For the first time in a few years, I am looking forward to a relatively easy Well-Being Week in Law. In case you didn’t know, May is Mental Health Awareness Month. The first week of the month is appropriately dedicated to promoting well-being in the legal profession. As a mindfulness teacher, this is often a busy week for me.
But, as a school lawyer too, this time of year is otherwise hectic for me. I have a few nice events lined up this week, which I share below. In addition, I am looking forward to some rest after a busy April and a lot of speaking engagements.
Guiding Meditation with the Mindfulness in Law Society
The first event for the week is easy and enjoyable for me. On Wednesday, May 6th at 5 PM, I will guide the virtual sit for the Mindfulness in Law Society. I have been involved with the Mindfulness in Law Society for a few years now. Having worked with the group for so long, I now get a strong sense of community from it.
If you have never attended one of the virtual sits before, Well-Being Week in Law is a great week to try it out. For one thing, it is very beneficial to support your meditation practice with sitting in community. In addition, the Mindfulness in Law Society virtual sits are free to attend, easy to access, and led by trained teachers.
To access the sessions, you can find more details and the link to join on my events page. Even if you are very new to meditation practice, the session this week will be perfect at beginners and refreshing for experienced meditators. Since my personal theme this week is keeping things simple and taking it easy, I’ll be guiding a practice with built in breaks.
If you are a lawyer, law student, law professor, or work for a court system or law firm, please join the session.
Interview for the Thriving in Law Summit
On Friday, I will also be talking about one of my favorite topics: self-compassion with fellow lawyer and coach, Gina Steele. Gina asked me to record an interview with her for her Thriving in Law Summit. I love the title she selected, “Becoming a Badass Lawyer: How Self-Compassion and Compassion Towards Others Helps Lawyers Succeed and Thrive.”
In the session, Gina and I will discuss how essential self-compassion and compassion for others are to law practice. We’ll also discuss how real lawyers in the midst of stress and busy lives can cultivate compassion.
In case you are struggling with conference season like I have been, you may be pleased to know that the Thriving in Law Summit is virtual and free to attend. You must register for access at the link above or on my events page.
How I Plan to Support My Own Well-Being
As a school lawyer, it’s too busy right now for me to take any time off next week. I will be trying my best to take it easy this week otherwise. I still have one more conference later this month. I’ll be ending the month in Boston to speak at the DRI Employment and Labor Law Seminar.
In the intervening weeks, I am making a point to rest as much as I can. This week, I plan to work at home a few days. This will leave me some extra time to do the restorative activities that help me recharge. Most certainly, in addition to meditation, this will include cooking, getting outside, exercise, and lots of sleep. If I am lucky, I may find the energy to do some writing, including on my forthcoming novel.
However, you plan to spend the week, I hope it is one that supports your well-being and the wellness of those around you.
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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Fouder’s Note: I have written before about how we are the first people to benefit when we show compassion for others. This interview shows how true this is. I know Tiffany Blackmon through a Facebook group for lawyer moms. It was easy to see right away that Tiffany was civic-minded and had a generous spirit that exceeded the bounds of her law practice. Recently, I saw her post about making a life-saving bone marrow donation and I asked her to do an interview here. I hope you enjoy reading her story of courage and compassion.
Q: Tell me about yourself and your law practice.
I’ve represented clients in Social Security cases, worked in insurance defense, and served as a career law clerk before moving into my current role as General Counsel for Cascadia Health, the largest community-based behavioral health and substance use treatment services organization in Oregon.
In my current role, I oversee the legal, compliance, and housing departments within the organization, and enjoy the opportunity to work on a wide array of work, including privacy work, AI governance, and representing the organization in administrative hearings and other matters.
Outside of work, I stay busy raising 3 kids, and I’m an active volunteer with the PTA and Junior League of Portland. I enjoy traveling (working on visiting all 50 states before I turn 40!), trying new restaurants, and attending art and theatre events in my free time.
Q: How did you learn about and get involved with bone marrow donation?
I saw an article shared on social media about how the bone marrow donor registry needed an array of diverse donors. It explained that the markers used to match a donor and a patient are inherited based on ancestry- making it far more likely a patient will be compatible with a donor who is from the same ethnic background.
I thought that was really interesting, and started looking into the topic more. My research revealed that only 30% of patients have a family member who is a compatible donor, which is why registries are so necessary. After talking with family and friends about what I had learned and the donor registry, and decided to join the registry myself.
Getting on the registry was a simple process. I completed a form online, and received a box in the mail that only required swabbing my cheek and sending it back in. Over the years, I then received a couple check-ins over the years to confirm my contact information/interest, but no work was required on my end to remain on the registry.
Q: What was the bone marrow donation experience like for you?
It was a great learning experience. Reading all the materials that the National Marrow Donor Program (NMDP) sent, and talking with their staff helped me gain so much knowledge. It had been seven years since joining the registry before I was matched with a patient. It was exciting to receive the call that I had matched with someone after the long waiting period.
