Thanksgiving is coming up next week. This holiday is one that is pretty easy for me to love because cooking and eating are two of my favorite things. You get to do both on Thanksgiving and you only have to spend one day with your extended family. Seems perfect, right?
Oh yeah, I forgot about gratitude. In some form or fashion, you may be asked to reflect on or proclaim your gratitude. I don’t doubt the myriad studies that say gratitude is good for us. I appreciate the need to express and receive gratitude. But, as a lifelong pigheaded person, I refuse to feel something on demand.
Honestly, it’s not even truly refusal. I could decide to go along with the little game of gratitude to amuse my family or shut them up. But I would know in my secret heart of hearts that I don’t really feel grateful. What I really feel is resentful.
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.
This is why I am sharing a gratitude meditation that is really a modified loving-kindness practice. It follows the same traditional pattern, but instead of wishing the phrases of peace and well-being it includes an offering of gratitude. I did this one for the Mindfulness in Law Society Virtual Sit this week and remembered how much I liked it.
To try out the practice, find it here or on our YouTube channel or on Insight Timer. Please have a wonderful holiday weekend. I am honestly and sincerely grateful to have you as a reader and meditation friend.
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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Editor’s Note: I realized this month that I have been meditating for ten years. It seemed like it should be a big deal, but I had a really hard time understanding what the big deal was. I struggled to think this through in the present tense, so I got the idea of writing a letter to myself ten years ago. Bingo. The big deal isn’t the ten years at all, but what happened in them. Please enjoy this post and consider writing yourself a letter from time to time. You may just learn something.
Dear Claire,
This is from you in the future. I know that seems weird. No, they haven’t invented time machines; at least not yet. Instead, this is a note from your future self in 2023.
You just started meditating. I know you feel like a total weirdo. I know that you haven’t told anyone—literally anyone—yet that you are meditating. I know that you don’t even know what it is you are supposed to be looking for as you focus on your breath. I know these things because, as I say, I’m you but from ten years in the future.
Look, I get it. I know meditation is boring and right now you feel like you have no time. I know that being a mom to a one-year-old as a litigation associate is intense and some days you aren’t sure you could handle everything. But, listen, meditation will help you in ways you couldn’t even imagine.
I bet you can’t see it yet, but you will soon start to see some subtle shifts. Some of those headaches you always get will go away. You’ll learn that they were caused by stress. Then you’ll start to notice when you’re rushing and stop. Over time, more and more little things like this will rack up in your mind until you realize that meditation is helping you.
It will take some time until the big changes happen, but trust me they will. Did you know that you wrote a book? Well, now it’s three and you are working on a fourth. You made partner, and you have another daughter too. And you can manage it all and you aren’t exhausted all the time because you know how to rest and can rest (for real) when you need it.
You did all these things because you learned how to sit with your eyes closed in a dark room by yourself for a few minutes a day. Right now, this pastime may seem foolish to you. You may be ashamed that you have to do something so stupid. I’m writing to tell you that what you are doing isn’t foolish. Instead, it’s so profoundly practical that it’s value is hard to see.
You’ve spent a lot of life running from yourself. You’ve spent so many years chasing external validation. Even when you got all the things in life you were supposed to want (a good job and a family), something still seemed missing. You don’t know it yet but you went looking for the missing thing in the right place. As you will see, there was nothing missing at all. But your joy, your spark, your creativity and courage, it was just buried under years of trying to feel the right thing or do what you believed you were supposed to do.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not telling you it’s all going to be rainbows from here on out. Sorry to disappoint but that’s not how this works. You’ll have hard times in the next ten years for sure. You’ll lose loved ones and friends will move away. You’ll change jobs. You’ll make poor choices. You’ll say things you wish you hadn’t said and make huge mistakes.
But here’s the thing: now you at least have a practice that can help you handle all these things. You’ll learn how to hold disappointment in tenderness and care for your fear and pain. You’ll even learn how to tame your anger (most of the time) and quiet down your doubt voice. You’ll even learn how to ask for help–that you CAN ask for help. It’s all because you can sit and do nothing.
Because as you sit, you can let all those things bounce and dance and do their thing and breathe and give them space. You won’t be a perfect meditator. You will miss days frequently and sometimes go weeks or months without practice. You will fall asleep often. Your focus will be poor. And motivation will be an unending struggle. In case you have any delusions about enlightenment, you won’t attain that either. But you’ll keep coming back to the cushion because you know it will make you feel better even if the practice session itself is no good.
And it’s this that will teach you the most. Being imperfect at meditation will help you learn to let yourself be imperfect at life. That might sound a bit scary to you now because you are under a lot of pressure, but it will be a lot of fun. It will be more fun than you ever thought you’d have. Soon you’ll be chasing dreams you haven’t even thought about yet. Can you imagine? You will soon because, once you cut through some old habits, you’ll start to trust yourself.
You won’t feel a big wave of pride when you realize you have been meditating for ten years. It won’t be like winning an award or getting a degree. It won’t feel that way because you won’t be done. Instead, it will feel more like remembering the day you met your best friend and being glad you were brave enough to go talk to them. You’ll just look back and be glad you did that small, brave thing because it added so much to your life.
And so, Claire, my dearest self, thank you so much. I am so glad you made the brave decision to start meditating. Please keep going because it has helped me get to know you and made the life I now know possible.
With gratitude, Your Future Self
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.
