Author Archives: Claire E. Parsons

Claire E. Parsons is a partner at Wood + Lamping LLP in Cincinnati, Ohio. She has practiced for the last fifteen years in the areas of litigation, employment, local government law. Claire lives in Kentucky with her husband, Brian, their two daughters, and dog. Claire is an active leader in her community and in the legal profession. She has led innovative charitable programs in her community, statewide legal organizations, committees relating to the promotion of women professionals. Claire is also a frequent writer and speaker for these and other organizations. She has published and spoken about numerous topics, ranging from complex legal issues, to law practice, networking and marketing, as well as mindfulness and wellness for lawyers and other professionals. She writes regularly on LinkedIn and even co-authored a book this year with 19 other women lawyers about how they used the platform to network and pursue career goals during the pandemic. In 2013, Claire began a mindfulness practice early in her law career and as she was learning to be a new mom to her eldest daughter, Sophie. When Claire began the practice, she saw it gradually transform her life for the better by helping her to reduce overthinking, manage stress, and infuse compassion practices into her daily life. Over the next few years, she continued to study mindfulness practices and attend retreats. In 2018, Claire began speaking and writing on these topics and she quickly became regarded as a resource for professionals as someone who can explain meditation practices in an approachable and practical way. In 2020, she completed the online meditation teacher certification program with The Mindfulness Center founded by Deborah Norris, Ph.D., to refine her understanding of the science of mindfulness and its practical applications. In 2021, Claire also completed the 500-hour yoga teacher training from My Vinyasa Practice as well as numerous courses relating to compassion practices, including Mindful Self-Compassion and Compassion Cultivation Training. Claire enjoys sharing her experience with mindfulness in her practical, and often humorous voice, to help humanize the legal profession and to make life a little easier for her community.

If You Are Thinking about Dry January, You’ll Love This

I know New Years Even hasn’t happened yet and you may still be enjoying the holidays. If so, don’t let this post stop you. Here’s the thing, though, the hits on the blog tell me that many people out there are thinking about Dry January.

As I have done in years past, I am doing a retreat this year for New Years and so I won’t have the ability to post this closer to the big day. If you read the blog, you may know that Dry January is now an annual tradition for me. I have done it since January 2021. It has made a big difference for me.

Here is a collection of posts I and other contributors have written about Dry January and related topics to help you consider or prepare for the challenge.

1. Ditch the shame.

Feeling shame about alcohol? Yeah, I’ve been there. In this post, I share how shame kept me from examining my alcohol habits for months. Trying Dry January helped me experiment and see that I wasn’t hopelessly out of control. Instead, I just needed a reason to say no.

As I have come to realize, there was nothing to be ashamed about at all. In fact, writing about my struggles, including with alcohol, is now a source of pride. Funny how life works sometimes.

2. The More You Know.

One way to motivate yourself during Dry January is to understand the impact of alcohol on the body. You can learn about this in the book Quit Like a Woman which my friend Loren reviewed here.

Some of our other past posts which are not directly related to alcohol may also be helpful too. To understand how cravings work and why mindfulness can help manage them, check out our review of The Craving Mind by Judson Brewer.

Similarly, you may see that Dry January is a new way to disrupt habits. To learn more about habit formation, check out our review of Atomic Habits by James Clear.

3. Hacks and Tricks.

So what if you decide to try Dry January? Are there any tips or strategies that can help you cope or make the experience easier? Yes there are. Here is my original post sharing those tips and here is a revised version just for lawyers I recently published for the Ohio State Bar Association Wellness Advisory Board.

For some more general ideas relating to this, check out my friend’s discussion of the value of patience when it comes to habit change. And I would be remiss if I didn’t remind you to consider self-compassion as the most powerful tool you can use during Dry January.

4. Beyond Dry January.

Can Dry January turn into a more long-term lifestyle change? Absolutely. As my friend and fellow lawyer, Christina, shared in this post last year, it can turn into a sober lifestyle. Christina is now well over 1000 days sober and still going strong.

I have not gone for full sobriety but Dry January and its counterpart 300/65 has helped me significantly reduce alcohol intake overall. Even better, it also helped me significantly increase creative output. To learn more about that, check out my post here.

5. If You Need Some Guidance.

Reading is great, but a blog post may not help you with a craving. Good news. I have a brand new guided meditation just for that. This meditation is broad enough to cover any kind of craving, including one for a drink during Dry January. Check it out on Insight Timer or here:

Want to learn more about mindfulness and compassion? Check out my new book, How to Be a Badass Lawyer, for a simple guide to creating a meditation practice of your own in 30 days. And to share mindfulness with your little one, check out my new children’s book, Mommy Needs a Minute.