I went through the initial screening call, labs, and a physical exam before being cleared to donate. For the days leading up to the donation, a nurse came to my home to give me Filgrastim injections that are needed to help increase stem cell production. The side effects of the injections were not too severe for me, with just one day of more significant fatigue requiring a nap.
I traveled from Portland, OR up to Seattle, where I was scheduled to donate. NMDP coordinates the travel, and helps support you through the whole process. You’re able to bring a companion with you, and my mother was able to travel with me to help with transportation after the donation. We spent a day at the donation site (the donations typically take 4-6 hours, though mine took 8 hours). There was also some time to explore Seattle, a city I always love to visit. I was sore after the donation, but able to travel home the next day.
Q:What did you gain from the experience of making a bone marrow donation?
It was a really positive experience to get to help someone else in such a significant way. When I explained to my kids what I was doing, I explained I was helping someone who we didn’t know, who was my dad’s age. They understood that I may be helping someone else’s grandpa, and they thought that was really cool. It was such a learning experience to get to talk through with them, and I think it had a positive impact on them and I hope inspires them to donate someday.
I’ve also enjoyed being able to connect with other donors, and learn about their experiences. It’s amazing to see how many people have donated to strangers-not just in our country, but all over the world. The staff are also passionate about the work, and that added to the experience, being able to be surrounded by a team of people who are all so dedicated to helping others is a unique and great experience to have.
Q: As a busy lawyer and parent, how did you find the time to do the donation?
NMDP works with you to schedule the donation, and my employer was supportive in helping me be able to fit the time off into my schedule. I worked from home when needed. One of the days I was too sore and fatigued from the injections to go into the office, so that really helped.
Q: What is one lesson from the experience that you want other lawyers to know?
While it can be stressful to take time off of work to donate, or to impact community members in other ways, such as through volunteering, it is so worth it. It’s a great opportunity to get out of the office, meet other people who are positively impacting others in ways beyond what we see in the legal field, and remind ourselves that there is so much life outside of work.
Q: What resources relating to bone marrow donation do you want to share?
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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The last week was filled with grief for me because my dog of nearly 16 years passed away. She was very old and ill, and we had to put her down. I had never had to euthanize a pet before so this was even more challenging. Looking back, I saw the many ways that my mindfulness practice helped me get through it.
Grief is a part of life for all of us at some point. It can be a hard thing for lawyers to experience because the emotion often comes with a huge lack of control. There is no way to make grief easy, but I experienced this week that mindfulness can help us avoid making it worse.
Here are the things I noticed this week as I let my mindfulness training help me work my way through grief.
Mindfulness Can Help You Not Make Grief Worse
As I sat with my scared sick dog in the vet’s office, I was pretty sad and scared too. And you know what? That was a perfectly appropriate response to the situation.
As we all know, sadness is not a pleasant emotion. But from experience I can say that it feels better than being sad and trying to pretend I am not. Sadness also feels better than being sad and ignoring reality or resisting my feelings.
Acceptance is perhaps the hardest part of mindfulness to learn because it means we have to confront the parts of life that we may not like. The gold on the other side, though, is that we get to see and feel the peace that comes with not making things worse.
Mindfulness Can Help You Avoid Overwhelm
Another reason mindfulness helps with grief is that it can help you manage overwhelm. Sometimes when grief comes, we don’t have any choice but to be overwhelmed. Of course, nobody should fault themselves for feeling that way either.
In my situation, though, I really needed to avoid overwhelm because I wanted to stay as steady as possible to help my dog. As sad as the situation was for me, it was much scarier for her. In addition, I was her person. She had bonded to me and so I wanted to be a support for her.
As I sat in the vet’s office holding my dog, tears and sadness came. But I used my breath to ground and soothe myself. I kept my attention in my body, feeling the weight of her body on me as I waited. The situation was sad but I was able to stay in my window of tolerance as I experienced it. This helped me help my dog as I faced what I needed to face without overwhelm.
Responding to Grief with Kindness
One of the important ways that mindfulness can help us avoid overwhelm is that it isn’t just training clear awareness but kind awareness. In times of difficulty in mindfulness practice, we train the skill of responding to ourselves with care and concern instead of judgment and criticism.
I tried to support my husband and let him support me during the experience. As I mentioned, I was focused primarily on reducing my dog’s fear and pain. And I showed appreciation for the staff at the vet’s office and let their show of kindness affect me.
When I first started exploring mindfulness, I was confused about equanimity. In times of grief, the idea of equanimity – not being thrown off balance – feels like it doesn’t make sense. How can we be nonreactive in a situation where we are clearly sad?
As I left the vet’s office, though, I couldn’t help but see the good in the situation. My dog had died, but she had lived a very long and mostly healthy life. She died surrounded by her family and caring medical providers and she was not in pain long.
