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[00:00:10] Kathleen: You are listening to The Thriving Lawyer With Kathleen Brenner and Carla Ferraz. I'm Kathleen, a highly experienced lawyer and an International Coaching Federation accredited coach.
[00:00:23] Carla: And I am Carla. Like Kathleen, I am an ICF certified coach and I have worked with top leaders and professionals, many of them lawyers, at some of the world's biggest organizations.
My focus is on using evidence based approaches to help my clients thrive at work and in the rest of their lives.
Together,
[00:00:45] Kathleen: we bring you the Thriving Lawyer podcast, a podcast filled with ideas and inspiration, as well as practical tips to help you thrive as a lawyer and in the rest of your
life. Let's get into it. β
welcome to the Thriving Lawyer Podcast with Carla Ferraz and Kathleen Brenner. I'm here today with my co-host Carla, but we are really excited because we've also got a guest, Dr. Haley Quinn, a former psychologist and an author of From Self Neglect to Self-Compassion. A gentle but powerful guide for anyone who's spent too long putting their own needs last.
So Dr. Haley Quinn is a mindset and wellbeing coach, speaker, author, and former clinical psychologist. She's a. Host of the popular Welcome to Self podcast and past president of Compassionate Mind Australia.
Haley is passionate about burnout, prevention, and helping women non-binary and gender diverse folk transform their relationships with themselves and achieve their goals while prioritizing sustainable practices, self-care and compassion.
She promotes a new model of sustainable success, one where personal wellbeing is no longer sacrificed.
She blends clinical expertise and science-backed approaches with real world insights to empower people to transform how they live and work.
So welcome Haley.
Hi. Thank you so much for having me on.
[00:02:16] Speaker 14: Haley. Welcome. We're so excited to have you here because we believe that your work, it's, it really speaks to the thriving lawyer because we've, what we are talking about, thriving lawyer is this journey from langu into flourishing. Cultivating the self-awareness and the boundaries and self-compassion is one of the topics that we have lessons on it as well.
So we are really excited to have you and the title of your book, like From Self Neglect to Self-Compassion, a Compassionate Guide to Greater Thriving, like it speaks to so many of us, like especially in the caring professional, the high pressure professional like law, you know? So what patterns of self neglect do you see most often in your work?
[00:02:57] Dr Hayley Quinn : Gosh, so many. Where do, where do we start with that? I think it can range from people just really prioritizing everybody else in their world. And I think particularly as women, and I do use that term inclusively, we are socialized from a very young age to think about the other, to take care of the other.
So I think it can be that very broad, that a lot of people just think about the other person first without thinking about their own needs. If we think about some of the more granular things, it can be things like packing the lunch for your family and then getting to work and realizing you actually haven't gotten any lunch for yourself or making medical appointments for other people, but then thinking, oh my gosh, I really was supposed to get that thing checked, and I've been saying that for the last three months, right down to just really not paying attention to ourselves.
One of the things I do very regularly is have regular check-ins with myself. And I think sometimes we can go through life forgetting that we have needs and our needs matter.
[00:04:03] Kathleen: Yeah. So one of the things that comes up in the audience that we have, which is lawyers, is that there's a lot of women, lawyers, women now make the majority of the profession yet and not necessarily at the top at that equal level and.
Often juggling multiple demand in different domains from family to busy careers as well. But even quite aside from that, the very culture of the profession is high performance. It's very driven. The demands, like if you are working on litigation and you've got a case, right, that you are trying to prepare for in the next week, for example, or you know ahead, it could be a massive thing.
The demand's on you. Are going to be really heavy. Mm-hmm. And that's actually some of the resistance that we hear to this work, but Oh, but it's just the reality of like the profession. So I'm kind of curious, like, you know, that's a specific audience, but how when you are working with people or when you're thinking about the message in your book, like what's the message or how do you help them recognize when that drive.
Perhaps that it's for service is just leading to that self neglect. Yeah.
[00:05:17] Dr Hayley Quinn : Yeah, I think that's a really good point and and I hear that a lot, but it's just the way it is. This is how my life is. I don't have time. I need to, this is how our industry works, all those kind of things. And, and I might not necessarily say it as bluntly as this, but to get to the point for a podcast.
Also the reality is we are human not machines, and if we continue to behave in ways that neglect us continually, we will suffer the consequences of that, and we will have higher rates of things like burnout, chronic illness, et cetera. Now I think it's really common for high achieving people to fear. That if they somehow slow down or take time to take care of themselves, that somehow their work or their career is going to suffer.
