the paradox of choice
Messy questions with no obvious answers are my favorite to explore. One of the most challenging is managing work and life. Is it one or the other, can we really do it all, and do it well?
I sat down with Kathleen Wu, a renowned and nationally recognized Real Estate Lawyer at Hunton Andrews Kurth, President of the Board of the US Tennis Association Foundation and an active parent, friend, partner and more.
From starting out in foster care to living her best life through a motto of #OnlyJoy, Kathleen shares how she does it all.
Here are five takeaways from our conversation:
More choices can actually decrease our overall satisfaction with our decisions (Barry Schwartz). Kathleen didn’t let the stress of choosing work vs. life early in her career hold her back because she didn’t feel like she had a choice - both a lens influenced by her upbringing and the lack of flexibility and support during the time she was becoming a law Partner and parent.
Decide what you want (this can be the hardest part), go all in, and then don’t look over your shoulder wondering ‘what if.’ In an era where there are more options for how to succeed, we can forget the important part of still making a choice, and from there going all in making that the right choice.
One day the ‘pats on the back’ stop coming or don’t mean as much. When that happens, determine how you want to measure your own success and find fulfillment that comes from within.
Get comfortable being uncomfortable. As soon as you realize, okay, this is just my state of being and that's okay, then things seem to settle down.
The best bottle of wine for only $35 - Riglos Malbec (clearly she’s on to something it’s sold out everywhere by me)! For more things wine, food, fashion, art and life visit her blog at whatwouldwuwear.com.
And those insights are just the tip of the spear. Want to go deeper - you can listen to the full episode here or read additional highlights from the interview below.
interview excerpts
Interview with Kathleen WuMarch 29, 2023__________
What is the one thing most people don't know about your origin story?
My origin story isn't what you would think it is. I was in foster care and adopted into a very lovely family in New York with two other adopted children, so when you see me now, 60 years later, I started out from a very different beginning, and my trajectory could have been a lot different. And as a result, that has had a lasting impact on how I view the world and what my lens looks like, even at that age. So that's probably what most people don't know about me.
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How exactly has that experience shaped your lens?
I never feel entitled to anything, never did. As a young child, when I could have asked my parents, for example, for tennis lessons and I watched the other children in the neighborhood go play tennis, it never occurred to me that I could ask for that. And I think that follows me through the rest of my life. I don't feel entitled to everything. Instead, I view everything as a privilege as opposed to entitlement.
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From the outside, it may look to many like you have been able to do it all - does it feel that way?
It does in a way, but that's because I didn't feel like I had a choice. Not because there was a financial carrot, not because there was parental pressure or spousal pressure. I just didn't feel like I had a choice but to do it all.
My lens on the world really made me see that it was a privilege to be able to have all of that in front of me, and so I felt I had no choice but to rise to whatever was in front of me at the time.
So it's more of a sense of privilege now rather than a view of sort of having it all. I feel very fortunate to be in this position.
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On this tension between work and life, at any point did you feel like you had to sacrifice being a good lawyer or a good parent, for example?
Yes. I think every mother or parent has some level of guilt, whether you're full time working or not. But in the end, it all worked out okay. That's what's interesting about life. The little things you stressed about don't end up really mattering that much in the long term.
So it's definitely a marathon and not a sprint. And so once you get that mindset shift, whether it's professionally or personally, then you're able to sort of not carry that sort of negative energy or guilt with you as you move forward. It’s a long road and you can’t stress about the little things or you're going to suffer the consequence of that.
But sure, I mean, trying to balance both motherhood and running a practice was very difficult. And I had to make choices. I had to make choices to get out of my comfort zone and get comfortable, not miserable, but comfortable being in a state of being uncomfortable.
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The weight of this work-life paradox is felt by many the most in day to day trade offs, so to get really granular what advice would you give to a senior associate up for Partner, for example, who is faced between a life event with their family and a client deadline?
It depends what you want. And when you do make that choice, then you have to be all in on the choice and not be looking over your shoulder.
Practically speaking, if it’s Christmas and they're making partner decisions on December 31, I'd probably say, yeah, you know what, suck it up and just work through and kill it. But that assumes you're already on superstar status.
And if it's that meaningful, a funeral, a big life event, and you go and don’t do the work you just have to trust your superstar status and your track record from the 7-8 years that preceded you and hope in this kinder, more gentler environment that you get the benefit of the doubt.
The firm is not going to want to lose out on the A player because they had an unfortunate timing of a life event or life phase even if that may take them months, years, whatever, to exit out and then come back in. There's always room for A players back into the cycle, but you have to be okay with knowing you're going to be a little bit delayed - and that delay is the kind of thing that feels like a big deal in the moment but really doesn’t matter in the long run.
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How do you measure your success and has that changed over time?
