Retreats offer community and an opportunity to explore extended periods of meditation. The problem, of course, is that busy people like lawyers may struggle to find the time. They may also feel a bit awkward about showing up to try such an intimate practice with people who feel like strangers.
Online Mindfulness Retreats Offer Flexibility for Busy Lawyers
The MILS Online Retreat, happening on October 26th, via Zoom offers a potential solution. I will be the first one to say that in-person retreats are superior to online retreats. In-person retreats offer the direct support of a group and there just isn’t a substitute to meditating when physically present with other people.
Online retreats, though, are an excellent option when in-person convening isn’t practical. In the case of Mindfulness in Law Society, with chapters and members spread across and outside of the United States, an online option is a good one. It makes the retreat more accessible to members with a range of time and life commitments.
The MILS Online Retreat Provides Lawyers a Community to Support Their Mindfulness Practice
The MILS Online Retreat Offers Lawyers a Chance to Try a Variety of Mindfulness Practices
With most meditation retreats, you will generally engage in a deep dive with one or maybe a few styles of practice. The MILS retreat is a little bit different. Because the MILS Online Retreat is led by several of the trained teachers who support the group, it has a variety of practices.
This means people who join in the MILS Online Retreat will get a chance to explore a variety of meditation practices. For example, this year, I plan to offer a “Jewel Tree” practice that I discovered in Ethan Nichtern’s new book on Confidence. This practice about drawing strength from one’s ancestors and mentors will be a nice complement to other meditation offerings.
Last year, the MILS Online Retreat also featured some movement practices, including walking meditation, qi gong, and gentle yoga practices. In this way, if the idea of sitting all day seems intimidating to you, the MILS Online Retreat is perfect because you will not be sitting all day.
The MILS Online Retreat Is Not Just for Lawyers
One other great thing: the MILS Online Retreat is not just for lawyers but for anyone in the legal profession. This includes lawyers, law professors, law students, judges, judicial staff, and paralegals.
Though membership in MILS is a prerequisite to participating in the retreat, the annual membership fee is not onerous. In addition, now MILS offers access to all members to a growing repository of online resources so that you can learn more about mindfulness.
Additionally, law students may join MILS and participate in the retreat for free.
How to Register and Join the MILS Online Retreat
To register and join the MILS Online Retreat, you can use the QR Codes in the image for this post. You can also find details and register at the MILS Events page here. If you aren’t a member, you will be prompted to join first and then you can register for the event.
After you are registered, you will get a Zoom link as the event date approaches and then you join by Zoom. If you can’t make the whole event, you can participate as you like and drop off whenever your schedule requires.
If you aren’t able to attend but are still interested in MILS, be sure to check out the MILS Virtual Sits. These are free guided meditation practices offered twice weekly via Zoom. Like other MILS events, they are open to lawyers and all others in the legal profession.
If you have any questions, please reach out to me and ask. I hope to see you there or at a MILS Virtual Sit soon.
Want to learn more about mindfulness and compassion? Check out my new book, A New Year’s Present, to learn about mindfulness from a heartwarming story. For a simple guide to creating a meditation practice of your own in 30 days, try How to Be a Badass Lawyer. And to share mindfulness with your little one, check out my new children’s book, Mommy Needs a Minute.
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World Mental Health Day is coming up on Thursday October 10th and I am pleased to be celebrating it in a big way. I have three, yes three, continuing legal education virtual presentations coming up next week. Two are state specific, but one is available in several jurisdictions and one is completely free. All are eligible for ethics continuing legal education credit.
Check out the details below.
Kentucky Bar Association
On Tuesday October 8th, Claire will present an ethics seminar for the Kentucky Bar Association “Learn and Earn” program. The session is at 12 PM EST and offered virtually. This means you can eat lunch, get CLE credit, and it is free.
If you can’t make it on Tuesday or practice outside of Kentucky, no worries. The session on Tuesday is the same one that Claire will be offering on LawLine. After Wednesday, it will be on demand. Scroll down or check out my Events page for more.
LawLine
On Wednesday, October 9th at 10 AM EST, Claire will offer the virtual CLE entitled The Truth About Compassion Fatigue, Managing Empathic Overwhelm. This will be available for CLE credit in multiple jurisdictions. You will have to purchase it through LawLine or use your firm subscription.
On October 10th, the official date for World Mental Health Day 2024, Claire will offer a virtual CLE for the Pennsylvania Bar Institute. This one is inspired by her book, How to Be a Badass Lawyer. It will be for continuing legal education ethics credit and will include an overview of the 4 practices offered in the book: (1) breath focus; (2) body scan; (3) joy; and (4) loving-kindness.
This session is for anyone interested in what makes mindfulness and compassion badass and why it matters to lawyers. In addition to briefly explaining the meditation practices, Claire will share why each of them works. Learn more and register for the live presentation here. If you can’t attend on October 10th at 10 AM EST, the CLE will be available to watch on-demand later.
Conclusion
It is an honor and a privilege to have something to offer the profession in honor of World Mental Health Day. Join in next week if you want to learn, meet me virtually and say hello, or if you just need some ethics credit.
