Career Development

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My mentor has always reminded me that happiness is a choice available to each of us and is crucial for our well being. She also told me that it’s okay to not be okay all of the time.

After the recent ending of a relationship, she again said to me, “I know you’re sad now, but you can to choose to be happy.”

You can be stuck feeling bad during bad times or you can choose to make hardships and the worst times of your life teaching moments and turn them into something positive. You’d be surprised just how resilient each of us are if we just believe it.

Also, happiness comes easier to some people and others must choose to be happy at certain points in our lives in order to turn the tide around or just to carry on and not to fall into a dark hole of despair.

I’m about to share a personal story in the hopes that it helps others. Not everyone shares what’s going on with them personally with professional colleagues, but I want others to know that life is messy and no one is perfect – especially me, and so many of us are struggling with personal crises and it’s a miracle we are so high functioning. It’s about time we got real and stop making it seem like everything is fine when it’s not.

The next Woman Who Wows is Emily Witt, a managing director at boutique legal search and matchmaking firm Whistler Partners in NYC. Emily spent almost 15 years in the recruiting department at Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz.

Emily is also a fully certified comprehensive Pilates instructor. She combines her love of recruiting with helping people physically. One of her first placements in legal recruiting was one of her Pilates clients.  Learn more about her classes – she’s currently teaching online too. And read her Q&A below.

I wrote a new article for Law.com and the Mid-Market Report on “How To Maintain and Build Your Business During COVID-19.”

As I note, the most important question you should…

Finding listening tools

I bet you’ve probably experienced a bit of joy at the hardship or failure of another person (oftentimes someone you don’t like or who brings out feelings of jealousy in you) at least once in your life just as someone has experienced joy at your negative expense as well.

Think back to when someone you didn’t care for much tripped and spilled coffee on themselves, or when a politician experienced a particularly humiliating fall from grace or when someone of whom you’ve always been envious got fired. It felt a little good, right?

So, why does it sometimes make us feel good when we hear bad news about people we know? Why does it feel strangely satisfying? And does it make us a bad person?

Online networking has never been more important than it is today. With all that is going in the world, you don’t want to be in the position to overhaul your LinkedIn profile and build your connections if you should be in the position of losing your job or being furloughed. Also, online networking is now even much more important than it was before the coronavirus pandemic. It’s our primary way of remaining connected to and top of mind with our professional contacts.

You should always keep your network “warm” and your LinkedIn connections updated because at some point, you’ll need them. Here’s a plan for how build and maximize your LinkedIn presence now and in the future.