In my experience for myself and also in the work I've done with other people, and I would suggest that the research will back this up as well, is when we actually take time to take care of ourselves, when we rest, when we are more compassionate to ourselves. When we drink enough water, when we have enough nutritional food, when we take enough breaks, we can actually perform at a higher level so people can think they're in this very kind of high performing stage, but they're actually not because their body and mind are depleted.
[00:06:50] Kathleen: Yeah. That resonates very strongly. I see that. In the circles of lawyers that I know, and just through the stories that you hear about what goes on of those late nights, potentially the six billing increments that I think is so incredibly adverse to wellbeing. There's this perception, oh, well I must be performing well because I'm putting in all of this work.
And it's in fact, how long would that advice actually take you if you took the breaks, you know, and you were refreshed, had the good food, uh, and the rest. Is that what you see too? In, in, in the work with people? Absolutely.
[00:07:29] Dr Hayley Quinn : And you know, when we, when we rest, when we take space, we open up our creativity. How many times do we go for a walk or even perhaps you're in the shower and a brilliant idea comes or a solution to a problem that you've been trying to fix comes to you.
That doesn't happen when we are in kind of push, push when we are constantly in drive or I would suggest as well a threat based drive, particularly at those times when you say you're perhaps facing some litigation, you've got a big case coming up. You're working long hours. Most people at that stage are probably in their threat system, and we don't work as well.
We know that when we're in our threat system that our attention actually narrows. We don't have that ability to brainstorm and be creative as we would if we were more grounded in our nervous system, and we can access a more wiser mind. So there's so many benefits to this. It's so common that people get caught in the, but I have to keep going because I've got so much on, or this is just the way it is, or even the things I see, and I saw this in the psychology profession as well when I was a psychologist, if I slow down and do it differently and everybody else is still doing it the way that people are doing it, in the profession, what will that mean about me?
What will people say about me? Will I get judgment? And I think there can be a lot of fear and also a lot of shame that shows up that people can think, well, if I have to slow down to take care of myself, maybe that means I'm not coping.
[00:09:05] Kathleen: Mm,
[00:09:06] Dr Hayley Quinn : but that's just not true.
[00:09:08] Kathleen: Or the judgment, you know, the, you, you sometimes hear about in the legal profession, the, the comments about the empty chair at five 30 or five o'clock because someone's gone home.
And the fear of, oh, is someone gonna perceive them negatively? Which may be the case in a particular culture, like we have to be honest that they could be that reality. But that probably tells you something about the cultural environment in which you're finding yourself in.
[00:09:31] Dr Hayley Quinn : Absolutely, and I think you make a really good point because I, I never want to minimize the systemic problems that are happening.
Obviously the work I do with people, and certainly in my book, and I talk about this in the book about not trying to minimize what's happening on a more systemic level, but what I'm looking at is what can we do that's within our control and unfortunately in a number of professions. There aren't immediate things within our control that we can change.
So we need to look at what is it that I can do. But there are absolutely workplaces and professions where there is a lot of negative judgment. There is this pressure to keep hustling and performing. There isn't the. Take care of yourself and we'll honor you taking care of yourself. So we don't want to ignore that, but I think, again, you raise a good point.
Maybe that's actually highlighting to you, perhaps this isn't the ideal place for you if you value your wellbeing, if you value other things outside of work, maybe there are other places to do that that aren't where you're currently at. And I know that's not necessarily just a very easy choice, but it could be something to think about.
I certainly saw that in psychology where some places, some workplaces were not conducive to wellbeing and then the person would leave and either work for themselves or go somewhere else to a practice where wellbeing was honored. So it is possible, um, not always easy.
[00:11:01] Kathleen: Yes. I'm so glad that you said that because I think that that honesty is important.
I don't wanna, you know, the legal profession here in Australia is really diverse. There has been a huge amount of cultural change in a lot of pockets of it. I, for one, have found, you know, I work part-time as a lawyer as in addition to the coaching work that I do in my study at Sydney University in coaching psychology.
And I'm only able to do that because I found an employer where that is the part-time and remote work is completely possible. Their model as a law firm is completely different to traditional law firms. Yeah. But that deliberate choice, and I can see for some people, you know, those choices might be harder to find or not as easy, and you've got immediate pressures of mortgages and things that can be really difficult to think about that.