Like this post? Subscribe to the blog here or follow us on social media:
This week, we offer a guest post from a friend and supporter of the blog who is doing great work out in the world. Joseline Jean-Louis Hardrick found me and the blog on LinkedIn and she’s been an active supporter of it. We love her work to promote diversity, inclusion, and wellness in the legal profession and want to support her back here. Welcome Joseline to Brilliant Legal Mind!
Many lawyers and other professionals are experiencing burnout. Are you going through a hard time in your life and career and are constantly struggling with chronic stress that leaves you feeling exhausted to the core and helpless to the extent where you think nothing can ever go right?
No job in this world is easy. Every task, every goal, and every journey has its fair share of struggles and obstacles. That said, being a lawyer has its troubles on another level. It is certainly not easy to tackle difficult cases, prepare strategies for your client, and stand strong in the grueling atmosphere of the courtroom. This job and your daily routine certainly take a toll on your well-being and can easily produce a state of complete burnout.
What Burnout Does to You
Burnout is a traumatizing state of mental, physical, and emotional exhaustion that makes you feel swamped and shattered. It is normal to have occasional or even routine bouts of stress, particularly in this line of work. However, things take an unexpected, undesirable turn when you do not manage your stress on time and soothe it daily.
When you don’t address the routine stress, it grows bigger and more monstrous. There then comes the point when you become so emotionally drained and overwhelmed that your body and mind keep you from going any further. You lose the motivation to take on any case; you feel withdrawn from even the activities you once found incredibly enjoyable, and you simply let go of the will to push yourself any harder.
You become cynical, hopeless, pessimistic, lethargic, exhausted, and even highly resentful. You do not wish to progress in life because you feel you don’t have that spark anymore. Burnout manifests itself in many different symptoms, including feeling drained, emotionally and physically, all the time; having muscular pain frequently, drastic changes in appetite, insomnia, lowered immunity, and a very low sense of self-esteem, among other things. If you experience any of these daily, it is clear you are not in a healthy physical, emotional, and mental state.
Whether you work as a litigator or as a transactional attorney, or you’re in academia or government, if you find yourself overwhelmed and cynical often, that’s because of burnout. Fortunately, a creative way out of this rut is a unique approach to soothe burnout and reclaim your energy, motivation, and life for good.
A Creative Solution to Handle Burnout
Having struggled with burnout excessively and frequently myself, I realized that I would have to find a unique fix for the problem to turn things around. When we are stuck in a bad rut, often, our go-to approach to get ourselves out of the problem is to push past the walls. We keep pushing ourselves forward to end the problem, but we only exhaust ourselves more in the process.
The right way to turn the tables around in your favor is to look for a new angle, just like you do in a deposition. Instead of beating around the bush, you bring up a completely new and creative perspective on the table and turn the odds in your favor. Similarly, to soothe your burnout, you need to adopt an innovative approach.
This approach is about finding joy in the journey by engaging yourself in useful activities that help you channel your stressful energy into something positive, meaningful, and productive. I call this approach “RENEWAL.”
What is Renewal?
The RENEWAL process involves the following:
R: Review your strengths, priorities, and talents and review your schedule to understand everything better.
E: Energize yourself by eating healthily, sleeping well, and taking care of your body.
N: Noticing things peacefully and becoming more mindful of yourself and your surroundings.
E: Expressing gratitude for everything you have to attain contentment from within.
W: Withdrawing yourself from the digital world to give yourself a break from the online media and different technological tools.
A: Assess your routine and responsibilities and prioritize things that matter to you.
L: Love is an essential requirement to live happily, so you need to infuse meaningful relationships and connections in your life.
This approach helps you change your thinking and behavior to modify your current state of life. Understand that nothing always happens as you plan it, but you need to let go of your former ideas and create a new you to improve on things.
While doing that, understand that you must have a clear goal moving forward, especially in the study and practice of law.
In case you’re wondering if any of these ideas are backed by research – they are! The anecdotal evidence and your personal lived experience tell you that being a law student and lawyer is stressful. But so do all the studies. The studies also show that the techniques can lead to lawyer satisfaction in their personal and professional lives.
One thing they noticed is that most law students and lawyers focus almost exclusively on external factors. These factors include money and status-such as earnings, partnership in a law firm, law school debt, class rank, law review membership, and U.S. News & World Report’s law school rankings. But the study shows almost no correlation between those external factors and lawyer well-being.
But they found that internal and psychological factors correlate to “happiness” and “satisfaction.” But unfortunately, focusing on the internal factors, such as autonomy, interest, freedom, a sense of worth, choices regarding family and personal life, erode in law school.
Interestingly, money and status factors and demographic differences were least important in lawyer happiness. Different practice types and settings further exemplified the issues that arise with a misplaced focus between internal and external factors. For example, lawyers in large firms and other prestigious positions were not “as happy” as public service attorneys. This held true even though the latter had much better grades and pay than the former group. And junior partners in law firms show no significant improvement in happiness than senior associates. Even with the higher pay, benefits, and prestige of a partner, there was no actual increase in the sense of satisfaction.
The bottom line is, lawyers are like everybody else. Despite specialized cognitive training and the common perception that lawyers are fundamentally different, we are people first and lawyers second.
So do yourself a favor, practice RENEWAL regularly to prevent and overcome burnout because the world needs and deserves, well-balanced attorneys.
