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Cover image for blog post with title "Mindfulness and Your Top 5 Mental Patterns Revealed"

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.

Image listing an example of top 5 mental patterns revealed by mindfulness practice as shared in the blog post

Seeing the Mental Patterns Is Hard but Worthwhile

Unlike the Spotify Wrapped, which usually may be fun or at least funny to see, reckoning with these inner mental and emotional patterns can more of a gut check. Even so, it is worth it because awareness that something has become a pattern provides important information.

1. You Can Take Them Less Personally.

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.

In this way, you can see the connection between your singular reaction and the broader state of your life. You can see how your behavior today leads to the circumstances you will face tomorrow and potentially for months and years to come.

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.

Once I saw this, I was in a position to see how much anxiety detracted from my life and kept me from the things I wanted. This was a painful acknowledgement, but it is what motivated me, in very slow and small steps, to change.

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.

Image that asks the sort of scary question "what would your top 5 mental patterns of the year be?"

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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Image of growth charts and progress markers in business with title of blog post "How Lawyers Can Use Self-Compassion for Growth"

December can be hit or miss for lawyers depending on how your year was. It can be a big celebration if you had a lot of growth. But it can be a struggle if the year did not quite go as you had hoped. In both cases, self-compassion is in order.

Now, you may think it’s odd that I say self-compassion is important if you achieved your goals. If so, jump down to point 2 below. Most of us understand innately why self-compassion might help when we fail to achieve our goals.

The struggle, of course, is in remembering to use employ it. That is why I am reminding you about it here (and trying to remind myself in the process). If self-compassion is a struggle for you, know that you aren’t alone. But keep reading because this post has some tips and a good resource to help you learn more.

Lawyers Should Be Cautious about Raising the Bar

One of the reasons that I am thinking about this now is that I did not achieve all my goals this year. It was a great year for me. I achieved many of the goals I had set for myself. Sadly, I did not achieve them all and one significant personal project fell by the wayside.

When you are a high achiever, like many lawyers are, it can be really easy to expect that you will achieve all your goals. This can cause you to forget that many of our goals are challenging and subject to conditions outside of our control. What this means is that accomplishing the goals we set for ourselves is not always something we can realistically expect.

How can we reflect on the year in a way that keeps our standards high, but doesn’t continuously raise the bar to unhealthy levels?

Assess Your Growth with Self-Compassion

Self-compassion is the tool that can help us find balance here. As I have written before, self-compassion has three simple steps: (a) mindfulness; (b) common humanity; and (c) self-kindness.

Contrary to popular belief, these steps are not about being “easy” on yourself. Instead, they are about being fair to yourself. Self-compassion is about not judging yourself more harshly than you would judge someone else.

Even if you struggle with self-compassion, using the three steps in your year-end reflection can help you take a balanced and accurate view.

Step 1: Mindfully Review the Data

The first step – mindfulness – does not require meditation though that can help. Instead, mindfulness here refers to awareness. To review your year with self-compassion, you would review the data of what transpired.

To do this, you might ask questions like these:

What did you accomplish this year?
How did you use your time?
How do you feel about the year?
What happened during the year that was unexpected or out of your control?

When you ask these questions, be as objective and neutral as you can be. It may help to review your calendar and any relevant data points to ensure your reflections are based on accurate data.

Step 2: Celebrate the Victories

In a normal year, the odds are that the questions above will elicit both positive and negative recollections. Though it may be easy to do, I encourage you to not gloss over the positive parts.

One part of self-compassion that lawyers easily forget is enjoying positive things. If you achieved goals or hit milestones, by all means, celebrate them.

If you struggle to even recognize the positive things you did, as some lawyers might, you can try to reflect on these questions:

What did you do well?
What personal or professional growth did you experience?
What goals did you achieve or what habits did you make last?
What makes you proud about the last year?

This is not an exercise of selfishness or arrogance. In fact, one benefit of reflecting on achievements is that it inevitably leads to reflection of the people and supports who helped you along the way. If these arise, share your celebration by expressing gratitude or praising the people who deserve it.

Step 3: Identify the Areas of Growth

Of course, the biggest struggle for many of us is with the goals we did not achieve. These dreaded “areas of growth” can easily make us feel defeated or hopeless. As people who come to expect high performance, lawyers often don’t know how to process failure when it comes.

This is where self-compassion is really essential. Mindfulness can help us get clear about the things that did not go as we had hoped. The second step, common humanity, is what can help us stay clear and avoid judging ourselves too harshly.

To identify the areas of growth from the year, we can ask ourselves these questions:

What projects did you not get to?
On what goals did you fall short?
What problems or struggles did you encounter?
What things or experiences are missing in your life and work?

After we identify these items, the key is to remember that we are human and that most humans are imperfect. Most humans do not always achieve 100% of their goals 100% of the time. Then, instead of beating ourselves up, we might reflect on the things that were struggles for us and consider what we need to recover or move forward.

Use Self-Compassion to Set New Year Goals

As I have written before, self-compassion is not just for reflecting at the end of the year. It can also help you apply more self-kindness when you set goals for the new year.

This may help you find motivation to start strong with a new habit. It could help you learn to stop procrastinating on one of those nagging projects that you’ve avoided for too long. It can even make sometimes heart-wrenching resolutions, like checking unhealthy habits or weight loss, feel less painful.

If you are looking to set high goals or form healthier habits in the new year, don’t forget about self-kindness and honoring your human needs.

Where Lawyers Can Learn More

Image for webinar event shared in the blog post that is called "recharge your legal mind: year end reflection for growth in the new year"

If you want to learn more about this topic, you are in luck. I will be presenting a webinar for CLE credit on this subject for the Knowledge Group on December 12, 2025 at 12 PM EST. The session will be available on-demand after that date as well.

I will be speaking about Self-Compassion for End of Year Self-Reflection and Goal-Setting. Fellow lawyers and mindfulness teachers, Ron Wilcox and Alexandra Echser-Rasmussen will offer session on mindfulness practices and self-care.

If you would like to join the session, you can connect with me on LinkedIn and send me a message for a 50% off code.

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