Want to learn more about mindfulness and compassion? Check out my new book, A New Year’s Present, to learn about mindfulness from a heartwarming story. For a simple guide to creating a meditation practice of your own in 30 days, try How to Be a Badass Lawyer. And to share mindfulness with your little one, check out my new children’s book, Mommy Needs a Minute.
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I was asked to talk to a law school class this week about anger management in the legal profession. I’m not stranger to anger. As a litigator, it is something that comes up in my law practice frequently. As a wife and mother, I’d be lying if I pretended anger didn’t arise at home too.
Mindfulness practices and training have shifted my perspective on anger. They have improved it for the better. These practices have given me essential tools for managing anger at home and work. Here are some thoughts on anger for lawyers and some simple steps you can take to manage it better.
Anger is not all bad.
Anger is a volatile emotion and all of us know that it can lead to damaging, if not disastrous, conduct. But does that mean it is bad in itself?
From a mindfulness perspective, the answer is no. To the contrary, when viewed through that lens, emotions don’t have moral value. Instead, mindfulness calls on us to observe things, including our emotions, without judgment.
1. There can be good sides to anger.
One thing we may observe if we can look at anger nonjudgmentally is that it serves a useful purpose in our lives. Anger can help us clarify what matters, motivate us to act when needed, and enforce boundaries.
One reason we are right to distrust anger is that it is an exceptionally hard emotion to control. That is in part because of the energy it inspires. This energy, though, is exactly why anger is useful. It can force us to pay attention to things we had been ignoring or overlooking. It can highlight our values and standards even when we may find it more convenient to sweep them under the rug.
Anger can also offer a protective force for some of our more vulnerable emotions. When you watch anger long enough, you may find sadness, fear, or overwhelm lurking below the surface. Some of us may be primed to reject or judge these soft emotions, so anger has the potential to lead us to more wisdom about all of our emotions.
2. Most of us have judgments about anger.
Despite these potentially good aspects, most lawyers and people may have judgments about anger. In many cases, these judgments have been informed by our culture, families, religions, and professions. Some of us may have been validated for our anger, while some may have received messages implying that anger is off limits. Most of us are bound to have experienced a mix of these messages, which can add to the confusion surrounding the emotion.
In this way, an important step in understanding anger is to explore our own judgments about it. A complete analysis of this will also consider the cultural and developmental messages we received about anger. This might include whether we feel entitled to experience anger, how and whether anger should be expressed, and whether anger has any proper purposes.
What is anger? Seriously. What is it?
Because there are so many judgments about anger, it is important to ask what it really is. Even if it sounds like one, this is not a trick question or a philosophical one. With this point, I am prompting you to consider as directly as possible what anger is. When anger arises, what exactly do you experience?
Understanding anger clearly and directly is a fundamental mindfulness practice. When you know what anger is, you can learn how to manage it better.
In general, you are likely to experience some combination of (a) thoughts; and (b) feelings or sensations in the body. If you watch angry thoughts that arise, you are likely to notice a pattern. They may include some form of judgment or reaction and they often relate to some kind of boundary or rules violation or an unmet need.
The physical sensations of anger may vary for each of us, but what often arises is a surge of energy. Heat, power, and intensity are some of the most common markers of anger, as illustrated by artists and poets over the course of human history. In general, this energy motivates action but as we know the action is often not measured or thoughtful.
Anger should not be a way of life.
Though anger is a normal and necessary human emotion, medical science, life experience, and most world religions agree it is not a good way of life. For lawyers who train in the art of judgment and deal regularly with high-conflict situations, anger can easily become habitual. Why?
If you pay close attention to anger, you will notice a strange thing. Anger can feel volatile, scary, and uncontrollable at times. We may experience shame and regret after the fact. But in the moment, anger may feel good. It may make us feel powerful, energized, and crystal clear about the rules of life.
Think about it. Doesn’t it feel kind of good when you write the email reply telling the opposing counsel you can’t stand how wrong they are? In the flurry of emotion and energy, I bet you feel powerful, filled with creative arguments and poetic language, and most of all, right.
This is one of the things about anger that makes it so dangerous. The Buddha rather famously and accurately said that anger has a “poisoned root’ and a “honeyed tip.” Just like alcohol or drugs, anger can be intoxicating and addictive.
What is good anger management?
Based on all of this, you may be wondering what anger management means. There are a number of clinical opinions and high-quality programs for anger management. From a mindfulness perspective, though, good anger management for lawyers would include:
Awareness of the role anger plays in one’s life and work;
Understanding of the impact of anger in one’s relationships and community;
The ability to feel, hold, and understand anger;
Skillful and nonviolent navigation of situations involving anger; and
Effective strategies to avoid or mitigate anger.
Simple steps to start managing anger better.
This list above might sound like a tall order, especially for lawyers who work with anger nearly every day. In truth, it is a tall order for everyone. Our culture is steeped in anger right now, so changing our relationship to it may feel like swimming upstream.
In this regard, a healthy dose of perspective and self-compassion is in order. Building quality anger management skills may take time and require support, including from trained professionals, especially in the case of mental health challenges or past trauma. With this in mind, here are some steps that you can take to begin cultivating better anger management skills in your own life and work:
1. Explore messages and judgments about anger.
This is something that will definitely take time and may require help from loved ones, a therapist, spiritual leaders, or a coach to fully consider. However, some prompts for personal exploration might include the following questions:
What significant memories do I have around anger?