But also tension between like the systemic and the individual. That's one thing that Carla and I really grappled with when we were looking at the thriving lawyer work and looking at this through that coaching lens. We didn't want law lawyer to misinterpret our work to say it's all on them. Because the systemic issues are so important, but it is about, I love your message about what you can
control.
[00:12:14] Dr Hayley Quinn : Yeah. And that is important because this is not, one of the things I always say is even if people have got to the point of burnout, you haven't done something wrong. This is not, this is not your fault. This is often numerous factors and one of the risk factors is. Unsupportive workplace or a toxic culture within a workplace.
We know that. And therefore, one of the protective factors is the reverse of that, where you've got support and autonomy in a workplace, but also a, a workplace culture that actually sees people as human beings. Yeah, it sounds simple. It's not simple, right? But I think we need to start with seeing ourselves as human first as well.
Then look at, okay, what are the things that I'm doing or I could be doing that would enhance my wellbeing? And what are the environmental things that are happening in my life that perhaps I could do more of or do less of, or move away from? And I, I certainly acknowledge that that isn't always easy for people, like you say, and also acknowledge that in some instances.
People are on a path where perhaps they're in line for promotion. You know, I think about the legal field. If you're in a, in a legal practice, you might be in line to become a partner, and that is really enticing, right? But also, it could be doing a lot of damage to you along the way. So some of this is about being radically honest with yourself about what are my values and what's important to me.
And is what I'm doing actually working for me, not just in, I'm gonna reach that pinnacle at some point. Because if you're not taking care of yourself and you get to that point, whatever it might be, if you are not well, if you end up burnt out, all that work you've done is going to be almost for nothing because you could end up having to walk away anyway.
[00:14:17] Kathleen: I was just talking to a part ex-partner of a very top tier, major law firm in this country, and he recently walked away and was doing consultancy work and the freedom and the difference to his life was quite extraordinary listening to him, but it wasn't easy, and he bumped around for a long time before he reached the point of actually making that choice.
[00:14:43] Dr Hayley Quinn : Yeah. And this is the thing. These aren't necessarily easy decisions, but I went through a very significant burnout 10 years ago, which is why I'm so passionate about burnout prevention. I don't want to see people end up in burnout because recovering from burnout takes a lot more work, a lot more money, a lot more time than preventing burnout ever will.
And whilst it's not easy, there are things we can choose to do that will mean in the long term. Because we need to take care of ourselves till our last breath. Right? And if we're fortunate, many of those years will be after we've finished working. If we focus everything on the productivity and what we're achieving at work, particularly if we are thinking about work being our worth, which a lot of people do, then when that ends.
What is left? What is life gonna look like? What's your quality of life going to be like? So it can feel very, but I need it now, like this in the moment. And this is very rewarding. And perhaps you're getting paid great money, or perhaps you're having wonderful opportunities, or perhaps you're getting a lot of validation.
Um, perhaps you're a lawyer that wins a lot of cases and it feels really good. But what about. When you're older and you're in your kind of twilight years, what is it gonna look like then? And do you want to sacrifice those years for what you're having now, which can be confronting?
[00:16:26] Speaker 14: And, and, and what it comes to mind is like the self-compassion is almost a guide, right?
Like to be able to allow you to be able to ask those questions, to look ahead, to look if self-compassion is present.
[00:16:39] Dr Hayley Quinn : Yeah.
[00:16:40] Speaker 14: And so bad that you're there, right? Almost like a teta kind of Wendy guide here where I am.
[00:16:46] Dr Hayley Quinn : So when I think about compassion, I always come to the definition by Professor Paul Gilbert.
He's the founder of Compassion Focused Therapy, which is compassion is a sensitivity to suffering in ourselves and others with a commitment to alleviate or prevent further suffering. So when we look at our life today, and perhaps we're in a workplace that is quite toxic in its culture, perhaps there's, you know, you're trying to survive on three or four hours sleep because you're preparing for things and you think this is the only way to do it.
If we look and think, okay, what is this gonna mean in terms of suffering later? We know that as human beings, you can't survive on limited sleep. You can't survive on not eating properly. You know, you might for a period of time, but in the long term, chances are, unless you're extremely fortunate, have amazingly good genes.
Some you are going to have negative impacts and consequences from that. So I think having the compassion is. A way you can be with yourself when you ask yourself these really difficult questions. But also one of the things I love to do is connect with my 80-year-old self and ask her, what would you want me to do in this situation?
