Why Lawyers Need Mudita Practice for Greater Joy

As a writer and a lawyer, I love it when the sound of a word fits its meaning. “Mudita” is one of those words. It is a Pali and Sanskrit term that refers to sympathetic or appreciative joy. In Buddhist teachings, mudita is one of the four essential heart practices. This post will explain why it’s also essential for lawyers.

What Is Appreciative Joy or Mudita?

Mudita practice is about cultivating joy for the happiness of others. As one of the four heart practices, mudita supports the cultivation of kindness, equanimity, and compassion. As a meditation practice, mudita has a structure similar to loving-kindness. It involves bringing people and groups to mind and conveying kind wishes.

Because mudita focuses on the well-being of others, though, it is the one practice that does not start with oneself. Instead, typically, mudita starts with a loved one and mentor and then extends out to neutral and difficult people. This is because mudita practice, if you give it some time, is likely to create joy in you.

The phrases for mudita practice are also similar to those used for loving-kindness, but with slight edits. Instead of sending simple kindness and well-being, the phrases are tailored to evoke appreciate at the well-being of others. Some examples include:

May you be happy;
May your happiness continue;
May you appreciate your joy;
I am happy for your.

Benefits of Mudita Practice

I’ll talk more about why lawyers specifically might want to consider adding mudita practice to their routine below. As a general matter, practicing appreciative joy has many benefits. The most common reason that someone would want to practice mudita is to reduce self-centered thinking.

To a certain degree, most of us are self-centered. This is more of an observation than a criticism. Part of being human is the reality that our minds get stuck on ourselves. Individualism in western culture and technology don’t help this either.

These two things can combine to alienate us from others. They can also present the illusion that the happiness or success is a threat to us. Given this, even the best of us might need to get intentional about expanding our horizons. Mudita practice can help you reconnect with others and reconsider what real happiness is.

Image showing the benefits of mudita meditation practice for lawyers

Can You Train Yourself to Feel Joy for Others?

Now, you may wonder if you can really train yourself to feel authentic joy for other people. This is a fair question. Most of know that we can’t boss our emotions around.

Though this is true, mudita practice is not about forcing yourself to feel anything. Just like with loving-kindness, the practice is not about feeling joy on demand. Instead, it is better to think about mudita practice as one of orientation.

The point is to direct your attention and intention towards open-heartedness and generosity. You can’t and shouldn’t try to make yourself feel joy for someone else’s good fortune. But you can practice wishing people true happiness and see how it makes you feel.

At first, this practice is likely to feel awkward, strange, or like nothing at all. If you keep practicing, though, you may notice a shift. You may see that you can feel genuine happiness for others. And you may also see the circle of people you can feel happiness for can expand to include people you never expected.

Why Mudita Practice Is Good for Lawyers

Most busy people, like lawyers, are encouraged constantly to “make time for self-care.” This is because lawyers spend most of their work day thinking of others. Why should they want to spend time in meditation focusing on the well-being of others?

One reason is that, while lawyers are often serving others, they are not often intentionally practicing joy. Law practice is often embroiled in conflict and stress. As a result, redirecting attention to happiness and joy can feel pretty good.

In the same way, lawyers are often in competition with others. Some of us have literal opponents in litigation or a hostile transactional matter. It’s not uncommon for lawyers to feel a sense of competition for business reasons with other lawyers.

In this way, mudita might be a nice respite from the competition. It can remind us that our own success is not the only way for us to find happiness. In short, it can help us reflect on and literally feel that connection is our best source of joy.

Want to Try Mudita? Here’s a Guided Meditation.

If you are revved up about appreciative joy and want to try a mudita practice, you are in luck. You can try this practice here:

And if you want to try another option, you can check out this one I liked from One Mind Dharma.

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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How to Practice Gratitude without Being Fake

Thanksgiving is coming up in a few days. 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.

Forcing Gratitude Doesn’t Work

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.

Then How Can You Practice Gratitude?

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.

Try This Gratitude Meditation

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 a Mindfulness in Law Society Virtual Sit 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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Join Us for a Collective Meditation for Peace

The events in Jerusalem last weekend have been devastating for so many friends for a variety of reasons. This post is offered as a wish for all of the blog’s readers and friends to be happy, healthy, safe, and at ease.

I know in times of difficulty, it can be very hard to remember that goodness remains possible. Several times in my life, though, I have had the experience where friends helped me reconnect with something good even in the midst of difficult situations.