What reactions do I have when someone directs anger towards me?
What personal reactions or judgments come up when I experience anger?
What cultural, religious, or professional messages about anger are prominent for me?
Is there any way that aspects of my identity (race, gender, age, job title/role, educational background, etc.) affect my experience of anger?
2. Learn your anger patterns.
Again, this one will take some time and definitely some self-compassion to explore. Things to look for and consider include the following:
What is the context in which anger arises for you most commonly?
Are there certain things or situations that trigger your anger most clearly?
What is your response to anger (including mental or emotional reactions and behavior)?
Do you feel like you can manage anger skillfully and if not, what are some possible impediments to doing so?
Do you take the time or have established practices to process or understand your anger after you have regained calm?
3. Find ways to hold and use anger energy.
There are possibly countless ways to learn to hold the energy that anger creates and put it to good use. Some of the most common and accessible include the following:
Sitting with anger and watching it until it fades. Notice where it shows up and how long it lasts. (Hint: it may be shorter than you think.)
Looking for signs that other emotions lie beneath the anger (Hint: look for sadness, fear, overwhelm, or loneliness.)
Move. Exercise is great. Housework can be great. Taking a walk around the block can blow off steam. Yoga may help you chill and release bodily tension.
Take action. If something makes you mad, there may be a good reason for it. The energy of anger can inspire courage. As long as you remain steady enough, let it move you to act or to express your needs clearly.
Write or talk it out. Writing or venting can be a good way to release energy when it gets mixed up with thoughts. Watch out for this becoming excessive but short bursts can help you find clarity.
4. Learn to manage and question judgments.
This is yet another skill that can take some time to develop. The effort can be worthwhile, though, because the mental side of anger is often tied up with our judgments. As this blog frequently explores, meditation is something that can help with this because the practice is about noting our judgments. Other possible options include:
Catching yourself in a reaction. In your daily life, try to catch yourself in a reaction. Look for the judgment at the core.
Talking with friends or trained professionals. Social support is essential but outside perspectives can help us check our judgments and assumptions.
Evaluating needs v. preferences. Once you have started to catch yourself in judgment, you can next ask: is this a need or a preference? Needs may make anger worth it, but preferences may not.
Looking at our influences. We don’t like to admit it but our judgments are often informed by the people in our lives, past experiences, and media we consume. Looking at how these influences affect us and shape our anger can teach us a lot.
5. Practice re-orienting yourself to goodness.
Given that anger management may feel like swimming upstream in an angry culture and profession, my last tip is about perspective. Many lawyers regularly face situations involving anger that they cannot totally control or avoid. In general, people these days are lonely, overwhelmed, too busy, and lost in their own thoughts and judgments.
As a result, you may feel like anger management practices are impossible. Instead of expecting to avoid anger altogether, though, consider a view that instead your efforts are part of a practice of reorienting back to goodness. Yes, our angry culture and profession may encourage you to fight, close your mind and heart, and judge yourself and others.
An important anger management practice, then, is to build moments and practices into your day that do the opposite. These are ones that open your mind and heart, and encourage collaboration, connection, and rest. These might include practices like meditation, yoga, spiritual practices, creative efforts, or time with loved ones. These are essential practices for living a good life, but should be priorities for anyone who regularly faces anger in their life and work.
Conclusion
These are some thoughts on anger and how mindfulness practice and perspective can help lawyers and others manage it better. These ideas are not substitutes for quality mental health support or stress management and they expressly discourage self-judgment in response to one’s own anger. Instead, this post is offered to help lawyers and others understand anger to better support their communities and their own well-being.
Want to learn more about mindfulness and compassion? Check out my new book, A New Year’s Present, to learn about mindfulness from a heartwarming story. For a simple guide to creating a meditation practice of your own in 30 days, try How to Be a Badass Lawyer. And to share mindfulness with your little one, check out my new children’s book, Mommy Needs a Minute.
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It’s a Monday night and I am trying to get myself into writing mode. My weekend plans blocked my normal motivation to write. Now I am stuck in last minute work mode and trying to find the motivation to crank something out. Then it hit me. My own life advice suddenly went careening through my mind. “Just do five minutes,” it bellowed.
And that, dear readers, is the post for today. The five-minute rule-or hack or strategy or cudgel for those really bad days-is something that has saved many a healthy habit for me, including meditation. It’s very simple, which makes it a perfect for those low energy times.
What is the five-minute rule?
The five-minute rule is not really a rule. I am not sure it has any basis in research. It’s not necessarily a scientific thing. Rather, it’s a practical thing. Finding motivation can be a challenge for any healthy habit and it can be especially hard for meditation. Why?
What’s the answer to this problem? One simple answer is to cut down on the time you spend noticing how much you aren’t feeling it. This is where the five-minute rule enters the chat in the form of a motivational GIF and a caption that says “bruh, you can do anything for 5 minutes.”
The five-minute rule as applied to meditation.
I’ll explain this in less figurative language in case my metaphor and old millennial text speak was confusing. The five-minute rule is this: you do the thing you don’t want to do even though you know you should, but only for five minutes.
