Seeking Serenity
- Kim Meninger
- Jun 9
- 22 min read
In this episode of The Impostor Syndrome Files, we talk about the pressure high achievers put on themselves and the fears that often drive that pressure beneath the surface. My guest this week is Brendan Cournane, attorney, endurance athlete and author of Seeking Serenity.
Brendan shares stories from his decades in law, including the decision to close a major deal on the same day his daughter was born because he feared being seen as unavailable or less committed. He reflects on how stress, expectations and the need to prove ourselves can shape the choices we make at work and in life.
In our conversation, we explore the connection between fear and overachievement, why asking for help feels so difficult for many professionals and how self-awareness helps us respond more intentionally under pressure. Brendan also shares why he believes harmony is a more useful goal than balance. Finally, we discuss the role expectations play in impostor syndrome and why understanding our motives, fears and core values is essential to finding greater clarity, steadiness and fulfillment.
About My Guest
Brendan Cournane is a Certified Professional Coach (CPC) and world-class endurance coach with over 35 years of expertise. After finding his path to recovery in 1989 and discovering the transformative power of running through qualifying for the 100th Boston Marathon in 1995, Brendan learned that mindfulness practice and being true to oneself are integral to achieving happiness and success. He believes and practices the philosophy that “Happiness is a present attitude, not a future condition.”
As Chairperson of the Chicago Bar Association Committee on Lawyer Well-Being and
Mindfulness and Co-President of the Mindfulness in the Law Society, Illinois Chapter,
Brendan specializes in helping professionals facing stress, transition, and burnout. He
has been a training coach for charity marathon teams participating in races around the world, including Chicago, Marine Corps, Disney, Dublin, Rome, Paris, London,
Stockholm, Berlin, Tokyo, and Antarctica.
Through his professional development coaching practice, speaking engagements, and training programs, Brendan offers his lived experience, strength, and hope as a catalyst for others seeking to live healthy, fulfilling lives while maintaining balance in even the most challenging times.
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Connect with Brendan:
Website: https://www.coachbrendan.com/
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Connect with Kim and The Impostor Syndrome Files:
Join the free Impostor Syndrome Challenge.
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Schedule time to speak with Kim Meninger directly about your questions/challenges.
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Transcript
Kim Meninger
Welcome Brendan. It is wonderful to have you here today. I would love to start by inviting you to tell us a little bit about yourself.
Brendan Cournane
Well, Kim, it's a pleasure to be here today with you and for your audience. You know, I've had kind of a storied career. I think looking back, I practiced law for over 40 years as a municipal finance a public finance lawyer, and in addition to that, I decided as a coping technique to get into a little exercise. And as many people in your audience may feel like, you know, moderation is a thing, so I began to run marathons, because that's pretty moderate thing to do. And you know, one is not enough. Kind of a concept of more is never enough. I've run 100 marathons. I've run a marathon in each of the 50 states, each of the seven continents, and six of the world majors. So again, moderation is the key. But I've learned from that that, you know, less really comes out to be more. So I kind of fold things in to my background, where I am today, to take things in from my, my world as a practicing lawyer, my world is an endurance athlete and coach in that area, and also in recovery. I've been sober since 1989 and that was at a time when I was facing a lot of challenges in life, burnout, through my work, family situation, and so all of these things kind of fit together to what has evolved to where I am today and how I interact with people that connect with.
Kim Meninger
Thank you for sharing that. And you know I appreciate your talking about the various coping mechanisms, some more positive than others, right? But I think law is, I don't do it myself, but I think it's known to be a very stressful field, and so I wonder if you could tell us a little bit more about your experience just practicing law, and how that was for, for you, in terms of your own stress level, and, you know, kind of learned about yourself through that.
