34 Live Life Lit! | Interview With Ryan Spence

Today's episode is brought to you by four Hour Workday Freedom, my signature group program for ambitious online entrepreneurs who are here to stack consistent income while working fewer hours a day. Listen, I see you. Your business is growing, but your time is disappearing. Your income is increasing, but so is your workload. And no matter how much you meditate, journal, hit the gym, or do the breath work, you're still stressed af and deep down you know that if nothing changes, you're going to hit your next income goal. Feeling just as overworked as you do now, wondering how the hell you're supposed to increase your revenue when there just aren't enough hours in a day. That's exactly why I created four Hour Workday Freedom. Inside, you'll learn how to stack consistent income while creating more white space in your calendar for creative work, family, and the things that truly matter, all while feeling alive, vibrant and healthy in your body. You didn't start your business to be chained to your laptop 24 7, and we're going to change that right now. Join us and start running your business in a way that actually feels spacious, profitable and fulfilling. Head to it's lauralang.com workwithme to read more about for our workday freedom and my free and paid offers, or check out the show notes for the link. Now let's dive into today's episode. Welcome to the Hatha Yoga Podcast. I'm Laura Lang, yoga teacher and corporate lawyer for before we dive into today's episode, there's something I want to share with you. So I've been talking to many of you in this community now about what you're struggling with at the moment. And something that almost always comes up is how difficult it is to turn the brain off after a full day of work or studies. And I totally get it. And I have to be honest with you, it can be so difficult for me as well. So I decided to test this out a bit on my own body and my own life, and I began to get curious about what patterns I have in my life. And something that I really quickly noticed was this unconscious habit that I think many of us have that at the moment we come home, we crash on the couch with our phones and sit there for maybe 15, 30, 60 minutes just to, you know, calm down while mindlessly scrolling on our phones. And it's not that relaxing at all, is it? At least it's not for me. But I also know that we do it because we just don't have the energy to go and cook a good meal or go Shopping for that meal or clean up or whatever else you have on your to do. So I've been getting a little creative and I decided to put together a free guide and a free masterclass where I teach you a super simple step by step routine that you can do the moment you come home. You won't even need a yoga mat or anything. This routine, you can do it on the floor, on your couch, you can, you can even do it on your bed. It's so easy to remember that you'll get the hang of it in just a few days. And I promise you, you'll notice a difference throughout the rest of your evening. So you're not constantly checking your phone for messages or work emails, or worrying about cases or tasks when you just want to fall asleep. Okay, so I've included a link to this free guide and masterclass in the description to this episode. So go download your copy right away to get your wind down on already tonight. Okay, that's enough wind down talk for now. Let's move on to the theme of today's episode. So this week I have the honor of interviewing Ryan Spence, a yoga teacher, coach to lawyers and corporate professionals, and a former Big Law lawyer himself. And today is all about living Life Lit. This is Ryan's mission statement and I absolutely love it because it encourages us all to go and light that fire within that we forgot existed. We need to go and spark. And Ryan is so kind and he is hilarious to talk to. He's such an inspiration to me and really, this perfect mix of hip hop and hoodies and spirituality and law. And after this episode, promise me that you go and listen to his podcast, especially his hip hop intro. It's the best. It's like living life lit. He can do it much better than me because it's his podcast. Anyway, in this episode, Ryan shares why he decided to leave his career in Big Law after many years to pursue this path of coaching lawyers and corporate professionals. And Ryan has many years of experience in the legal field, but just like me, he found comfort in the practice of yoga to navigate life in the legal industry. I'm sure you'll find this chat very inspiring and will want to rush to Yoga Mat afterwards or even while listening. So, without further ado, let's welcome Ryan onto the show. Welcome to the podcast, Ryan. It's so good to have you here.

Thank you, Laura. Really good to be here. Thank you for inviting me.

Of course. I've been excited to chat with you. And before we get started, I want to ask you what Is one thing you did today to care for your health?

Ah, well, one thing I do every day is I meditate. It's the first thing I do in the morning. And since I've got into a more consistent rhythm, I found that it's just really helped to start the day with a good intention, start with a relaxed manner. Inevitably, once I interact with my kids in the morning, that changes. But it's kind of good to have that level of calm, that level of relaxation, and start the day with that intention.

Yeah, totally. I couldn't agree more. It's just, it's just such a good way to set yourself up for success. Do you get your meditation practice and before your kids get up and run around the house, or do you have a bit of time for yourself before?

Yeah, what I've, I've. I've learned from past experience that it's best that it's the very first thing I do in the morning. So if I get up before my kids and give myself that time, I know it will get done. When I've tried to have a bit of a lie in or, or, or whatever and try to do it later in the day, you know how it goes. Things come up, you. You get stuck into what you're doing, and before you know it, the day is gone. It doesn't happen. So if I can do a second session in the afternoon, that's fantastic. I always make sure I do the one first thing in the morning. The first thing I do when I wake up, I. Ten minutes is the minimum, and if I go longer, fantastic. But commit to 10 minutes and yeah, that's my day.

Okay, so I'm wondering if you could maybe tell the listeners a bit more about yourself, like, who are you, where do you live, and what do you do? Why are you here? On the Hatha Yoga podcast today.

I explain why I'm here because you kind of invited me, but you invited me for a reason. So I'm based in the UK in a city called Sheffield, three hours north of London. But prior to this, I lived in Singapore for seven years and I was a lawyer. I was a lawyer in big law for 11 years. So started in London, moved to Singapore in 2014, and had seven years out in Singapore as a finance lawyer for one of the large international firms. And like anyone who's been a lawyer, it's very stressful. It can be very rewarding, but it can also be very stressful, very demanding on your time. And about halfway through my career, I questioned whether I actually really wanted what was ahead of me. Did I want to be partner? Did I want to continue sacrificing holidays, weekends, relationships? You know, I mean, my life for work and having a child, my first child, kind of really started to raise those questions in my mind. As the questions got louder, I became more fearful because I didn't think that I could do anything else outside, from the outside. I was successful, I had a good career. I had a good career trajectory ahead of me. I made good money, I worked on deals that were in the press. You know, all the things that you feel they're going to make you happy and fulfilled and make you successful. But I wasn't sure that I actually wanted any of that because there were other things that I wanted to do and I wanted to be able to be around for my child and kind of be home for bath time and be around on holidays and not constantly be attached to a screen. So 2018, Christmas was when it kind of finally changed for me and I decided that I had to do something different. Didn't know what, but I had to make a shift. Christmas holiday, Bali, beautiful villa. I'm sure you can all picture the scene. And as always, as all lawyers will know, you always carry your work laptop with you. And thankfully I did, because as I was on my way from the airport to the villa, a deal that had been dead came back to life. And I knew I was going to be working pretty much over Christmas. So the holiday was involved. Spending time in the spare room on calls, drafting documents, reviewing documents. And when I wasn't doing that, I was still thinking about the deal. So the relaxing vacation I was looking forward to didn't turn out that way. And I remember on the plane home saying to myself, I can't do this anymore. Something has to change. And that's really where the transformation, or the idea of transformation began.