If your normal meditation habits is, for example, 20 minutes, you don’t worry about that. Instead, you just commit to 5 minutes. Then at the end you notice how you feel.
In many cases, you may find that (magically) your mood has changed and you may want to do more. If that happens, go with it. If you do not feel better and hate every second, you should instead stop, let it be, and praise yourself profusely for trying.
Why five minutes of meditation matters.
You skeptics out there may wonder why this matters. You may think 5 minutes of meditation or any other healthy habit doesn’t matter. Perhaps you may be right if you are thinking of the five-minute activity by itself.
Short sessions done strategically when needed, though, serve another arguably more significant function: they preserve the habit. If you meditate for five minutes, that’s another day you have meditated and think of yourself as someone who meditates. In fact, if you meditate for a short burst on the days you aren’t feeling it, that isn’t just practicing the habit but committing to it.
Does this work for other activities?
You may be wondering if this hack can work for other activities too. Yes it can. Case in point, I used it for this blog post. I wasn’t sure I felt like writing, but I told myself I would try a few minutes. A few paragraphs in, I found my flow and discovered I was enjoying myself while typing away.
I have done the same thing for exercise too. As I have written before, I usually love my Peloton workouts. Some days, though, I am not into it. My strategy on those days is to do a warm up, which is usually-you guessed it-5 minutes. By the end, I usually feel better. But if I don’t, I quit, praise myself for trying, and call it quits.
Does it have to be five minutes?
Lastly, you may wonder whether the five-minute rule truly has to be five minutes. I’m the meditation teacher that says self-discipline is overrated. Do you really think I am going to be strict on this one? Of course not.
For the hack to work, I recommend investing enough time and to give yourself time to adjust and assess how you feel. However, there’s no reason you can’t try a period less than 5 minutes. For instance, if your normal meditation practice is 10 minutes, a shorter period of 2-3 minutes might make more sense.
Remember: your meditation practice is your practice. The good thing about mindfulness is that it calls you to pay attention. If something doesn’t work for you, notice it and try something else.
Conclusion
In short, when motivation to meditate is low, you don’t necessarily have to fight it. Instead, you could try going with it by reducing the amount of time that you meditate. You may find after five minutes of practice and want to do more, but even when you don’t you may preserve your habit and your identity as someone who meditates. Next time you find yourself unmotivated to sit, remember the rule: just do 5 minutes.
Want to learn more about mindfulness and compassion? Check out my new book, A New Year’s Present, to learn about mindfulness from a heartwarming story. For a simple guide to creating a meditation practice of your own in 30 days, try How to Be a Badass Lawyer. And to share mindfulness with your little one, check out my new children’s book, Mommy Needs a Minute.
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I have seen a lot of comments on social media lately where people express an interest in meditation but complain that they just aren’t “good” at it. My answer usually includes some variation of the following: you don’t have to be good at meditation to benefit from it.
For lawyers and other Type A personalities, this may sound like crazy talk. Many of us are trained to think that we have to earn our stripes with something before it can help us. In truth, meditation is a skill and mindfulness and compassion are traits that can be strengthened with practice.
Meditation isn’t about mastery.
In this way, there is a learning curve when it comes to meditation. Does that mean meditation is fundamentally or principally about “mastering” the practice and becoming good at it? Not in my humble opinion.
To the contrary, meditation is sort of a rigged deck. Most people who do the practice never consider themselves good at it. This is because meditation is hard. Paradoxically, the simpler the style of practice one does, the more challenging you may find it to be.
The brain is not wired to stay focused on a single thing for very long. The default mode network of the brain kicks in when we are not intensely occupied and it causes the mind to wander. Thus, when you meditate, you are going against the grain (or should I say against the brain?).
Struggle is part of the practice.
In some ways, meditation is like strength training because the practice, in part, is learning to struggle. Though I generally enjoy exercise, I struggled mightily to build a strength training regimen a few years back. The reason? Strength training is not fun; instead it is a lot of struggle. When I do cardio, I get to move and enjoy music. But strength requires me to push really hard against a lot of weight.
Eventually, I got over this by figuring out a schedule that works and motivates me to keep going. One thing that helped me was seeing how much the strength training helped me. After a few weeks, I noticed that yoga was easier, cardio felt better, and those heavy doors downtown didn’t feel quite so heavy.
Don’t expect benefits in your meditation practice.
The same is true in meditation. You probably won’t notice huge benefits when you are struggling to focus on the breath in meditation. Since the practice is to notice when the mind wanders, it may feel like a struggle even if you are doing the practice right. But, during this practice time, this experience of struggle may be normal.
This is why some people may say they aren’t “good at” meditation. They see and feel the struggle and think that they aren’t making progress or feeling benefits. In reality, though, meditation isn’t where you will see the benefits most clearly. Just like with strength training, the real question is whether the practice is creating benefits in your life.
Look for the benefits of your meditation practice in your life.
Look for signs that you feel better, mentally or physically. Pay attention to whether you notice your mind wandering in real life and whether you can refocus. Over time, you may notice even more changes like:
If meditation feels like it is all struggle, though, get some help.
