Confessions of a Praise Junkie

Moving Closer To a Life of Purpose

This year I started a podcast, “Higher Callings.” I use an interview format, focusing on guests who strive to make the world a better place. What I enjoy most about it is that I get to spend time with each guest, reconnect with those who are old friends, and hear their inspiring stories.

One of my guests in Season 1 was my law school friend, Phil Mueller. Phil began his legal career as a civil litigator in Boston, but ultimately found his calling as a homicide prosecutor in Schenectady, New York. As he recounted his story, Phil mentioned a close friend of his whom I also know, a now-retired corporate lawyer named Dave. As Phil explained it, Dave once told him that litigators (like Phil and me) are “praise junkies.” The phrase has stuck with me since Phil expressed it, and it obviously has stuck with him.  

After completing judicial clerkships, Phil and I both began our careers in 1980 as litigators in large Boston law firms. Back then, our two firms both had different reputations. His was considered a very good firm whose lawyers had a scholarly, intellectual bent. The firm I joined was a bit different. Although, like Phil’s firm, it attracted some of the brightest legal talent, the partners I worked with were especially skilled at connecting with judges and juries in the courtroom. Our litigators were very good and we held ourselves in high esteem.

The head of our litigation department was a senior trial lawyer who won almost every case he ever tried. At our monthly department meetings, he sometimes told us that we were the best group of litigators in the country, and some of us probably believed it. Meeting after meeting, we would hear from a partner who had just won this trial or that appeal or had gotten a case against one of our clients dismissed before it went to trial. Each report of a recent victory was delivered with enthusiastic pride. We sought and obtained each other’s praise for the work we did and for the personal sacrifices that we all accepted to claim a spot at the top of the pack. And while the praise we bestowed on each other was often well-deserved, it likely also gave some of us an exaggerated sense of our own importance.

Of course, praise among one’s colleagues takes one only so far. As the legal profession advanced in the 1980s, it became increasingly important to convert praise into business. Until the mid-1980s, lawyers attracted clients largely by reputation and word of mouth. By the latter half of that decade, the profession began changing. We not only had to be lawyers, but we also had to market ourselves to keep up with the increasing competition. At first, the word “marketing” carried a negative connotation, but it soon caught on, and continues to be central to the success of most lawyers and law firms.

Today, and for the past 30 years, firms of any significant size include marketing departments staffed by dedicated communications professionals. Their job, which the people I have worked with do very well, is to tout the success of the firms’ lawyers and promote the firms’ reputations among potential clients. However, the responsibility for marketing is not the exclusive province of professional marketers. In many firms, each lawyer also bears responsibility for getting the word out about their capabilities and successes, which they do through client alerts, newsletters, and social media.

For more than three decades, I have embraced the need to showcase my knowledge and experience, both within the law firms I have worked at and with external audiences. Like most lawyers, I have done so by publishing articles, speaking at conferences, blogging, and posting to LinkedIn and Twitter. I also have sought visibility through leadership positions in bar associations, rising to the very top of one of them. No doubt, the attention I have often sought and sometimes gained has paid off by attracting business. At times, however, it has also fed my ego, which was already groomed by an industry-wide culture that promises to reward those who seek sufficient fame and recognition to distinguish themselves from the competition.

This constant need for attention, often through self-praise, is not limited to the profession of law. It has become ingrained across all aspects of our society. Every American has access to social media, and those of us who use it often do so to earn likes and shares. It is as if we are trying to say “I am here. I matter. Show me you approve.” We seek to leverage our platforms to reach friends and strangers alike, and the larger our “reach,” the more important we feel. I tweet, therefore I am.

Of course, social media platforms are just tools, and their impact, for good or ill, depends on how we use them. I get much helpful information from social media and learn a great deal from the people I choose to follow. I also try to use social media to share information and ideas with others, as well as just connect with friends and acquaintances whom I am blessed to know. (This post itself represents a feeble effort along those lines.) But I would like to do better at using social media for such laudable ends, and not primarily as a means of drawing attention to myself. Only the former is truly praiseworthy. The rest can, and often does, produce narcissism.  

I am fortunate to have reached a point in my life when I no longer feel the need to prove myself professionally. I can now focus on what Richard Rohr and others call “the second half of life,” or what David Brooks calls “The Second Mountain.” I am reading Brooks’ book of that name now, and it speaks to where I am in my personal journey. I am moving away from the quest for professional accomplishment, a mountain I have already climbed and have started to descend, and hope to be continuing my journey up the second mountain, towards a greater focus on using whatever gifts, opportunities, and remaining time I have to support the common good. Climbing the second mountain means finally laying down the burden of insignificant self-promotion and taking up the yoke of service to more important, lasting values. As Brooks describes it:

If the first mountain is about building up the ego and defining the self, the second mountain is about shedding the ego and losing the self. If the first mountain is about acquisition, the second mountain is about contribution. If the first mountain is elitist—moving up—the second mountain is egalitarian—planting yourself among those who need, and walking arm in arm with them.

I have come to believe that this second half of life begins with realizing and accepting that I am not the center of the universe, that in fact I am less than a momentary speck in the boundless sweep of space and time, that any contributions I have made or may hope to make to my profession and my communities have been small and mostly insignificant, and that what truly matters is not fleeting fame or material success, but living a life of love and purpose in whatever small but helpful ways I can.

Perhaps I have always known that. Now I get to try it out.

And maybe someday I can even be satisfied with a life that is less focused on doing and more centered on being. That’s a mountain that may be the hardest but most important for a praise junkie like me to climb.

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If you are interested in this topic, I recommend reading a poem called “Famous” by Naomi Shihab Nye. I ran across it earlier this year and it very much hit home. You can find it at the website of the Poetry Foundation using this link: Famous

I am still in the early pages of David Brooks’ book, but so far it also rings true to me. Here’s a link to its page on Amazon: The Second Mountain: The Quest for a Moral Life

My “Higher Callings” interview of Phil Mueller is in two parts. You can find them here and here. The “praise junkies” quote came up in Part I.