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Don’t Let a Crappy Year Ruin Your Happy Holidays

Now is the time of year when I, a mindfulness teacher, am supposed to write a poetical and heartwarming post about the power of mindfulness. I’m supposed to tell you it can calm holiday stress and help you complete all work in a timely manner, leaving extra energy for creating holiday magic.

Sorry to disappoint you but that is not happening this year. You want to know why? Well, my 2023 was not the best. I am grateful to say no true calamities happened in my family or work life, but the year was not at all what I expected it to be. As a result, I haven’t been thinking about holiday magic. Instead, I’ve been pondering how to bring in some warm holiday spirit when the rest of the year left me cold.

I figure I am not alone in pondering this topic. Here are the things that have helped me avoid being too Grinchy this year, even though I can’t promise that they will turn you into Cindy Lou Who.

1. Redefine happiness.

I bet you have said “happy holidays” or something like it approximately 15 million times in the last few weeks. When have you ever asked yourself what that phrase means?

If you are a normal person, you probably never have. We all have visions and ideas and assumptions about what this means. “Happy holidays” is shorthand for that concept. It’s a vague wish of well-being to people we don’t really know.

The truth is, though, that happiness is not one-size-fits-all. There are certain essential ingredients for a base level of happiness, but that leaves a lot of control for you to decide what really matters to you. As you consider how to make happy holidays out of a less than ideal year, part of your control may be letting go of expectations about happiness that aren’t true for you.

2. Accentuate the positive.

One reason mindfulness helps us is that it can balance out our experience. The default setting in most of our minds is negative, so we may have to consciously remember positivity. If you want to move past negativity in the last year, a way to start is to consciously refocus on the positive.

One important way to do this in year end reflection is to stop focusing on what you didn’t do, what you failed at, and what you got wrong. Instead, you can intentionally shift to what you did, what you learned, what successes you had, and the resilience you showed in the process.

This may feel like faking it at first, but I’m not telling you to pretend the bad things aren’t there. I am saying that perspective can shift how we view our lives. Taking a chance to shift perspective may be one way to open your mind up to the good that may still be there for you even after a hard year.

3. Show gratitude for those who helped.

Giving gifts is a big part of the holidays. You know what makes gift-giving feel the best? In my experience, giving a gift means the most when there’s real emotion behind it.

In a hard year, it may be tough to get into the spirit of giving, so I usually have to first consider the gifts that I have received. I may not feel super bountiful so I usually have to lean into my negative mood. Sometimes I ask how things might have been worse or harder without the help or support of someone specific.

My mind is really good at coming with ways that things could get worse, so this is an easy task. This reflection helps me remember that even if my year was not ideal, it was not one I faced alone. When I have identified the people who made a difference for me, I show it with my holiday gift giving and make an effort to tell the person what their actions meant to me.

4. Notice your capacity to feel more than one thing at a time.

As you may have noticed, the strategies so far have been about adding context and balance to your negative moods. You can’t truly wish away personal pain or negative reactions about a hard year and I don’t encourage you to try.

At the same time, though, you may find that happiness may just show up when you least expect it. Perhaps you are in a terrible mood about your own life and then you see something kind or decent or joyful and you may feel something warm, light, and good creeping into your heart.

Does this sound like the closing lines of a Hallmark Christmas movie? Maybe so but people love those movies for a reason. And one reason is that our feelings don’t make sense. They are not logical. You can be in a negative state and still have positive feelings. It happens all the time.

After a hard year, this can be a godsend. When it happens, don’t block it; allow it. Let the kindness, warmth, and happiness float there right along with your negativity, resentment, anger, or hurt. Your brain may try to tell you this doesn’t make sense but learning to hold both at once is how we can make sense out of life.

5. Celebrate the year ending.

If all of these strategies fail, there is still one more thing that may help. This one is the most fundamental and essential of all lessons you may learn from mindfulness practice: change. Things are temporary. Time marches on.

After a hard year, the best thing about the holiday season may be that it is at the end of the year. A new year is coming. There’s a new day. You can let go of 2023 and may even forget some of it soon.

Change is a hard fact of life when things are sweet. When they are not so great, it can be a relief. If you are celebrating the end of 2023 this holiday season, at least you have something to celebrate. And you aren’t alone because I, for one, am right there with you.

If 2023 was a struggle for you, I hope these tips will help you feel at least a little bit merry and bright. If they don’t, here’s one final closing thought. I have had a few occasions in life where my worst years were followed promptly by some of my best. This is not a promise but it is a wish that I have for all of you. Happy holidays to all and well wishes for a wonderful 2024.