That's so exciting. And I'm glad you had that wake up call. I've experienced something very similar too. I don't know why it always clashes with Christmas holidays, but it's always like some, some weird, uncomfortable case just pops up out of nowhere and you're like, oh, I thought I was going to have some time with my family and my friends, and now I'm going to sit here behind my screen and just be anxious because I have to take care of all these things. How's your life now compared to 2018 when you were the big law lawyer?

Well, significantly different. So I decided in 2019 that I needed to shake things up to kind of get myself out of the rut that I was in. And yeah, there's lots of things that you could do. And I decided to sign up for a boxing match. So that was my, my wake up call. I did three months training for it, for a fight, and that really kind of kickstarted my personal development journey, mentally, physically, spiritually. It just really changed how I felt about myself, how I felt about my life, and how I felt about what was possible for me. And so through that, I got back into my yoga practice, which I'd kind of let lapse a little bit, went on a yoga retreat, changed my diet, changed lots of things about my life. And January 2020, ended up working with a coach completely by accident, really. And that really helped me see I could do anything, literally. I don't have to stick with what I've always been doing. I. I can go and do something else. And so I decided that's what I do. I left the firm at the end of February 2020. There was a layoff. I took that willingly, went and trained as a yoga teacher and thought initially that I would just teach yoga to people who are in the position that I had been in, help them get back to themselves. As we all know, yoga is a process of self inquiry. So by bringing people to the mat, I would allow them to kind of look inwards and really find out who they were and what it was that they wanted. But the more that I spoke to people and the more that people heard what I was doing, they were asking me to speak to friends of theirs who were maybe stuck in their job and were looking for some direction. And people kept saying to me, oh, you should be a coach. I mean, you're, you're really helping people out. You should be a coach. And I was very resistant to becoming a coach, I think, because there were a lot of coaches out there in my mind. And although coaching had helped me, I just felt that there were other people who could probably do that work better. And I just wanted to teach yoga. But I think anyone who goes through that process of yoga or goes through that process of self inquiry, you learn that sometimes it isn't always necessarily about you. It's about what the universe wants for you, it's about what the plan is for you. And I just felt that, well, if enough people are saying this, I should at least explore this path. And I started coaching the end of December 2020. I love my clients, they love the transformation that they got. And so when I relocated to the uk, one of the reasons for doing that was to set up my coaching practice. And so now that's what I do. I coach lawyers and other corporate professionals who are feeling stuck, who are in that rut that I was in. And I help them kind of figure out what it is that they want, but then go after it, go and get it. So my foundational pillars are clarity, getting clear on what you want, why you want it and who you are. Confidence so that you can actually get that belief that you can go ahead and you can actually do something new. You can figure it out as you go along, and then also the courage to build, the courage to get after it, to take action, to basically go and live the life that you want, not the life that you think that you should want.

That's awesome. And I think so many lawyers and just corporate professionals in general can really benefit from this help because I, I recognize so much of myself in, in your story, this feeling of looking, looking at your outside and you see this, this person that has obtained all the, the things that from an external point of view, looks like success. You have the law job or the legal job that you always wanted and always aspired to during law school, and you have the money, you have the house, you have the partner, Everything is fine. But on the inside, it just feels like something is falling apart because maybe you went through this entire journey of a legal career without ever inquiring with yourself. Is this actually what I want?

Yeah. And I think it's. It's common because we are conditioned to see success as a particular thing, to see as a linear path. You go to school, you get the grades, you go to university, you start at the bottom of the career ladder and you climb your way up. That is success. And we never encouraged to explore what success actually means to us because success means different things to different people. And so therefore people do get to these positions in their career where outwardly they're very successful, but they start to ask, well, I've done this for so long, but I've never actually thought if it's what I want to do. And it isn't necessarily about the law or the corporate world being this awful environment. I mean, they have their issues, but this is really an individualistic thing. It's really taken the time to assess do I want to be where I am and do I want to go where I'm going. And if the answer is yes, it's looking at how you can do that in a way that is more sustainable, in a way that serves you, that doesn't lead to burnout, that doesn't lead to broken relationships that doesn't lead to your well being, suffering. And if it isn't, then it's finding out what it is that you do want and then going after that instead and not feeling constrained by the box that people are trying to put you in. Because we've all been put in boxes, you know, I mean you're going to argue and you should be a lawyer, you know, those sorts of, oh, you're good with numbers, you should be an accountant. And so you do that because that's what people expect of you. But actually when do you ever ask yourself, well, what do I expect for myself? What do I want for myself? How will I commit to my dreams, to, to my wishes, to my desires?

Yeah, that's really something we should talk way more about than we do and what we just taught in law school and the first years of our career for sure. Now you've explained about the whole situation you had over Christmas and with your trip to Bali, I guess that was the tipping point for you. But I know you've been in your lawyer job for quite some years and I assume the first couple of years you were actually happy with what you were doing. But what were the signs that you were starting to notice that maybe I'm not really on the right path here. Wait, I might be successful, but is this actually what I want? When did that start to pop up for you and how did you notice it?

Oh yeah, good question. So yeah, I mean, I was being a lawyer when I first became a lawyer. I'd come from the music business and I'd basically come from, well, where I had no money. So actually me how to make Money was fantastic. Being surrounded by all of these amazingly intelligent people working in these big glass and steel buildings, working on deals that are in the press, working on international deals, you mean all of the things that as a, as a fresh faced junior lawyer seem quite exciting. And so I did, I enjoyed it and I really wanted to go to Singapore. I'd been there as a trainee and I really wanted to go back. We had an office there. And so when that opportunity came up, I jumped at it and I was really excited about what the future might hold for that. But I think that like a lot of things, I had gone there with a certain intention in mind. It sold to me in a certain way and that wasn't necessarily how it played out for me and I could see that. But I still kept going because it's like, I live in Singapore, I can have these great holidays, you know, I Mean, I've got this good lifestyle, this is all fine. But I definitely feel having a child was the. Was the initial catalyst where that voice first started saying to me, you know, I mean, is this really what you want to do? Not being able to guarantee you can be home to see your child, to put them to bed, I mean, being around at the weekends, but having to be constantly checking your phone through emails and maybe jump on a call or work on a deal and not really have any control over that really started to affect me more as a parent than they had done before. I'd become a parent, and then I had a second child. And this kept getting louder, this voice kept getting louder. And I just thought, I don't really want what's lying ahead of me. I will get more money, I will have high status being a partner. But what I have to do to get there and then what I have to do to, to sustain that position, that isn't really going to best serve my family and it isn't going to best serve me. Because I knew I wasn't happy and. But I didn't feel that I could say that. Everyone says that they weren't happy at times, but you just get up the next day and you get back to work and you suck it up. But I knew that deep down this wasn't just like I was having a bad day. This was far, far deeper than that. But I didn't feel that I could express that out loud because again, I was in this privileged position of being a lawyer in big law with all of that entails. So I'd say about halfway through, through my career is where the first inklings of that voice started to appear. And that voice got progressively louder during the last five years of being, being in my big law career. And at some point, As I say, 2018 was when I was like, okay, I should probably listen to this voice. I don't really know what to do because it's not telling me what to do, it's just telling me there's a problem. But I kind of now need to kind of figure out, you know, I mean, what this problem is. Is it a case of move firms? Is it a case of do a different type of law? Is it a case of leave law completely? I don't know. But I really need to take some time to figure out who I am to then be able to answer those questions.