Brendan Cournane
Sure, I think there's a lot in common that I have with other people who practice law, but there are also some differences, for example, in trying to set the baseline for stress. My first child was born in October of my first year of law school. My second child was born in October of my second year in law school, and my third child was born in March of my third year in law school. So there aren't a lot of people that I have four children all together. So you know that kind of a law school career path is fairly unusual, and the area of law that I wound up practicing in public finance is a pretty high-stress area of law. And you know, as a young lawyer, I would often compare myself to other young lawyers in my firm and also in my niche area of public finance. And one example is that when my fourth child was born, I was had been practicing law for about four years at that time, and the day my daughter was born, I closed the transaction. It was one of the largest transactions that I had worked on that time. It was a transaction that I was solely responsible for. And the day before her birth, I traveled to Des Moines, Iowa to get documents signed. This was at a time when we didn't have automatic signatures on the document, so we had to do things in person. So I flew to Des Moines, came back when we arrived at O'Hare, found a pay phone to check in with my wife, who was at a doctor's appointment, and this was about a month before her due date. What could go wrong, right? So found out when I called from O'Hare that my wife had been admitted to the hospital because her water broke, completely unscheduled, and now I was faced with a dilemma of, what do I do about closing this transaction or going to the hospital? Well, I went to the hospital my daughter had had the presence of mind, so to speak, to be born at about one o'clock or two o'clock in the morning. So I was there for her birth. Afterwards, went home, changed and then went into the office to close my deal, because at that point, I felt that had I not done that, I would have been seen as unavailable and not really capable of handling the work of a lawyer in my field, and it also meant getting help from some of my peers who, at least in my mind, were going to be competitors. So I would give them a heads up ahead of. Put up in my trying to make partner in the firm. And I also believe that if I was seen as being unavailable at that point, that was career suicide. So I was determined to go in close the deal. And of course, that became a big story in my firm for years and years about how dedicated I was. Now, while I didn't so much believe it at the time that behavior was wrong, I should have taken the time to be with my wife and new daughter. And after the deal closed, I hung around for a couple of celebratory drinks, and then I went back to the hospital to be with my wife and daughter. It was, however, something that I thought was necessary, and it's one of the things that I see a lot of young lawyers do, and not just lawyers, I think it's, it's many in professions I work with doctors and accountants who also feel the same kind of stress load that they've got to be present at all times, because if they weren't present, they weren't seen it be dedicated to their job, to their career, to their clients or patients, and therefore there's something wrong with them, instead of recognizing that there may be something wrong with them, but It's in the opposite direction of being there for their clients.
Kim Meninger
That is such a compelling story. And it's interesting because I often hear that from women who are hesitant to take time, you know, to take their kids to the doctor or things like that, because it of the perception that they may look less invested in their careers. And it just goes to show how as humans, there are these invisible or visible pressure points on all of us. And you know, some of them, I think, self-imposed, but others of them very real. And just when you described that as becoming a story, as you know, within your firm, it reminds me that really, what we mythologize says a lot about what we value, right?
Brendan Cournane
Yes, not only what we value, but where do those values come from? You know how much of this is internal pressure and how much of this is external pressure going into that story? You know, none of none of the partners, senior partners in my firm, would have said, you have to be here to close this deal. Had they thought that my wife would have gone into labor, they would have said, we'll make sure that somebody is available as a backup. However, I wouldn't have listened to that, because this was my deal. This was one that I had been solely in charge of, and it meant a lot to me to prove my worth to the firm. And what could go wrong, you know, I had planned everything else. You know, kind of, I think many of us feel that we are in control of the circumstances, even when we're not truly in control. And, you know, as a lawyer in my field, we try to plan out everything is what possibly could go wrong, plan around that, and life doesn't always work out that way. So what do we, do to, to, to work around that when we get those curve balls in life? As it turned out? You know, the timing worked that my daughter was born overnight, so I was able to come in in the morning, close the deal, and then go back to the hospital. But it could have very easily worked out something else, and then I really would have been a conundrum that I don't know how I would have resolved, because I would not have felt comfortable asking a peer to step in at the last minute to cover for me. And I think you know there that asking for help is also something that many of us that I've seen in my practice are afraid to do, because it's a sign of weakness. It's a sign of you're not good enough. It's a sign of, no matter how good I think I am, I'm not quite there yet. I've got to go that extra mile. And you mentioned the fact of women in, in, in certain situations, there have been women that I've worked with who have been in the office the day before they've delivered their child for this much the same reason, that they didn't want to seem unavailable, they didn't want to seem that they couldn't that they weren't up to the task, and It's very challenging. You know, some of them were afraid to take maternity leave or an extended maternity leave, regardless of the circumstances, not only in the practice of law, but in, in other fields as well. And that's unhealthy. That's unhealthy for us individually. It's unhealthy for our clients. Because we're not fully capable of making wise decisions when we put that kind of stress and pressure on ourselves, and it's really detrimental to everybody involved. But there's a recognition that that is detrimental, and a need to acknowledge and validate those feelings, whether we're male or female, whether we're a lawyer or, or the janitor in the school building, and it that's very hard to do because of the external pressures we have, expectations that we both set for ourselves and that we feel, that we perceive others to establish for ourselves.
