking about getting someone to hold you accountable for your efforts. And that could be your partner, maybe your kids, or maybe hiring a coach. But I wish all of you good luck and keep striving because the end result is so worth it. And if you have any questions about my weight loss journey or wanted to share yours, please reach out to me. So that’s all we have for our show today, and I’d love to hear your thoughts about today’s episode. If you have comments or a question you’d like for me to answer on an upcoming show, you can contact me at DCR Young at O’Hagan meyer.com and connect with me on social. I’m at Attorney Dsy on LinkedIn, Instagram X and Facebook, and you can also connect with the ABA Litigation Section on those platforms as well.

But as much as I’d like to connect with you online, nothing beats meeting you in person at one of our next litigation section events. So please make plans to join us at the 2024 Professional Success Summit taking place November 7th through the eighth in Atlanta, Georgia. This summit features empowering programming to help you unlock your professional potential. Whether you seek valuable trial tips, engaging networking opportunities, insight from leading lawyers and judges, or just CCLE credit, you’ll leave this inclusive summit with tools and practical insights to help you achieve your greatest heights. Register today at ambar.org/pss 2024. And if you like the show, please help spread the word by sharing a link to this episode with a friend or through a post on social and invite others to join the show and community. If you want to leave a review over at Apple Podcast, it’s incredibly helpful. Even a quick rating at Spotify is super helpful as well. Finally, I want to quickly thank some folks who make the show possible. Thank you, to Michelle Oberts who’s on staff with the litigation section. Thanks. Also goes out to the co-chairs of the Litigation Section’s audio content committee, Haley Maple and Charla Stevens. Thank you to the audio professionals from Legal Talk Network. And last but not least, thank you so much for listening. I’ll see you next time.

Continue Reading