Yeah. Interesting journey. And it's very interesting for me to hear that this really kicked off when you or had your first child, because as you know, I don't have any children. And for me, I, I again, I recognize this feeling of a really loud voice that just gets louder and louder and at some point you just can't ignore it anymore. And I'm curious to know how this made you feel. Like, in your body, were there any, like, specific bodily sensations or emotions present for you that sort of signalized, hey, this voice inside you really feel trying to make you listened, but you keep ignoring it. You keep working longer hours, checking the emails over the weekend and not being there with your family as you know, you really want to. How did it manifest in your body?

So I refer to it as a feeling of lethargy. I think that's the best way that I can explain it. So I think we've all had those feelings of lethargy where you're. You just feel tired and you don't really know why. You feel a little bit unmotivated, you feel a little bit unfilled. You have all of these things that you could do, but none of them seem particularly exciting. You can't really muster up the energy to, to get up and go and do them. So that's the feeling. It's just that, that heaviness of, I really don't want to do this. I'm really not sure that I can do this. I think that's the best way of explaining it and never really being able to get over that feeling. It's not as if you're tired. You can go to bed, have a good night's sleep, and you wake up the next day when you're ready to go. It was a case of this feeling was always there, and you would just be better some days at masking it than others. I talk about in my, in my book, in the opening chapter about feeling like. Like my soul was being sucked out of me at times. And that's really one of the best ways to describe it, because I think we can all picture that or imagine that feeling of just, oh, my goodness, I have to kind of go here, or I have to go and do that, or here we go again, this is happening again, or what am I going to get a moment for myself? That's kind of really what it felt like, just this heaviness, this lethargy.

Yeah, that's a really good description. And it's, it's nice to hear a completely different bodily reaction. I think, because I've also talked about this on the podcast before and, and to the people that know me, that for me it was very much anxiety and this, like, feeling of constantly shaking, that was the. The sign from my body telling me, hey, something isn't right here. And it sounds like this. I can't even pronounce the word lethargy. I hadn't heard it before, but. But I get. I get the meaning of it now is sort of like feeling lazy, but you don't really. You can't really do anything about that laziness. Or is that right? And it's. For me, it almost sounds like it's kind of the opposite, but it's signalizing the same thing in your body that, hey, something isn't right. Listen to this. This voice inside of you that's just screaming like, something's got to change.

Yeah. And there's a. There's a common phrase which is, you know, I mean, if you. Well, I can't remember the actual quote now, and I will get it wrong, but it's your body. Your body is a really good indicator of what's going on for you. And your body will continue to give you signals, and if you don't listen to those signals, it will eventually just stop. I mean, whether. And that will manifest itself in some sort of illness when, whether that keeps you in bed or it just impacts how you move about your day or forces you to slow down. The body is a very good barometer as to what you're feeling. So you might be able to sort of lie to yourself in your head, but your. Your body. Your body won't lie to you. And so when you're feeling that, that tension, when you're feeling that anxiety or when you're feeling that lethargy, you will feel it in your. In your body. And that's a signal for you to take a step back and listen. Where is that coming from? What's causing that? What's the root cause? And how can I. How can I solve that? What is the solution to that problem? Or you can continue like so many other people do and end up in burnout. And burnout is going to take you a lot longer to get over than dealing with the issue, with the issue in the situation when those signs initially show themselves.

Effy. Exactly. Yeah. And like, for me, it was such a. It was so difficult for me to actually understand what it meant to. To listen to my body. I think in the Western world and in the legal industry in particular, we just raised to be in our heads all the time, and we can ignore our bodies and the signals that the body sends for a really long time until someday it just. It just stops. Working or. Yeah, you burn out and you sit at home and you're like, why did I not listen? And you're forced to listen. And it's so much more difficult to listen when you've taught yourself to ignore it and not listen for a long time. I remember when I was at the, like, feeling at the worst when I was working for, for my law firm, I was telling my therapist how I. I didn't know what it meant to have an emotion. Like, I. If she would sometimes check in with me during the session and be like, solar when we talk about this. How does it make you feel? How do you feel right now? And I'd be like, looking at her. I don't. I don't. I don't know what I'm supposed to say. I. I can't feel anything. I was so disconnected from my own body. And I had to ask her, like, what do you mean when you ask me how I'm feeling? What am I supposed to say? And she was like, wow, okay, that's where we begin. Okay. And she was like, well, maybe you notice the temperature in, in your hands. Are your hands cold? Are they warm? Is something tingling? Is something. Do you feel like scratching a part of your body just to get that mind body connection back? And I was like, wow, okay. I can't even tell her if I'm happy or if I'm angry. I have to start with the temperature of my fingertips. That's crazy. And it just takes long to build up from. From there. Right. And that's where yoga comes into the picture. It really helped me so much. But I'm curious to, to understand how, like, what led you into yoga and how did you use yoga to. To deal with all these things that you felt in your career?

Yeah, sure. Now, what you said there was really powerful that, that numbness. And I think it's. It's again, the conditioning of just being expected to do more, produce more, make more. That's all that matters. And so even if your body is shutting down, well, you can still use your head. I remember times when I was off sick and I was literally in my bed sick, but I was still required to be on deals and get on calls and I'd have to kind of muscle through. So when that's the expectation, you just keep doing it, right? Because you don't feel that you have a choice. So I felt that, yeah, that was really, really powerful. And it really, really resonated with me and what I went through. But yoga, Yoga is an interesting one because yoga I started yoga way before I was a lawyer. I used to play football and I, I don't know, I must have read some articles somewhere about it was, it was way, way back, so I don't know what football it was and they must have been a really real pioneer but used yoga to kind of help with their sort of flexibility and stuff. So I started going to the odd class when I could afford to go and enjoyed it. But I was, I was hopeless. Like I literally was like the tin man in the back of the class and I was often the only guy, often the only black gu. It was like way, way back but I'd still come back to it off and on. And then when I became a lawyer and obviously I had money and when I started to sort of feel some stress, I started to go, I found classes and I would just go. And I found that it really helped to just center me really to just yes, physically make me sort of feel more relaxed and gain a bit more flexibility. But more in my mind the more that I went and the more that I kind of understood about yoga, the more I kind of felt the mental and the spiritual benefits it as well. But again working in big law, there were times I'd booked to go to a class and just wouldn't be able to get out to, to get a class and that would frustrate me. And so I went through periods where I would go and then I wouldn't and then I would go and then I wouldn't. And I think for me, Singapore, I again was the same cycle of going for a bit then not going for a bit. But as I say 20, 2019 after I had that enough is enough and I went through that sort of training for boxing that led me back to yoga and I was like, wow, this is, this is really what I need. This is really helping me start to figure certain things out. And I moved from a more I guess fitness based class to one where there was no music. And it was very much about the self inquiry and that's really what I needed at that moment in my life. Because then it's like suddenly you're kind of almost alone with your thoughts. You're in a class and you're going through the, through the postures but you're also being forced to look inward. And I just knew that it's something that I needed to share with people and I knew I wanted to teach. I just hadn't really figured out what that would look like and when I would get the time to do that and Then as I say, fortunately, getting laid off and having time meant that I could go and spend a month just doing my teacher training full time. And it's probably one of the most transformational periods of my life. And there are still aspects of that that I fall back on, still aspects of that that I still don't understand. And this is the thing. Yoga is an, it's an. It's an ongoing lifelong journey of discovery. Discovery about, about yoga, discovery about the world, but more importantly, discovery about yourself.