This is not to say, of course, that you should just “suck it up” when it comes to meditation. After practicing for a while, you should expect that the practice may get a bit easier and I hope you can learn to enjoy it. If that doesn’t happen, though, you may have some options for helping yourself.
In short, I would encourage you as much as possible to let go of the idea that you have to be good at meditation. That’s not the point. Meditation is not about proving yourself, but just being yourself. The question isn’t whether you are good at meditation but instead whether it is good for you. Though I hope that anyone who tries meditation eventually learns to enjoy it, the signs that the practice is working for you are more likely to show up in your daily life.
Want to learn more about mindfulness and compassion? Check out my new book, A New Year’s Present, to learn about mindfulness from a heartwarming story. For a simple guide to creating a meditation practice of your own in 30 days, try How to Be a Badass Lawyer. And to share mindfulness with your little one, check out my new children’s book, Mommy Needs a Minute.
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The other day, I made an audacious comment on social media. I posited that one “can and should enjoy meditation.” Now, this was on Threads, a platform with character limits. It was in response to someone else’s post about struggling with practice. When I made it, I assumed the comment was a pretty basic thing to say.
Despite my experience with social media, I was surprised when people responded to this with hostility. One person used actual profanity and another responded with a video, presumably to tell me I wrong.
The real issue here was probably that social media is not the best forum for clear communication. Even so, these surprising interactions got me thinking. Is it okay to enjoy your meditation practice? I think so. No longer shackled by character limits, I will explain why.
Expectations in Meditation Can Be Dangerous
The commenter who sent me the GIF of a meditation teacher telling me I was wrong had this point to make: looking to enjoy your meditation practice is often problematic. Meditation can lead to a reduction in stress, a more open mind, and heart, and many positive life changes. But it does so when we let it teach us.
This is why, when I commented that one should enjoy meditation, I wasn’t saying that one should expect to enjoy meditation. Instead, what I meant was that if meditation becomes a regular part of your life, it really helps if you find something in it that you enjoy. In this way, it is good to be open to enjoying meditation practice while being watchful of expectations for your practice to feel a certain way.
Are You in Shape for Meditation?
The woman who reacted to my comment with hostility, I suspect, had a different problem. She expressed a lot of struggles with the practice itself. As I have written before, this can happen for a variety of reasons.
People new practice may have to build up a tolerance for it. I started at 1 minute day and even then found all the thoughts and feelings I had been ignoring most of my life to be overwhelming. Over time, I had to learn a lot about letting go and responding to myself with kindness instead of judgment.
If your practice is far from enjoyable, consider whether you are still learning and whether you could support your practice more.
Every Session Won’t Be Enjoyable
Although I generally enjoy my meditation practice, the truth is that I frequently don’t. Sometimes I space out and barely notice it. Sometimes it is painful, physically or emotionally. And sometimes I resist doing it because I don’t want to face what is lurking in my mind and heart.
After years of practice I now know that this is just life. I normally love working out, practicing law, being with my kids, and writing. Depending on the circumstances, though, all of those preferred activities can become painful.
In the times when meditation, or any other healthy habit, feels hard, I usually have to adjust, simplify, and give myself a lot of grace. For this reason, the surprising thing is that I often learn and benefit as much from the hard times as I do from the experiences that feel great. So, of course, every meditation session won’t be enjoyable. That’s life and it’s okay.
But enjoyment matters for practical reasons too. Just like exercise, meditation can’t affect you in a positive way if you don’t do it. Life experience teaches us all that we are a much more likely to repeatedly do an activity we enjoy. This is what I really meant when I said one “should” enjoy meditation.
This wasn’t a rule. Instead, it was a remark on practical realities. Meditation is much more likely to invite you to practice if you find something about it that you enjoy. In general, then, it is a good thing to enjoy your meditation practice.
But What If You Don’t Enjoy Meditation?
Now, what if you have been meditating for a while and you don’t enjoy meditation? This is something that is bound to come up for most of us, but what can we do about it?
If this were me, my first step would be to see if I can identify the issue. Sometimes things like the time or location we practice, the physical set up for our practice, or the style of practice can be the culprit. Making adjustments or finding better ways to support ourselves can work wonders.
Perhaps a better option might be to work with a teacher or find a meditation community. Years ago, a five-minute interview with a teacher on a retreat told me it was time to loosen my grip on focus practices and shift to open awareness. That led to insights I had never had before and turned my practice into a respite rather than a battleground.
Meditation is not an easy practice, but I believe it is something that can and should generally be enjoyable to do. Many sessions will be tough and we should all watch out for expectations that our practice produce only blissful experiences. With that said, enjoying practice is a good thing because it may motivate us to practice. In addition, learning that and how to enjoy a practice like meditation can teach us a lot about life and ourselves.
Want to learn more about mindfulness and compassion? Check out my new book, A New Year’s Present, to learn about mindfulness from a heartwarming story. For a simple guide to creating a meditation practice of your own in 30 days, try How to Be a Badass Lawyer. And to share mindfulness with your little one, check out my new children’s book, Mommy Needs a Minute.
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There are few things in life as satisfying as typing out a strongly worded email to someone who’s got it coming. Or maybe you have a colleague driving you nuts, so nuts in fact that you think a text message containing all your anger is the way to go.
