How can art help you find career joy?

In this conversation, Samorn Selim, daughter of Lao refugees, Berkeley Law grad, and career coach shares how she moved from poverty to Big Law, faced a toxic workplace, and rebuilt a life anchored in truth, art, and service. She talks about journaling as a “place of truth,” the power of five-minute practices to beat burnout, and the shift away from always chasing more. Along the way are tender moments, hard-won clarity about self-worth, and practical ways to find joy and energy again. If you need a gentle, grounded nudge to reconnect with yourself, this one’s for you. Get to know Samorn more at https://www.careerunicorns.com/

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Hello, hello. We’re so excited to have Simorn as our guest today. Simorn, can you tell us a little bit about yourself and your journey?

Yeah, first I want to say thanks for inviting me, Lisa and Lauren. I’m really excited to be here. Uh, a bit about my background. My parents are refugees from Laos. And for those of you who don’t know, during the Vietnam War, America had two secret wars in Laos and in Cambodia. And when they left the country, the basically the country fell. And so my parents had to flee for their lives. And we were fortunate enough to go to refugee camps and then get to America. And so it really reminds me of what’s going on politically in the world right now. And so I have so much love, compassion, empathy for the folks who are going through the hardships because it’s really hard on the civilians who really have no idea what’s going on politically. Um, so I grew up in Stockton, California, in an ethnic enclave that was primarily refugees from Southeast Asia. And unlike the Asian Wild and Minority myth where everybody expects that you’re gonna go become doctors, lawyers, engineers, that wasn’t how we grew up. I grew up with a lot of violence around gang fights, drug use, teenage pregnancy in my own family. I experienced some of that. And that left a huge trauma as well as drive to try to figure out how to get out of here and how to make a better life for myself. And I was fortunate enough where in high school I was able to get into Berkeley as an undergrad. And at the time I didn’t really realize it was a big deal because I didn’t really understand college. And I literally applied to four colleges a day or two before applications were due. And now I think about it, I’m just thinking, that was nuts. And then I was also fortunate enough to get into Berkeley Law and going to Berkeley Law, a top 10 law school, really just transformed my life. And it opened up so many opportunities that I never thought I could even have access to. So in my mid-20s, I found myself working at a big law firm, making six figures in an office that overlooks the Bay Bridge. And, you know, to go from extreme poverty, growing up in public assistance, barely having enough food to eat, going to the welfare office and having social workers look at you with disdain because you’re on government assistance to making six figures was just a total 180. And it was a really difficult time because you think that you’ve made it, you’ve paid your dues, and now you’re gonna have a good life. But I graduated from law school during the economic crisis in 2009. So our offers were taken away, deferred. I was deferred. And then before I started, my salary was lowered from 160 to 145, then to 125 on the Friday before I started. So it was a lot of money. That being said, it’s very shocking when people just keep calling you and telling you, hey, you’re not gonna keep making money in them. Right. How long is it gonna take to pay off my student loans so I can get out of here? So um I went through that experience and it was really traumatic and traumatizing. There was a lot of workplace abuse from many people. And I think what happens in an economic recession like the one we’re experiencing now is that bad actors feel that they can act even more badly. And so I worked for a partner who would yell at me, he’d throw papers on my desk. We were in trial and I was so uncomfortable because his wife was there, because she had some expertise, and he literally put his hand up to her face and said, Stop. And uncomfortable, right? So there’s just so many moments where I would just stand there and not know what to do. And so I did report this behavior, and then I was blackballed. I was told I was a problem. I went from one of the highest billing associates to zero billable hours. And essentially, if you can’t bill hours, you’re useless in a law firm. You’re not generating money, you’re gonna get fired. Uh, I did recover from that because I was resourceful. So I took on a ton of pro bono projects helping victims of domestic violence, students who were getting expelled so that they wouldn’t be from the path of to prison. And then I also reached out to all the different offices in LA and New York to get work. And so by the time I left the firm, I had turned things around, but I realized, you know what, this isn’t my dream and my passion. And I don’t want to work in an environment where your life is literally up to one person and that can change on a dime. And so I really reflected deeply on my career and found that what I love was helping mentoring and teaching students. And I ended up getting my dream job at Berkeley Law. It was really fortunate through networking because at first I was told you’re never gonna get this job. Everybody wants to be a career counselor, and uh, people never retire. And if you start out working in a career office, you’re probably gonna have to go to somewhere in the middle of nowhere. Um, but I put together an event called What I Wish Had Known About on campus interviews. Uh, and it was the first event of its kind during the summer, which I was so surprised by. At any rate, they we put it on, they told us, you know, this is the first kind of event we have. There might be five people, don’t be offended. Right. We get there and there were, I think, 60 students, and they stayed for more than three plus hours. And then finally at nine, we told them, we haven’t had dinner, we need to go. And and I remember telling the assistant dean that my mentee had sent me an email saying that they were actually hiring a career counselor, and and she sent it to me as a joke, by the way. And I was like, Oh, I’m interested, but I see that you’re looking for somebody with five years of experience in uh practicing and then two years of experience as a career counselor. In a few years, give me a call. And he kind of laughed, you know, and people were like, ah, yeah, right. And then after the um the panel that we put together, he came up to me and said, if you’re serious, call me on Monday. So that’s how my career in career coaching started because I just really loved the work. I was there as a volunteer for free. I made a joke, sort of, and thought I’d have to wait another five to ten years. And then come to find out they actually had a candidate who had the exact same experience. And that job was actually written for her. But at the end, because they had a lot of creative ideas, I beat her out. Yeah. So it was kind of an interesting journey. And now I have my own company. It’s called Career Unicorns, and we focus on helping women, people of color, and first generation college and professional students to build their dream careers. And there’s different stages. One is landing your dream job. The second part is how to get promoted into leadership or be seen as a leader. And the the third part, which I think is the most critical and important, is how to build a thriving and sustainable career because burnout is so real. And when you become a leader and you reach what you feel is the top or the peak of your career, that’s where you feel you have to take on more and more and more. And the burnout can happen pretty quickly there. So it’s been a really fun journey of doing all of that. And then in the middle of all of that, I know you your focus is on art. I’m I also see myself as a writer. So I’ve written two books. You can see them back here, you know, the The Gratitude Journal, as well as the memoir around my time at Big Law. Um, and I have so many more book ideas and other projects that I’m thinking about that are creative. That’s been a lot of fun.