On September 11th, a woman in my dorm brought me along with a group to give blood. In 2017, after the bruising election season of 2016, my mom’s group organized a donation drive to support local homeless shelters. Even though these acts didn’t solve the problems that motivated them, they did good and they helped me remember that there is always good to do.

This week, my author friend and heroic lawyer Tahmina Watson invited me to help guide a meditation for peace on Sunday evening. Like the other events, this one features friends too. Jigna Patel, the Mindful Divorce Coach, will start the session. I will lead a loving-kindness practice, which has always been a source of strength for me on difficult days. And Amaris Vicari of The Beneficial Element will close out the session with a brief reflection.

The event is Sunday, October 15th at 7 PM PST/10 PM EST on Zoom. You can register here. Registration is required to obtain the link to join on Zoom but the event is free and open to all. I hope that you can join us but if not I plan to have a recording of the meditation on Insight Timer and in our Guided Meditations soon.

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Supported Fish Pose with Self-Kindness Guided Meditation

Cover image of woman doing restorative yoga with title of blog post "Supported Fish Post with Self-Kindness Guided Meditation"

It’s a long holiday weekend. If you’re lucky, that means some extra time for rest and relaxation and enjoying the last days of summer. Some of us have no trouble resting when we get the chance, but if you are anything like me it can be a struggle. That’s why I am sharing this guided meditation.

It’s really easy to get caught in habits, whether they support the life we want or not. For lawyers, the habit that can impede quality rest is that of being busy. We have jam-packed schedules, numerous obligations, and full lives. This can make it hard to spot the nooks and crannies in our schedule for ease and rest and take advantage of them when they come.

Some of Us Need Help Resting and This Guided Meditation Can Help

The other problem for lawyers, of course, is that even physical rest can feel uncomfortable because our minds don’t stop. As a long-time overthinker, I know that this struggle is very real.

So what’s my answer? First, it is important to learn to just stop and take a few minutes for oneself. Second, though, it helps a lot to honor and connect with the body. In general, it’s the quickest way to feel better both physically and mentally. Third, I really like playing with my mindfulness practice to find what works just for me. As someone trained to teach meditation, yoga, and compassion, this has often meant combining practices.

A Guided Meditation Combined with Restorative Yoga

I used all of these ideas in the new guided meditation I am offering today. In the practice, there is a guided reflection on rest and it’s role in our lives. This practice is not merely a mental exercise but also incorporates a classic restorative yoga pose: supported fish to help the body relax and rest. And third, it’s certainly a playful exploration of the intersection between meditation and yoga.

Labor Day is about honoring the American worker with a day of rest. I’m sharing this meditation with you today as an additional support in your quest to rest this long weekend. If you want to try it out, check it out here or on the YouTube channel.

Another Guided Meditation Option to Help You Rest

If you like this practice and want another, you might check out my most popular video, the Legs Up the Wall Guided Meditation too. This one uses another classic restorative yoga pose: legs up the wall. You can use a cushion to support your back and hips but in truth no props are required at all. This meditation teaches a variety of ways to focus on the breath so you can learn while you rest.

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Companion Guided Meditations from How to Be a Badass Lawyer

It’s World Meditation Day today, a day to raise awareness about the practice of meditation and its benefits. To honor the day, I’m sharing four new guided meditations with a variety of practices and a range of times. These meditations are the recorded companions to the practices offered in my book, How to Be a Badass Lawyer.

As the book explains in more detail, these practices are offered to help you build a regular meditation practice. They offer a variety of practices so that, over time, you can better understand your body, mind, and emotions. With this foundation, you should have the basic skills needed to do the dynamic and transformational practice of loving-kindness. In addition, they range in time so that you can gradually build up your tolerance for meditation practice.

Keep reading to learn more about and try each practice.

Breath Focus Practice

Most meditation practitioners and teachers start with the breath and there’s good reason for that. It’s always with you and the breath is the link between body and mind that can reliably help you calm down. This means that getting comfortable with your breath and being able to use it as a tool is not just helpful as a resource for meditation practice but also a good tool for life. If you need help finding your breath, read more here.

But if you are ready to go, check out this 5-minute practice to get started.

Body Scan

One thing that can get overlooked when it comes to mindfulness is that the body is an essential part. Mindfulness of thoughts is only one aspect, but the body is a link that can help us cultivate awareness even of thoughts. Why? Because contemporary life invites us so frequently to reside in our heads and ignore our bodies.