Yeah, totally. It's. It's so interesting. Like, I think I don't have one day in my life now that I don't think back on the time when I did my teacher training or I was with the, the teachers that, that ended up training me for, for being a yoga teacher. Because a transformational experience and you really get to understand, like, oh, that's why the teacher is asking me to put my head down or in a forward fold or whatever it is. It's not just that fitness class of we want to stretch our hamstrings and we want to get big bicep muscles and all these things. There's so much more to it, but you don't understand it until you actually take the time to dive into the philosophy and the theory behind it. And I'm curious to know, now, you already mentioned it a little bit, that sometimes you had a yoga class booked when you were in the office and you'd have to cancel it because something urgent came up at work. I think we've all been there. But did your co workers and the partners know that you were practicing yoga and breath work or did you keep it a secret?

Yeah, it's interesting. There were kind of two sides of it. So. No, initially, no, because again, it wasn't really particularly, particularly as a guy, particularly as a. I was a senior associate then and, you know, you're supposed to give everything to the job and saying, I'm going to leave and go to a yoga class. I didn't feel that I could say that because that's the environment that I was in, that's the environment that was created. But then there was the other side of that. Whereas once I grew in confidence, once I knew that this wasn't the world I wanted to be in and I, and I, and I could go out and explore the opportunities, I, I became a lot bolder about, I'm going. It was in my calendar at work and I would just go. I remember there was one time, it was a Friday evening and we had, we had Some post work thing in the office. And I knew I had to leave at 6 to be able to make my class. And we, I think I can't remember exactly what we were doing, but we've been speaking to teams and we're doing some certain things. And anyway, it kind of got to sort of five minutes, six. I was like, okay, I need to go. And I remember the managing partner. So where are you going? It's like I'm off to a yoga class and there's this kind of like this look of, of I guess surprise or on the face. What are you doing? But, but by that point I had stopped hiding the fact that I was going off or I didn't look at it as though sneaking. I was like, this is my commitment. This is kind of what I'm, what I'm going to do. But that only came as I grew in confidence. And that confidence came from better understanding myself and what I wanted and where it was that I wanted to be and realizing how important yoga was to that journey.

Yeah. Because that would be my next question, how to overcome these reactions. I think we've all been there. When I quit my law firm job and, and I had a month in between to, before I had to start my new job, some of the partners asked me like, what are you going to do this month? And I was like, I'm off to Greece to, to do some yoga teacher training and just like dive into my practice. And I'd be like, what the. Like, why would you do that? And like I had so many reasons for why I wanted to do that. But just the, the look on their faces like that is, that is the weirdest thing they've ever heard. Like, why would you take time to just sit on a mat and gaze over a mountain in Greece for, for a month? And I was like, I couldn't think of anything I'd rather do for that month.

Yeah, exactly. And I think this is the. Once you've, once you've tried it, once you've really got to the essence of what yoga is and what it can do for you. I think it does change you, whether you do your training or not, whether you teach or not. I just think that you, it's one of those things where you can't unsee what you've already seen. I mean, once you've experienced how it can make you feel. And once you've experienced, oh, wow, there was it, there was a depth to me there that I didn't really know was there. And it's uncomfortable exploring it, but actually by doing that, a lot of things start to make sense. Why I didn't like this situation or why I didn't get on with that person or, or why I wanted to go down this path and not that path. Once you've been through all of that, I think it's, it's very hard to, to walk away from that. And I think you then become more vocal in talking about it because it's like anything, when you have something that helps you and, you know, can help other people, you want other people to know about it. So then the problem becomes trying to not talk about yoga too much.

It's like there's no in between. There's like the stage where you hide that you're doing yoga and then there's the yelling it from the top of the, the roof, like, here we go. Like, go to yoga. Everyone do yoga. Or you have low back pain, go to yoga. Or you have a headache, go to yoga.

Yeah, exactly. You become, you become that person. But yeah, that's, but yeah, that's. That, that was the thing for me. Once I realized what it was doing for me, that kept me going. And actually, funnily enough, it's the yoga that led me to coaching. And they're real. I found that there are real connections between them because I think if I hadn't done the yoga, I hadn't done the teacher training, then I maybe would not have felt, felt comfortable being a coach and, and really enjoyed that. But both things are the same for me. Teaching people yoga and coaching people, seeing the transformation, that's really what it is for me is seeing that transformation in people. People can come to a yoga class for an hour and they can arrive really stressed. The train was late. They were, they were going to be late. They've had a bad day at the office. And then at the end of the class, you're kind of taking them out of Shavasana and they're like, wow, I feel so relaxed. I feel so calm. And that's, for me, that there's, there's nothing better than that, you know, and the same with coaching. When somebody comes struggling with a particular issue or feeling like they don't have enough time or they're really stressed all the time. I had a client say to me the other day that now I was like, well, what, what kind of, what, what have you taken away from the work that we've done? And they said, well, there's all of this stuff which I, which you said that I would get, but actually I don't need that extra glass of wine at the end of a day now, or I don't need that sort of snack because I'm already calm. I'm already cultivating that inner peace from the work that we've done. These are the things to me which are really important and which both yoga and coaching combine together can really make that huge difference in your life and transform the way that you look at things and the way that you deal with situations as they arise.

Yeah, for sure. And I think it's for people that don't know a lot about yoga, they think of it as, well, it's just this asana practice or doing the physical postures on the mat in your tight yoga pants and some funky color. But once you dive deeper into it and understand the whole philosophy behind very much ties into the whole coaching and mentoring, almost like a therapy kind of thing, if you find a teacher or a coach who can really explain the basics of yoga philosophy to you, it very much becomes this therapeutical practice. There are so many things that I've learned in my own therapy sessions with my psychologist that I think I would not have been able to implement in my life if I, I didn't have the practice of yoga to come back to and say, okay, I remember my psychologist reminded me to do this, but I don't know how to take it into practice until I was in some yoga class or meditation where the teacher explains to me, oh, remember to be kind to yourself. That is the theme of today's class. And I'm like, oh, I guess that's how you learn to be kind to yourself. I don't know what other people do, but that's my approach at least.

Yeah. And I think that thing about yoga is it gives you, it gives you the space to have those breakthroughs. I think if you're looking at it, if you're looking at fitness practices, they tend to be quite high pace. They tend to be, you know, I mean, you're, you're, you're hitting something, you're running at something, you're jumping over something. So there isn't really much time to think about anything else. And that's good. It was the same for me with boxing. With boxing, all I could do was focus on what I was doing. Otherwise I get punched in the face, you know, I mean, so you've really got to be switched up with yoga. What I like is that you, you have that time to really look inward. So in the transition or when you're in the pose itself and you're holding it and you're focusing on your breath. How often, how often do you have that stillness in your day? How often do any of us do? We're always rushing from one thing to another or thinking about emitting and one of the things. But when you're literally just being led from pose to pose, you're holding that pose, you're focusing on the breath. In that focus, so many things come up, so many things come out. And I think that's why it's really important for me, a really important aspect of life. It isn't just about the fitness, it is about everything. And it always comes back to self inquiry. What are you finding out about yourself? What's going on for you? What is in there? What's really hidden? What are you really kind of suppressing from the world? What are you not showing? What are you not sharing? And how can you bring those out in a way that is true to you, that serves you and that serves the people around you?