Yeah, that’s what an I mean, I but what an amazing like roller coaster of events to land you where you are right now. And I think that um we wanted to talk to you about how art can help you find that career joy. And if you could speak about that, um, you know, that’s a I think it’s an important question, and um, we could maybe benefit a lot of people right always, but like really right now.

Yeah. That’s such a good question. I think when I was growing up, I thought art meant all the beautiful paintings and sculptures in a museum. Yeah. And now I have a very different experience of what I feel is art, and art could be anything. It could be you go outside, or this morning I was watching sunrise with my son. That was like a thing we do. I wake up, I usually get up a little bit early to journal, and then when he wakes up, we’ll watch sunrise together. It’s really for a short minute, but that is so beautiful. Yeah. And the sunrise, it just changes even from second to second, depending if there’s clouds or not. Um, and in my own life, I don’t think I had a lot of art growing up because we were always on survival mode. And I was just reflecting about how my son broke his crayons and we’re in such a good, fortunate place where we could help him and say, like, you can use whatever little is left and we can also get more. Versus when I was growing up, I didn’t even have access to crayons. Right. And then if I broke my pencil, I would be in a big trouble because you’re barely making any money to survive. So I don’t think I had a lot of art, but I was conduing my house. I condo my house every year. But I can see like finally after 11 years, I did it. I went through my mementos. That was the hardest part. I could never get the mementos. But in my mementos and boxes of things from my younger life, I found that I won this art contest in sixth grade. Uh, and it was for first place. And then I wrote a book and I won second place for that book. And that had a skipped my memory entirely. I never remember that. And going back to that, I was like, oh yeah, I remember I was working on these things and I don’t remember the outcome. But here are these ribbons, you know, telling me I won. And I think what art can do for you in your life is it can allow you to really be in tune with who you are and have stillness and really reflect on what it is that you want. So when I wrote this first book, um, belonging self-love lessons from a workaholic, depressed, insomniac lawyer, I was told, don’t do it. You’re committing a rare suicide. And in a lot of ways it was, because when I talked about the truth of how toxic and damaging big law can be with abusive people there, not everybody there is abusive. I still have several people that I keep in touch with who are my mentors or friends, but there was this culture of you should expect to be abused because we’re paying you so much money. And you know, if if you didn’t want that, you should have thought about it differently, right? And no one talks about it. Actually, during the pandemic, uh big firm Paul Hastings had this memo of um, they thought that it would be funny, but basically, like you need to be on 24-7. You need to think of yourself as a Michelin star, Concierge. Like you should never tell people that you can’t be available. All these things that we looked at and were like, this is horrifying. And they were like, no, this is just a joke. That’s how they try to play it off. But it wasn’t, it was a PowerPoint slide out of whole orientation. Like, uh, if this is your sense of joke, this is not good, especially during the pandemic when everybody was already burnt out. And your message is you need to work harder, don’t give me excuses. If I ask you to jump, don’t ask, why? Ask, tell, ask how high, you know, things like that, right? So, um, so I think what art allows you to do is to really get in tune with what matters for you and what truly inspires you and also what you want to do for yourself. And Lisa and I actually talked about this recently because I was uh having dinner at Lisa and Dawn, and we talked about the difference between creating art for yourself versus creating art for the world. And the way I think about art, especially in my writing, is that I’m creating it for myself.

Yeah.