She's probably not gonna say, just get by on three hours sleep tonight. Love, don't worry about dinner. And, um, if you can't manage any water, don't worry. And, uh, don't worry about the exercise.
[00:18:20] Speaker 14: Beautiful reflection to think for and creating space for these kinds of reflections to happen as well. 'cause sometimes in the heat of the moment.
Yeah, absolutely. And Kathleen and I was just talking about reflection and reflection is a practice, right? It it's a beautiful self-compassion practice to be able to check in with yourself as things are happening.
[00:18:42] Dr Hayley Quinn : Yeah. And absolutely, it certainly is a practice and. It's something that I do. I start my day checking in with myself.
Like I check in with, how was your sleep? What have you got on today? What do you need to resource yourself for? Whatever that is. Is there anything you need to let go of because maybe I didn't sleep well, you know, a lot of us, I. Uh, you know, go through peri and menopause, and that certainly starts to add extra layers to everything else that's going on.
So for me, it's that first check-in in the morning, but then also regular check-ins during the day. And I encourage people to practice this when life isn't feeling as stressful or you're perhaps not about to head into a really important case or something, because if you've practiced it already. It's easier to draw upon.
In those times when you are stressed and things are busier, it becomes more of a habit. But if we wait until we are just really stressed and then think that we're gonna remember to check in with ourselves and be compassionate, then we're kind of setting ourselves up. That might not happen. Yeah.
[00:19:52] Speaker 14: Yeah.
[00:19:53] Kathleen: And in fact, I think that this is what often trips lawyers up is because they're not doing that.
And so it gets to almost a crisis point, right? So by the time that they realize they're in that state, their body is already so exhausted, overwhelmed with strength, uh, that it, that it becomes very difficult if, if, if you have reached that point. In the moment, it's gonna be really difficult to remember any of this because you're in kind of that sort of flight mode, that fear mode that you, I think you mentioned earlier, like what might be for that cohort, like, or, or even maybe to try and stop yourself getting there.
Like some early signs that people that you've seen like tend to ignore and that really should focus on.
[00:20:42] Dr Hayley Quinn : Yeah.
[00:20:43] Kathleen: So in terms
[00:20:43] Dr Hayley Quinn : of. Trying to prevent ourselves from getting there. I think it's kind of really paying attention to what is happening in your own life. You, you can go online, you can Google signs and symptoms of burnout, and they'll give you a whole list, and there'll be things like increased irritability, that sense of decreased self-efficacy, that perhaps everything at work's starting to feel a bit harder, or perhaps you're getting more of the Sunday dreads.
You don't really want to go to work on Monday or perhaps a particular case in the. Case of lawyers, perhaps a particular case just keeps showing up and bothering you a lot. Um, whereas normally you might be able to sort of put that aside and, and focus on your life. Outside of work, you might be getting more headaches or stomach aches or other physical symptoms that haveing you might notice increased conflict within your relationships because you are getting more irritable, you might find that you're not sleeping as well.
And I think what we need to be mindful of, people can then say, oh yes, but it's because I've got this stressful case. Oh yes, but it's because I'm busy and come up with reasons for why they feel different. Now, one of the things I always like to share as well is my roommate, when I was doing my PhD, Jacque was my first guest on my podcast, and he is a really funny guy, and he spoke about getting to the point where.
Everything. He would just make a joke of everything. Everything was funny. Now, because he is a really funny guy, people wouldn't necessarily be like, oh, what's wrong with Jug? And he was using it as a way to avoid the things that were feeling difficult in his life. So what I have learned from that, from him, and always say to people, whilst there are sort of standard things we can look for.
I really want you to look for things that either you are doing less of that you would normally do, or things that you are doing more of that might seem like they're okay, but actually they could be quite harmful or they could be that you're avoiding because we are very similar in lots of ways, but we are also different.
So for me, the premise is always get to know yourself. Get to really understand yourself so that you can recognize when things are going off track in terms of if you feel like you've got there. I always like to think if you, if you saw something smoldering, you could pick up a glass of water and you could throw the glass of water on it and it's gonna put it out.
Yeah. If it bursts into a fire, a glass of water's gonna do nothing. And this is where it's tricky because if you get yourself into a state where you're really burnt out. Doing some of the things that will help in burnout prevention are not going to necessarily be helpful or helpful enough, I should say, to get you recovered from burnout.