This recognition helped me see that this sad situation, like so many others in life, was also infused with joy, kindness, and good memories. In hard times, remembering the good is essential. I was glad my mindfulness practice helped me remember it on that sad day.
Mindfulness Practice Cultivates Kind Attention When You Need It Most
By no means can a blog post with a few points about mindfulness wave grief away like a magic wand. And I don’t claim that mindfulness practice can do that either. But it can help. Sometimes during hard times, even a little bit of help and a little bit of kind attention can go a long way. With mindfulness practice, you can cultivate kind attention so it is there for you when you need it most.
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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Even if you aren’t a Spotify user, you probably heard about the Wrapped year-end reviews last week. Wrapped is a feature that summarizes the year in audio for Spotify users. It lists your top artists, top songs, and this year even provides a listening age.
As I heard friends and contacts share stories about this, I couldn’t help but wonder what it would be like if our minds had a similar feature. What would it be like if, each year, we got a list of our top 5 mental patterns?
What If You Got a Yearly Report of Your Mental Patterns?
What if our minds generated some kind of fun video for us to watch and play back our inner audio over the past year? I can’t decide if I would want to watch this video or not. When it comes to music, it can be fun to reflect on the albums and songs that made your year. Thoughts and emotions, though, can be another matter.
In truth, learning about your mental patterns and repetitious thoughts is one of the principal benefits of mindfulness practice. Once you practice meditation enough, you can generate your own mental version of the Spotify Wrapped.
Mindfulness Can Help You Identify Your Top 5 Mental Patterns
Mindfulness practice may help you learn what your top 5 mental tendencies are. For instance, after more than 10 years of meditation, I know that my top 5 usually includes: (1) planning; (2) worrying; (3) wondering; (4) spacing out; and (5) writing. Seriously, my mind is often writing when I meditate whether I am trying to write something or not.
You start to catch repetitious nasty internal phrases. Again, mine include: (1) you aren’t good at this; (2) you will fail; (3) nobody likes you; (4) I’m so embarrassed; and (5) why doesn’t everyone recognize how amazing I am?
Meditation may even help you learn that emotional reactions are part of larger patterns. All my years meditating have helped me see that my top 5 challenging emotions are: (1) anxiety; (2) fear; (3) doubt; (4) anger (that’s hiding anxiety); and (5) loneliness/alienation.
On the flip side, mindfulness practices also helped me see that my top 5 positive emotions are: (1) generosity; (2) humor; (3) compassion; (4) courage; and (5) creativity. This means that sometimes meditation can help us see and embrace our wholesome qualities.
First, seeing your patterns with mindfulness helps you to take things less personally. In the moment, our thoughts and feelings can seem to be really big and important. Mindfulness practice helps you see these incidents as part of a pattern. This helps you zoom out in terms of perspective. You can see an incident as a data point and watch for where your reaction leads instead of being mired in all the messy details.
2. You See How You Can Change the Pattern.
Second, this broader perspective produced in meditation can create the clarity needed to change the pattern. As I have written before, it is exceptionally hard to change habits and patterns. Yet, one of the things that can help us do so is by taking a good clear look at where they lead. Mindfulness can help us see this and it gives us the opportunity to take the steps to make a change.
3. You Gain Motivation to Change the Pattern.
Finally, seeing the reaction or behavior as a pattern helps you appreciate its impact. As I mentioned, changing habits is hard work. It takes discipline and thoughtfulness and a whole lot of self-compassion. In many cases, it can feel daunting even to try to make a change. But, when you see that something is part of a pattern, you can see that it’s not just a singular incident.
Mindfulness Can Help You See Patterns and Change Your Life
As I shared above, I have always struggled with fear and anxiety. It arose in nearly every situation for me. To be honest, it still arises in many situations today. Mindfulness practice helped me see that my anxiety was not just the product of my immediate conditions, but was instead part of a bigger pattern.
For this reason, it is understandable why we all love to hear about our top song, artist, and album lists at the end of the year. Reflecting on our patterns can be a fun thing to do in the case of our music and media choices. It can remind us of the songs that made our years great or helped us cope with a challenging year.
At the Year End, Consider Noting Your Top 5 Mental Patterns Too
In the case our minds, taking stock of our patterns can be an interesting exercise too. When it comes to mental patterns and inner reactions, though, seeing things clearly can be a bit more complex. Unlike the Spotify Wrapped, noting the top thoughts or patterns that consume our mental energy can be a bit more challenging.
Even so, I think it is still worth it. Most of us will forget our Spotify Wrapped within a week after we see them each December. Once mindfulness practice helps you see your mental patterns, though, it is hard to forget what they are. It not only opens up new possibilities for change. It also creates a little more space for self-kindness.
