During law school, I began to notice the alarm bells, going off internally as I strived to conform to the norms and expectations of being a law student. The pressure from administrators, faculty, and peers to excel and overachieve made it difficult to silence my mind enough to assess what I actually needed to succeed. The pressure from family and friends who expected me to just do it..and do it well wasn’t helpful either. I didn’t take the time to substantially assess my own unique needs, learning style, and capacity. Instead I fell into the temptation of simply needing to follow a predetermined path to get to the goal.

While I was able to see that staying up until midnight or 1 AM, trying to complete a full reading was not for me, I still tried to play the game the exact same way as what I was told and what I was witnessing around me.

There were not very many other black, or Latinx students on my campus and even less coming from the same community or financial background as me. I was one of only a handful of people my age with a child. I raised my hand a lot in class to criticize the discrimination in laws we were learning and I did not give professors a pass to mistreat me.

These things made me different and feeling different made me uncomfortable.

The result of my unattended to discomfort was a series of decisions that were not rooted in caring for myself, or preparing myself in the best way to graduate and pass the bar. I instead began aiming to prove myself or to disprove the stigmas that the people around me may have had about people like me: aggressive, not good enough, unlikely to succeed.

I felt trapped in this very strange paradox of wanting to stand out, but also wanting be the same.

In my final year, I was on the board for two organizations, a teaching assistant, a peer mentor, taking bar prep courses, doing an externship and taking trial advocacy skills. This was all while still being the primary caregiver for my child who requires extra supports, and while being treated myself for debilitating depressive episodes and panic attacks.

I realized that so much of my mental health symptoms were a direct result of my refusal to live authentically. I felt disempowered ****to move through the academic experience in the way I needed to, because I was so afraid of stepping off the beaten path.

I had no idea at that time, just how deep of a hole I had dug for myself and it was all over my concern of what other people would think of me.

When it came time to complete bar prep, I continued on with this mindset. Everyone around me was engaging in extreme acts of self-sacrifice. They embodied a complete devotion to prep. People often likened it to working a full-time job but then romanticized lack of sleep, lack of proper nourishment, lack of community and neglecting self-care. It seemed like essentially abusing my brain, and forgetting all else was the only way I could pass.

I quickly could feel that this approach was not working for me, but I did not want to be different.

I felt my intution leading me one way, but ignored it because I was terrified that if I didn’t pass it would be because I strayed from the track everyone else was on. I felt I very much needed someone else to tell me what to do because I did not trust myself (this will be explored in a spearate post because WHEW!).

I eventually burned out well before the exam and began to self sabotage because of how dysregulated and defeated I already felt. Then I failed.

However, I also watched many other people who seemingly stayed the path also fail. Which makes perfect sense because you have about a 50-50 chance of passing based on the stats of the exam.

Despite the statistics, I still blamed my failure on own ineptitude and said that I should’ve worked harder, even though I know deep down that wasn’t the issue. Everyone in my life said if I just worked even harder, isolate even more then I would pass so again, I refused to leave the common approach behind.

Going into the second round, I began to pay more attention to taking care of myself and striving for more balance. I was still afraid of doing things too differently, so I only stepped one foot off the traditional track.

Testing out a bit of doing things differently made me feel A LOT better, and although I didn’t pass the second time, I got my score of much higher, which was a great indicator of the power of making authentic choices.

Cue my third round of bar prep. I developed a deeper connection with myself: I built up myself trust, I learned to listen to my intuition, I incorporated mental, physical, and spiritual nourishment into my daily routine.

I made big decisions to change career paths and opened myself up to more possibilities about where my life could go than I had before.

Both feet off the traditional path I was able to walk in the direction that would take me to places even better than what originally I imagined for myself.

Now, I have a career that I adore as an attorney. I do not spend my days dragging myself through work in the name of public servitude or in the name of making lots of money. I get to help people, be creative, and all while getting paid to be my true self. I live days at my own pace. My days are full of love, peace, and joy. I get to be multi-dimensional.

My non-traditional lawyering, relationships, parenting, and way of doing business were all made possible by me making brave decisions to stop living for others and begin living for myself.

Our society encourages people to blend in. The more predictable we are collectively, the easier we are to control and manipulate. Our entire system relies on our pain, our learned helplessness, and our sense of inadequacy.

On top of that, many of us come from cultures where the ability to assimilate meant something as serious as life and death. We still carry that trauma on a cellular level.

We get the privilege to choose something different. To choose to live boldly and authentically. To change the status quo.

It can be terrifying to take a leap relying only on something feeling right, but it is my experience that this is the easiest and most fulfilling way to get what you want out of life.

Develop the courage to embrace being unique and to try a different approach. This act of courage will expand the opportunities available to you. It creates space for you to tap into desires and strengths that you have previously ignored and suppressed in the name of sameness.

It’s amazing how much power you discover you have when you decide to step out of line.