Day 3: Engage and Grow – Career and Intellectual Well-Being
Seeking personal satisfaction, continuous learning, and growth in our professional and personal lives, and financial stability. Engaging in creative or intellectually challenging activities that foster ongoing development and monitoring cognitive wellness.
Connections that support our career and our best thinking work are an important element of this year’s well-being week theme, The Social Rx: Boosting Well-Being with Connection. The Surgeon General’s report on Workplace Mental Health and Well-Being identifies Connection and Community as one of five critical elements. This includes trusted relationships, collaboration and teamwork, and cultures of inclusion.
Many calls to LCL involve career concerns. We can advocate for another but not so well for ourselves, and when we find ourselves in a difficult situation, we isolate and lose the support of valued connections. This can be in our own sphere or in our community.
Close to a fifth of LCL calls include some level of job dissatisfaction. A change may be necessary, or we may need better tools. How do you know? Who can help?
Change your job. When we are isolated, we don’t see what options may be available to us right where we are. The pessimistic approach that helps us as lawyers to see and solve problems for our clients is not helpful here! If there’s a relationship challenge at work and we withdraw, it can hurt us. When LCL staff talk to a lawyer who is dissatisfied (it happens to judges too), we can identify options and talk about how to ask for them. Many have used that coaching to make large or small changes that increase satisfaction and engagement. This can range from staffing to assignments of fewer traumatic cases, to support. Your friends and colleagues may be amazing source of ideas and support, if you let them. However, that is not always an option.
Change Jobs. If it’s involuntary, LCL can help with the strong emotions that can arise. You may have decided it’s involuntary because of what, after talking it through, really is an untenable work situation. Lack of respect for your needs even when proven or repeated manufactured injury instead of accountability are two examples of the challenges where LCL can be a sounding board. If it’s voluntary or involuntary, LCL can help you move toward a growth mindset rather than focusing on your escape, while managing the process and building those connections that will help you move forward.
It’s not the job. Sometimes our isolation and withdrawal is because we are dealing with serious issues and need more help. Whether it’s substance use, stress and anxiety, trauma or burnout, or anything else that is on your mind, changing jobs will not provide a realistic change. LCL can help you sort through all of these challenges with support from our lawyer staff and our counselors at no cost to you.
-Joan Bibelhausen, Executive Director