At the end of the year, while you are compiling your top lists, it may be interesting to consider your top 5 mindfulness lists too. What occupied your mind most this year? What mental patterns were the most frequent for you? What common phrases played in your mind on a loop?
I don’t promise that reflecting in this way is as fun as seeing your Spotify Wrapped, but when viewed with mindfulness and self-compassion, it may open up fresh possibilities for the new year.
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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In honor of World Kindness Day, I am giving a talk this week on the power of kindness for lawyers and legal professionals. Many lawyers are skeptical of kindness, at least in relation to our work. We worry that kindness will be viewed as weakness by others and lead to passivity in ourselves.
Clearly, I don’t have illusions that I can convince an entire profession on this point, but I don’t think I have to do any convincing. If you pay attention to what kindness really is, you will see that it is powerful and essential for lawyers today. Here are five things to consider as you explore this for yourself.
1. Kindness Is Rare for Lawyers and Therefore Precious.
As discussed below, law practice is often challenging and filled with stress. This both makes kindness more essential and also more challenging. As most of us know, the difference between a difficult and unbearable situation is kindness. I cannot tell you how much of a difference it makes to work with an opposing counsel who is kind. We communicate more effectively and work through problems more efficiently as a result.
Though I know that many clients think they want a bulldog lawyer, I have found those types of litigators to often be ineffective. Therefore, if you want to really show power, calm, control, and courage in law practice, being kind is the way to go.
2. Kindness Is Essential in Difficult Times.
I have written before that kindness is an essential trait for difficult times. Lawyers, of course, are usually dealing with difficult times. We are literally paid to manage other people’s problems. This means our stock and trade is dealing with people going through really hard situations.
If lawyers are to weather these storms, we must learn skills for caring for ourselves and others. Sometimes this may include tending to our own fears, worries, and hurts. Sometimes it may mean patience with a stressed or unskillful opponent. And sometimes it may mean showing calm courage for our scared clients.
Either way, kindness is essential for lawyers because it helps us and our clients navigate challenging situations.
3. Kindness Is An Antidote to Fear and Aggression.
Because stress and conflict is a big part of law practice, fear and aggression unfortunately are too. This can be hard for our clients, but it is definitely hard for lawyers. One of the reasons that kindness is so powerful is that it helps people feel safe or at least safer.
In this way, kindness is an antidote to fear and aggression. It is a way that we can calm our own nerves and built trust and safety with those around us. Kindness may not make fear and aggression disappear entirely but it can help us create a sense of steadiness and comfort during emotional upheaval.
This can help lawyers focus more squarely on the relevant issues and avoid creating additional fights.
4. Kindness Builds the Connections that Lawyers Need.
Related to the feeling of safety is trust. Most lawyers know that relationships are at the core of law practice. Relationships permeate what we do as lawyers, including those with our firm, opposing counsel, and clients.
Kindness is a way to build trust because it is how we demonstrate care and concern for others. One of the reasons that litigation is so difficult is that trust is often lacking between parties and legal counsel as well. This is one reason that kind and professional speech is so important in litigation contexts.
When trust is lacking, it is easy to misunderstand each other and overreactions are bound to occur. Kindness is a way to cut through this animosity and rebuild the trust that is so essential to our working relationships.
5. Kindness Looks Soft but Feels Like Power.
The best and final argument I can make for kindness is not an argument at all. That’s because the best argument for kindness is in the experience of it. Lawyer struggle with kindness because it is easy to misunderstand.
Next time you offer or experience kindness, though, I urge you to pay closer attention. Though kindness undoubtedly has a softness to it, it often also includes stability, calm, courage, and support. In this way, even though kindness may look soft to an observer, it often feels powerful to those who give and receive it.
In truth, kindness is power because it offers us the possibility of transforming a situation or building a connection with a little bit of courage, presence, and an open heart.
Don’t Take My Word for It. Try This for Yourself.
Here’s the truth: you probably already know how essential kindness is. Most of us wouldn’t have gotten as far as we have without kindness in our lives. Even so, most of us would love to have more kindness in our lives. If you are nervous about showing more kindness in your life or work, you aren’t alone. Kindness takes courage, discipline, and patience.
But when you pay attention, you may notice that it feels really good and usually leads to even better results. That’s what this post was really about anyway. I hope it helps you know where to look and to look for when it comes to kindness in your life and work. The more you study and notice kindness, the more you will want to experience and share it with others.
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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Self-care habits like rest, exercise, and mindfulness are meaningful parts of a healthy legal career. They help lawyers steady themselves against the pace and pressure of daily practice, yet resilience doesn’t come only from looking inward.
An even broader source of balance can be found when lawyers give time and attention to causes beyond the office. Serving and caring for the community is sometimes referred to as “collective care” and shifting focus outward in this way can widen your perspective, relieve stress, and create a sense of connection that the profession itself doesn’t always provide.