And if somebody wants to experience it, that’s totally fine. And there’s many, many things that I write, stories, uh, drawings or whatever that I never share with the world. Right. Um, and but so, but it it really is a time and a place for me to have self-expression and really get in tune with what matters. And often what I find is that through it, I’m really able to dig down into what my heart’s yearning for. So there’s been a book that I’ve been waiting to write. I’ve I’ve been writing it for five years and I had to take a break because I could not figure out how to end the story. But I finally feel like I’m ready to clear certain things that I need to clear out in terms of projects and return to it. And it’s you know, it’s just one of those things where uh so many of us spend our day-to-day just going through the humdrum. I do too, right? You know what it’s like. You have kids and you have to, you know, do breakfast.

Logistics, logistics, yeah.

Yeah, all is and that you don’t have time to really connect with who you are. But when you do the art, especially in this world where we’re so inundated with social media and technology, it just really is allows you to reconnect with yourself and reconnect with what can inspire you. And in doing that, I think that’s how you can have more career joy. For example, with the gratitude journal, it’s it’s about cultivating mindfulness, beating burnout, and finding career joy. And the idea of the gratitude journal came to me because I I do a lot of gratitude journaling, but I haven’t found one that was focused on career. Yeah. So this one’s like so simple and easy to follow. It’s one question a day. You know, who in your younger life inspired you or mentored you? That would be the one question. Or what’s a difficult work experience that you gained valuable lessons from? What were how did these lessons help your life? You know, it’s just like one question a day. It’s very easy. It’s five minutes or less that you journal, and it just allows you to have that time to reflect and think about what you can appreciate in your life. And I think art is the same way. I feel like journaling is a form of art. I journal art. And then you get so many ideas and you get in tune with yourself and it helps you to cut through the noise and the chaos. I think there’s so much noise out there, like you’re not doing enough. Look at this person’s life. Right. And if you’re so focused on all of that, you don’t really have the ability to focus on what’s in here. And the journaling, the art, the letting go of the technology and getting back to your hands and writing and drawing and crafting, that’s really where you have that space for stillness. Um, my drawings are terrible, by the way. They look like chicken scratch. That being said, you know, I can but I think the art thing that I did in sixth grade, it was a uh modern art thing. And my my teacher was like, I want you to paint something similar to this. And so I was able to imitate, but uh by myself, I’m not somebody who’s like, I can do a monet or something, you know? Um, but it but in those moments, I get a lot of really good ideas for work, for books, for whatever it is that I want to create. And so I just think it’s a way that allows you to reconnect with yourself, move through your feelings, and then really think about what you want to do that inspires you. And then if somebody else benefits from it, that’s great. Like the first book I wrote, Belonging, a therapist wrote to me and said, I read it and I quit my job. You changed your life. And now he has this huge therapy practice where he focuses on helping Asian Americans who need therapy. Um, or in this gratitude journal, you know, we’ve been so fortunate we’ve been featured on Above the Law, and we’re gonna get featured at this year’s Nepal Ba convention, which is the largest convention for Asian American lawyers. So um, you know, your art can help people, your art can inspire people, your art can change people’s life too.

Yeah, what comes up for me, um, it seems like your journey is all about transformation and your art is about adaptability, you know. Do you see what I’m saying? It’s like you where you came from and where you like Lauren said, it was a roller coaster. So it’s really your story, it’s really about um shining a light about if you have adaptability and you dream big and you you know, then transformation happens. Can you talk about that? And that that intention in your life, I should say.

That what in my life?

That intention, like do you did you have an intention to transform or how did you know what I mean? What was what was the why for you? I mean, you you know, you growing up and then you know, going into big law, and then you know, it seems like a very transformative and very adaptable um light in the world, you know, and you were dreaming big at that time. You just didn’t say I’m gonna be this. You were like reaching for the stars. Does that make sense?

I see what you’re saying. I think that’s such an interesting perspective because I never had big dreams. Oh, you know, not not when I was younger, anyways. When I was younger, the the biggest dream I had was to work in an air-conditioned office. Uh-huh. And the reason is because Stockton is really hot during the summer, it’s 110 degrees. I was like, dear Lord, and I don’t even go to church, but please just give me a job that has air conditioning. Yeah. And so it’s kind of funny now to look back and everybody would say, You’re so ambitious, et cetera, et cetera. I never had that. I was president of four or five clubs when I was in high school. And I always thought that I was that awkward nerd that nobody liked and I was poor, so I did not have the nicest clothes. Maybe sometimes I smelled, I don’t even know, you know? And so I think when now when I reflect back, one one day my husband said, But if you were so disliked, how could you be president of four or five clubs and you were home on the homecoming court? And I sat there, I said, Oh, you’re right. I guess I wasn’t that unlikable. I don’t know, you know. And I said, But the thing that I was was that I was very reliable. Oh, okay. You gave me a task, I would get it done, and I would get it done 10x. You know, I just I’m just that person. I continue to be a very reliable person. If I see I’m gonna do something, I’m gonna show up, I’m gonna do it. Um, and if I can’t do it, there must be a really big reason. Like I’m on my deathbed or today, if I completely like I woke up with a raspy voice, but I’m still showing up. It would have to be like I didn’t have a voice at all, and then tell you, hey, you can’t talk. So I don’t think I had a lot of big dreams. I think what helped me to survive was that the current situation I was living in was truly not what I wanted for my life. But I also didn’t know what I needed to do to get out of there. So the only thing I did and I continue to do today is to do the best that I can do in that moment. Yeah. I didn’t know what college was, but I definitely wanted to learn and get the best grades. I didn’t know what college was, but I wanted to do speech and debate and overcome stage fright. I still have stage fright. I don’t think you ever overcome it.