And it could be that you actually need to stop. And that can be really frightening for people. Like for me, I had to leave where I was working, I had to say goodbye to my clients and step away. And at that point, I didn't know if I was gonna be able to keep working 'cause my health was so bad. Yeah, so it might be, you know, I speak to a lot of people who've got a lot of annual leave that they never take, and it's accruing and it might be it's time to book in that break so you can actually have a proper break.
It might be that you need to, if you, if you're working for yourself, obviously you have more autonomy and more choice. It might be that you need to speak to your employer and talk about shifting your hours differently. You know, if somebody is really depleted, maybe they can start something where they go into work a bit later so they can actually have more time in bed.
Have a slower start to their day, go to some of the appointments they've been neglecting. So it's really quite individual, but for me, the key is stopping yourself getting to the place where you've got to take more drastic measures to recover.
[00:25:04] Kathleen: Hmm. Yeah, I mean, I love the metaphor that you use because in the end it comes down to the F, pouring the glass of water is much easier than getting the firetruck.
[00:25:13] Dr Hayley Quinn : Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah, it will. It will take less time, less energy, less money, less loss of income potentially,
[00:25:26] Kathleen: and a hold of better wellbeing. Absolutely.
[00:25:31] Speaker 14: Yeah. And I hear you saying a, the important, like to check in with yourself, like to create space to know where you are at. 'cause sometimes we are on autopilot, right?
By the time we get there. So that to be where am I now? Absolutely. In your book you mentioned like that this journey from self neglect to self-compassion had different stages. Would you be able to share bit fast about what these stages are?
[00:26:01] Dr Hayley Quinn : I think for me it was really that changing the relationship with myself.
It was starting to really know myself and understand myself. So I take people through the book in a really start where you are. Let's understand what it means to be human, um, as a starting point and what it means to be human with a tricky mind and a nervous system that we've got. And then also then getting more nuanced about what it means to be you and what you like and what you don't like, and how you best operate in the world.
And then looking at. What you are doing and is it what you want to be doing? And I was just thinking before there, there are many people in professions. When I was doing my PhD, I was teaching at university and there was, there was students in first year psychology who didn't wanna be there. They were there because that's what their parents wanted them to do, whether that was the subject they wanted them to do or whether they just wanted their child to be at university and.
I've worked with people in many different professions, including law, and I know there's lots of people who are in law and accounting and things like that because that's what their parents wanted them to do. And one of the things I ask people is really tune in. Are you living the life you want or are you living by somebody else's rules?
Because some of the things that can contribute to burnout. When we are doing work that we actually don't necessarily want to do, and somebody might have qualified and trained and be really good in a particular profession, but it might not be what they want. It might not be the work that they're wanting to do, or maybe they're wanting to do it.
You mentioned, Kathleen, that you are doing it part-time. Maybe they want to do it part-time because they've got passion areas somewhere else that would enhance their life. So for me, it really is all about really understanding what it means to be human, what it means to be you, and then tuning into our values and understanding what our values are.
Looking at areas where we are doing things because we feel like we should, there's perhaps a sense of obligation not having good boundaries. Which need to be healthy and flexible. They don't need to be rigid boundaries. We will have different boundaries in different contexts with different people at different times of our life.
Learning to say no to other people so we can say yes to ourselves and also really allowing ourselves to dream. I talk about this in the book about, you know. We can stop that. We can have these dreams and then we do, we, you mentioned autopilot. We can get on the path of, well, this is what you know you should do and this is the path you should be on.
And this is what's expected. And we, we live in a very capitalist, patriarchal, white centric world, and that does determine a lot of the decisions that people make. So I think coming back to ourselves and our values and understanding ourselves. Is really, really key. And then also then adding in this piece around compassion and self-compassion.
But also, and I, I'll often say, you know, we, we can be very good at offering compassion to other people. That doesn't tend to be an issue for people I talk to and work with, offering ourselves compassion, but also being open to receiving compassion from others. That when we're struggling and somebody says, I can see you're struggling, can I help?
We don't go, no, no, I'm fine, fine. I, I'm fine. Which so many people do, right?
[00:30:00] Speaker 14: Right.
[00:30:00] Dr Hayley Quinn : We need to be open to that flow of compassion coming to us as well, so then in community we can be helping one another.
[00:30:08] Kathleen: You know, that's an important music message and one of what has, it sparked me thinking about the different kinds of lawyers that, that I know.