If you are looking for a meditation to get you more into the holiday spirit, check out our Holiday Stories Guided Meditation here:

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Why Innovators Need to Manage Stress

I’m invited to appear on podcasts frequently. Most commonly, I am asked to explain the fundamentals of meditation or other mindfulness practices and how professionals can use them in their life and work. I love doing this. Podcasts are really fun and I always learn so much by answering the questions of thoughtful podcast hosts.

Sometimes, though, when I talk about meditation its impact on my life I feel like the answer is incomplete. In truth, starting a meditation practice is one of the best things I have done for my life as an adult. It is hugely important to me because it helped me get out of thought tangles, care for my anxiety, and move forward in life.

As I have shared several times on the blog, though, meditation did not help me so much because it calmed me down. Instead, it helped me because it gave the skills to follow what made me excited. When I started practicing meditation, I was lost in thought, overly rational, and had no self-compassion. I was nearly exclusively focused on what I “should” do and so didn’t spend much of the time I had doing what I wanted.

Meditation helped me change that by giving me mental space to see thoughts swirling around. It helped me not judge and discard every idea that came up. And then it helped me allow myself to not be perfect at every activity the first time I tried it.

This is how meditation led to an explosion of innovation and creativity for me. After I got my bearings, healed from depression, and learned to curb my anxiety, I saw that I was hungry to write and create and let myself do it. Importantly, I let myself invest time and money into writing even though my writing was not squarely related to my law practice.

In his podcast and book, Matt Mueller often talks about a very different type of innovation. Most commonly, he’s talking about business innovation, including new products, processes, or service models. Though my story is more personal, it has affected how I practice law too and how I network and market my law practice. The reality is that our personal stories often shape our business strategies.

If you want to learn how mindfulness can do more than help you manage stress, check out the episode on Matt’s website or your podcast streaming service. If innovation is an interest to you, Matt’s podcast and book are excellent places to start.

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How a Holiday Gift Pulled Me Out of Burnout

Founder’s Note: Writers on the internet have a way of finding each other. Jim is a labor and employment lawyer in Illinois with Big Law and corporate experience, blogger, and many other things. He found me when I interviewed his best friend, Joel Stern, about his experience with cancer and his new book. We chatted via email for a while and then Jim sent me a guest post. It wasn’t until I read it that I learned we had another thing in common: Peloton. Checkout his story of how a holiday gift helped him end burnout and start a new life.

In 2017, I became the Global Lead of Employment and Immigration for a large Indian IT company (a competitor of Accenture). I had a team of 20 lawyers based in London and Bangalore, India. I would travel to London and spend about one week there and then a week in India. I did this several times. At first, it was exciting and fun. After a couple of years though, it was no longer fun- – it was just grueling. And the job was really 24/7, I would be doing conference calls in the middle of the night because that’s daytime in India or checking emails in the middle of the night.

I am not saying my employer expected this; it is how I am wired. Lawyers handle the toughest issues businesses and society face. And while there is a lot of satisfaction to be gained by the practice of law, the legal profession is a stressful one. Lawyers are expected to work long hours, practice at a 24/7, “always on” pace, and provide immediate answers to the most complex issues, all while maintaining a high degree of client service and professionalism.

In December 2018, I traveled to London and India for almost 3 weeks. I returned home just before Christmas. I was physically and mentally exhausted. As I left India, I thought to myself “I really never want to come back here.” When I got home, we had friends over to sing Christmas carols and I literally fell asleep while singing them.

One of my favorite things about Christmas was singing in the midnight Christmas Eve service with the choir I sang with for over 20 years. Singing “Silent Night” with only candles to illuminate the church is one of the most spiritual experiences I’ve ever had. But I couldn’t even stay awake until 8 p.m., so I missed the service that year.

2019 rolled around and a polar vortex hit Chicago and the temperatures were way below 0. That matched my mood – – cold and dark. I was supposed to return to India in February. I just couldn’t do it. My General Counsel was very understanding. But I just couldn’t get of my funk. I struggled to get through the workday, and it was a slog.

By 2020, I realized that I wasn’t doing myself, my family, my friends, or my work team any favors and it was time for me to go. I took an “early” retirement in March 2020. What else happened in March 2020? The pandemic hit. A double whammy. I plunged into further darkness. I would sleep until noon and basically get up and just read a book or something. I had no interest in playing golf even though we had moved to a beautiful new community with a golf course and our house overlooks the 16^th hole.

In December 2020, my wife and I bought a Peloton bike. I made a pledge to myself that I was going to get on this damn bike and ride almost every day. And I did! I started to feel better and eventually experienced weight loss that further contributed to my well-being. At the same time, I rediscovered meditation. I had meditated off and on over the years, but I found a meditation program called Ten Percent Happier. I am not getting paid to endorse this, I just really like the program.