Kim Meninger
Do you think things have changed? I mean, I think obviously we're always going to experience pressures, but when it comes to things like asking for help, things like that, fear of I'm going to give a leg up to my colleagues if I get them involved. And this is a very competitive field, right? Like, if you do, you feel like you would make different choices today than you did back then?
Brendan Cournane
I certainly hope I would. I mean, I've grown in so many ways since, since that episode happened, and I really hope that I have both the courage and the recognition that that behavior was unhealthy. It was an unhealthy coping technique and is based in fear. So a lot of times, for example, I ask people two questions, when they feel stuck at a point in life, or when they're facing a challenge or dilemma like I faced when my daughter was about to be born. First, what are my motives for doing what I'm doing? And second, what am I afraid of? Because my motives often are, I want to get ahead in my firm. I want to make partner, and I have to show that I'm dedicated, and regardless of the, the area that we work in or our nature, I think that's the motives that are underlying everything really speak to how we behave. The second thing is that most times, how we respond to those motives is based in fear, and I found that, both for myself, personally and a lot of the folks that I've worked with, that there are two basic fears that underlie our motives. The first is we're afraid we're going to lose something that we have. The second fear is, I'm not going to get what I deserve or what I want, and almost everything that motivates me can be broken down to one of those two fears that if I wasn't there to close my deal, I would not make partner. Maybe you know, if I was up for partner that year or the next year, that that would have been as seen as a strike against me as far as my dedication or my capability, or so I could lose the opportunity to become a partner or to advance, or I'm afraid that I'm going to lose something. I'm going to lose the credibility that my firm has of me as a capable lawyer who could close this big deal. It also is a fear that, that my colleagues would see me as, as weak or not as capable as well. So those, those questions, getting to the real nature and answers to those questions goes a long way.
Kim Meninger
I agree with you entirely. I love those questions, and I think that it's really helpful to reflect on what's driving our behavior, because we don't often think about, you know, we don't often realize it, or do that kind of self-reflection. And I wonder if you have thoughts just based on your own journey and what you do today, what if we are able to identify that, yeah, I am afraid, and this is a really kind of scary situation that I'm in. What would you advise people to think about that?