What Collective Care Means
Collective care takes shape through service outside of billable work. It can look like volunteering with a nonprofit, mentoring a younger lawyer, serving on a board, or joining a civic project. The value comes less from the scale of the effort and more from the consistency. A steady commitment, even in small doses, creates connection and purpose that extend beyond daily casework.
Stress Relief in High-Conflict Work
So much of legal work is built on conflict because you’re fighting deadlines, pushing through discovery, arguing points that never seem to end. The grind can take a toll, but contributing to community projects can flip the script and help manage the stress. Instead of bracing for a fight, you’re working with people who share a goal, which can take pressure off and help you come back to the office with a clearer head.
Identity Beyond Case Outcomes
The Narrow Scorecard
Lawyers constantly deal with numbers, things like billable hours, win rates, settlement or verdict amounts, which makes it easy to reduce a career to a set of scores. A bad result in court or a client who walks away unhappy can feel like a judgment on you as a person, not just your work.
A Broader Foundation
Service outside of the office can help change the way you see things. When you mentor a younger lawyer or sit on a nonprofit board, no one is keeping track of wins and losses and the value shows up in relationships built and in the progress of the people you help. Being involved in collective care settings can remind you that your worth doesn’t live only in case outcomes.
Mentorship and Role Modeling
When experienced lawyers give time to mentoring or to projects in the community, they can set an example that highly influences younger attorneys. Balance doesn’t come only from managing hours or squeezing in rest; it also grows from steady contribution to something larger than your own practice. A mentor who makes space for work like this shows that holistic wellness includes more than self-care.
Over time, those choices set a standard. New lawyers see that longevity in practice depends not only on private routines but also on the connections built through service. It gives a new perspective on what a legal career can look like by showing that resilience grows from community as well as personal habits. Over time, that perspective influences how newer lawyers balance the demands of practice with the need for purpose outside of it.
Perspective from Practice
Community work has been a steady part of my career. Our firm has donated to Austin nonprofits, helped build playgrounds, supported food banks, and backed programs that strengthen families. Giving in this way doesn’t take me out of my role as a lawyer; it gives me the perspective to do it better.
What’s important isn’t the size of the contribution but the habit of returning to service again and again. Each project is a reminder that the profession doesn’t have to drain you if you anchor yourself in something larger.
Simple Ways to Start
Lawyers will sometimes hesitate to take on community projects because the workweek already feels overloaded. Fitting in one more thing can feel impossible, but collective care doesn’t need to mean adding hours you don’t have. It can begin with a single commitment that fits naturally into your schedule, like mentoring one law student each semester or serving on the board of a neighborhood nonprofit.
The key is to begin, even on a small scale and then once community involvement becomes part of your calendar, it starts to feel less like an obligation and more like a steady source of perspective.
Wellness Through Community Connection
Collective care, though community work doesn’t replace personal wellness habits, but it complements them in a way nothing else can. Lawyers who give time outside of their practice discover energy and perspective that steady them for the long run. Service ties you to people and goals beyond the case at hand, and that connection can make a demanding career feel sustainable.
Author Bio: Adam Loewy is a leading personal injury attorney in Austin with over two decades of experience. Since founding Loewy Law Firm in 2005, he’s handled serious injury and wrongful death cases, consistently securing multi-million dollar recoveries for his clients. Known for keeping a more focused docket, he ensures each case receives full attention, while his firm extends its impact through charitable giving, community sponsorships, and support of local nonprofits.
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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Seeing your mental patterns clearly is one of the biggest benefits of a mindfulness practice. I experienced this recently and the results of a few minutes of meditation were so pronounced that I had to write about it. I had a big attack of anxiety about a party with my law firm. Despite this beginning, the night was actually really fun. I had an amazing time and ended up singing “Pink Pony Club” in front of my colleagues without the slightest feeling of fear.
So what changed? How did I go from social anxiety to social butterfly in the course of a night? The long story is that I have practiced mindfulness for more than a decade. The short answer relevant to this particular situation is that I spotted my mental pattern.
This post will share some steps for recognizing and navigating challenging mental patterns with mindfulness and self-compassion.
What Are Mental Patterns?
People new to meditation are likely to notice that the mind generates a lot of thoughts. If you keep meditating long enough, you eventually will see that thoughts are often not original. Many of the same thoughts repeat themselves or fall into categories.
These can fall into a wide array of categories, but many people have a select few that dominate their minds. Some examples include obsession with planning, a recurrent theme of self-doubt, or even a preoccupation with past harms or slights.
One of my most obnoxious mental patterns is the anxiety that arises around social settings. No matter what I do, I can’t seem to shake the fear of being rejected in a social situations. This can make it hard to enjoy myself during the networking events and parties that lawyers often have to attend.
Clearly, taken to the extreme or left unchecked, patterns like this can cause us to feel shame, and miss out on connection, opportunities, and fun. This is why learning to recognize and navigate mental patterns is one of the most important power moves that mindfulness practice can offer.