There's that one group that you talked about just before that did law because that's what you did. If you got good marks and you weren't into maths basically, or blood medicine, you didn't wanna do medicine. But there's another group that you've alluded to because you know, you talked about the fact that we're in this very capitalist, patriarchal world.
I can think of lawyers that I know who work in spaces that are aiming to address that. Like one human rights lawyer that's in my circle. And that person is so committed to their work and very purpose driven. So there's not an issue here about intrinsic motivation lacking, like they are so intrinsically motivated, but they have challenges with this stuff for a different reason, because it is so giving.
So other oriented that their boundaries are no, just not there often. And, and there's little left for them. And I, I once said to them like, but how are you gonna maintain this in the long term? But that gets sort of, you know, it's so easy to miss that. So I'm curious, like, just with that second category, for those who are perhaps being burnt out because of it, almost like a, the, I don't know how to put it.
Maybe like they're so intrinsically motivated.
[00:31:32] Dr Hayley Quinn : Absolutely. And look, we see a lot of that in the psychology profession and other helping professions where, and it can be, and I, and I don't know about that in the law sector for that, but I imagine there probably is a bit of a narrative around this.
Certainly in psychology, you're, you're here for your clients. This is not about you. This is like, well actually this is a co-created relationship with a client. Like how can it not be somewhat about the therapist? So with your colleagues who are. In the areas of things like human rights, I think very understandably there can be this sense of that.
If I slow down or stop or take a break from this, look at what's happening, how, who's gonna take care of it. This is too important to stop. It's a really dangerous trap to be in. And what I would say, as I would say to anybody. Whether you are a parent caring for a newborn or whatever age, children, if you are somebody caring for somebody in your family with a disability, if you are caring for aging parents, if you are doing humanitarian work, if you're doing service provision, you have to take care of yourself.
The more you can take care of yourself, the more you can take care of the other things that you're doing, the more you can nourish yourself and take care and honor your wellbeing, you will be more resourced to do the work that you need to do. The work will not go aside and not get done. You'll be better positioned to do it.
Now, I don't like to think people only take care of themselves so they can take care of other people, but that certainly can be a motivation. Well, if I take care of myself, I can take care of others. And another thing I say to some people sometimes is if you are seen to be taking care of yourself, your role modeling to other people, that they can do the same.
So it has this beautiful ripple effect, whether that's to other people in your family, whether that's to your children, whether that's to your friends or colleagues or people in your community. I certainly used to have clients say to me when I was practicing as a psychologist, 'cause I would cancel sessions if I was sick and there was a time I wouldn't, and I would push on, obviously if I was contagious I would cancel.
But if I was feeling unwell, I would push on. And that led to me burning out. That was one of the factors. So I would cancel. I would change things. I would do things to take care of myself. And I have clients say to me, thank you, because seeing you do that helps me know I can do it. So if you can't do it purely for yourself right now, do it because you'll be in a better position to take care of other people or do it because you'll be role modeling for other people.
Because I get that sometimes people doing it just for themselves, they're not ready. That feels selfish or it just feels too much. So it's like, so pick a different motivation.
[00:34:51] Speaker 14: Hmm,
[00:34:52] Dr Hayley Quinn : but don't not do it.
[00:34:53] Speaker 14: That's so beautiful. Hay. Like, um, it reminded me about my own journey with the self-compassion. I struggled with that for ages when I was in the corporate world, and for me it was when I had kids, I wanted to role model that behavior.
I knew what it was not to be self-compassion, and I don't want my girls to ever struggle with any of that. And that's how I started role modeling for myself. So they would grow with pain. Compassionate and, and it was very, how, it was a beautiful start. You know, like, so it's win-win, right? That's
[00:35:24] Dr Hayley Quinn : win-win, yeah.
Doesn't matter how you do it, just get on the pathway of doing it
[00:35:30] Speaker 14: Well, because once you practice, then it's, yeah, it's for them. But now, nowadays it's not just for that. Right. Because the practice is here and, and I can't even imagine. Going backwards on that because, and another point to that too, sometimes we get used to operate at a certain level and that level is good, but we don't even know is great.
Like we can do so much with little sleep, we can do so much with little self-compassion. But what can you actually do when you do have those other things? Like we, sometimes we don't imagine what what can be, well, yeah. Just tapping into like the understandings of stories and beliefs we do in a thriving lawyer.
We talked lot about the narratives that are quite common. Lawyers, like Kathleen mentioned, the perfectionism, the due obsession, right? That can really keep lawyers stuck in this cycle of exhaustion. In your book you mentioned about the, the stories, identifying some of these stories that hold you back. Do you have some common stories that you see that people get stuck,
[00:36:33] Dr Hayley Quinn : didn't you?