Dan Harris is a fidgety, skeptical journalist who had a panic attack on live national television, which led him to try something he otherwise never would have considered: meditation. He went on to write the bestselling book, 10% Happier. Dan talks with eminent meditation teachers, top scientists, and even the odd celebrity. Dan sometimes ventures into the deep end of the pool, covering subjects such as enlightenment and psychedelics. Or it can be science-based techniques for issues such as anxiety, productivity, and relationships.

Dan’s approach is seemingly modest, but secretly radical: happiness is a skill you can train, just like working your bicep in the gym. Your progress may be incremental at first, but like any good investment, it compounds over time. I liked that. Meditation became part of my daily practice. Between biking and meditation, I rediscovered myself. Don’t get me wrong-many days I still struggle with meditation because I have a very active monkey-mind. But I stick to it.

I love my life now. I love my family. I love my friends. I love my work and I love to sing (I found a local junior college choir to sing with where it’s me and about twenty 18–19-year-olds who put up with an old fart like me), play sports like golf, pickleball, platform tennis, kayaking, swimming, etc.

I love to travel and I cannot wait to travel more with my amazing wife of 37 years who put up with me during my darkest days. I write my own blog called “A Year of Grateful Music” where I highlight an artist and a song that I like. They say writing things we are grateful for everyday drastically improves your life. If you’re interested, email and I’ll send you the link and password.

Will this approach work for you? I don’t know, but I’d sure encourage you to try it and become a badass lawyer too!

Author Bio: Jim Beyer is a management labor and employment Lawyer with 25+ years of experience with major corporations (Accenture, General Electric, IBM and Infosys) and with Seyfarth Shaw, an AmLaw 100 firm. Jim is currently employed by Axiom. Axiom is the global leader in high-caliber, on-demand legal talent. Axiom employs over 13,000 lawyers globally. Over 60% of Fortune 100 companies are Axiom clients. Over 4000 Axiom lawyers have been with Fortune 500 companies and over 1700 Axiom lawyers have been with AmLaw 100 firms . Jim was elected as a Fellow in The College of Labor and Employment Lawyers in 2006 and he is an Adjunct Law Professor teaching employment law.

Outside of work, Jim is an avid singer looking to perform on Broadway (but happy to be a soloist on a local junior college choir, along with about 20 18–20-year-old young adults). He is a wannabe legal fiction novelist, he has been for married 37 years to a woman who should be sainted for putting up with him, father of 3 great adult sons (they call him Fred McMurray), Dad to a precocious 11-year-old English Springer Spaniel, lousy but avid golfer, Peloton bike nut and Jim also enjoys pickleball, platform tennis and kayaking. He writes a blog called “Musings of an Employment Lawyer.”

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A Holiday Gift for Readers: New Law Practice e-Book

It’s that time of year when you may be getting winter coats and clothes out of the closet. If you are lucky, you may find a dollar or too in a pocket of one of your coats. Recently, I had the writing equivalent of that experience.

I was perusing the blog’s pages to check on links from guest posts I had written to see if they were still current. I saw that my old posts for Ms. JD were no longer available on their blog because they revamped their website. As a teacher of mindfulness, it was an opportunity to reflect on impermanence. Apparently even aspects of the internet are temporary.

I was sad for a minute and thought “wow, has it really been 5 years since I wrote those posts?” Indeed, it has and it’s closer to six for the early ones. But then I remembered something awesome.

In 2020, when I first started experimenting with Canva and just before I decided to launch this blog, I had created an e-book with my Ms. JD posts. I had originally intended it for another group, MothersEsquire, with which I had been involved and wrote for previously. Then I got invited to write a chapter for the #Networked book, started my meditation teacher training, and launched the blog.

In short, I forgot entirely about the e-book and just let it sit. That’s how writing projects sometimes go. You set them aside for a while as you focus on something else. It’s been a great three years and, with the publication of 2 other books and the continued growth of the blog.

Though all of these wonderful things may have provided an excuse to forget about the e-book, they also presented a wonderful opportunity to celebrate. I started writing for Ms. JD almost 6 years ago and had no plans, no goal, and no confidence that my writing would go anywhere.

Many lawyers and other professionals ask me about writing frequently. They express that they want to write more but are afraid to get started. I’m sharing the e-book for any people who might want to see how a single blog post a month can add to something bigger.