The Problem: Mental Patterns Can Be Tricky
Here’s the problem with well-worn mental patterns: we often don’t recognize them for what they are. Many lawyers are too busy to pay close attention to our thoughts and feelings. We also are often intent on projecting an image of strong self-assuredness.
So, when nasty mental patterns arise, they can be hard to spot. These patterns don’t announce themselves. Instead, they slink in through the back door of your mind and whisper awful things about you and your life. They have the bleakest and most savage view of every situation.
In my case, the pattern revealed itself by creating little worries about nearly everything associated with the event. My mind criticized the outfit I had selected. It worried about whether my shoes would be too uncomfortable. It offered concerns about whether I would be too tired to have fun. It presented me with mental imagery of me standing alone in a crowded room with nobody to talk to.
Does any of this sound familiar?
Mindfulness Can Help You Recognize Mental Patterns
After a while of these nagging thoughts, I started to zoom out and get some perspective. Instead of seeing the thoughts as individual rational reflections, I saw them for what they were. These thoughts were the manifestation of my social anxiety.
This hardly sounds like good news, right? I know it is counterintuitive to feel relief that a litany of negative self-talk is *just* one’s anxiety. Even so, there is a very practical benefit to be had from recognizing that the worrisome thoughts are part of a pattern.
An implicit idea underlying all of my nasty thoughts was the idea that I was not good enough and would never be good enough. This is a constant lie that anxiety tells me. But when I saw the mental pattern as just my social anxiety talking, I realized that it was not the voice of reason. I stopped believing it for a moment and that gave me enough space to break free.
The Practice: Holding the Toxic Mental Pattern in Mindful Awareness
When I created enough space, I saw that I was struggling. So I did the thing that I have trained myself over years to do: I took a pause.
Over the years, however, I have learned something cool. If you can sit and let the thoughts bounce around in your mind, they don’t hurt so much. Sometimes the thoughts change. Sometimes other insights arise to counter them. Or sometimes the thoughts just bounce around until they lose energy and they just stop or disappear.
With this experience, I knew that I should just meditate for a few minutes and let the thoughts do whatever they wanted. I let them wash over me and thrash around. All the while I kept returning my focus to my breath or softening and relaxing my body.
Finally, the big insight came that I was nervous about the party. My thoughts weren’t truths. They were signs of my fear. They were signals that I wanted to connect with people, but was afraid I wouldn’t be able to do so.
The Red Flag: Don’t Judge Yourself
In years past, noticing a childlike vulnerability like this in myself might have made me feel worse. But in my case, this was actually the path forward. Years of mindfulness practice, has taught me a lot about self-compassion. That has helped me cultivate a healthy dose of caution when it comes to self-judgment.
Instead of feeling like a loser about my anxiety, I recognized that I just needed some self-assurances. I needed to take care of my fear. First, I offered myself some perspective by reminding myself that this was supposed to be fun instead of a test. Then I remembered that I did not have to stay at the party for any specific period and could leave if it wasn’t fun.
Finally, I drew on common humanity to remember that I was probably not the only person who had these fears. I recalled that social situations are hard for a lot of people and that we had several other new people in the firm. In reality, most of us were too busy, but we made the effort to attend the party because connection matters.
The Result: Being Brave Enough to Break the Pattern
The final step of the process is to break the pattern. Once you see the pattern, investigate it, and take care of yourself, the only way to get out of a pattern is to disobey it.
I won’t lie. This is really hard. If you are new to mindfulness practice, it may not always be possible to get out of mental patterns so easily or you may have to take baby steps. As someone who has practiced mindfulness for more than a decade, I have learned that part of changing my patterns is acceptance.
Life experience helps me run a quick cost benefit analysis whenever my anxiety flares up. I know that fear, worry, and nerves are often going to be part of many social activities I undertake. So I sit with them, take care of my fear, and then make the brave choice to proceed anyway.
Before the party, all my anxious thoughts were attempted roadblocks. They were concocted objections and warnings trying to convince me to skip the party. Life experience has taught me that the best way to silence those thoughts was to take their power. I did that by ignoring them. I just decided to go to the party and be afraid. A few minutes in at the party, I wasn’t afraid anymore.
Conclusion: Mindfulness Practice Is One Way to Check Mental Patterns
Don’t get me wrong here. There are a lot different types of mental patterns. All of us cannot necessarily expect to face those mental patterns on our own. We all deserve the support of trusted friends, medication, and other mental health treatment to face down our most challenging mental patterns, including those relating to anxiety. Even so, one of the great blessings of mindfulness practice is that it can help you support yourself and build the skills to check, disrupt, and break free from some of the mental patterns that hold you back.