Yeah, I think, I think there's quite a lot. I think some of them, particularly for high achieving, I tend to work with high achieving women, and it can be, if I slow down, I won't get the things done that I need to get done. If I focus on me, I'm gonna lose my edge. I think those can be really common. And then things like, but if I start thinking about what I need, people are just gonna think I'm selfish.
Or maybe there's somebody in their life who is pretty self-obsessed and not in a perhaps healthy way. And it might be. But if I start doing things like that, I'm gonna be like in certain name of person. You don't wanna be like, do you think there's lots of things that we can tell ourselves, like it's lazy?
I think many people, I, I'm 55, so I think many people of kind of my generation, maybe a bit younger as well. I grew up with. You know, if you're sitting around, don't sit around, go outside and play. I think things have perhaps changed quite a bit more now with technology. But you know, certainly in my day you went to sit around, you should be going out and doing stuff and being active.
So what I hear a lot from people is that they can find it really hard to slow down and rest because they get that internal voice that actually isn't theirs, but they've internalized it. Of you're being lazy, you should be doing something. Or again, a lot of the household labor does tend to, we know still fall mainly on women.
So there might be that there's washing that needs to be done and you might go down to sit and have a cup of tea and think, oh, well I should probably be doing the washing. It's gonna be waiting for you. Don't worry. I'll get someone else to do it. So I think there's lots of things like that that can interfere.
I myself am neurodivergent, I'm an autistic woman with A DHD, and slowing down and resting, particularly for people with A DHD can be really challenging. So I think what we also need to think about is what does resting actually mean? And sometimes it's not just about slowing down. Sometimes rest might be.
Socializing with some people that really energize you, having connections with people that you feel quite replenished by. So we talk about the difference between rest and replenishment in the book and the different types of things. So again, it's knowing yourself so you can understand what actually feeds me and nourishes me.
And knowing that this might be different at different times. And in different contexts, we might need different things. At some time we might think, okay, I need to cancel social engagements because I just don't have capacity for that. That would be very draining. But then at other times it might be, well, actually I've been so busy with perhaps this case I've been working on.
I've neglected all my social connection and what I need is a really good night out with my friends. Or a friend to come over and watch a movie with me, or whatever it might be that you want to do, or you've perhaps not been going to an exercise class or a pottery class, or a guitar lessons or whatever it is that you do.
So again, unless we get to know ourselves, we can't know that because then I think we can be influenced by, well, Carla says she goes to that, so I should try that. Or the, this is the new trend on Instagram, so I should learn how to do that thing. And actually it's not in line with you, your interests, your values, the type of energy that you need to be mindful of.
So I, I do keep coming back to, we need to get to know ourselves so that we can then try these different things, but make sure they're things that are aligned with us.
[00:40:39] Kathleen: Yeah. And so one of the things that I see sometimes is like younger lawyers maybe, or they might be really just discovering themselves, like at that stage of life where they actually don't know the answers to the questions.
You've, that can be really hard, right? When you don't know. Is there practical suggestion or I don't know whether it could be like reflection questions or just journaling prompts or like a spirit of experimentation to something. To kind of start to explore what their answers to those questions might be?
[00:41:13] Dr Hayley Quinn : Absolutely. I think all of the above by my book. There's lots of reflective concussions, a little plug there, and there's guided meditations in the book as well, which takes people through some really beautiful, I think there's eight meditations in the book. For me. I come from a background of having a very toxic relationship with myself.
And when I reflect on what, what changed and how did I kind of shift that? One of the things I realized was I decided I was gonna get to know myself as if I was meeting somebody new. Mm-hmm. As if you met a new friend and you would ask them questions. Right. And then when you ask them the question, you take the time to listen to the answer.
Then they might say to me, you get curious and be like, oh, and what else? And why did you like that? And how long did you do that for? And what was the outcome of that or, so for me it was just turning inward and saying, well, I'm gonna meet myself and I'm gonna ask questions of myself even down to, do I prefer coffee or tea?
I dunno. If you've, you've had people you say, would you like a, would you like a drink? What would you like? Oh, I don't mind. Often people don't even stop to think, well, actually, I really love tea. I would like a tea, so I don't mind. We wanna be polite and we want to not be bothersome, and people don't necessarily want to be a burden, or they don't even stop to think, actually, do I prefer coffee or tea?