In addition, the e-book has some good things in it. It is aimed at young women lawyers because that is Ms. JD’s mission and the focus of their blog. However, it may have some ideas, practice tips, and humor for any lawyer or working professional. It addresses topics like:

the best career advice I ever received;
work-life balance and dispelling the “how do you do it all” myth;
dealing with microaggressions as a female lawyer;
establishing fitness and meditation habits;
networking; and
leadership and mentorship.

To download and read the e-book or share it with someone else, you can find it here. While you are there, check out the other free downloads on the resources page, including the Meditation Habit Worksheet, Heart of Loving-Kindness Practice Guide, Pause and Begin Again e-book, and Personal Well-Being Worksheet.

Happy holidays to all!

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How Mindfulness Can Help Lawyers Make Social Change

Founder’s Note: I had the great pleasure to teach a session during the Mindfulness in Law Society annual online retreat in October. The speaker for this event was Chris Punongbayan, the Executive Director for Changelawyers in California. In his talk, Chris shared how mindfulness practices can help us build a better, more equitable world. I could not believe how much I needed to hear it. I wanted to share some of his insights with you so I asked him to participate in this interview.

1. Tell me about yourself and your work, both as a lawyer and yoga teacher.

I remember my law school admissions essay clear as day, although it was 23 years ago when I wrote it. I wanted to be a lawyer because I wanted to start a Filipino American Legal Defense Fund. I was living in New York City at the time and saw there was a great need for lawyers for community members on issues like immigration and employment, especially for domestic workers. But there were very few lawyers who looked like me and who came from my background who wanted to serve those who could not afford a lawyer.

So, I went to law school with a strong public interest focus. It was there at UCLA Law School that I also discovered Critical Race Theory. I’ve never looked back. In 2003, I received a scholarship from the California Bar Foundation. I am proud to say that now, 20 years later, I am leading that very same organization as its Executive Director. We are now called California ChangeLawyers. Our mission is to build a better justice system for all Californians.

I’ve always had an interest in yoga, but it was purely from a physical vantage point. I thought of it more as stretching than anything else. In 2016, I decided to take it to another level. I took a sabbatical from the civil rights nonprofit I was working for at the time, and decided to do an intensive immersion training program.

I crammed 200 hours into one month. This decision changed the course of my life. I learned so much more about what the true purpose of yoga is, how the physical is a doorway into a much deeper experience of self. I learned how to truly be a student. I love teaching yoga today, as well as mindfulness, because of the inherent benefits of practices that invite us to truly wake up and be fully present.

2. Politics and policy are challenging now on almost every level and may affect those doing any kind of social change work acutely. How have you been able to stay engaged as a citizen and lawyer?

What I try to do is be mindful in the everyday sense of being mindful, not just through seated meditation. I am aware of how I consume media and the torrent of bad news, and notice if I am starting to doom scroll. I feel like I have a strong North Star and so I try to keep looking up, rather than getting stuck in the energy of fear, worry, and doubt.

I pay attention to my words and what type of conversations I am having. I am trying more and more to show appreciation and gratitude for things that are easy to take for granted, like not having a toothache, or are neutral, like having a chair to sit on or a bed to lie in.

When I pay attention to these ways of being in the present moment, I am able to enter into “the real world” with more calm and understanding, and less judgment and feelings of being wronged or overwhelmed. I find that when others are in a fervor, I am, more often than not, level-headed. This allows me to have a clearer vision about the nature of injustices and discover more skillful ways of addressing the suffering caused by discrimination and exclusion.

3. What helps you manage your emotions, energy, and spirit as you engage in the challenging work of social change?

Being in nature is a top priority for my well-being. Sometimes I take a walk in a park, sit down, and place my hands on the grass. Feeling the direct contact with the earth through the palms of my hand reminds me of what connection is. Doing social change work, especially as the leader of an organization, can be lonely. I have found that touching the ground works wonders.

Second, being in a community of mindfulness practitioners who are also advocates for social change helps address not only loneliness, but also the sadness, anger, frustration, and sorrow that is part and parcel of fighting for a change to the status quo. There is power in numbers.

4. What role can mindfulness practices play in helping lawyers to create positive social change?

Mindfulness can help lawyers become more kind. Our profession can be brutal and, in fact, being ruthless is often preferred in comparison to being vulnerable. Can you imagine being vulnerable in a legal setting? As lawyers, we are taught to put on our armor and our masks. And yet, vulnerability is an undeniable human experience.

Imagine if we saw each other, even as adversaries, through the lens of kindness. Perhaps it will start to make shifts at the margins in terms of how we interact with each other. And perhaps, even more profound shifts may cascade over time. If the profession were just 10% more kind, this would be a positive social change.

