The one statement that changed my life after burnout

Nature is healing. So was this conversation.

During my burnout, the law firm I worked for lined up an appointment for me with their go-to senior coach, whose clinic was on a treelined street in southern Amsterdam. I biked there one cold and cloudless February day, relieved to have a break from the office.

Cees Stegenga was pleasant, direct and didn’t waste time. He was also a skilled senior coach and psychologist. Within five minutes of me entering his sunny, spacious office, he made a statement that set off fireworks in my mind:

“You already know if you want to stay at the firm or not.”

As he uttered these words, the world stopped. Goosebumps formed on my skin. All my focus was right there in the moment. My thoughts were a singular, big, gawping:

YES. I WANT TO LEAVE.

Appreciating that I could actually leave law after lawyer burnout caused pure freedom to suddenly course through my veins. It was as if I’d been having an out of body experience, and now I could feel my own heartbeat and see through my own eyes. I left those offices a changed woman.

“The most common form of despair is not being who you are” — Søren Kierkegaard

And I never went back — Cees was an excellent coach, but this simple insight helped me chart the course forward towards the life I wanted. Later, after quitting the firm, I started seeing a psychologist I’d worked with some years previously, to continue delving into my beliefs, ideas and residual childhood issues.

Because in order to really get past burnout, I had to understand how I could have gone 31 years without ever asking myself what I truly wanted — and why.

Cees’ words kickstarted an important journey. Despite having ample evidence that my role as a lawyer made me miserable and exhausted, I’d never even allowed myself to think about quitting, too scared by the consequences of giving up everything working at the firm provided.

• The prestige of a magic circle firm

• A tidy salary

• Being the envy of law graduates everywhere

• An ego-boosting sense of importance*

• The admiration and approval of peers, friends and family**

*The irony being, I didn’t think what I did was important — I thought it was kind of useless, making rich people richer. But it was important in other people’s eyes, and that’s the only measure I cared about at the time.

**The other irony being, the friends and family who truly care about me love me because of who I am, not my job title. In fact, I didn’t admire or approve of myself — which is exactly why I’d come to burnout in the first place.

Recently, Cees reached out through LinkedIn, and we ended up having a long, wending, fun conversation about burnout, COVID and life coaching. As our Zoom call ended and we waved our goodbyes, I felt grateful to reconnect with someone who had played such a pivotal role in the substantial shifts that have occurred in my life, post-burnout.

As I mentioned to Cees, “sometimes I wonder, if I told my younger self about how my life would play out: how would she respond? And I think she’d be surprised, excited — and proud of the woman she has become.”

Originally published on Medium in 2020.