This post is just one example of how this can be done, but once you learn a process that works for you it can help you many times over the course of your life. I hope that, like I was able to do in the example shared here, you can recognize difficult mental patterns before they keep you from doing the things you want to do in life.
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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Whenever I get the chance, I talk about self-compassion. It is one of the biggest and most beneficial changes I have made over the course of my life. As a lawyer, it is essential to help me manage the stresses and challenges of law practice. The other day, though, a friend reminded me of yet another reason. Self-compassion can help with anger.
I teach about self-compassion all the time, but it was honestly nice to be reminded of this fact. For one thing, it was good timing because I am preparing to present a CLE on anger management for lawyers. In addition, self-compassion is not always easy to practice, so it was nice to remember yet another benefit of this trait.
The Relationship Between Self-Compassion and Anger
The friend who told me about the positive impact self-compassion can have on anger is another mindfulness teacher. I didn’t doubt her memory, but I wanted to confirm for myself. As a result, I visited researcher, Kristin Neff’s, website to see what I could find.
In a quick search, I found at least 3 studies that confirmed that self-compassion indeed had an impact on anger. These included the following studies showing that:
These are just a few examples, but all of these studies reveal that my friend was right. Indeed, self-compassion has an impact on anger and how we process it.
How Are Self-Compassion and Anger Related?
If you read any of the studies above, you may get some insights about the way that self-compassion can help us navigate and let go of anger. As a mindfulness teacher and someone who has historically struggled with anger, I have seen exactly how the two things are related.
Here are just a few ways that I believe self-compassion has helped me to be a less angry person.
I practice anger and judgment less. This means I disrupt the habitual anger reaction. Instead, I have replaced it (most of the time) with remembering common humanity.
I allow my feelings more and block them less. It took years but quite literally I have learned to let myself feel my emotions. This has created clarity about what matters and what doesn’t.
I focus more on honoring my own needs. When I meet my needs more, I feel better and don’t feel angry as much.
All of these things help me see others with kinder and gentler eyes. When I accept how I feel and what I need, I remember more often the humanity of other people.
Why Should Lawyers and Professionals or Anyone Else Care?
This one is obvious to most lawyers. Anger is a constant and frequent threat for us, just like it is for many business professionals. Our jobs often entail stress, time constraints, and conflict. This is a breeding ground for anger in and of itself.
In addition, as I have written before, anger and judgment are strongly correlated. Nothing will create an anger reaction more than the perception that someone has broken the rules or invaded a personal boundary. This kind of analysis is a lawyer’s stock and trade. To some degree, this means that many lawyers and other professionals practice anger every day at work.
Easy Ways to Begin Exploring Self-Compassion Even If You Are Unsure about It
Despite the promising research, many people remain skeptical or unsure about cultivating self-compassion. Even though research exists to the contrary, they may be concerned that self-compassion will make them weak. In addition, they may be concerned that they can never change, even though countless studies demonstrate that self-compassion can be cultivated.
If this is you, I encourage you to first be self-compassionate towards yourself by not pushing too far. You don’t have to change your mind right away. All of those fears are normal and besides change takes time.
If you want to explore self-compassion more deeply, including to help you manage anger, I hope this list of resources will help:
Anger is a human emotion that happens to us all. Though we should not strive to never be angry in life, many lawyers and professionals may need help managing it. If you have a busy, stressful, or conflict-heavy job, you may need to pay extra attention to the role that anger plays in your life and work. The good news is that self-compassion is a trait you can cultivate with simple practices over time. If you give them a try, you may help yourself build a happier, healthier, and less angry life.
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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“Can you talk about setting boundaries?” I got this question during a presentation about mindfulness and compassion for a law firm last week. Though I did my best to answer it, this topic is one that took more time than I had during a webinar. As a result, the question stayed with me long after the presentation ended.
Boundaries are tough for many of us. They are especially challenging for lawyers and others in service professions. My answer when the question was presented to me was that mindfulness and compassion can definitely help with this. In this article, though, I will explain in more detail precisely how.
The Ways that Mindfulness Helps with Boundaries
Boundary setting sounds like a single-step process but it truly has multiple aspects. This means that our ability to set boundaries may require us to execute more than one task successfully. The other problem with boundaries is that they are by definition individualized. We can’t simply copy other people. Instead, we must learn through life experience what our needs are and how to ensure that they are met.
This is why mindfulness and compassion can help us set boundaries in the following ways:
Supporting us in identifying personal needs;
Helping us to explore the concept of interconnection;
Cultivating clarity about what kindness and compassion truly are; and
Building skill with being uncomfortable.
I’ll explain each one below in more detail.
1. Mindfulness and Identifying Needs
One of the reasons that boundaries can be hard to set is that we may be in the habit of overlooking our own needs. This is not a criticism but an observation of life. Lots of us are busy. Lawyers, caregivers, and others in service industries may be accustomed to focusing on the needs of others. For these reasons, it is quite easy to just not notice what you need.