Yeah. And that's scary, right? Most of us, when we come home or when we have a break, we pull out the phone and scroll through social media and news just to fill our brains with everything else so we don't have to deal with whatever is going on inside the mind. I see myself still doing that even though I have my yoga practice. And I'm like, oh, I should totally not take my phone out now. I should take these 30 seconds that I have to just be with myself. But it can just sometimes be so scary to dive into that deep darkness of hidden truths and secrets about yourself. So taking the first step is difficult. And I'm curious to hear if you have some examples of challenges you've had at work or in your career where yoga techniques helped you get through it. Like something you experienced in your office once you started to get more confident with your practice and you said, wow, there's actually a way that I can link these two things together. This thing I do over here on my yoga mat, I could take it with me into my legal practice.

Good question. I don't think of a direct link to my legal practice, but what I think it has done is I talked about confidence before and I think I'd also talk about courage as well. I think that when you get on the mat, particularly when you're not used to practicing yoga, it can be quite daunting. Particularly if you're in a room where everyone seems to know what they're doing and everyone's doing these funky postures and you're like, my Body is never going to be able to do that. But once you keep going and once you get comfortable, then you can start to try. You just. So for example, crow pose. Crow pose is one of those where you just feel you're going to fall flat on your face and smack your face into the floor. So there's a certain fear of, of trying, right? And so your instinct is to say, well, I just can't do that, you know, I just can't do that, I'm not even going to try. And we approach a lot of things in life like that. We just think, well, that's not for me, so I'm not even going to try, I can't do that. So I'm just not going to attempt it.

It.

But actually on the map, once you start to break down what crow pose is and how you make it happen into its components, then you realize actually it's all just a process. And if you trust the process, the process will lead you to the outcome. And so by giving yourself, by giving, by putting that trust in the process, you then allow yourself to get to the end goal. And I think that that's something which I take away and carry just into life generally. And it has then allowed me to go off and do things which two or three years ago I never would have thought that I would do. Because it's now a case of, okay, well, just trust in the process. I trust myself that I can figure it out and I trust that I can just go through that process and that will get me to where it is that I want to get to. So therefore it's not that the fear isn't there, but now it's like, well, I just trust, you know, and at the end of the day I've fallen out of crow pose a number of times. It's not the end of the world, you know, I haven't died, you know, I haven't severely injured myself. And so actually the worst thing that could happen actually isn't that bad anyway. And so there are all of these lessons on, on the mat which actually if you're really intentional about what you're doing and you're really taking the time to do that self inquiry rather than just trying to have the best looking pose in the class, you will then start to those similarities and then see how you can apply the asana on the mat in your class to the rest of your life and to your everyday life.

Yeah, for sure. It's funny that you mentioned this with falling out of crow pose a million times. I'VE definitely done it before and smacked my face on the floor into a cushion if I remembered to place that in front of me. But even this morning, I was practicing with a new teacher that I've recently come into contact with, and I really love his style. And. And he was guiding us through this practice with a couple of advanced postures, for sure. And he was like, he kept reminding us that the fact that you can get your head to your knee in a forward fold, it might be that you can. It might be that you're not able to yet. And he was like, I have a secret I want to share with you. Just because you can get your nose to your knee doesn't mean that all your problems will go away. You will still have the same problem problems, even though your nose comes to the knee. And he kept reminding us of this, and I was like, this is such a great reminder, and I think that counts for our career, too, that we're so focused on always reaching that goal, reaching that promotion, that bonus, whatever it is, becoming partner, passing an exam, passing the bar. And you're like, once I've passed this milestone, I'm going to be happy. I'm going to have so much success. I'm going to just, like, love my life. But if you haven't dealt with whatever is going on inside of you, why you're so obsessed with getting your nose to the knee or getting that promotion, whatever it is, then the problems are going to stay the same and they'll just grow and grow and grow.

Oh, exactly. I. And I love that because. So I remember when I first went to. To teach yoga, and I was doing a. I was doing a podcast then, and I was sort of talking to people who had practiced yoga, and it kind of helped them sort of figure certain things out in their life. But one of the things that I would often say is that if I decided to leave big law and become a yoga teacher without doing any of the work that I had done, nothing would have changed. I would have just been a miserable lawyer and then a miserable yoga teacher, because I'd be looking to the external to solve all of my problems. Whereas I feel that what yoga teaches you, what yoga helps you with, same with coaching, is it teaches you that you need to look inside yourself. And rather than waiting for external things to give you what you need, validation, fulfillment, happiness, it's looking at how can I create those things for myself? Now, where I am right now, I may have these. These goals, these things that I want to achieve. But what you realize Is that you get the thing and it's just like, I feel a little bit empty. I mean, once that initial excitement has gone, you feel a little bit empty. And it's because you've been waiting for that thing to give you the feeling you've been after. I talk about living a life that's. That's lit. And for me, that's what it is. It's that life of fulfillment. There's moments of joy, there's moments of feeling, like, yeah, I mean, I'm really enjoying life. But that isn't like something that happens down the line. It's something that you start with today. How can you find those moments? Maybe it is stepping on your mat for 10 minutes and that makes you feel great. Maybe it's having that cup of coffee, you know, I mean, maybe it's just sitting in stillness and really connecting with your breath or connecting with your thoughts. But those moments, those feelings only come from the internal, you know, I mean, if you're looking for them externally, they will be fleeting and they won't give you that lasting, sustainable feeling that it is that you're after.

And it's a great reminder because we can all start implementing that today. I definitely reached that, like, realization this year, actually, because I finally reached a milestone of passing the bar exam. And I finished this education that I've been working to achieve for the past eight, nine years. And it was like, wow, I'm done. What now? Because I still wasn't happy. It's not like, oh, I got my certificate, and then, okay, I can call myself an attorney, I can call myself a lawyer, but I'm not someone who goes out and brags about that. So it's not going to make me happy. And, yeah, then we need some other goals to work towards for sure.

Well, I always say that actually, what it comes down to is that I think goals are important. Goals are what. What most of what motivates us. Goals are what gets us up in the morning. It's like having that mission, something to work towards. I feel that that is important, but actually, the. It's not the most important thing. The most important thing is the process. It's what you learn and who you become in the process of trying to achieve that goal. Because. Because in going towards any goal, there were so many skills that you learn, so many obstacles you have to overcome. And you learn about yourself. You learn how resilient you are. You learn how you can solve problems. You build up this body of evidence that you can look upon and rely upon to help you get after the next goal in the future. So even if you are going off to a goal and you don't quite get that thing at the end, you'd have gained so much just by going through that process. And you'll have become a different person just through the growth that you've experienced in going through that process. So goals are great. Have them. I, I fully support having goals, I fully support having a mission and things to get after. But really, again, it comes to that point of, look at yourself each day, like, what have I learned about myself? Who am I? Who have I become? What am I doing here? And take that, take what you've gained from the process as the main prize, the main trophy. And if you hit the goal at the end, then that's just the icing on the cake.

