You can‘t protect yourself behind emotional walls — trust me, I tried and failed — but you can protect yourself by building character.
Early in my career, I focused primarily on building my reputation as a litigator, creating a body of work that would cement my professional identity and grant me entry to the places I aspired to go. Along the way, I built all kinds of walls, from subtle ones to those I would justify as if I were trying the case of my life!
It took burning through two marriages and a law career to recognize the emotional walls I thought would protect me were keeping me from the things I wanted the most.
I Imagine You Have Built Similar Emotional Walls
If you’re reading this, you’ve likely spent your life building everything you think is necessary for success and doing everything you’ve been told you were supposed to do. You built your walls, in part, because you thought it would allow you to focus in a way that would heighten your performance and give you the edge to succeed.
It is difficult not to build walls when you hold the kind of expectations you likely have for yourself. The walls I built were supposed to protect me from the weight of responsibility, from disappointment and from the exhaustion of being the person everybody counts on.
You Can’t Protect Yourself by Building Emotional Walls
The unfortunate truth is that walls don’t protect you. They only serve to isolate you. To add more irony to the mix, your brain knows this. From a neuroscience standpoint, the act of walling yourself off, emotionally or mentally, activates your brain’s threat detection systems.
When you try to avoid feeling susceptible to unwanted things in the name of safety, you keep your amygdala, your brain’s fear center, on a hair-trigger. You may think you’re playing it safe with your emotional walls, but neurologically, you’re training your brain to see life through the lens of “what could go wrong” instead of “what could go right.” That’s not protection. That’s a low-grade fight-or-flight state, which can compromise your chances for achieving what you want.
In high-stakes professions like law, leadership, medicine and entrepreneurship — truly any field where people depend on your clarity, steadiness and ability to stay cool under pressure — your nervous system is your real asset. When it becomes dysregulated, everything from your decisions to your relationships to your sense of self is compromised.
The conundrum is that the more you wall yourself off to protect your professional identity, the more fragile that identity becomes.
When you try to develop an identity that is not based on character but on guarding the image of who you think you have to be, you lose momentum.
Focusing on Character Creates Wildly Different Results
Unlike walls, character is the internal structure you build not to defend yourself, but to define yourself.
Neuroscience tells us that character is deeply linked to self-regulation. Self-regulation is a function of the prefrontal cortex, the part of your brain responsible for executive function, emotional regulation, and your ability to plan, choose and override impulses. The more you build character, the more you strengthen this area.
Instead of the illusion of safety that walls offer, character creates the safety of knowing you can navigate hard things without collapsing or lashing out. Walls say, “Don’t get too close.” Character says, “I can handle challenges. I can handle hard feedback. I’m a champ at handling uncertainty.”
Walls feel like control. Character is control. You don’t need to micromanage everyone and everything to feel safe when you trust your own resilience. When I learned this, it changed almost every aspect of my life.
Think about the moments in your career when you were most proud. Not the moments when everything went according to plan, but the moments you handled yourself in a way that surprised even you. That wasn’t your walls protecting you. That was your character showing up.
It is fully within your ability to respond with integrity when everyone is watching and to remain calm and curious under pressure, instead of judgmental and reactionary.
The higher you rise in your profession, the more tempting it is to rely on old armor.
The problem is that these layers of armor tend to push people away. If you want to grow and if you want to lead (not just others but your own life), then you’ll need something stronger than outdated defense mechanisms. You’ll need strategic, even neuro-strategic, skills like emotional flexibility, self-awareness, and bounce-back-ability at a rate you may not have experienced before.
When you’re grounded in character, you send signals of psychological safety to others — whether in the courtroom, the boardroom or your own home. People feel calmer around you. They trust you. Not because you’re perfect, but because you’re real. You regulate yourself, so you don’t dysregulate them. That’s the dynamic of character in action.
Start Breaking Down the Walls
So, if you’ve been feeling as though you keep working harder but what you want seems to stay just out of reach, it might be time to stop fortifying your emotional walls. Instead, focus on ways to build and trust your character.
Ask yourself:
- Where am I choosing safety over growth?
- Where am I reacting out of doubt rather than strength?
- Where have I mistaken control for security?
You don’t have to have all the answers right now. But start noticing where you have built walls and how they are blocking you from building the life and legacy you want.
If you’re like me, you want to feel alive in your work, successful with your relationships, and honest with yourself about what you are choosing to create. This happens by deliberately engaging with life in a way that honors your values, not just your resumé.
A Comprehensive Guide to Wellness in Law
The emotional health issues lawyers face are not due to weakness or failure, says author Gray Robinson, but are often due to failed training. In this new ABA book, he offers a holistic guide to lawyer wellness, using mental, emotional, and physical approaches to managing stress and anxiety.
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