For lawyers who are already dedicated to social change work, mindfulness can help us become aware of how much stress we hold when we work with traumas of our clients who are facing deportation, wage theft, discrimination, or environmental toxins. When we are aware of these vicarious traumas, we can take steps to metabolize and then release these stresses so that we can again be the best advocates we can be.

5. What resources, practices, or groups have been particularly helpful to you in your work or life? (this can be about mindfulness practices but it doesn’t have to be)

Right now, I am taking the online course, Zen and the Art of Saving the Planet. It is a global community practicing in the Plum Village tradition of Zen master, Thich Nhat Hanh. We are coming together to address the issue that binds us all together, the fate of the planet. The teachings are beautiful and the sangha (community) is equally potent. The book that it is based on is also poignant.

I also recently joined the ARISE Sangha listserv. ARISE stands for Awakening through Race, Intersectionality, and Social Equity. They regularly examine issues of our day through the dharma (teachings) and offer very relevant practices and skillful insight that aren’t part of the mainstream discourse on race in the United States.

The last resource I would offer is Home is Here: Practicing Anti-Racism with the Engaged Eightfold Path by Lien Shutt. The book offers an important perspective on racism that exists in the mindfulness community against Asian Americans. It is also an excellent refresher on the Eightfold Path in the context of fighting against racism in its various forms, from the individual level to the institutional level.

Chris’s Bio: Christopher Punongbayan is the Executive Director of California ChangeLawyers, a community foundation that empowers the next generation of legal changemakers through grants and scholarships totaling $1.5M+ annually. A native of Massachusetts and the son of immigrants from the Philippines, Chris graduated cum laude from Brown University with a degree in Asian American Studies and UCLA School of Law where he completed the Critical Race Studies concentration and the Epstein Program in Public Interest Law and Policy. Chris is a 500 hour certified yoga teacher and completed the Mindfulness for Lawyers training with Warrior One in 2022. He lives in San Francisco with his husband, 2 adopted sons, and 3 adopted cats.

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Mindfulness Can Make Litigation Suck a Little Bit Less: New Podcast Interview

“Mindfulness does not make life easy. It can make it suck it a little bit less.”

This is a brilliant quote from me on the Business Litigation and Intellectual Property Podcast with Travis Richins and Jacob Tingen.

They asked me to explain some ways that mindfulness has made my law practice a little bit more calm and kind. I was happy to share some examples with them. I have many such stories that I have compiled over the years.

Meditation has helped me decompress after hard days. It has helped me stay steady when life or a case freaks me out. And it has helped me avoid reactivity in response to the behavior or stress of my fellow lawyers.

But I had to admit that the practice didn’t make me perfect and it didn’t make law practice suddenly become easy. That’s because mindfulness practices aren’t magic. Instead, they are deeply practical.

For this reason, this interview with Jacob and Travis was one of my favorites because we talked about the practical reasons why mindfulness practices can benefit a law practice. This includes managing the day to day stresses of the job, but also facing the long-standing doubts and fears that can keep you from trying things that scare you (like networking for me) or pursuing things you love (in my case writing).

If you are interested in learning what mindfulness may mean for you or your law practice, check out this interview. You can watch it here.

I mentioned a few meditations in the podcast to help lawyers who have to deliver bad news to clients or avoid email wars with opposing counsel. If you want to check those out here they are:

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3 Ways Mindfulness Can Help in Troubled Times

In the last month, many of us may have found ourselves questioning the state of the world. If you have watched news reports from the devastation in Gaza or the hateful violence perpetrated in the United States following it, you may have felt less than certain about the goodness of humanity and your role in it.

One of the things that I have been incredibly grateful for over the last month was that I had opportunities to teach and meditate in community. It gave me a way to contribute and receive the gifts of fellow meditators. Despite this experience, I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that I had some doubtful thoughts along the way.

These included questions like these: is meditation really what we should be doing when the world has so many challenges? How can people even relax in such hard times? Is it even right to try to relax?

Though I’ve taken some time with these thoughts, I don’t know that I have definitive answers. Even so, here are three thoughts that have helped me stick with my practice and rely on it as a support in these troubled times.

1. Meditation Is Ideal for Giving Big Questions the Time and Space They Deserve.

“How can one meditate in troubled times?” That’s a big question. Of course, lawyers tend to love big questions. As a teacher and student of meditation, however, I have learned to treat them with a healthy amount of skepticism. After all, asking a big question often carries with it an urge for an immediate (and satisfying) answer. Law school and law practice train us to think we have to answer every question quickly and do so well.

If you pay attention, however, life shows us that time and curiosity may point us closer to the right direction. This is in part because big questions often don’t have just one right answer. Though law practice can force us to overlook this as we search for the “best” result for clients, there is usually more than one way to solve a problem. In fact, sometimes when we open our minds up, we may even see the problem itself differently.