Exactly. But it's not hitting that goal that's going to make you happy. It's like that, the cheeky yoga quote that's floating all over social media with like, it's in Pachimotanasana, the seated forward fold. It's not about reaching your toes, it's what you learn on the way down there. And I'm like, oh, it's so cheeky, but it's so true. And it's like everything we've just talked about, right?

Exactly. Yeah, exactly. I'd forgot about that. And that is that thing, that connection between yoga engaging and personal development. I mean, it's the same process, right? They've been talking about this in yoga for hundreds and hundreds of years and we're still talking about it today. It's very much that process, like, what do you learn about yourself? Are you someone who's trying to force the agenda? Are you somebody who allows yourself to surrender to the process? Are you connecting with your breath? Are you holding your breath? What's the difference? When you do each of those two things? There's so much just from that simple move, that simple posture that you can learn about yourself. So, yeah, I think it's fantastic.

Yeah. And I know you have gone through also a very cool process of writing your own book. And I'd love to hear more about that book because every time I hear someone who's not like, said, since they were a child, I'm going to be an author. So when you write a book, I'm like, wow, how do you even start off with writing a book? How do you know what to put down? And all these empty piece of pieces of paper. That's the process as well. And I'm just curious to know what's your book actually about? And. And how did you get into writing it?

Sure. So the book is called the Triple C Method. Gain clarity, boost confidence, and build courage so you can live life lit. And the book is really bad. Thank you.

Also, your podcast intro. It's. I think I almost know it by heart now. And I'll walk around and be like, live life lit.

Excellent. This is, this is what we're doing. We're trying to make everybody live. Live life lit. And it came about. It's funny because I. I always wanted to write. And being a Big Law, I just felt my creativity got. Got suppressed. And when I left Big Law, suddenly I just had all of these thoughts and ideas come out of me and I started writing again. And I thought I'd write a book. I thought I was going to write this big memoir about Big Law. And like most people, I kind of wrote for a couple of days and then was like, yeah, I've left that and never went back to it. But as I started coaching, what I. What I liked is that I was learning more about my clients. So although I have my own story to go on, as I coached more people, I learned there was all these similarities, but also some slight differences as well, and other ways that I could help people. But social media, I just felt that your quote is your. Your quote, your caption is there for a day or two, and then it disappears into the ether. There was no sort of a lasting, lasting legacy. There was no sort of lasting way that people could go and find what I was sharing that could potentially help them. So as I got clearer on my method of coaching and how I help people, and on the importance in my own process of the three pillars of clarity, confidence, and courage, I thought that, okay, well, I could maybe write a book about it. And started toying with the idea. And it was funny because I. I could probably have still been toy with the idea now if it wasn't for a conversation I had with a. With a coach I had at the time. And I kind of thrown out this comment just like, yeah, I might go write a book. Just like, okay, what would it be about? And I explained, how many words do you think you can write a day? And I was just like, yeah, I could probably write, you know, me, about sort of 500 to a thousand words a day. She's like, and what days could you write? And I didn't really see where this is going. I should have done being a coach myself. And she was like, so basically you could have a Book. You could have a first draft of a book finished in like, like, I think she said, end of September. And I was like, oh, I really don't have an excuse now, do I? It's just a case of deciding to do it. So I did. I scheduled the time in my diary, Monday to Friday, 5:30 to 7:30am before the kids got up. I would sit down to write. Some days I would write a lot, some days I wouldn't write much. But that was, that was the schedule. I just sat down to write. And she was right. I got the first draft done in couple of months. First draft was awful. And I cried. And I was like, I could never put this out. It's terrible. But then I kind of got a good book coach. And she's like, no, it's not. This is, this is fine. Now you just need to flesh it out. And yeah, before you know it, the. The book took shape and came out in April 2022. And I love again to go back to what I was saying before about the process. I was really excited about having a book out, but I learned so much about myself in the process of writing it. It obviously I revisited old stories, things came up I hadn't thought about in a long time. I saw myself through different eyes. I learned my own sort of process of dedication, of discipline, of knowing my wine. When I knew really why I wanted to write this book. To help people who'd been in position that I had been in, to give them that sort of doorway of hope, to show them that there is another way of living life. Then, then getting up and writing just became easy and not worrying about what people might say. Because for me, the. The message was more important. I have this saying, service over ego. And if I'm being in service, that is more important than my ego. It's more important than worrying about what people might say, worrying about embarrassment in myself, because I feel that what I have to say is important is going to help. So therefore I will say it. And so, yeah, the book, book came out and then I recorded the audiobook as well. And it's just being a really, really good process. And it's been really great hearing some of the feedback from people and hearing how it's helped people, clients who I've worked with, who have read it alongside the work that we've done, and even people who have never worked with me who have just said, it's really given them a different way of looking at life. And it's really helped them start to kind of look at how they can do what it is that they want instead of doing the thing that they, they never wanted to do in the first place. So, yeah, loved it. I would advise everyone to write a book at some point in their life.

Yeah, I really like hearing about that. That whole process of scheduling and just saying, like, well, what time can I find in my diary? Okay, I have two hours early in the morning, and then I'm just gonna make it happen. You could do that for anything. And you could do it also for less than two hours, and then it's just going to take a little bit longer, whatever it is. Also installing a morning routine. It's just so interesting to hear about this. Once you find the discipline and you're like, I need to get this message out there. And I guess it's also been really beneficial to go through that process to transition into what you're doing now of coaching lawyers and corporate professionals. Almost like to get that framework in place within yourself and be like, how is it that I'm actually going to help them? And I could imagine that is so much easier if you've already written down the whole recipe and shared it in a book. And then of course, you can just take the time to outline it and, and make it specific to, to the person or the client you have sitting in front of you. It's almost like legal method.

You're right. Actually never thought of it like that, but yes, yeah, yeah, it's true. It's true. Because when you, when you write, you get, you get things clear in your own head. We spend so much time in our head and we have all these ideas floating around, but when you write, when you actually get it out of your head, you can then start to sort of see, well, there's a pattern here. There's a framework, there's a formula. And so you're getting it down and being able to point people to the book if they want to find out more, they can see the content, see. Well, that concept sounds interesting. Go to the book and just see what I'm. Where I'm coming from, what I'm about, what I help people with, how I've helped people. It just, for me, it's one of those things where the book will always be there. The book will always, always live on regardless. So it was a lot of. There were a lot of, A lot of tears, a lot of frustration, a lot of anger in the process, but having it there really for me is like, wow, I've done that. And it's something that sits there and it's something which I can then build upon as well. So hence the podcast. The podcast was inspired by the book, you know, sort of taking some of the concepts of the book and kind of expanding on them, just giving a different spin on them. Because also the thing about a book is that it's written, but as I learn more and as I grow, I will expand on some of those concepts. And some things may shift a little bit, some things may change a little bit. And so the podcast allows me a platform to kind of take people on that journey as well. So from the book to the podcast and then beyond.

Yeah, and then perhaps bringing them on as clients, I guess. And how do you help them implement these tools and this method that you've outlined in the book and in your podcast? So if you have this classical lawyer who's like, like, you have to be flexible to do yoga, or a real yoga class is like 90 minute hot sweating power in a room, which I think we've clarified by now. That is not the only side of yoga. But how do you. How do you help them implement these tools in their lives so they can show up in their careers and in their lives as the best version of themselves?