But but but you know, I would argue it just means you care. That’s what I tell, that’s what I tell myself. That’s what I tell my kids when they are like nervous about something. Um I tell them it’s because you care deeply about it. And that’s not a bad thing. It’s not a bad thing to care. Yeah, it’s not a bad thing to care about doing well, right?

Yeah, I love the way you frame it, the things you care. Yeah, so I think all throughout parts of my life, I just did the best that I could. When I went to Berkeley undergrad, I double major in social welfare and legal studies and minor in education and wrote two honors theses, which I don’t recommend. I look back while working for jobs, by the way. I was like, what were you thinking, lady? Um but I think it’s that you don’t feel enough. Yeah. And you’re told you don’t belong here. So you have to hustle for your worth and overprove that you do belong and overdo, right? And that took a lot of unlearning to do. And then when I got to law school again, I don’t think I realized how big of a deal it was to get into Berkeley law. You know what I mean? Because you don’t know what you don’t know. And the way I grew up, it was like, hey, if you didn’t die today because there was a drive-by shooting, you’re good. You’re right. Like I survived my first drive-by shooting when I was five. So it wasn’t like there was a grand plan or a future, even. It was just do the best that you can today and survive. And then, you know, luckily, through that mentality and that work ethic and that grit and that resilience, when opportunities came, I was able to capitalize on it. Like if I didn’t do that, I wouldn’t have been able to get into a top 10 law school.

Right. Yeah. So it’s, I mean, it’s, I think it’s really interesting because you you talked about your journal and the questions you ask. And it it’s to me, it’s very um pertinent to your life experience because you you asked a question of like, what’s something negative that held that happened at work that actually you gain from? That to me is your life story, right? Is that um you it’s and and then you mentioned the word unlearning. So it’s like you were the way you were because of your circumstances, and it obviously had a positive impact, and you were clearly having a positive impact in the world, but now you are doing some self self-repair because of the the trauma that kind of your your life was and turned you into, which was a good thing and a bad thing. Does that make sense? Because I I always think that your um your characteristics that are good for you can also have a negative side. Um, like ambition is a wonderful thing to have. I have a lot of ambition, but ambition also stems from not feeling like you’re enough, you know? So it’s like, how do you do that? Do you use art to balance that? Is do you feel like that’s what uh journaling is for you? It’s it’s like it’s almost like coming back to yourself, giving your yourself a moment rather than having to have external things um confirm who you are.

I really appreciate those questions. I think there’s so many nuances to it. And fundamentally, I think what you’re talking about is a sense of self-worth. Yeah. And how do you derive that? Is it intrinsic or extrinsic? And often it’s a combination, right? Because we are societal human beings, we are social beings, so we’re we can’t just say we’re living in a hole. The the reason why I started journaling was because I actually had severe depression. Okay. And I didn’t know it that I had severe depression and severe anxiety, actually. But it makes sense growing up if every day you’re worried about, you know, getting shot. It doesn’t go away just because you go to college or law school or make money, it’s still following you everywhere. So I think the and there was a lot of survival tactic, which was a lot of minimizing. You almost got shot today, it’s fine. You know, nothing happened, just another day, right? And so yeah, and even at the big law firm, when the there was a day where the partner came and yelled at me with my door open and slammed the door, and there was another partner who was supposed to be my mentor, was like, you know, that’s not okay. And I just told her, it’s fine, I’ve seen worse. But but the thing is, after I raised the issue, they they then the firm was like, That’s not okay. You can’t, you know, they tell you that you’re saying the right things, but then you’re the ones punished for it. And I think that’s always the challenge is if you do speak the truth about a bad situation, people then say you’re overly sensitive, you’re making it up. So the journaling for me is is what I call my place of truth. Um often we’re told by the world, you have to do X or you are this or you can’t do that, or you need to do more. Yeah. And the the journaling is just a place for me to just quiet that noise. So I wake up around 5:30 to just be in tune with myself. And I love it because no one’s up, including the kids. I can have a little bit of time myself. And I noticed a huge difference between the day I journal and the day I don’t.

Yeah.