Body scan is a practice that can help us get reacquainted with our bodies. It is a simple practice that many consider deeply relaxing. You systematically feel the sensations in the body. This is a practice that can help you understand how to take better care of your body (i.e. recognizing signs of stress or physical needs), relax and rest, and understand your emotions better.

To try this 10-minute practice, check it out here.

Joy Practice

Now, I bet you are wondering why I would tell you to practice joy. I have good reason. Did you know that, from a stress standpoint, the body doesn’t necessarily differentiate between what we consider positive emotions versus negative emotions? Thus, if we get more understanding and tolerance for positive emotions, we can understand all of our emotions better.

For many lawyers and professionals, though, positive emotions are the easiest ones to overlook. We are busy and expect good results so we may gloss over accomplishments and peaceful times because we are habituated to handle crisis situations. When we focus on joy, we heal and nourish ourselves and we cultivate emotional understanding at the same time.

Try this 15-minute practice, which incorporates breath and body work as well here.

Loving-Kindness

The final practice in the book is my favorite: loving-kindness. It is a practice where meditators focus on the body, usually the area around the heart, and wish others well. Though you may not think wishing will do a lot, research says otherwise. This practice is associated with reduced stress, improved relationships, and may even lead to more ethical conduct.

You can modify the practice to support your needs and goals and I have a guide here that can help you do that. This 20-minute practice, however, includes the traditional people, groups, and phrases. You can check it out here.

To learn more about the practices and how they fit together, check out my book, How to Be a Badass Lawyer. Good luck with the practices and please reach out if you have any questions.

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It Was a Great Well-Being Week in Law

It was a busy week but a great week for me. I got to celebrate Well-Being Week in Law in several different ways.

First, I got to present on mindfulness and confidence for a law firm. The session was well-attended and the engagement from the audience was excellent. I shared how mindfulness can help build confidence because it can help you break down fear and doubt into component parts and learn strategies to care for each aspect.

Well-Being Week in Law Event Number 1

On Wednesday, I connected with Kristin Tyler, a founder of LAWCLERK Legal and a long-time friend of the blog, and coach and one of my co-authors from the book #Networked, Olivia Vizachero, to discuss mental health in the legal profession.

We discussed everything from strategies for time management and reducing decision fatigue to the practices that support our personal and professional well-being. It was a fun conversation and I was so proud that LAWCLERK chose my book, How to Be a Badass Lawyer, as a giveaway item to support attorney wellness.

You can watch the recording of event here on YouTube:

Well-Being Week in Law Event Number 2

For my last event of the week, I came back home. Specifically, I did a brief talk and guided meditation for my local bar association. I’m a proud member of the Northern Kentucky Bar Association Lawyers Living Well Committee. I talked about how to manage the early phases of meditation practice when you may not immediately feel calm and relaxed. In the guided meditation, I focused on ways to learn to practice relaxation and rest.

To listen to the talk and try the meditation, check out the recording of the event here:

Did you do any special activities this week? Leave a comment to let us know what you tried.

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Holiday Stories Guided Meditation

Last week, we wrote about A Christmas Carol and how Ebenezer Scrooge’s miraculous change of heart can help us all examine our “selves” at the holidays. As a companion to that, I offer this guided meditation from the Brilliant Legal Mind collection. The holidays are a time for stories. They can help us connect with loved ones and learn from our experiences over the years.

Unfortunately, though, stories can also get in the way of connection at times or block us from insights about our lives when we let them play unconsciously in the background of our minds. In this meditation, I help you calm down and then walk you through the stories of the past and present so that you can bring more peace and joy to the future.

Happy holidays to all!

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5 Reasons Why You Might Benefit from and Enjoy Unguided Meditation

The ready availability of high-quality meditation apps means that most people exploring meditation these days are doing so with the support of guided meditations. This is a great thing and was, in fact, what I used to support my practice early on. Many guided meditations instruct and demonstrate, so the guiding may help you build skills and understanding even while you practice. It can also feel lonely and uncomfortable to start sitting in silence if you haven’t meditated much before or maybe just because that’s your personality. Thus, using guided meditations to establish or support your practice is excellent, whether you are a new or experienced meditator.

Even so, sitting in silence—meditating without guiding—offers a lot of benefits too because it offers freedom and flexibility that pre-recorded guided meditations cannot. Though I have no intention to dissuade you away from guided meditations (many of which are offered on this blog), you could be missing out if you never try meditating without guiding. To explain why, here are 5 reasons that you may want to explore meditating in silence.

