Throughout my project for young lawyers, I have stressed the concept of getting out of comfort zones to increase competency and assure positive professional careers. I learned it during my practice years, and it just makes sense to me. But I also recognize that venturing beyond comfort zones involves taking risks, and risk taking can be stress inducing. Or so we thought.

Now someone, an executive, leadership, and life coach to impressive business leaders, is telling us that you can achieve less stress, more success, and more joy by embracing risk taking. In her new book, BET ON YOU: How to Win with Risk, Angie Morgan Witkowski shares the following insights about risk:

• Daydreaming is important. Ask yourself what your professional kaleidoscope looks like, what’s worth pursuing, where is the starting point, whether you have the necessary resources for the journey, and whether the challenges can be enjoyable.
• The right guides and mentors are imperative to success while taking risks. These guides and mentors need to include people who have experiences that reflect goals you’d like to achieve.
• Both planning and doing are essential; and
• Fear is your enemy. Fear stifles accomplishment by creating illusions of safety that crush healthy risk taking and run counter to increased job satisfaction and happiness.

Check out the author and the book. It is a perspective you need to explore.

It is not clear whether the US is headed for a full-blown recession or not. We look at new job numbers, the price of gas, and other indicators, and yet there is no clear consensus of what the future holds. However, we do know that Biglaw hiring is much less robust than even six months ago, and that some of those firms are experiencing associate layoffs.

So, what is an associate to do? What is an appropriate response when the work starts drying up? Is it to hope for the best and spend hour after hour sitting idly at your desk? Or is there something more constructive that you can be doing to protect your professional future against unnecessary interruption and damage.

Here is an article that contains some good food for thought from an accomplished senior attorney, who has been there and done that, and is willing to share advice with you. My hope is that you will not need this kind of advice. If that is the case, keep it in your arsenal for the time that you may.