As soon as you read these words, you probably see the error in this line of thinking. Yes, letting it all hang out in text or email may seem like a great idea at times. The moment we hit “send” on those messages, though, we are bound to feel something more akin to shame, regret, or even guilt.
Can mindfulness help us avoid this trap? Indeed, it can. Keep reading to learn how.
Why we need mindfulness when it comes to text and emails?
As I have written before, mindfulness is a faculty of mind for most humans. We generally don’t have to do anything extra, including special practices, to be mindful. With that said, when it comes to email and text, some extra help is frequently needed because those activities are so often mindless.
Consider how many text messages, personal messages, and emails you send in a given work day. If this number is large, and for most of us it is, then your use of these means of communication most likely is a habit. Habits aren’t bad, of course, but when there are habits there may be less conscious awareness.
Text messages and emails can be generated quickly and outside of the presence of the person with whom you are communicating. Doing things speedily rarely makes us more ethical. Less contact with others often implies less empathy and fewer options for establishing understanding.
What it means to respond to emails mindfully.
When I talk about responding to emails or text messages mindfully, I am talking about invoking the faculty of mindful awareness to support skillful communication. On a practical level, this means taking measures to counteract the risks stated above: slowing down the process, remembering our human connections, and choosing your response consistent with your values and ethics.
Here are five steps that can help you do this.
Mindful Step 1: Take a Pause
As noted above, emails and texts are dangerous because they are fast. They can quickly elicit emotion from us unless we have time to recognize it. Nasty emails and texts are likely to invoke the emotion anger, which often manifests as a burst of energy. One of the calling cards of anger, of course, is an urge to act immediately on that energy.
If you receive emotionally charged emails and texts, the first and best mindful step I can offer is to stop. Take a pause and, where possible, get away from your messaging device. Literally get up and back away from the computer or put your phone down. It doesn’t have to be for a long time. The point of this is to stop the chain reaction between your screen and your mind and body and give yourself a chance to choose your next step.
When you take a moment to pause, check in with yourself and acknowledge your feelings. This may show up with a multitude of thought reactions about the situation, the other person, or even yourself. It likely will also include the physical signs of emotion, including tension in your body, a faster heart or breath rate, or even heat in your face and neck.
You don’t have to make these things go away. Instead, you can note them in mindful awareness and offer yourself compassion for dealing with something hard.
Mindful Step 3: Get Help
This next step isn’t mandatory, but it may be a good option for challenging communications that are critical, recurring, or more deeply troubling. I’ve talked before about the “spotlighting” effect of empathy that can cause us to zero in on a particular person’s emotions. From experience, I know that this can happen with email and text communications.
One way to break out of this and get much needed perspective is to talk with a colleague. With this, I am not saying you need to ask the colleague to intervene in the communication. Instead, my suggestion here is to speak with a colleague as a sounding board to get a broader view and personal support.
I know many of us want to be independent, but I frequently check in with colleagues when dealing with difficult opposing counsel. It makes the experience less overwhelming and lonely. I also feel more confident that I am responding based on my judgment and not my resentment.
Mindful Step 4: Invoke Common Humanity
Whether we like to acknowledge it or not, the humanity of the other person is present in all of our digital communications. I put this step next to last for a practical reason: it’s hard to recognize someone else’s needs when we are struggling.
Now, you may wonder about why you should care about the humanity of someone who just sent you a nasty diatribe via email? There are a few answers on this, but my best one is that it is usually better for everyone when we do so. Even from a very selfish perspective, most of us feel guilt and shame when we act in ways that are inconsistent with our values.
Email wars can cause us to forget basic values easily, but most of us want to to help and serve others in our work. Most of us do not want to harm and hurt others. A simple way we can do this is to remember that the person we are communicating with is a person with hopes, fears, dreams, and needs. Remembering that they are a person and not just an email or text troll can make it easier to choose our words wisely.
Mindful Step 5: Plan Your Response
This tip is less about drafting techniques than it is about the arc and meaning of your professional life. The plan I am talking about here simply means to ask yourself what your purpose with the communication is. This can raise deeper questions regarding your purpose in life, including at work, or your purpose with a particular matter.
It’s not necessary and it would be inefficient for you to expect crystal clear answers on these issues every time. Even so, asking yourself simply “what do I want here?” or “what purpose does this communication serve?” is a good start. Asking these questions is a way to reorient towards your values, meaning, and ethics so that it can guide your communication.
Conclusion
Copious and unpleasant digital communications are an unfortunate part of life for many lawyers and professionals. They can make our lives more stressful and pull us away from our deeper values. As with many things, an intentionally mindful approach can help. By slowing down, acknowledging our emotions and the needs of others, we can remember and reorient to effective communication that does not cause more harm. This can make our work lives better, less stressful, and more meaningful.
If you need a practice to help you go through these steps, check our our Guided Meditation for Responding Mindfully to Nasty Emails on Insight Timer or here:
Want to learn more about mindfulness and compassion? Check out my new book, A New Year’s Present, to learn about mindfulness from a heartwarming story. For a simple guide to creating a meditation practice of your own in 30 days, try How to Be a Badass Lawyer. And to share mindfulness with your little one, check out my new children’s book, Mommy Needs a Minute.