And how can you open your mind up? Meditation is one way. This is not a trick. Once you let go of the idea that meditation is about clearing your mind, you realize that meditation may be the perfect thing to do when thoughts are rolling around in your head. Even if you don’t get answers right away, you may get some rest or find some peace. And that’s a win.

2. Mindfulness Can Help You Check for Doubt.

Of all people, lawyers should know that not all questions are really seeking information. In many cases, questions that start with the phrase “how can” are truly expressions of doubt.

Doubt is a normal part of mindfulness practice. The Buddha identified it as one of the major impediments to meditation and living a good life. When life is hard or the world presents challenges, our minds often generate doubts about ourselves and our efforts. Practice can teach us, though, that doubts aren’t always based on truth.

Instead, I have experienced that doubts are often a mental manifestation of fear. When we are presented with challenging subjects and memories, fear is bound to arise. When we see the doubting questions as fear, we may learn how to take care of the fear instead of following the directions of the doubt.

If the state of the world is hurting your motivation to meditate, be compassionate with yourself but check for doubt too. It’s human to be alarmed about what is happening in the world and to question the meaning in what we do. But acting unconsciously based on doubt often leads way from meaning and goodness rather than back to it.

3. Meditation Is Resting Instead of Giving Up.

Meditation can be particularly hard on challenging days because it is sometimes described as “doing nothing.” When things in the world feel wrong, the idea of doing nothing can seem immoral. Couple this with the often misunderstood concept of “acceptance” and you can make yourself feel like a monster for taking a few minutes to breathe.

But meditating for a few minutes isn’t doing nothing in an absolute sense, is it? At most, it is doing nothing for a few minutes out of your day. My point here, of course, is that resting and giving up aren’t the same thing.

Sure, there are times when people might use meditation to bliss out and avoid the problems of the world. But that’s not the only way to practice. I don’t practice meditation to check out or give up. I practice it to rest, steady myself, allow my mind to settle, and fortify my heart precisely so I can engage better and more skillfully in the world.

In this way, meditating is more about seeing clearly the possibility for personal agency rather than doing nothing. Yes, the practice done right calls for clarity about the state of affairs, including the darkest parts. It also builds the essential ingredients that need to exist for humans to be of help to the world and our communities.

Conclusion

The reality is that meditation may be counterintuitive when our emotions are high and questions, rather than answers, pervade our minds. Despite this, I have found that meditation can be essential in precisely those times. It helps me give the big questions the time and space to bounce around, let go of doubt, and focus on strengthening the skills and capacities I need to continue trying to live an ethical life.

In short, I think experience–instead of pure logic–is more likely to show you how you can keep meditating in a world full of challenges. Rather than focusing on the merits of the practice itself, the better approach is to ask whether meditation will serve you now. Of course, this is a question to ask yourself every time you are thinking about practice and not merely on the hardest of days. To be a meaningful one, though, it must be safe for the answer to be “no.”

Sometimes you may need to give yourself permission to take a pass from meditation. When the world feels really heavy, seeking support from a friend or loved one may serve you better. Taking a walk outside may help you get out of your head and reconnect with what is right in the world.

Self-care practices like meditation can be a wonderful way to take refuge when we encounter difficulty. But they serve us best when we don’t use them against ourselves. As you consider your meditation practice in the context of the broader world, always be kind to yourself.

If you decide that you want to try meditation, here is a practice inspired by Mr. Rogers that I developed for myself for hard days.

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How to Practice Gratitude without Being Fake

Thanksgiving is coming up next week. This holiday is one that is pretty easy for me to love because cooking and eating are two of my favorite things. You get to do both on Thanksgiving and you only have to spend one day with your extended family. Seems perfect, right?

Oh yeah, I forgot about gratitude. In some form or fashion, you may be asked to reflect on or proclaim your gratitude. I don’t doubt the myriad studies that say gratitude is good for us. I appreciate the need to express and receive gratitude. But, as a lifelong pigheaded person, I refuse to feel something on demand.

Honestly, it’s not even truly refusal. I could decide to go along with the little game of gratitude to amuse my family or shut them up. But I would know in my secret heart of hearts that I don’t really feel grateful. What I really feel is resentful.

This same phenomenon is why I also can’t do positive affirmations. They don’t make me feel strong, calm, empowered or loved. They make my mind argue and my mind already does this well enough on it’s own. In short, despite the best intentions of these positive practices, I just can’t force my mind or heart to go in a direction it’s not already inclined to go.

So, what’s the key here? How can someone like me practice gratitude in a way that’s not fake? One way, of course, is to notice when genuine gratitude comes up, savor it, and where appropriate share it. I do this and it feels really good.