It’s just how I show up in the world, how patient I am, how kind I am, how compassionate I am. And that journaling also helped me to heal and recover because there were so many thoughts uh where we blame ourselves. So a few years ago, I was attacked in the park. I think Lisa knows about this. I was just walking at 9:30 a.m. You know, kids from summer camp were being dropped off there, and a man pretended to be a jogger and then attacked me in the park. So it was when there was the rise in violence against Asian women and Asian elders. And so that was a really horrifying experience, and it really brought back a lot of trauma from childhood where there was a lot of violence. And the questions that people asked me were, What were you wearing? What time of day were you walking? No, uh, did you look at him weird? Did you say something to him? You know, these were the kinds of questions, and some people even said I made it up to get attention, and I was just thinking to myself, what in the world? Right, and and I it I and I found myself having to defend, and then I also that’s all I got to play is like, does it matter if I walked around naked? Right, does it matter that doesn’t entitle anyone to do anything with my body or to attack me? It doesn’t matter, and I but but we’re in these like straw man arguments, right? So I think the journaling allowed me to get in tune with that and get to a place of you are not responsible for somebody else’s bad behavior. No, and what you are responsible for is doing the work to heal your own journey so that you can show up as your best self. So journaling is part of my therapy, yeah. It’s part of me being able to give that time to myself and to say, like, I matter, and so I’m gonna take this 15 to 30 minutes at the start of the day for myself. There are days where my son wakes up earlier and then he’s like, hey, I want to cuddle. Like I used to be like, I’m meditating, go away. Now I’m like, okay, this is the practice. I have to show up when you’re here. Yes, let’s cuddle. But but for the most part, I think it’s a way to get in tune with yourself and to really see what matters. That doesn’t mean that I don’t have dreams and aspirations. I’m like, oh my gosh, if Oprah calls me about the gratitude journal, do it Oprah, yes, please call me. Or if if Kelly Clarkson, who I’ve been following since American Idol calls me, I’m like, yes, Kelly, please. You know, so I would want those opportunities. I’m not against those opportunities. That being said, I think I’m not also waiting for that to come in order to feel like what I’m doing is enough in the world.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

I like the that the place of truth is amazing. That’s a very powerful statement that journaling is a place of truth. Do you feel to to about your gratitude journal that you’re offering to um professionals? Do you think that can be their place of truth? You know, is that is that kind of why you did it, maybe?

Yeah, that’s such a great question. So I wrote the gratitude journal because of what’s going on in the world today. Yeah. I get a little emotional talking about it. Like I I I can’t I can’t believe that this is the world that we live in. I can and I can’t, because growing up, this was the world I lived in. Yeah, right. So it’s not that I haven’t seen this kind of callousness, this kind of otherness, this kind of dangerous conversations. I grew up in Stockton. So this is happening all the time. But to have but for things to happen at the scale where we dehumanize other people, yeah. We say things like it doesn’t matter if children or women are getting killed, those types of things just it just so heartbreaking. So I had been wanting to write this gratitude journal for many, many, many years. And of course, life gets busy. So I finally felt in this moment, I want to bring some light to the world. And this is my form of doing that. And I think when I first was diagnosed with major depression and bipolar two, everybody was basically telling me, like, your life is over. Right. Science, the doctors, and the research bears out that people with these major mental health illnesses, they don’t have a good life, right? Right. Because the struggle is real and it takes so many years to get to stability, all that stuff. And I remember being told you need to meditate, you go to yoga. There’s so many things that they tell you to do. And it’s like, how am I gonna do all of that? Or so overwhelmed, and you get overwhelmed and you just don’t do anything. So the journal was written in a way where it’s so simple and so easy. There isn’t like this long text of here’s all the many things you have to do. It’s just literally like, hey, these are the things that you can do. You can start your day with a little deep breathing. You can do three deep breaths, or you can fall along this guided meditation that I have. There’s only one question a day, and it’s about gratitude. And why do we start with gratitude? Because if you’re in a toxic place, all you’re thinking about are all the negative things. Right. So if you can just cut that a little bit to talk about what you appreciate, then you can invite in more of that into our life. And then at the end of the page, it’s either an inspirational quote, a uh positive affirmation, or a self-care tip. And so it’s done in such a way that you can do the things that you need to do for yourself in just five minutes a day. Yeah. And anybody can do that, right? Whereas before, you can make that excuse. And so yesterday I was on day 67 and the inspirational quote I think was so apt. It was the miracle is not to walk on water, the miracle is to walk on the green earth and feeling truly alive. And that’s by Titnan Han. And you know, I it I spent so many, so many months finding all these quotes. People think finding quotes is easy. AI lies. So I asked you how to give me a hundred quotes, 90 of them are wrong. Right. I literally had to go to the library and look at real books and be like, is this real? So at any rate, you know, I think I think that’s also part of the journey of doing art and writing is the Inquisition for the truth. Yes. Like, you know, there’s uh uh Be a Rainbow in Somebody’s Cloud by Maya Angelo. Turns out it is not a quote. No, it it is a representation of her ideas. Um I was like, this should not be stated as a quote. It’s not a quote, right? A quote is exact words. You can take some words out, but it still should be their exact words. So it so the Inquisition for Truth was also an interesting Inquisition there, but that they’re so I mean, I remember seeing that quote on US UCSF’s wall, and I was like, that’s such a beautiful quote. I want to include it in my book. But then of course I was source checking and realized, oh, it’s not a real quote, you know. So yeah, so so that was also interesting to go through that journey. And so the gratitude journal is really a place for you to be able to do it if you’re on the bus ride, yeah. If you’re going in between, you know, Zoom meetings, or if you just put your kid down, right? It’s something that you can do in five minutes or less.