A little while ago I stopped saying to people, do you wanna catch up for coffee? I was like, I don't drink coffee anymore. I was like, why do I keep saying, do you wanna catch up for coffee? I don't drink coffee. Say, would you like to go out to a cafe? You wanna come and join me, I'm gonna have a cup of tea.
So I think asking yourself, if I was to do this work for the next 30 years of my life, how do I feel in my body when I ask myself that question? And some people might get this feeling in the pit of their stomach, and it's like, okay, so be curious. The answer might be, well, I don't wanna work for 30 years of my life.
I wanna be off traveling the world. But somebody might be like, oh, I never even really wanted to do this. Yeah.
[00:43:24] Kathleen: Or I
[00:43:25] Dr Hayley Quinn : did wanna do
[00:43:25] Kathleen: it, but it has to look very different,
[00:43:28] Dr Hayley Quinn : you know? Or I wanted to do it, but gee, I didn't think it was gonna be like that. So I think asking questions of yourself and then Yeah. I mean, if you can write them down or voice note them, or whatever it is that works for you, can be a really good idea.
The other thing people can do, and I just think about these things randomly sometimes, is sit down with a friend or a trusted colleague and ask them to interview you. And I don't mean in terms of you were about to get a job, but as if you were being interviewed for a magazine or something about your life, and get them to ask you some questions and just see what
[00:44:06] Kathleen: comes up.
That value awareness, that knowledge, that self-knowledge about what's important to you. It's just foundationalism, everything kind of, it stems from there. If you don't have that, you can just be lost
[00:44:21] Dr Hayley Quinn : and pay attention to the, the beliefs and stories that we hold and tell ourselves. We've gotta be aware of where they're from.
'cause oftentimes they're not ours. And then we can choose, do I wanna keep hold of this or do I wanna let this one go? And replace it with something that's perhaps a bit more helpful for me,
[00:44:39] Speaker 14: which we all get there, right? Like we all grew up in a household with parents and we'd somewhat take some of the good things and some of the not so useful things.
And at one point in time we go, if we allow ourselves, as you're saying, give ourselves permission to play with their curiosity and say, well, I do this. Oh, well, well, well, why's that? Okay. Do I wanna keep doing it?
[00:45:00] Dr Hayley Quinn : Absolutely. I mean, we are, we're influenced. We are social beings. We are so influenced by our environment and we don't get choice in a lot of that.
We don't choose who families we're born into or where we're born into. There's so much we don't get to choose. Obviously, as we get older, we start to have more autonomy and choice, but yeah, we're influenced by family, friends, society in general. The stuff we're consuming, like be mindful around not only what you're consuming in terms of the food.
Liquids you're putting in your body, but also the media content and the the lunchroom chant and all that stuff. So it takes work. It's not a magic wand easy. It does take work, but it takes less work than trying to undo it all damage that you can do and the pain and suffering that you'll have if you don't take care of yourself.
[00:45:58] Kathleen: Mm. That's a very powerful kind of message and perhaps a good place to sort of think about and go, you know, in terms of one final question, is there any other mess message or that you'd like to leave for our audience of lawyers just to round out the discussion?
[00:46:15] Dr Hayley Quinn : I think what I, what I say to a lot of people is remember that you are human first and on on a daily basis.
Choose you in some form because you matter.
[00:46:27] Kathleen: So simple, yet so powerful and not, and, and such challenging for us to implement despite its seeming simplicity. Thank you for that. And how can our, our audience find you? If they'd like to follow you up, get in contact, explore your work, find your book.
[00:46:48] Dr Hayley Quinn : So I'm on all the socials under Dr.
Haley d Quinn on Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn. My website is Dr. Haley d quinn.com and there's links to the book there as well. Depending when this airs, there'll be a link to the wait list and otherwise it will be a link to actually being able to buy the book as well.
[00:47:10] Kathleen: Excellent. Thank you so much. We really appreciate you talking to us today.
Thank you.
[00:47:15] Dr Hayley Quinn : Oh, it's been lovely. Thank you for having me.
[00:47:17] Kathleen: Thank you so much for listening to this episode of the thriving lawyer with Kathleen Brenner and Carla Ferraz, if you like it, please share it with your lawyer friends and colleagues, and tag us on Instagram at @thriving lawyer or on LinkedIn via the links in the show notes. And if you liked what you heard, please drop a review in apple podcasts.
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