1. You don’t have to pick a guided meditation.

I went to Catholic school from 1^st through 12^th grade. Some may think those school uniforms are restrictive, but I kind of liked not having to think about what to wear each day. Sitting in silence offers this benefit. One of the reasons I shifted away from guided meditations was that I got sick of scrolling through my app or podcasts to find the one I wanted each day. Rather than continue wasting time and exerting effort to try to control my meditation experience, I instead let go and started using the unguided timer on my meditation app. Now, the only decision I have to make before I sit is to go and do it. In short, sitting in silence saves times and cuts down significantly on the risk that decision fatigue will impede your practice.

2. Unguided meditation always fits you perfectly because it is you.

If you use guided meditations, it can be a challenge to find one that fits your current circumstances. Though good apps and teachers will give you an idea as to what the meditation is about, you won’t really know the tone and content until you are in it. Meditating without guiding avoids this because there is no guide. Your practice always fits you perfectly because your practice is just you. To be sure, this can be scary and difficult at times but so can meditating with the guidance of a teacher. Just like you must learn to trust your teacher in a guided meditation, you also must learn to trust yourself when you sit in silence. In this way, sitting in silence is the perfect meditation for whatever the circumstances are, and it can help you learn to take refuge in yourself in whatever circumstances that may arise.

3. Silence gives the mind space to relax.

What I really love about silent meditation is how it feels in my mind. This is esoteric, so I will try to explain with an analogy. Let’s say your mind is a basketball player. All day long, you have the mind running drills. It must do your work. It must record facts. It must listen to words and make sense of them. To put it another way, during most of your waking hours, your mind is doing passing drills, layups, and free throws. When you meditate, you intentionally stop some of these drills by sitting still and closing or lowering your eyes. If you use a guided meditation, at least one drill continues on as you focus on particular objects or visualizations to which you are directed. But, what if you just sat in silence and gave your mind permission to have open gym? What if you dropped the drills for a while and let your mind play HORSE, 21, or a pickup game or whatever else it wants to do? Sitting in silence is a way of giving space—all the space your mind has to offer—to your thoughts, emotions, and mental habits. This can feel really good and can help you see your patterns of thought a bit more clearly.

4. Meditation without guiding is more like real life.

While it would be awesome if your fav meditation teacher could sit on your shoulder and guide you as you go about your life each day, that’s just not possible. In real life, we have to make our own decisions in the moment. For this reason, meditating in silence is advantageous because it more closely resembles real life where there is no guide. In other words, sitting in silence allows you to practice the skills of mindfulness and compassion unprompted so that you are more likely to use those skills when you need them in life.

5. You may get an unfiltered look at your mind.

Guided meditation is great because you don’t have to think of what to focus on while you meditate and it may keep you on track. For that same reason, though, guided meditation has the potential to hide certain habits of mind from view. The mind can be tricky and it will hide and evade whenever the opportunity presents itself. Even though guided meditations are often intended to help you find clarity, inherently, they are additional sensory input for the mind to process. When you sit in silence, you take this additional input away and may give the mind one less object (or pleasing voice) to hide behind. Free from this extra layer of words, you may be in a better position to see how your mind works.

Silence, for many, is unsettling, unnerving, awkward, or just plain boring. For that reason, guided meditations offer support, comfort, and instruction to many meditators. As a result, I am not telling you in this post that you must or even should meditate in silence. I’m not saying that sitting in silence is the only “real”, “legitimate” or “valid” way to meditate because I believe meditation practices naturally shift over time and we all must find what works for us. My point here, however, is that meditation without guiding just might work for you if you give it a try.

If you want to work a bit with silence in your meditation practice but aren’t quite ready to do it for a full session, check out this meditation. In this practice, Claire will help you get settled and then offer three short intervals of silence for you to practice.

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How to Teach Your Kids about Meditation

Over the last year, we’ve had to figure out how to do many things with our kids around, including our jobs. I’ve already covered ways to find quiet so you can meditate on your own. But another way to address the issue is to bring the kids into your meditation practice. The question inevitably arises, though, as to how one might actually do that.

Kids aren’t exactly known for sitting still and being quiet. I mean, when I wrote the post about “finding” quiet, I had my own noisy and fidgety kids in mind the whole time. For my own part, though, I know that I wish I had learned to meditate sooner since it has offered me so many benefits and helped make my life happier and richer. So, even though it may be a challenge to share mindfulness with our kids, it may be worth it. With that in mind, here are my tips if you want to start sharing mediation with your kids.

