Speech by Her Honour Magistrate Michelle Harries
What does it mean to be successful? Her Honour Magistrate Michelle Harries, former Assistant Director and lecturer at the College of Law WA, shares her insights at the PLT Excellence Awards Evening. The following is an extract from Her Honour’s speech.
Success
“As you start your career in law, I want to talk to you tonight about success and what it means.
There are some traditional societal views about the meaning of success that we may consciously or sub-consciously internalise: money, accumulation of possessions, achieving status, power. We see those with money and possessions living a better, easier, blessed if you like, life. Maybe there is a part of you that was driven to the law partly because it offers you the chance of a life with financial stability and status and because your definition of success includes that desire. And that is ok.
You might also be a person who has set goals for themselves. I see that as taking time to define what success looks like to you and setting a path to achieving that success.
Whether you have or have not set goals, whether you do or don’t follow the traditional societal views about success, I invite you tonight to think more broadly about what success means.
Workplace
Is success in the workplace getting a job you desire, earning good money, working hard, working long hours, being respected, producing work of a high quality, learning from and owning mistakes, working hard to manage confidence and imposter syndrome, doing pro bono work, making a difference, assisting the community. What does it mean to you?
Outside of the workplace
Is success outside of the workplace having financial stability, owning possessions and living in the “right” suburb and driving the “right” car, is it having healthy relationships, being a good person, exercising and working hard to get assistance for health problems including mental health, helping others, and being spiritual. What does success outside of the workplace mean to you?
As I often said to students when I lectured at the College of Law, chances are most of you have had a successful experience in education. It is highly likely you were the child that enjoyed school, studied hard, achieved well, received acknowledgement by winning awards, were praised by family and friends, bragged about by your parents, were able to get into your desired university course and made it through university with a group of talented peers.
You are a group where there is a natural inclination to achieve, to compete and to succeed. And I am positive you will do that.
The real question is how you live your life along the way to whatever path is your success.
I want to ask you to consider one thing that I strongly suspect we generally undervalue as a sign of success in life. I want to talk to you about that and suggest to you that this is your strongest indicator of success in life generally but also in the law.
We have all seen video and perhaps some in person evidence of people in third world countries who have very little by way of material possessions. Perhaps surprisingly we see and very often notice, that they smile and dance and sing and work hard together to survive.
For me this represents true success. Why? I think the key to success in all aspects of life is to be a good person, a nice person, a friendly person.
A good person
What is a good person? I think we have a pretty good idea of what it means to be a good person. Sometimes we might squash that gut feel about what we should do when it doesn’t fit with what we want to do. Sometimes we make the wrong decisions in life, we are human after all, but learning from those decisions, looking for ways to do things differently and better, that’s what I think makes us a good person.
One definition of “good” is that you follow the rules — you don't break the law, commit crimes, lie, or cheat. As officers of the court this is fundamental to the practice of law.
But let’s go beyond that, what does being a good person look like both in and out of practice (these are my ideas and you may have yours):
- You identify your morals and live morally, or if you don’t, you learn from your mistakes;
- You are kind, thoughtful, generous and helpful;
- You smile and treat everyone respectfully whether they are the cleaner or your supervisor, and irrespective of race, gender, sexual orientation or disability;
- You walk a mile in others’ shoes and lose judgement;
- You listen to other perspectives;
- You protect those who need your protection;
- You are consistent in your goodness;
- You use manners;
- You don’t take things for granted.
When you leave this earth, your job title, your house, your car they all mean nothing. But people will always remember how you made them feel.
As you move into practise, I challenge you to make this your success goal. I wish you every success in your future career, but also in your life more broadly as this is the foundation to your career.
I will leave you with the words of two wise souls that I am grateful for:
Mother Teresa said:
“Peace begins with a smile.”
And the Dalai Lama said:
“A simple smile. That’s the start of opening your heart and being compassionate to others.”
Go forth into the world and share your smile, your compassion, your kindness and watch your success flourish.”
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