Brendan Cournane
Well, you know, there's a lot of talk these days about stress and how we handle stress, and I think most people believe stress is negative. And you know, basically, there are three types of stress. There is what is commonly referred to by all of us as stress, which is also known as distress, and that's a negative feeling that we have that something bad is about to happen, but there are two other types of stresses too. The first is called New stress, which I think about as being neutral stress. And an example of that would be, we hear about volcano erupting on a South Pacific Island. So, you know, we have this visual. Reaction that, yeah, that could be bad, especially if the island is, is inhabited. Or, you know, a couple of years ago, there was a volcano that erupted in Hawaii, so the lava is pouring out, and it's coming down on a town nearby. And we feel that this to some stress, some level of stress, empathy and compassion for the people who are there. But as I'm sitting here in the United States, in the mainland of the United States, something in Hawaii or in the South Pacific doesn't really have that same visceral reaction that I have. So it's, it's neutral in the way, but our body still has a stress response. The third type of stress is what's known as eustress, which I think of euphoric stress, winning the lottery, getting a new job, having a child, things that we think are very happy, bringing a form of euphoria. But for example, when a child is born, I'm ecstatic holding my new baby, but all of a sudden, how am I going to support this baby for 18 years, get her or him through high school, college and beyond, so that they are successful? In my eyes, my determination and how much of my self-worth is what they do, so even something that's positive, that brings about euphoria, even winning the lottery, what am I going to do with all these millions of dollars? What are the expectations? Do I give some to certain charities? Do I pay off all my bills? You know, we can go down the litany. Do I quit my job because I no longer have to quit my job? And then what am I going to do? So we have different types of stress, and each one of those has a stress reaction. But you know, ultimately, it's not the stress that we face that kills us, it's our response to the stress. And in each one of these types of stress, the distress, the new stress, the eustress. Our bodies have the same response. Our bodies don't know whether it's good, bad or indifferent. It just knows that it's feeling stress. We typically focus a lot more. Our senses become more accentuated so that we're aware of what's happening around there, so that we can respond. We typically get more rapid breathing, you know, increased heart rate, because we're responding something, even though we don't necessarily know what we're responding to. So we need to take a step back at this point and kind of identify why, what am I feeling first of all, and how do I need to respond to the stress load that I'm feeling? And by the way, these things can change. You know, the example that I gave you about the volcano in a South Pacific Island is new stress. You know, I can feel empathy and compassion for the people there, but all of a sudden that changes. If my son is visiting that island on his honeymoon, so all of a sudden, my child is in danger, because I know that they're on that island where this volcano is erupting and communication is broken off with that island because of the emergency there. So what's happening? So my neutral feeling of stress extends to something that's very distressful for my body, and it happens like that once I realize the location of what's happening there and how I have to change my approach.
Kim Meninger
Yeah, that's a really helpful breakdown, and I appreciate your talking about the fact that we don't really make clear distinctions between that. I think about that a lot with threats as well. You know, it's like the, the threat of being rejected feels just as, you know, dangerous as the threat of being faced with a bear, right? And so. So really, taking the time to slow down and ask ourselves these questions gives us some perspective and a chance to manage some of the nervous system response as well. And I wonder you talked about the marathons, and I wonder how that kind of exercise helps or helped you with stress, and whether you learned anything from that experience as well.
Brendan Cournane