But can I cultivate gratitude otherwise? Despite my mental and emotional blocks against fakery, I have discovered a hack. I have written many times about my fondness for loving-kindness practice. One of the reasons I love this practice so much is that it serves as a gratitude practice for me.

I don’t go into the practice hoping for gratitude but it almost always shows up as a wonderful side effect. When I bring to mind the people I love and care about and wish them well, invariably I also feel gratitude that they are in my life. Strangely, I even sometimes feel gratitude to myself and to the difficult people in my life as the practice progresses.

This is why I am sharing a gratitude meditation that is really a modified loving-kindness practice. It follows the same traditional pattern, but instead of wishing the phrases of peace and well-being it includes an offering of gratitude. I did this one for the Mindfulness in Law Society Virtual Sit this week and remembered how much I liked it.

To try out the practice, find it here or on our YouTube channel or on Insight Timer. Please have a wonderful holiday weekend. I am honestly and sincerely grateful to have you as a reader and meditation friend.

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Does Meditation Make You a Buddhist?

This is the question I have been waiting for someone to ask me ever since I started teaching mindfulness to lawyers. After several years and countless events, nobody ever has. Maybe it’s because people don’t know the origins of most of the practices I teach. Maybe people are busy focusing on learning the practices instead of a deeper question like this. Or maybe they are just too polite to ask.

Since I have been waiting years to answer this question, I have practiced many different versions of my answer in my mind. To be totally upfront about it, I think that there are many valid ways to answer this question. This blog post is a summation of all the different ways of considering the question so that you can answer it better for yourself.

1. What does “Buddhist” mean?

Sorry to be a total lawyer about this, but when this question has crossed my mind I always wonder what the term “Buddhist” means. It can refer to one’s religion or spiritual identity. On the other hand, it can also refer to one’s allegiance to a philosophical perspective or set of ideas.

For many people, being a Buddhist may include both of these ideas. For me, though, only the latter feels right. Buddhism, as a religion, is connected to a myriad of cultural practices and ideas. Given this, I don’t feel right calling myself a Buddhist when I share in only a part of the practices that other people do for their religion.

On the other hand, I regularly do and teach many practices that have emanated from Buddhism. I believe in and have developed faith through life experience in traditional Buddhist concepts like compassion, the value of clear awareness, and even tricky concepts like not-self. Thus, clearly I am a Buddhist in the philosophical sense.

2. Does meditation alone make you a Buddhist?

My opinion on this question is that meditation by itself probably does not make you a Buddhist in the religious or philosophical sense. For one thing, there are many styles of meditation out there and not all of them emanate from Buddhism. Moreover, you can practice and benefit from meditation without ever understanding the philosophical or spiritual aspects of Buddhism.

Of course, this answer could change depending on the extent of your practice. A few minutes a day is not likely to immediately change your personality, worldview, or beliefs. However, more extensive experience in retreats or with different groups and teachers could change the answer over time.

3. Does it really matter?

When people ask me a question, it always helps to know why they are asking so I can address the real concern. Some people may be concerned that “being a Buddhist” could take away from other religious practice or faith. You are the best person to judge the requirements of your own religion.

I can say, however, that Buddhism is relatively free of metaphysics in comparison to other religions. Meditation groups and classes are also not uncommon these days in secular spaces, churches, synagogues, and mosques. Based on this, there seem to be plenty of people who believe meditation is not in conflict at all with other world religions.

The harder question to answer is whether meditation or potentially “becoming a Buddhist” may change your self-image. My experience is that, of course, it can. Meditation and exploring Buddhist concepts and practices changed my life, including my identity and how I thought of myself. I am incredibly grateful for that experience but I don’t claim that it was easy.

Though it can be liberating, it can also be scary to watch habits change or see lifelong assumptions fall apart. The practice of meditation, even for just a few minutes a day, has the potential of causing that kind of change. As I have written before, though, this isn’t something that is likely to happen overnight. Moreover, the good thing about meditation is that it helps you pay more attention to your life. So, if you don’t like the change, you can stop or adjust the practice.

4. Summary and Conclusion

In short, meditation alone does not necessarily make you a Buddhist, but with enough time and experience that answer could change. Being a Buddhist, in terms of religion or philosophy, does not necessarily require abandoning or changing other faith practices or beliefs.

Meditation is most likely to change habits, assumptions, and your self-image but that may not be a bad thing. In fact, those changes are often what many people want when they try meditation whether they realize it or not. In the end, the real question isn’t whether I think mediation makes me (or anyone else) a Buddhist. The critical questions are whether you think that and what that conclusion means for you.

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