I think in the beginning, whether in school or in your job, whatever it may be, there's external factors that measure you, and that's how you view yourself as being successful. You got a good grade, you got a good performance evaluation, you got a pat on the back in some way, and then at some point, you don't get that anymore, and you have to figure out how to measure your own success.
And so I feel like I'm in a position of privilege. I get to work for the clients who hire me. I get to have friends that want to be my friend. I get to have this beautiful family. And so to me, that is the measurement of success now, because really, there aren't any factors tapping me on the back, telling me I'm doing a good job.
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In one of your blog posts on What Would Wu Wear, you said, “fulfillment has to do with the stage of life we are in.” What did you mean by that?
Well, I think it goes a little bit back to what we were talking about earlier. At first, you feel fulfilled because of other people grading your performance, grading how you look, grading whatever it may be. That's how you start to feel good and fulfilled.
And then as I've moved through life, I get fulfilled by other things like a beautiful sunset looking out my window. So it's less external and more internal driven. But when you're younger, it has to be external driven, because that's all you know - I feel fulfilled at my job because I just got a great review, I just got a good bonus. So eventually, when you go through all that, and I do think that's important for growth, as soon as you get out of all that, you find fulfillment in little things or big things.
For example, after taking up golf about five years ago, I was recently at the golf academy, and I found fulfillment that I could finally extend my arm when I swing. I never had that feeling before, and it was this AHA moment.
It sounds so silly, but when I think about what fulfills me now and I don't want to sound so frivolous as a golf swing or a sunset, because there's lots of fulfilling things in my job. But you change a little bit, and you start to see other things that may fill you with this joy or fill you with a sense of accomplishment and purpose and adding value. I think when you're younger, you have to get it from outside sources. And you don't really have that moment of reflection or pause because you're too busy on the treadmill. So the more of those moments you can pause and choose to find fulfillment from things that are generated from within, I think the quicker you'll get to be where I am.
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What has being more internally motivated and fulfilled made possible?
I think it bleeds into all other areas, more patience with myself and with others, pausing and giving somebody more due, extending more courtesy. Because when you're fulfilled generally, you're not looking to the next thing as much. So I find I'm probably a better human being to others just by having a sense of well being, and not in the sense of a spa well being, but really in a sense of sort of just a sense of wholeness that I think before I didn't have because I didn't know what I was supposed to have.
Then eventually you figure out what you don't have, you might not even want, whether it's material or intangible, and then you figure out what really matters to you. That gives you the time and the pause to extend grace to people that you might not have before.
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I work with a lot of people who have never heard of coaching. What strikes you as interesting or promising about more lawyers or even just professionals in general working with a coach?
You have to love what you do in order to stick with it a long time. And I don't mean love because a lot of lawyers are miserable, but you have to like it enough as a transactional lawyer to get a deal high. So that's sort of what I mean by love. You're into the work, and you're thinking about the work at hand and what you're drafting, what you're doing and how you're negotiating it. So to the extent you think about that as love, then you'll stick with it longer.
I think having a coach can help people prevent or overcome a lot of the burnout I see happening around. And it's not really that they might not love what they do. They just don't know how to modulate it and regulate it to a certain extent. So I think coaches can serve a huge function there that's really a big gap in our industry. It's really just about trying to achieve and figure out what your balance should be for you personally in the context of a very stressful job.
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One powerful motto coaches refer to often is “what got you here won’t get you there (Marshall Goldsmith).” When you reflect on your own career and life, are there any shifts you had to make personally or professionally that helped you either perform better or to get more of what you wanted out of life?
My biggest shift has probably been my divorce. When it happened, I had a choice. I could be angry or I could not be angry. And it was at that moment that I developed my own mantra, which was “only joy”. So whenever a negative thought would come in my head, I would just go, Only joy. I'd block it out if it was music, putting on, whatever it would be, so that I would keep out any of the negative thoughts. And that became my mantra to this day. And so when I look at things that the world has gone through, whether COVID or I renovated a house in six months, or do anything that seemed almost insurmountable, I just go back to my hashtag onlyjoy, and it's really become transformative. So I actually thank my divorce in a funny way.
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Bringing this all together, knowing what you know now about career and life and your whole journey, what advice would you give your younger self today?
I think you have to get comfortable with being uncomfortable.
My first seven years of practice of law, I was constantly uncomfortable. There's a reason why you don't make partners for 9-10 years these days because you're still uncomfortable. And if you're with a very busy practice, there's always going to be challenges. And so as soon as you realize, okay, this is just my state of being and that's okay, then things seem to settle down.
Like I mentioned earlier, it doesn't mean that you have to be miserable. It just means that you have to be okay and comfortable with being uncomfortable so that you know that that's where the growth is happening. It all sort of makes sense. I think that's why they call it practice, practice of law. You do get better, but the only way you get better is not doing the same thing for seven years, but doing very different things for seven years. And then at the end of the rainbow, you wake up and you realize you're very skilled in a host of different areas because of that level of discomfort.
