Practice Perspective

When a judge rules against me, even though they “ought to” have ruled for my client, I can pause and collect myself. If I pause.

Even before I was a lawyer, the stress of losing or being wrong was too difficult to handle gracefully. It felt humiliating. I was driven by a hundred forms of fear, self-delusion, self-seeking and self-pity. I had expectations of the way things “ought to be” and when things were not that way, I acted impulsively. Sometimes I fall back into that same way of thinking and acting. But through recovery I learned I can pause and “play the tape all the way through”.

A spare moment allows for a visit with “Old Me”, who ran the show before recovery. If I ask, “What would Old Me have done?” and then “What would have happened next to Old Me…and then next?” I will get answers.

Old Me could never pause, he just reacted. Old Me’s narratives under stress never went well. When queried, Old Me describes his future predicaments, and his suffering in one of his familiar tropes, like feeling like an imposter, to eventually drinking his life and career away.

Consultation with Old Me allows issues to begin to come into focus. Next, I can start working on the solution.

Maybe this is about my client, and not my ego? Maybe the judge was right, and I was blind to it? Maybe the judge was wrong, and there’s nothing I can do about it now? Maybe there is something I can do later? Maybe there is nothing else I can do?

When I use what I know about life before recovery and contrast it with life today in recovery, gratitude and solutions can guide Me. I know there are miracles, as I know old me of yesterday and I know Me of today.