I appreciate the accessibility of it. Uh, Lisa and I, we were just talking about this for like 15 years. Um, we have been essentially uh on an awareness campaign for making art part of your daily life and and trying to show people that it’s it’s probably easier than they think. Um, and that it’s worth, and it’s also worth so much more than they realize. Um and I and I uh I think that is, you know, you that’s what’s what you’re hitting on, right? Like I loved that you said you you wake up because because I’m worth it. Like I take the time for myself because I’m worth it. And that alone, I don’t know that I think there’s a lot of people struggling just even with that notion. Are they worth it? And they all, I mean, you are, you’re enough, right? And um that that alone, like being just the fact that you woke up is should be that reminder to you that you know you’re you’re worth it. And right now, I’m not sure that that’s the way it feels for a lot of people. Um, because I I think that we’re we’re operating under fear. Um, a lot of people are operating under fear. And I I love the idea of waking up and and operating under gratitude instead, and just imagining the two paths and which one would be more beneficial for the for the the human, you know, the individual, but also for the the world.

Yeah. I I think you touch on something big, which is when we’re born into this world as babies, we’re beings and they’re adorable just as they are, even when they have a poop out versus as we get older and older. And I was reading Wherever You Go, There You Are in the book, it talks about how at around eight is when you get the message of you need to be doing, you need to be achieving, you need to be accomplishing. And that there’s value in we need to get things done, but like you said before, too much of anything can become a bad thing. And if your whole life is driven by I have to achieve these milestones, I have to check off these boxes, that’s relentless. That never ends. And I can tell you this because I work with people from students all the way to the C-suite, and people think, oh, when they get to the suite suite, they don’t have no, it gets worse unless you’re actually doing the internal work. Um, but it is hard because I think Hustle culture is very real. Even for my work, people would say, Well, you have an audio podcast, so now you need to have all the video stuff on YouTube. And then if you have it on YouTube, then you need to have it on this, and you know, it’s just it’s never gonna end. So you you have to sit in that stillness and ask yourself, what is enough? And uh enoughness has been something that I’ve been reflecting on many years. So I have different words, words of the year. So one year it was ease, another year it was spaciousness, another year it was enoughness, and this year is delightful. Delightful, yeah. Because I I feel like I’ve been in this journey of healing, and it’s like I feel so serious and heavy, and uh and I’m like, I just want to have fun. Is that the city lover song? I just want to have fun, yeah. Yeah, I do think it’s a really fun song, yeah.

Right. I think um, I mean, you know, delight and joy are something that I think we think we need permission to have or we need to earn it. And I’m I personally in my own life am working really hard in in like encompassing it as just another, it’s just another thing, you know. I don’t I don’t feel like I have to earn being angry. Why do I have to earn being joyful? Like that’s such a weird concept. Yet that is how that is something I am currently fighting in my own brain, you know. Yeah, like why?

Well, I think what you’re raising makes so much sense because we’re told we need to do all these things before we can have the reward of just resting even. Yes. So if you can’t even rest, how can you have joy? That’s such a big leap, right? Yeah, and it it is a hard inquiry. So I I would offer compassion to yourself for it. Yeah. And you know, reminding yourself that there’s probably messages that you’re hearing that are from your childhood, oh yeah, where it’s coming up, right? Like this is the message I’ve I know. I was told from a very young age, like, you need to work, you need to work, you need to work. And part of it was because we needed to survive. So everybody had to contribute. It didn’t matter how young or old you were, everybody needed to do whatever we need to do to survive. And so being in survival mode for so long, it doesn’t go away just because you have a degree or money or a house or kids, you know, it just follows you and it becomes even more ingrained or different versions, unless you’re willing to work through it. And I think the other thing is that we often make rest and joy like such a big thing. Um, so I talk about this in the research that I’ve done for the Gratitude Journal. People think going on a two-week vacation, going to a mirror or some Zen yoga silent retreat is gonna be the answer. There are beneficial effects for having that big break, but it won’t fix the day-to-day burnout unless you’re doing the day-to-day thing to deal with it. And so that’s why it’s the the journal talks about the five minutes that you need. If you just set five minutes for yourself, it makes such a huge difference. So I was giving a talk to Disney recently on mental health. Um, and somebody asked me, like, Well, you know, I feel like I have so much. I can’t, I’m I’m bad at meditating to them. And I said, you know, what are your expectations around meditation? And people have this idea that you’re gonna sit like Buddha for 20 minutes or no one’s doing that. I yeah, my mom was a devout Buddhist when whenever she wasn’t going to church. A lot of religious and you know, I was meditating since I was three and I still have struggles. And so I just tell people, hey, look, if you’re going through something, all it takes is one deep breath. That’s really what meditation is, it’s mindfulness. Yeah, yeah, that’s also what rest is. If you, you know, sometimes you can’t cancel all of your meetings, but what you can do is say, Hey, I’m gonna have 25-minute meetings instead of 30-minute meetings. Yeah, I’m gonna give myself five minutes in between each meeting to gather myself. And that’s something I tell people all the time. It’s like, I’m in back-to-back meetings, so I’m gonna end the meeting at this time. And then it just sets expectations, and people who work with me know that that’s the way it goes. Or if you’re feeling really stressed and anxious, just take one deep breath. That will go a long way versus trying to do a 20-minute meditation. So, again, it’s it’s really about building these like small little daily habits to allow yourself to feel the rest and also the joy. And I think sometimes when we think about joy, we think it has to be this big thing because on Instagram everybody’s going on some super yacht or whatever, right? Totally, you know. Um, and look, I’ve been to the MALDs and state of the park Hyatt is really nice, but you’re I went on miles. Um, but but um, but that’s not accessible to most people, yeah. And it’s also not what real joy really is, right? Real joy to me now is having peace and stability in my life, right? Or we were out yesterday in the garden. I am really bad at gardening, but we have sprinklers, so they kind of take care of themselves for the most part. I killed almost all the plants I’ve had. At any rate, um, you know, we were supposed to have tomatoes for the last two years. We haven’t had any. And this year, for the first time, we have a few tomatoes growing, and one of them is actually turning red, and we’re like, oh my God, love it. You know, and so so I I think sometimes because of all the external We think joy has to look a certain way. Yeah. But really, joy is really in the small, ordinary, daily little things.