I have I learned a lot about myself in in marathon training, and it evolved in my very first marathon here in Chicago. At the end, I didn't train very well. I was very deeply in the practice of law, and I trained very little for my race, but I, you know, chopped it up to a youthful indiscretion, and around mile 22 of the race, I was completely spent. My lack of training was at the forefront. And all of a sudden, I was passed by a woman who was 80 years old. And a few minutes later, I was passed by a woman who. Is seven months pregnant now. To put this in perspective, this was 1985 and in 1985 there were not a lot of women who were running overall and especially endurance races. It just wasn't done for a variety of reasons. And the Chicago Marathon was very small at that point. And I know about both of these women because they both had their names and pictures in the Chicago Tribune the day after the race as featured stories for their accomplishments. And when each one of those women went by me, I had no energy to get them, and I was one of the last people to finish the race that year, completely spent and exhausted when I finished a number of years later, 10 years later, I qualified for the Boston Marathon, running an hour and a half faster than I did that day and qualified for the Boston Marathon. What I learned in the interim is it helps to train. It helps to dedicate yourself and train with a good training plan, and good things can happen when you do that. So but in the course of almost any marathon, I think almost everybody goes through cycles where we're feeling really, really good, we're feeling really, really tired and exhausted. Can I take another step? I'm never going to do this again. And then you cross the finish line, you kind of make the turn, and you see the finish line banner ahead, and there's this feeling of euphoria. So in the you know, in the middle of a race, you kind of go through all of those three types of stress, the neutral stress at the beginning of the race, where you feel excited, but you know that you've done the training, the distress that usually comes in around mile 18 or 20, and then the eustress when you see the finish line, when you get to that point of the race where you know you're going to finish, and you're just trying to hang on to the end, and then you cross the line, and It's a euphoric feeling. But it also reminds me that in our daily lives, we need to take things that are healthy coping techniques and transform them and replace some unhealthy coping techniques. In my case, in that first marathon, in addition to not training very well, I was deep in the practice of law, working a lot of hours, and my coping technique was primarily drinking, and it wasn't until a few years later that I got sober and I took the, the unhealthy coping technique and transformed that into something healthy. Now you can make an argument that a healthy coping technique and exercise might be running 20 or 30 minutes at a time for three or four times a week, and I chose to run marathons. But we'll put that conversation aside because, again, moderation is not always my thing, but it is a way to kind of take steps to to do, modify behaviors and identifying things that are unhealthy, taken to express, which is, not only, you know, like drinking, but it's shopping, it's relationships. It's working. You know, the practice of law is often one that has 60, 80, 100-hour weeks for a continual base of time. And what do we do with ourselves to transform what those coping texts are into ways that we can prolong our health and our happiness, even find our happiness through more balanced ways of coping in a healthy way. And, you know, I've heard a lot of people talk about work life balance, and I believe that that's a myth, because when I think about balance, it's like scales that reach equilibrium. I think about the coping techniques that we, we try to find that I try to find with folks that I work with, is more harmony, harmonizing different parts of our lives. In the example that comes to mind is an orchestra. And if you go to a symphony, you and you get there a little bit early, you see the musicians come on stage, and it's just a cacophony of sound. It doesn't sound very good, as you've got the strings, the percussionists, the pianos, the woodwinds, everybody's tuning their instruments at the same time, and it doesn't really sound that good. And then all of a sudden, the conductor comes on, taps his baton, and beautiful music flows. It's in harmony, and trying to find the attention level as an individual, trying to find the attention level of the triangle player. You know when you think about an orchestra and you think. Think about a musical movement. You've got the big instruments that are the primary instruments, but then oftentimes there's just that one piece where the triangle is rung. You can ding, ding. And think about the concentration of that percussionist waiting for just the right moment, and it's often towards the end of the movement. And so they're waiting and waiting and waiting and harmonizing their flow, their entrance into the musical composition. And you know, if it's wrong, I mean, you can just hear the disruption of the triangle is a couple of bars off where it's supposed to be, but when it's on time, it's beautiful and it fits in so well. So I think about what we're trying to do is harmonize our life with our different experiences to evolve and get the best performance out of ourselves.
Kim Meninger
I love that imagery. I agree with you. I think that concept of balance is it just sets us up to feel like we're never successful in doing it. The concept of harmony resonates with me so much more. I wonder. You wrote a book. I wonder if you could tell us a little bit about the book and, and anything that you know we haven't talked about yet that maybe you want to draw attention to, for people who might be thinking about reading the book.