Well, intentionally, I mean, intentionally. The book doesn't include yoga and it. Which is interesting because obviously it's such a big part of my life. But I know, I know the lawyer resistance to yoga. And so I wanted something where they could just pick it up and go through it without any of that initial resistance. But there have been clients who I have worked with and they have maybe mentioned that they have been to yoga class or that sometimes they'll do a class. And so then I will start to share. I mean, I have yoga flows, which I've compiled myself, or I will share some breathwork techniques that I know can, can help them. And what I will say to them is just, just try it. I mean, just try it. And we'll check in next week or between sessions and let me know what shifts for you. How do you feel? Because I think when you invite people to experience something and give them that option, it's. They're more likely to feel like, well, it's my idea, so therefore I'll go ahead and try. As opposed to saying, you must do this and it will make you feel like this. You're going to be like, yeah, I don't want to do that. I've tried it before. I've tried meditation before. It didn't work for me. I tried yoga before. It didn't work for Me. But if you just invite them and say, look, five minutes, 10 minutes, just give it a go and then just let me know how you feel, they will then start to see that shift for themselves. Oh, suddenly I feel like I have a little bit more energy or I feel a bit more awake or I feel my stress is reduced. You know, I mean just these little shifts can start to help somebody get curious and want to dig deeper. So really I, I class myself both as yoga. I mean I, we all call ourselves yoga teachers, but I prefer to call myself a yoga, a guy because all I'm doing is kind of guiding people back to themselves. And I'm doing that through the process of yoga, of breath work, of meditation, and also of coaching really. So that's really what it is. I'm really there to invite people to experience these different things, these tools, these strategies to see how they feel in their body, how they, how they can integrate them into their lives. And if they do that, then to see what differences arise for them. Do they have more time, do they feel less stress, do they have more energy, do they have better relationships with the people around them? You know, I mean, because once you see the change. Yeah, you're going to want to do more of it.

Exactly. Just starting with that one minute or five minute, whatever you have and then naturally it's going to expand from there. Yeah, we can always like, your clients are so lucky to have that framework.

Thank you. I like to think so. But I'm also lucky to have them. There's some great, the beauty about the, the people that I work with is because obviously I, I've been in that world, but they're always really driven, really ambitious, really quote unquote successful, but they are willing to do the work, they are open, they're coming to me because they see certain things that aren't working in their own life that they want to change and therefore they're willing to, to sort of lean upon me and my experience and at least give things a try, at least sort of see and keep that open mind. And that's what I love. I think if I haven't yet had a client who's come to me, he was really close minded and said I only want to work on this or who's come to me and says I want a new job and I just want to make money and I want to do this and I don't want to do any of the other stuff, you know, I mean, everyone has come to me with this is the thing that I'm struggling with, but then has allowed me to kind of guide them how I sort of see fit to kind of get to where they want to get to. And they always then see that everything's interconnected. If it's your job, then that's connected to money, which is connected to your relationships, which is connected to your health. They're all interconnected. So once you can fix things, or not necessarily fix things, but you can find a strategy or a way of working in one area, you can then apply that to other areas as well. And then these sorts see this huge shift and transformation across your entire life.

Yeah, yeah. That's also one thing I've heard before that for therapists and coaches and teachers, mentors, it can be really like almost easy to work with people that have already achieved, like high achievers basically, because they know what it means to put in the work to achieve a goal. And if they come to you or to a therapist or whoever and says, I'm not feeling well, tell me what I need to do to feel better, they get the framework and then it's like, well, okay, I know how to solve a task. I'll just start from A and I'll end with C. And then, wow, it's actually working. And I think it's really good that, or at least it's. How can you say, like promising that if you are a lawyer, if you're a law student and you're used to putting in the work, then there's actually hope out there that you can feel better because you know what it means to, to get the job done.

Yeah, exactly. I think, I think the biggest struggle, particularly with lawyers, is it's not that they, it's not that they're not open minded, that they don't feel that things can change because again, we're conditioned to believe that things, things have always been this way and therefore they would always be this way. But once you can show people actually you have options or start to question why they hold certain beliefs that they have, you realize actually those beliefs aren't really rooted in anything. And once you make that realization, suddenly it's just like, oh, so all of these things I've been sort of relying on and sort of stating as gospel all this time, they're not actually true. I can just change them. I can actually have the power to do that. Once you get to that point, then that's where the magic really happens because then you can start to explore all of these other opportunities and you're no longer held back by the constraints of Your previous conditioning or you're no longer feel confined to the box. Going back to what I said earlier that people have tried to put you in.

Yeah, yeah, you can expand out of your box. That's so great. And I'm curious to hear what kind of advice you would give to young law students, law grads, lawyers, who want to have this thriving legal career that we've both had. And it looks great on the outside, but maybe they feel limited by feelings like. Like anxiety or uncomfortable bodily sensations or exhaustion. What would you say to them? Like, if you do this, then you can have that thriving legal career that you always dreamt of.

For me, it always starts with clarity, and it starts with knowing who you are. So you need to know who you are, what your values are. Once you know that, then you need to know what is that you want. So what do you want your life to look like? How many hours do you want to work? Where do you want to live? Who do you want to be with? With what? The things you want to do? Where do you want to go on holiday? You know, and with all of those things, ask yourself why you want them. Because I feel that we can. We can jump into these careers without asking ourselves any of those questions, you know, I mean, so many people end up in big law because they are the biggest firms, they are the loudest firms, they pay the most money, they have the glossy brochures. I mean, everyone looks at it as, you're really successful, but they never really question, but do I want to do that? Because if you want to be a lawyer and have a thriving legal career, there are so many, many ways that you can do that. Yeah, I mean, it can look different for so many people. You work for a small firm, you work for a startup, a boutique, you contract, you know, I mean, you, you work in house. There were so many options available to you that unless you really get to the essence of who you are, what it is and why you want it, what kind of lifestyle you want, then you won't make the right decision for you. So that's where I would, I would always start, is figure out your core values and then figure out how you can build a life in accordance with those values, what that looks like. And if that's big law and you can find a big law firm that fits all those boxes and gives you the life that you want and aligns with your values, etc. Do you mean, then fine, you know, you're going into it with your eyes wide open, but if not, you can look at alternatives that are going to work for you.

That is such a good tip. Like, everyone could basically just go like two minutes back into the episode, start writing down the tips you said and start filling it out in that notebook. Be like, what do I want with my life? I know it's not an easy question, but all these sub questions that you suggested, it's really going to bring some clarity to the table and I love that. I wish I would have done the same. And if there's one thing you could change about the way you had approached your legal career early on, what do you think you would have changed? Is it this or is it something else?

I think it's. I think it is probably what I just said. I, I went into law partly for the money. I. I'd been broke for so long, I'd worked in the music business, it hadn't worked out. And my intention had always been to go back into the music business as a lawyer after I qualified. But then I discovered the world of finance, I discovered the world of big law, and I discovered what it paid. And I was like, oh, wow, this is more money than I've ever seen. I can actually start to have a life. Life having had years of, I mean, no holidays, living in a flat with a roof caved in when it rained. I mean, just trying to survive on sort of one meal a day sometimes to finally actually be able to get paid. So that was probably my. My primary driver. And I think if I'd gone through the process that I had just talked about, maybe I still would have gone down that path because the money still would have been good, but I would have had an end goal inside. I would have had a plan in sight. It would have been like, I'm going to do this, pay off these debts, make this happen, but my end goal is going to be this as. Rather than just allow myself to be carried along by this train without kind of thinking about whether I wanted to.