Mindfulness practices can be transformational for this basic reason. The practices force you, at least for a few minutes, to check in with yourself. Inherently, meditation or other practices like yoga include noticing what’s in your mind, heart, and body. This clarity about your thoughts, feelings, and emotions is a foundational step to help you identify needs so that you can set boundaries.
2. Mindfulness of Interconnection
We live in a highly individualistic culture, so many people can get the idea that setting boundaries is about focusing only on themselves. I think this is a mistake for a practical reason. Despite the constant encouragement to think about ourselves, humans are social animals. We live in and depend on community to live happy and productive lives.
Mindfulness practices can help us get clarity about our rightful role in the world. As we pay attention to our own minds, bodies, and hearts, it is nearly impossible to avoid the social situations in which our feelings, thoughts, and emotions arise. Over time, this helps us see how connected we are to others.
When we pay attention to this interconnectedness, we build wisdom about the importance of honoring all human needs, including our own. Paying closer attention to these connections may also help us better understand what our essential needs truly are. Over time, this may help us develop more balance in navigating our own boundaries in relationship to others.
As I have shared before, a regular mindfulness practice should include the four heart practices, including kindness and compassion. If you do these practices regularly, you will build clarity about what kindness and compassion truly are. Kindness isn’t meekness or consistently denying oneself. Compassion is not merely sacrificing oneself for others.
4. Setting Boundaries Can Be Uncomfortable but Mindfulness Helps with That
Another practical thing that keeps many of us from setting good boundaries: it’s uncomfortable. Most of us, especially lawyers and others in service professions, don’t like to tell other people no. It can cause conflict. We may worry it will cause others to judge us. At a minimum, it can make us feel awkward and unsure.
When we can persist with these challenges, though, it builds patience, courage, and the skill of being with discomfort. Though I emphasize gradualism and self-kindness at all stages of meditation, I am the first to say that these skills are invaluable. If you can sit in meditation for a few minutes with a difficult thought or uncomfortable sensation, this means you can face the same things when they arise in a conversation about boundaries.
Conclusion: Mindfulness Builds the Skills We Need to Set Boundaries Effectively
In short, mindfulness and compassion practices help with setting boundaries because they cultivate some of the fundamental skills necessary for doing so. These include, identifying personal needs, clarity about kindness and our role in community, and the ability to handle discomfort. Of course, setting boundaries is something that we cannot do with meditation alone. With time, though, mindfulness practice can help us bring these traits into our lives so that we can set personal boundaries more effectively.
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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Most of us know that looking for a job can be a hard thing to do. If you haven’t looked for work in recent history, you probably know some job seekers who have. Many people, including a lot of lawyers, are actively looking for work or trying to transition to a new role.
When I was asked to talk about mindfulness to a local group that supports job seekers, I quickly said yes. Though I had not experienced joblessness in my career, my friends and relatives have. I also knew from personal experience that mindfulness and compassion are essential for facing adversity in life.
In this post, I will share details about and access to my talk.
The group offers support and community, skills classes, and access to volunteer speakers and coaches. People local to Northern Kentucky and Cincinnati attend events in-person at the library. Many people outside of the Cincinnati metro area access the programs online and via Zoom.
I share this information here so that everyone can learn more about the program. Please review their offerings and share with any job seekers who need support.
Highlights from the Presentation to Job Seekers
In my talk, I spoke about my experience handling personal setbacks that led to professional growth. My talk was entitled Navigating Life’s Trials: A Story of Mindful Transformation and Community Impact. In it, I shared my story with postpartum depression and how it led me to explore mindfulness.
Besides sharing my story, the talk also included some teachings about mindfulness and compassion. Specifically, it explained how these human faculties help us navigate hard times in life. This is essential for job seekers and anyone dealing with life’s challenges.
The active engagement from the audience further enhanced the talk. They asked great questions and shared their own experiences and challenges.
How to Watch the Presentation
Another great thing about the Northern Kentucky Accountability Group is its online library of talks from past speakers. The library has recordings from many of its speakers dating back to 2022. All of the talks are tailored to active job seekers and others looking to build professional skills. You can browse through each year of the library to find a variety of excellent talks.
My talk, Navigating Life’s Trials, is listed under April, 2025. You will find a link and a password to view the recording. The session is about an hour in length. Don’t sleep on the Q&A session at the end. The questions were good and I mention extra resources too.
More Resources for Job Seekers
When asked about confidence and imposter syndrome, I mentioned these resources from the blog:
All of these resources offer valuable insights for those handling change in life and work.
Community and Mindfulness Can Support Job Seekers
If you are searching for a job, communities like the one I discuss here can be a great support. As I shared in my talk, building critical skills like mindfulness and compassion can also help too. I wish all of the job seekers out there the best. I also hope that the resources and ideas shared here will support you in your job search.
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.