Brendan Cournane
I'd love to the title of the book is Seeking Serenity, Finding Happiness by Embracing Your Present Attitude. And it covers a lot of the topics that we've talked about here. What is your stress load? What is your stress level? How do you know you're feeling stress? You know, in many cases, for many of us, it's what's next. And I've known, and what I what I try to bring about in the book, is that whatever we accomplish, do we really savor the moment? Do we savor the accomplishment we have? Or do we immediately ask what's next? When I graduated from law school, I wanted to work for a good firm, and I was fortunate enough to do that, but once I started working there, what's next? I wanted to become partner, and when I became partner, I wanted to move up the ranks of where I was in the firm. When I ran a marathon. What's next? I wanted to run further and faster. Wanted to qualify for Boston when I qualified for Boston, what's next? A friend of mine told me about this club where they ran a marathon in every one of the 50 states. And that seemed like a challenge. Once I accomplished that, what's next? And, you know it. I think that those are just two examples, one in the legal world, but one in the, in the in the exercise world. But I think it's universal. So many of us have these expectations. I found that in many cases, and I try to bring this out in the book, that in many cases, the expectations we have are eventually unachievable. When I set expectations, only two things can happen. The first is that I meet the expectations and immediately set the bar higher. And I found that for many people, it's it kind of comes down to the fact, if I can do it, it can't be that big of a deal. It's not that big of an accomplishment because I did it and that you like the name of your program, the imposter syndrome. I'm feeling that if I'm achieving something, or trying to achieve something, once I achieve it, it can't be that good. There's something wrong with me, and other people are going to judge me negatively, even though I've accomplished something that's tremendous. The other thing that happens with expectations is they're not met. Eventually, the bar is set so high trying to run a marathon in an hour and a half now that the two-hour barrier has been broken recently, you know it's the bar gets even higher in what point, though, but if I don't meet the expectations, it's very easy to go into a downward spiral and say, I'm worthless. I really am as bad as I think I am. So this, this kind of bifurcation of our expectations, of more is never enough, versus I'm worthless. Are two parts of the, of the same coin that we, we work with. And so I try in the book to identify what the core values are. How do we really see ourselves? And you know. Includes things like when the term that I use is that people are stuck. They're stuck at a certain point in their lives, whether it's in their career, their social life, their relationship, but just stuck. And so we kind of go through some core values to try to identify what really is the meaning of who we are. You know the old Shakespeare line of, “To thine own self be true.” Well, I believe that even if we look back on our lives at the highs and the lows, we are true to ourselves, no matter what we have done, but we're true to the selves who we are at that point in our lives. So part of identifying our core values is to change, to change from who we are at a certain point of our lives to where we want to be. And how do we get there? And how we get there is by identifying what is really meaningful to us, but also things like, how do I think about this? How do I feel about this, what do I want to change and why, which often gets back to those two questions of, what are my motives and what am I afraid of? And that even the title of the book Seeking Serenity is something that I think about serenity as the absence of fear. I have heard many people think about serenity as just being calm and sedate, but I think of it as the absence of fear. I can't be fearful and serene at the same time. There's a psychological approach that called Reciprocal inhibition, that I can't hold two competing emotions simultaneously. So I can't be fearful and serene simultaneously. One has to overrule the other. And when I think about seeking serenity, it's trying to identify my fears. Try to identify what my core values are, and how do I use my core values to be true to myself, to really dissipate the fears that I have, the fears and the anxieties that I have, and hopefully to get unstuck.
Kim Meninger
Thank you for sharing that I think you know, at the heart of it all too, it's just a deeper relationship with yourself, one that we just because we're so busy and the world is really noisy, you don't often take the time to do. And so I really appreciate the encouragement to just get to know yourself a little bit better and be more thoughtful about what's driving you and who you want to be.
Brendan Cournane
And that's hard. That's hard in our world right now because of expectations that others have of us. It's difficult because of expectations that we perceive others have of us, and there's expectations that we have of ourselves that we're projecting out there to, to the world, and those are three different elements of how we see ourselves, some real and some maybe not so real.
Kim Meninger
Yes, excellent point. Thank you so much for sharing this with us. Brendan, I know that you, you also offer a conversation with you, and I want to make sure that everybody who wants more of you and your book know where to find you. So where can people find you if they want to continue to stay connected with you?
Brendan Cournane
My website is Coach Brendan dot com and if you go to the website, you can get a link to buy the book. You can also sign up for a complimentary 30 minute session to see if there's anything that I've said today that resonates with you and you want to explore further. The complimentary session can be of your choosing at different times, and we can just explore some of the thoughts that we've shared here today. If you feel that you're stuck at a point in your life, if you think there are motives that you need to find or fears that you need to understand a little bit better, let's talk. Because, you know, if you oftentimes in these complimentary sessions, we discovered things that weren't the intention of the phone call in the beginning, and we often can find out whether we're a good fit to work with each other.
Kim Meninger
Wonderful. And I will make sure the links are in the show notes. And thank you again for being here and for the great work that you're doing.
Brendan Cournane
Thank you for the opportunity.
