The following is a guest post by Stephanie Haladner, who has recently launched Women in Law, a global networking and consulting organisation based in London designed to help lawyers bring balance into their lives and enthusiasm into their careers.

Painting a Vision

by Stephanie Haladner

Friend and fellow woman in law Jen Bird recently directed me to her blog ‘Painting a Vision’.  The title resonated with me immediately. And not just because over the last year I’ve found myself in the company of more than one painter. It’s been kind of weird. I go to a concert, I meet a painter. I’m eating eggs benedict, I’m approached by a painter. I attend a psychology conference, I sit next to a painter.  I reconnect with an old friend, she reveals she’s a painter.  I don’t really know why all this painter-magnetism has been happening. Psychologists might call it ‘concentrated focus’. Skeptics would call it coincidence. New-Agers (and Shakespeare) would say thinking about painters begets more painters. Creativity goddess Julia Cameron would say I’m a ‘shadow’ artist – too scared to become an artist, so gravitating to my rightful tribe. I can’t even draw a stick figure, but Julia may be on to something.

Moving past the literal, ‘Painting a Vision’ resonated with me because in addition to hanging out with painters over the last year, I’ve been busy painting a vision. When I left private practice, I left with a sense that my new career would involve helping people. During my seven years as a transactional lawyer, I’d always preferred humans to documents. So it was time to steer the career towards these humans. And when I thought about which humans to help, the answer was (as answers often are) right under my nose – women in law. Yes. I was a woman. I’d been in law. So who better to help than people just like moi!? So strong was this compulsion that I even inked ‘Will help women in law’ in my little book of visions.

How exactly I’d help I wasn’t sure. But I was sure about a few things:

1. I understood law firm culture;

2. I understood what it felt like to be a woman in law; and

3. I’d witnessed suffering (in myself and in others) at law firms –  the whole culture never made much sense to me.

Not that I didn’t meet many wonderful lawyers along the way – some of my best friends are lawyers, and I happen to be a big supporter of men in law (many a partner included). It was just that I consistently felt a subtle sense of alienation in the law firm environment. Even though I worked inside the firm, I was an outsider looking in. Call me Camus.

Strangely, after leaving the law firm existence, I found myself becoming even more existential. Minor topics like the meaning of life and how we perceive the world around us consumed me. I began to gorge on books on the human condition – everything from psychology, philosophy (yes, Alain de Botton counts), weird science and, to the horror of my rational brain, spirituality. I even indulged in The Secret, a book my rational brain had previously rejected as new-New Age hokum. The notion of your thoughts creating your reality was something I’d given little thought to when my brain was stuck on law. And the concept of invisible thoughts producing visible results in the real world seemed like cherry pie in a blazing red sky.

As chance would have it, I began to encounter people (and not just painters, but other artists, quantum physicists, neuroscientists, and the occasional yogi) who hinted that there was more to thinking than one might think. Those stories are for another day. The point here is that suddenly my mind opened up to the power of painting a vision. Begin with a thought, feed that thought with supporting words and actions, and you can turn that thought into a reality. Starting with the end in mind may in fact blow your mind. Pass the cherry pie.

Within weeks of painting my vision, I got clear on how I’d help women in law. Then I started surfing the waves of the world wide web to see who else was doing what I wanted to do. That’s when I came across an organisation aptly called ‘Women in Law’. As I clicked through the site, I discovered that the founder, one Dr. Linda Spedding, was offering many of the very same services that comprised my vision. How could this be? Inspired, I e-mailed Dr. Spedding immediately. That e-mail turned into a meeting with an extraordinary woman who happened to be looking for someone to help her take Women in Law in a new direction. Thanks to Dr. Spedding and some stunning synchronicity (someone call The Police!), my imagined vision had showed up on the canvas of real life.

One thing my non-rational brain still wonders about is whether finding Women in Law after painting a vision to help women in law had anything to do with all the painter encounters. Guess I’ll never know. But what I do know is it’s evidence that if you set your intention, take action and pay attention, you get results. So a small suggestion to all the ladies in law: start painting a vision. You may surprise yourself with your capacity to create. A colourful new reality may be only a few brushstrokes away.

* Stephanie Haladner is qualified to practise law in Canada and in England and Wales. In 1996, she graduated magna cum laude from Duke University in North Carolina where she studied English literature. She received her LLB from the University of Victoria in British Columbia.  See Stephanie’s complete bio and her blog post on the Women in Law site.