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I got up at 3:30 AM last week to catch a flight to New York City with my family. It was going to be a really long day. We had sightseeing and a Broadway show planned. Unfortunately, I’ve never been able to sleep on planes, trains, or automobiles. Lucky for me, though, I had another plan: I knew I would be able to meditate on the flight.
Meditation is no substitute for good sleep.
Trust me, I am the last person in the world to try to convince you that meditation is a good substitute for sleep. The impetus for my own meditation practice was postpartum depression, in part induced by intense sleep deprivation while trying to breastfeed my newly born daughter. That experience taught me many things but the most important may be that sleep is a nonnegotiable for me.
Regardless, the reality remains that sleep is not always an option. As a lawyer, I frequently have deadlines or a hectic schedule that can affect sleep. Even when we make the best choices we can, insomnia happens on occasion for a variety of reasons beyond our control.
When sleep is not an option, meditation can help.
In times like these, meditation can really help. On days after a less than ideal night of sleep, I find that a few minutes of meditation really helps me. For one thing, closing my eyes helps them rest and can ward off headaches and tension in my face and neck. Reducing my heart and breath rate also helps my body recover from the extra strain of slogging through the day on limited sleep.
I won’t claim that 10 to 30 minutes feels the same as a good night’s sleep, but it is close to the benefits one might expect from a power nap. Unlike a nap (a luxury my body rarely lets me enjoy), meditation doesn’t leave me feeling groggy the rest of the day. To the contrary, meditating for a quick rest during the day often feels energizing.
Meditating for rest can improve your mood and mindset.
Even if I don’t get a big energy boost from meditation, it offers other benefits. Mediation will usually stabilize my mood and mind. This usually means less grouchiness and generally less conflict with any people I may happen to encounter. This can even include myself.
Many lawyers like me may have a habit of pushing past or through our own needs. Taking a few minutes to meditate for the express purpose of resting–instead of improving yourself or boosting performance–is an important recognition that your needs matter. Most of us need reminders like this every so often. When life throws you lemons with too much business or not enough sleep, you make lemonade by taking the opportunity to practice rest.
Conclusion
Some of us who meditate may think the practice has to have some noble purpose. I have a noble purpose for my meditation practice: I practice to create less suffering for myself and others. But, you know what? I am pretty awful at reducing suffering for myself or anyone else when I am tired. And I bet that I’m not alone.
This is why I say that it is okay to meditate just for rest. It’s okay to let go of your noble purpose and big goals, at least for a few minutes. It’s okay to rest your eyes and body and give your mind a break. If you try it out on a hard day, I bet you’ll find that this use of meditation is perfectly consistent with your nobler purposes for the practice.
If you want to try some Guided Meditations with the aim of rest of mind, check these out on Insight Timer or here on Youtube:
This post was originally published a couple of years ago. I read it again and it still rings true. Happy Father’s Day to all the dads of all kinds and father figures out there!
My lawyer dad doesn’t know a thing about mindfulness, but he’s still one of the best meditation teachers I have ever had. He’s steady, hard-working, kind, and decent. He’s not closed off to new ideas, but he favors tradition. In this way, he has rarely sought out new practices and approaches to help manage his life.
Dad worked as a lawyer for or with local governments his whole career and he loves things like procedure, budgets, and finance. As an introvert, he’s rarely the life of the party, but people listen when he talks because they know he thinks first. He was picked on in school because he grew up on a farm in a small town called Rabbit Hash, Kentucky, so he usually prefers not to stand out.
My Lawyer Dad Was Not into Meditation but He Taught Me Good Lessons
My dad’s favorite ice cream is vanilla. His favorite snack is saltine crackers. His beverage of choice: ice water. Sometimes he mixes things up but he usually keeps things simple. Sometimes this simplicity can be magical.
He makes the best fried chicken I have ever had anywhere and he doesn’t bother with the Colonel’s 11 secret herbs and spices. His recipe is just salt, pepper, and flour. That’s it.
In my years of meditation, I’ve adopted the same approach. I’ve tried lots of different styles and practices. Most of the time I just like to sit and relax into the silence. I’m so glad I learned early on from my dad that simple is good.
2. It’s okay to be quiet.
If you are a meditator, it helps if you have at least a decent relationship with silence. When I teach about mindfulness, people often ask me if I am naturally calm. I tell them, emphatically, that I absolutely am not. But I have one secret advantage: I love silence. Silence isn’t lonely to me. It’s peaceful. It makes me feel at home.
I’ve never had trouble with silence because my dad always liked it too. He often drove with the radio turned off. He would read for hours on end. In a world that constantly wants to make noise, my dad taught me that it was okay just to stop and be still. That’s perhaps the first lesson that any new meditator needs to learn, so thanks dad.
3. Don’t be a martyr.
I’ve written before about struggling after the birth of my first daughter because she was tongue-tied and I couldn’t breastfeed her. During that time, I remember my dad saying this to me:
Claire, you will have her whole life to make sacrifices for her. I don’t have any doubts that you will be willing to do that most of the time. You don’t have to try to make all the sacrifices all at once right now.
