Choosing Joy

I clearly remember the early stages of writing The Anxious Lawyer. I felt overwhelmly shaky, anxious, afraid, and I felt a lot of self-doubt. I was writing the first paragraph and my mind kept wandering off to a distant future where someone would absolutely hate the book and trash it on an Amazon. I also feared that no one would buy the book. This constant catastrophizing was debilitating.

Fortunately, I had my mindfulness practice to ground me—to do the thing I had been practicing for many years. To focus on the present moment. So, I focused putting one word after the next. Word by words, formed sentences, chapters, then one day, I looked at the wordcount and The Anxious Lawyer had reached 80,000 words. Whoa.

Many parts of the writing journey felt like a dream. Life events, synchronicities, the challenges—it all showed up, as if on cue. These tiny bits of wisdoms found its way into the book. For most of the past two years, I felt incredibly protective of this work. It solely belonged to me and my co-author, Karen Gifford. I felt responsible for its safekeeping. It had a feeling of being part of me—like a third limb.

Then one day, I found the book—this thing I’ve been holding so close to my heart listed on Amazon for sale. Slowly, I learned to detach myself, my self-worth, and my value from the work. The work is what it is—this body of 80,000 words. I still love it, of course, but it’s also time… Time for it to go out into the world. I bless this work. I shower it with good intentions and pray that it does what what Karen and I so deeply desire—offer a way of bringing joy and satisfaction to the lawyers that read it.

Anyway, back to joy.

From the moment where I wrote the words “Jon, here is our final manuscript” (Jon is our editor over at the ABA) until this moment—which has been many months, I have not allowed myself even a few moments of steeping in the joy of finishing a manuscript. Regardless of how the book does, producing a body of work with 80,000 words should be celebrated, shouldn’t it?

When I met with Karen earlier this week, she reminded me of our deepest intention and desire for this book—that it serve the readers. And we need to do this with joy. Yes, joy. That tiny little word which has completely escaped me over the many months where I fussed, stressed, and anxiously fretted over every tiny detail.

Joy…

I realized all the ways in which I was trying to control things that were completely out of my control—the production schedule, how long it would take for people to send back reviews and blurbs, going through many reiterations of the book cover, and major bumps in the editing process.

I wanted things to be the way I thought it should be (I know, it’s so human nature). I wanted things to be done on my schedule—on my timeline.

As I sat on a conference call with Karen and our team over at the ABA, I relearned a lesson that I’ve had to learn so many times. I can approach this with anger, frustration, resentment and cling to my justification for feeling this way or I can show up with joy.

Joy that we’ve accomplished this monumental task of writing this book, which I am incredibly proud of. This is the book that Karen and I wish we had when we first started practicing meditation and mindfulness. Which is to say, we wrote the book that as Stephen King says reflects what we know and we wrote from a place of honesty as well as authenticity.

This desire to want things to be just so, this is to be human but I think this instinct is strong, particularly for lawyers. I mean, we are in the business of determining “right” from “wrong” and proving to the fact finder that my side of the story is “correct.”

The thing I’m learning, or perhaps relearning is that this part of ourselves, just like all the other parts of ourselves— must be embraced. We must create a container that’s big enough for all of these different parts of ourselves, and personalities to coexist, play and collaborate. However, it’s also important to keep these different parts in check.

That angry girl who gets outraged when people let her down, or perceives injustice? She can’t always be in the driver seat. The anxious girl, who frets over everything? Nope. She can’t sit in the driver seat either.

When I let all the dusts of thoughts and emotions settle, I can connect with a wiser part of myself. She’s equanimous, centered, grounded, loving, compassionate, kind and yes, most importantly joyful.

My challenge to myself and to you, my dear readers is to lead from a place of joy. And when we simply open our eyes to the wonders of life, there are always reasons to be joyful.

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