1. Be What You Want to See.

I don’t want to brag but my kids actually eat vegetables. It’s not because I have forced them to eat them (though I am not necessarily always immune from dinnertime battles) or have extolled their nutritional benefits. The reason my kids eat vegetables is because I really enjoy food. By that, I mean I love to cook. I get a lot of joy from making different things and experimenting and playing in the kitchen. When I do that, the girls automatically come in and want to help or steal veggies from the counter as I work. Meditation can be the same way. If you enjoy it and have fun with it, your kids are more likely to want to do the same. Let them see you meditate. Let them know you meditate and how it helps you. When they show interest, answer their questions and let them try it. If you push or demand or lecture, this will never happen. Meditation usually works best when someone chooses it for themselves so give your kids the same gift. In other words, just doing what is best for you is a great way to offer the best to your kids.

2. Meditate with them.

When your kids show interest, another great way to encourage them to pick up meditation is to try it with them. You can make this a routine by meditating for a few minutes before bed. Many meditation apps have meditations made just for kids and you can just play one after the bedtime stories or goodnight hugs. That may actually be a good way to help them get ready to sleep. You could also try a meditation break with them in times of stress. When my youngest was small, she refused to take a breath if I told her to do it because she thought it meant she was in trouble. But, if I did the breath with her, I got a totally different response. While you may not think of a few deep breaths as meditation, these building blocks for little kids can grow over time and serve as the foundation for a practice later on, not to mention that they are just good coping strategies to have.

3. Make it fun.

Play is essential to any good meditation practice and that is doubly true for kids. If your kids show an interest in meditation, try to make it fun. Explore guided meditations with imaginative visualizations. Keep your approach light and energized as you talk to them about their experience. For little kids, it may even help them to have them sit in your lap while you practice together. Meditation doesn’t have to be intense to be powerful. Helping them have fun as they explore their inner life bit by bit will serve as a good foundation for a healthy practice later.

4. Keep it simple and short.

It is no surprise that kids can’t sit very long. Don’t make the practice complex and don’t make it too long. It is unlikely that most kids younger than 10 can sit for more than five minutes straight and young kids may struggle to be silent. Start where you kids are. This may mean starting with one or two breaths. Later on you may advance to having your child name her experience. Though this may not seem like mindfulness to you, it is powerful for kids to begin to understand their inner lives. And, as always, their abilities and practice can grow over time.

5. Talking might actually help.

Some kids may not like the feeling of being alone when they meditate. Little kids may lack the ability to avoid talking. That’s just life. You can make meditation a bit easier for these kiddos by talking them through the process. For example, if a guided meditation tells you to envision yourself on a cozy cloud, you might watch your child and see how they react. If they fidget or make a funny face, you could say “what kind of cloud are you seeing?” or “how does the cloud make you feel?” With these questions, you are asking the child to focus on their direct experience so it is mindfulness but it may be easier for them since they have your support in the process. You may also enjoy this since the answers can range from insightful to hilarious and you may learn some surprising things about your kids.

If you want to try meditating with your kids, give this one a try. It’s a simple body scan but I was inspired by the many times I have found my daughters covered in paint or marker or crayon or whatever. Apparently, kids enjoy coloring on or painting themselves. With this meditation, they can do that and make a mess in their minds but there’s no mess at the end for you to clean up. If only craft time was so simple . . .

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Guided Meditation: Let Everything Go

Have you ever gotten all worked up about something and a friend or loved one says “hey, relax!” And then maybe you get mad about it because you think “I can’t relax!” or “I don’t know how!” I know I have.

While we often think our minds are the tools to use to calm ourselves down, that isn’t exactly true. When you get stressed, the mind detects it and the brain won’t calm down until your body tells the brain the “threat” is gone. If you are talking about an abstract threat or one you are worried about in the future, that may never happen. To disrupt the chain, you need to learn how to let go.

I guided this meditation for the ABA Young Lawyers Division on January 12th, day 9 of their Meditation Challenge.

One way of doing that, is by shifting your attention from your thoughts to the feelings in your body. With this brief meditation that I offered for the ABA Young Lawyers Division Meditation Challenge, we’ll shift attention from the swirling thoughts to the soothing and steady breath to rest–even if just for a few minutes. I bet you’ll find it helps. Check it out here.

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