My dad was a successful and respected civil servant with decades of experience. After he retired, he went into private practice, just a few years before I graduated from law school. I remember sharing with my dad that I was scared about business development and my dad gave me the best response possible: he admitted that he was scared of this too.
I loved basketball growing up and as a very tall kid I was pretty good at it. In high school, though, the competition caught up with me and my coordination and skill didn’t grow at the same pace as my height. I had an injury my sophomore year that benched me all season. My tryouts during junior year didn’t go well and, though I missed getting cut, I ended up on the JV team.
I ended up deciding to play and had so much fun with the younger players. As team captain, I was able to be a leader in a way I never had before. That season was one of the best sports experiences I ever had because of this opportunity to lead.
In our meditation practice, we may get upset when we struggle because it hurts our ego when we find we can’t do it perfectly or advance as quickly as we’d like. Of course, if you can keep going, you may learn an entirely different lesson than the one you started out to discover.
6. Any moment can be a teachable moment.
I was a kid who asked a lot of questions. Deep questions, usually starting with the word “why.” It didn’t matter how out of the blue it was. It didn’t matter if my dad was cooking dinner or working in the yard. He didn’t skip a beat. He’d answer the questions and a lot of time throw some back at me to force me to think through the issue myself.
Lots of meditation teachers will tell you that any moment can teach you about yourself if you keep your mind and heart open. In the same way, my dad’s constant comfort with questions and unwavering willingness to teach showed me that any moment in my life could be a learning moment.
f there are 84,000 doors to enlightenment, I am glad that I found one running to me that started on a farm in Rabbit Hash, Kentucky. Happy Father’s Day to all the dads, step-dads, foster parents, and father surrogates out there. Thank you for teaching us kids in your own way about mindfulness, meditation, and life.
Want to learn more about mindfulness and compassion? Check out my new book, A New Year’s Present, to learn about mindfulness from a heartwarming story. For a simple guide to creating a meditation practice of your own in 30 days, try How to Be a Badass Lawyer. And to share mindfulness with your little one, check out my new children’s book, Mommy Needs a Minute.
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There is a word that I have heard all the best meditation teachers say about meditation. As the title of this post would suggest, that word is “play.” On retreat and in courses, I have heard the teacher frequently offer some wisdom then encourage further study by suggesting we “play with it.”
When I first heard comments like this as someone new to mindfulness, my lawyer brain didn’t quite get it. I was looking for a direct path. I wanted clearer guideposts. Beyond this, I was trying to manage real life challenges, like stress, overthinking, and anxiety. How could playing possibly help me with problems like this?
Playing in meditation can do a lot of good.
Years of practice and training have changed my mind. In fact, cultivating a sense of play can in fact help you a lot. As I have written before, many of us lawyers and other type A people, innately may think that discipline and hard work is the way to go when we start meditation. I thought that too, but now I think that self-discipline is overrated when it comes to meditation.
I’m not the only who thinks this either. Thich Nhat Hanh, possibly one of the most beloved ambassadors of mindfulness in the modern era, famously reminds us to “smile” in life and meditation. Renowned teacher and psychologist, Tara Brach, does the same thing. Many of her meditations intended to release students from deep-seated emotional pain start with visualizing the image of a smile.
Even Shunryu Suzuki, author of Zen Mind Beginner’s Mind, tells us to bring an “effortless” quality into our practice. Though that book includes many reminders to be disciplined in posture and breath, it otherwise encourages us to relax and let meditation itself be “nothing special.”
Why is a playful attitude important?
So why is play so important in meditation? One reason is that meditation practice is hard, or at least it can be. The practice is simple, but it often involves retraining our minds. As most of us know, changing habits is challenging and can take time.
If we go charging into meditation with big ideas of instant calm and a clear mind, most of us are bound to be disappointed. Trying the practice, instead, with an attitude of kind curiosity can inspire the desire to practice more. With this attitude, you can try things out, see what works, and what doesn’t.
Now you may be wondering, what does “playfulness” even mean when it comes to meditation? For example, how would one know if their sense of play went too far and instead became silliness?
First, it’s important to note that I am talking about this idea in the context of meditation practice. Inherently, maintaining a meditation practice involves some level of discipline. The idea of play that I am describing doesn’t mean pure frivolity. It’s intended to counterbalance the habits of many of us lawyers to rely on discipline, rules, and force to achieve our goals.
When I talk about play in this article, what I mean is letting go of expectations. Play also includes forgiving yourself quickly for any mistakes or difficulty focusing. Having a sense of humor and adventure. And being open to joy when it arises.
How can you foster a sense of play in your meditation practice?
Learning to identify and cultivate a sense of play will likely take some time and experience. If you want to start exploring, here are a few strategies you can use to keep your practice fresh and light:
To explore the idea directly in your mindfulness practice, check out these guided meditations crafted to inspire play:
Want to learn more about mindfulness and compassion? Check out my new book, A New Year’s Present, to learn about mindfulness from a heartwarming story. For a simple guide to creating a meditation practice of your own in 30 days, try How to Be a Badass Lawyer. And to share mindfulness with your little one, check out my new children’s book, Mommy Needs a Minute.
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