Right:  Steve (Goldberg):  Insurance Policyholder Coverage Counsel Extraordinaire and My Actual Bliss on "Our" Birthday -- May 1.

I am quite immodestly posting here Gini Nelson's Engaging Conflicts newsletter which contains an interview with me about my shift from litigation to mediation.

Because I recently taught the Deposition Seminar sponsored by the National Institute of Trial Advocacy, I have young lawyers and the challenges that face them on my mind. 

I'm therefore reprinting here that part of the interview reflecting the career questions so often asked by young lawyers -- is litigation the right career path for me. 

Though my own answer is, of course, unique to me, I think every litigator will find something of their own professional struggle briefly recounted here.

Gini: What is the best advice that you have been given? And what advice would you give a budding conflict specialist?

Vickie: Joseph Campbell, the brilliant and recently departed student and professor of comparative religions and mythology, long ago gave me advice I needed but was not ready to apply – follow your bliss.

I didn’t know what my bliss was and couldn’t find it. I had to spend a lifetime quieting a lot of other voices that were vying for my attention before I was ready. Voices that told me to prove to my dad how brilliant and successful I could be; that told me to compete and “succeed” by running the fastest and the farthest whenever anyone shot off a starting gun in my vicinity; that told me I needed property, (perceived) power and prestige to accept myself in all my human fallibility.

It took more than twenty-five years for me to realize the bankruptcy of those thoughts and to experience the results of that way of living.

Then a new voice entered my head and it spoke very very very clearly. “Why don’t you mediate?” it asked.

Two weeks later I took Pepperdine’s 42-hour Mediating the Litigated Case. A month after that, I enrolled in the Straus Institute’s LL.M Dispute Resolution program. And here I am. Following my bliss.

So I guess my answer to this question now that I have written my way to it is this – quiet the voices. Then follow your bliss.

Influences and mentors mentioned in the interivew:

Joseph Campbell (and I owe this to my 12th grade English teacher -- Mr. Higbee -- who assigned us Hero with a Thousand Faces when we were barely sophisticated enough to read it)

Peter Robinson of the Straus Institute of Dispute Resolution

Kenneth Cloke, Center for Dispute Resolution & Founder/President of Mediators without Borders