Balanced and Happy with Heather Moulder

This week on Maximum Mom, your host Elise Buie joined Heather Moulder.

Heather is a recovering lawyer who practiced in Big Law for over 18 years, made partner, and built a thriving ($2.5MM practice). And she did the latter while staying balanced and happy - but only after burning out and wondering why she’d ever wanted to be a lawyer in the first place. This shift occurred about 4 years into her legal practice, after hitting a mental brick wall and realizing that not everyone was so unhappy.

After looking around, she realized that there were key consistencies in people who were happily successful lawyers (as opposed to the typical near-burnout, never-happy, always drinking-from-a-fire-hose attorney). That's what convinced her to change law firms and build a values-based practice while leveraging her strengths. 

This started with a mindset shift around how she defined success for herself (based on aligning to her values and what she put in and letting go of what other people thought of her). And slowly changed how she perceived not just what success meant to her but also who she was, how she showed up, and how she perceived her place in this world (as a lawyer, wife, mom, and person in general).

Fast forward a number of years, and Heather was a partner in BigLaw who was quite happy. Everything changed when she was diagnosed with aggressive breast cancer. She took almost 1 year off to be with her kids and fight that uphill battle (She was only 38 and her boys were 6 and 2 at the time). After coming back to work full-time, she tried hard to go "back to normal" (something she thinks a lot of people are doing now post-pandemic). And eventually realized she couldn't do that and had to figure out what her "new normal" would be. 

Cancer and the journey she took had changed her. Heather needed to figure out how, and what that meant for her moving forward. It took several years to figure out, but eventually, this personal journey led her out of law and into coaching. She now helps lawyers build the practices they actually want. And it all started by helping them rewire their minds for resilience and confidence, reconnect to their values and realign around their priorities (while ditching stress, overthinking, and people-pleasing). 

She does this both through mindset leadership coaching and business development coaching (which contains a fair bit of mindset coaching). Because real success - where you're actually happy and not just successful on paper - is created from within. 

3:02 two boys

7:52 It’s scary

11:09 rewire your mind to think differently

15:06 things get in the way

20:13 I didn’t like who I was becoming

24:28 mine was a 9

29:56 we’re not supposed to make mistakes

36:07 choosing to be happy

40:28 you can fall off of that roller coaster

45:16 everybody who needs it isn’t ready for it

Watch the interview here.

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