Yeah. I’m hearing you say that the like it’s almost like journaling and taking that five minutes helps you truly know what joy and delight are for you. And so if if whether it’s in your regular day-to-day life, whether it’s in your career, if you took those five minutes, even if it’s not in the morning, whatever whatever five minutes works for you, I would argue put it in your calendar so that you do it, right? But you will find over time what joy is for you, because you’ll be able to separate um external voices from your own internal voice.

Absolutely. And I think the reason why gratitude is so helpful is that even in our deepest, darkest moments, there’s always a little something we can be grateful for. There was a time in my life where I had suicidal ideation. That’s how bad the depression got when with bipolar two, it can get there. And it’s so hard in those moments where you have ruminating thoughts as a result of the illness, not because of who I was, to carry on. And having a gratitude practice of like, hey, today I’m grateful that I have a house that I can live in, or a blanket, or today I’m grateful the sun came out. Today I’m grateful I have a hot shower. Because there was a time in my life where I didn’t have hot showers because I grew up so poor, and sometimes things happen at those kinds of apartments, right? There I remember one time we were living in an apartment. There were seven of us living in a one-bedroom apartment, and then something started falling from the sky. Oh, turns out there was a leak in the upstairs apartment bathroom, and it fell down to ours. Yikes. So, but luckily, none no one got too hurt. So I just remember for a period of I think three or four weeks, we were boiling hot water and and trying to like shower in like in a tub, like like in the kitchen. And and but to remind myself, like, oh, I have a hot shower today. Yeah. I don’t have to go and boil hot water in the middle of mildew mold all over. Right. Or or you know, when my when when I drop some food, I wasn’t gonna get in extreme trouble because I’m not that’s not gonna mean that you know my family doesn’t get to eat tonight. You know, it’s like things like that, right? So I I think sometimes we can forget about the small things that we can still appreciate. And I think even in a toxic job, there’s questions in the journal that says, like, you know, even if you’re in a tough work situation, can you think of one small thing that your work provides that is making your life better? And often that’s some kind of income that it provides, maybe health insurance, um, though maybe access to opportunity other opportunities, right? So it’s just if you can shift that dynamic, it doesn’t mean that the toxic situation is okay. Right. It just means that you can shift your energy towards that. And what that does is it allows you to invite in more of that good energy. And then if you’re only focusing on all the things you hate, which is important, you should know what you don’t want in your life. Right, you you don’t have a sense of what it is that you want. So you kind of need to create some space for that. And that’s what the gratitude does, right? You go back to appreciation. Like, what is it that I appreciate? Oh, I appreciate having this one nice coworker. Well, that’s a signal. That’s a signal that means in my next job, whatever that may be, I need to really talk to people and see what kind of people they are. Yeah. And more often than not, we all know this in your job, jobs have the same titles, et cetera. So it’s really the team that matters, right? So I mean, even in big law, when I was working on a good team, it was great. I loved it. I was like, I don’t know why I’m quitting. I mean, by the time I was quitting, people are like, why are you quitting? I’m like, I don’t know. But um, you know, that first toxic situation was really bad. So I think I need to go, even though things are really good right now. You know, because you know it’s gonna turn at some point, right? It’s a firm. Yeah. So um I’m glad I left on good terms, but I think being able to focus on the things that you do appreciate allows you to carry that energy and invite in more of that.