Get to the destination, and then maybe just checking in with these questions once in a while as you go through the journey, maybe once a year or maybe once a month, whatever you feel like. Because things change, right? And it might be you start your law school journey and you're like, oh, I just want to be this big law lawyer, earning tons of money and becoming partner. And then you get into the world and you're like, maybe that's actually not what I want. And we're allowed to change. We're allowed to say, well, I found this really interesting opportunity over here and it Might look like I'm taking a step to the left. And maybe it doesn't create this big, linear, beautiful resume that I wanted to have. But ask yourself, why do you even want that resume? What's it going to do for you? Is it going to make you happy? I think not exactly.

With great. Yeah, with growth, we change. And also, we don't really know something until we try it, which is why I'm so big on taking action. You can think and theorize all you like, but until you're actually in the room, you've actually done doing the thing, you don't know whether you like it. You can have a thought, and so then it's up to you to go and go and explore that thought, but you can't know. And so when you're in it, if it's not working, then, yeah, don't be afraid to change your mind. Don't be afraid to pivot. This is how we find our path. Have. And, yeah, you've got to keep checking in. You've got to keep coming back to these questions. You know, I mean, I keep coming back to them. You know, I mean, in terms of my core values. Okay, because your core values, we all have values, and we probably all have a lot of the same values, but our core values at any given time may be slightly different. I mean, what, we may switch out one for another. I mean, our mission may change, our purpose may change. So we always need to be coming back to. Coming back to the mat or coming back to your coach, or coming back to sit in stillness and just kind of reevaluating. Okay, where am I now? And is this where I want to be? Am I heading in the right direction? Do I need to make it? Make a sort of slight diversion here and go another way? And that's why with the book, I have the free workbook, because it allows you to keep coming back to this framework. I mean, rather than thinking in your head, what should I ask myself? It's right there. You can just go through the process and check in with yourself and compare to where you were, say, six months ago or a year ago, and see the growth that you've had and see the changes that you've made made. Because we can forget how far we have come, because we're always going forward. And sometimes it's nice to be like, actually, I've done a lot. I'm doing pretty good here, and I should be easier on myself.

Exactly. That's such a great tip. Okay, we're. We're gonna start to wrap up here. But before we do, I want to ask you three real quick questions. Are you ready?

Sure. Yes.

What is one book you would recommend to law students, law grads and lawyers embarking on their career journey? And it doesn't have to be a law book.

Oh, I am going to go with the War of Art by David Pressfield, which I'm reading at the moment. And I'm going to go with that because it's about, I feel everyone has some, a sense of creativity within them and it's all about creativity and resistance to that creativity and how you break that resistance. And I feel that as lawyers we, we often suppress our creativity or we're often told that we're not creative people. And I believe everybody has creativity within them, however that manifests itself. So by finding a way and by breaking the resistance and getting your creative creativity out of you, I feel is going to help you in your life. It will help make you a better lawyer if that's the road that you decide to go down or it will help you see other opportunities that arise for you. So that's what I'm going to go with. The War of Art.

That's the War of Art. I'm going to read that as well. Add it to my list. Okay. What is your number one tip to deal with a toxic work environment?

I'm laughing because I've had two clients recently who have come to me with similar, similar issues. I think the problem with a toxic work environment is that you are only one person and so you alone can't change the environment. It takes multiple willing participants to change an environment. So I think you have to assess, first of all, can the environment be changed? If there's one person making it toxic and there are other people around who support you, then there may be a way that the environment can be changed. But if there's one or more people being toxic and they are being upheld by other people, then you probably need to get out of the environment because you're not going to be able to change it. So I think that you have to preserve your own well being as best as you can. And that can, that can look like not engaging or engaging as little as possible with the person or the people who are toxic. But it also looks like looking for opportunities to get out of that situation, recognizing the signs and not feeling. I'll just pull up with it and see how it goes. Because if it's toxic now and no one is doing anything about it, it's unlikely to change. So take, I would Say, take control, empower yourself and make the decision to find your exit.

Great advice. And if there's one thing you could change about the curriculum in law school, what would you change?

Difficult questions? I think it depends. So obviously law is different in, taught differently in different jurisdictions. What I would say for me is that law school, so not my undergrad but actual law school, didn't really prepare me or anyone I know for practice in terms of the work that we did. And I think that. So I think that the, I think the curriculum has to be more honest. It has to be more honest in terms of what is expected of you once you enter the legal world, particularly entering big law, to paint a real picture. I think often as law students you can be invited to these graduate recruitment events. Everything's rosy. You'll paint this great picture of the benefits and the salary and all that kind of stuff. But very, very rarely given the real picture, the real sort of downsides. Because I think if people are given the full picture, then they can, they can make that, make an informed decision. So, yeah, that's what I would say. I think, I think more honesty in terms of what, what the practice of law looks like on a day to day basis. Yeah, we'll go with that.

I wish, I wish I would have known some of that before I embarked on my journey, for sure. Is there anything else that you want to share before we finish up here today?

I think all that I would share is that yoga really helped me as. It really helps you. Laura has. It's really helped so many other people. And so I would encourage you, if you've never practiced yoga or maybe if you went to one class and had a bad experience, to maintain an open mind and look at it beyond the physical and look at it more as an act of self inquiry, an act of healing, an act of self care, and looking at something that can really help you find the success you're looking for, whatever that success looks like.

Oh, that's such a great, great tip. Because it's. We were always faced with this, like, I don't want to do yoga. And the first yoga class I went to was, it was awful and I would have never come back unless I, I really had to. So we've all been there and if someone would like to, to check out your book or your podcast or yoga coaching offers, anything else that you're doing, where can they find you?

So, so my website is iamryspence.com so that's very easy and you can find out everything there. I am on social media. So Instagram I'm at. I am underscore ryan Spence or LinkedIn where I'm hanging out more now on LinkedIn. LinkedIn seems to be the place where, where lawyers hang out. So having a lot of fun over there. Um, and the book, the C Method, you could obviously get that anywhere you get books. Amazon is obviously the big seller, but anywhere you can get your books. Audible if you want to hear the audio. And yeah, the podcast again, you find that on the, on the website as well, the Triple C project. So all the places, lots of free things for you to dive into and, and sort of figure out if you want to go further, you want to work together some more.

Yeah, I'll put all the links to your offers in the description to this episode. Thank you, Ryan, for being a guest on the Hatha Yoga podcast. And to anyone out there listening to our conversation, thank you so much for listening. As I've mentioned before, this podcast is a totally independent production, so every little bit of support from you truly means so much to me. If you're wondering how you can support the podcast, please leave a review on Apple Podcasts. Subscribe to the show or share it with someone you love in the real world or in cyberspace. You also are more than welcome to send me a message. Tell me about your journey. I would love to hear from you. Thank you everyone. And thank you, Ryan.

Thank you.