What I love what you said was about being and doing. You said, you know, we come up and we’re being, and then at some point we’re doing, doing, doing. I think you said it was an eight or something. That’s when it kind of clicks off. Um, and for me, it’s like gratitude is the key. It’s almost like the key to being. That’s what you know, which is interesting. And then when you’re being, then you can. I’m just talking. Well, you can you can find joy, right? When you’re and you find joy when you you look at the sunrise or the sunset or a bird or the hot water that I have. It’s almost like that’s a respite, a breath in time and space.

Well, then I think it also allows you to do more, right?

Because you’re filling your cup up, yeah.

And you’re not just you’re not you’re not gonna just write, you’re not just gonna sit there and it’s almost like you’re you it’s becoming a positive cycle, right? And so if you’re if you take the time to remind yourself that you are a being, right, and you find that stillness and you take that breath and you have whatever practice works for you, you know, and it’ll give you actually more energy to do the things that you want to do. Because we’re we are we are human beings, but we all are, we also are human doings. It’s just that sometimes, you know, we’re doing like a hundred percent of the doing and we’re for forgetting about us, right? Our souls and stuff. And so I I like this idea of finding you’re you’re finding a way to have a positive relationship between the two, which is which is I think an ultimate goal, right?

Yeah. When you are coming from a place of inspiration and love and compassion, there is a power in that that allows you to produce things in a way that has bigger impact. That couple with that though, I think what it also allows you to do is cut through the noise of that you always need to do more. Yeah. And that piling that more is the only key to productivity. Yeah. What I actually found, and I I did this when I was conduing, is I had so many books of ideas for business books of everything. And I took a leap of faith and I said, you know what? These are all great ideas. But at this point, these are just weighing me down because I’m so distracted and I’m not going anywhere. So I put them all in the trash. Um, where seven. And it was very hard, but it was sort of a metaphor of telling myself, I am enough as I am. I don’t need to do these 20 million things in order to prove myself or prove my worth. And I’m gonna focus on one thing at a time. Yeah. Or right now I can only focus on this book project, or right now I can only focus on this podcast or webinar that we’re recording. Yeah. And so allowing yourself to just do that instead of being like a computer that has all these apps open or the phone, right? Because what you’re doing is you’re literally draining your battery. Yeah. So if you have 20 apps open, you know in a couple hours your phone’s gone.

Right.

Versus if everything’s turned off and you’re only focused on the one thing, it’ll last you for two, three days. So it’s just being able to get back to that place of saying, Yes, I have to do things to make life function. We live in a capitalist society. I do need money to pay for my house and my car and my food and some of my kids to school. That’s that’s the reality of the world that we’re living in. That being said, I also get to choose how much I put on my plate. And I also get to say, no, I’m not gonna do that. And it doesn’t mean that I say no to everything. For example, there was a day where my husband was out of town. I gave a big presentation to Disney, and I I went to school to volunteer at my kids’ pizza party. Yeah. And it would be so easy to just say, you know what, I’m gonna cancel the pizza party, or I gave a school tour, and it’s like, it would be so easy to be like, I’m so busy, I’m gonna not do all these other things. But it allows you to sit back and say, what are my values in my life? And being a present parent and a somebody who contributes to the good of the community is really important. So even though it would be nice to not have to just spend four hours to volunteer today, I’m gonna show up, you know, instead of watching Netflix. And I could watch Netflix another time, right? Right. Um, so so it’s just like those the it allows you to really sit with what you feel matters to you. Yeah. And then when you are clear about what matters to you, decisions don’t feel so exhausting because it’s sort of a roadmap, right? Yeah. Well, I’m doing this because this is a value that I hold true and dear, and these are my top three values. So I’m gonna do my best to behave in alignment with that versus oh, I don’t know, like, should I say yes, should I say no? There’s a lot of confusion and chaos in that. So I I think just being able to say, I I can be, and that’s enough, but it takes off the pressure of I must do in order to do that. And then it allows you to have the ability to say, what is it that I want to do that is in alignment with my values and who I want to be.

Yeah, yeah.

Love it. Thank you so much.

Yeah, beautiful. Do you have any final thoughts?

You know, I just really appreciate this conversation and it’s allowed me to deeply reflect as well. And it’s been interesting to hear your reflections back because, you know, I’ve when you’re living your own life, you’re not really thinking through all these things, right? And I’m often in the the chair of the podcast host. So I’m asking everybody else a question. So this has been so much fun and so enriching. I really appreciate the thoughtfulness and the questions and in your your own feedback about the things that you’re hearing or what’s coming up for your own life. And I hope you keep doing more of these.

Yeah, no, we I I always love, I mean, conversation is probably one of the most important things in the world right now. And conversation is art. Yeah, it is, and it’s a lost art. It is, it is a lost art. And I think that um that’s one of the reasons we like to do this is that like we realize that maybe all people can do in terms of art is listen and talk about it, but that’s something, and so it’s not nothing, and it’s really important. And it if it’s the only step you take, at least you’re taking a step. But maybe it’s a first step and into a step of someday having your own studio where you take an art break every day, you know? So yeah, thank you for taking the time. We really appreciate it.

Thank you so much for having me, Lisa and Lauren. Yeah.