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How Do I Avoid Burnout? I Have Learned to Practice Renewal.

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 You lose the motivation to take on any case; you feel withdrawn from even the activities you once found incredibly enjoyable, and you simply let go of the will to push yourself any harder.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 such study is What Makes Lawyers Happy? A Data-Driven Prescription to Redefine Professional Success by Lawrence S. Krieger and Kenno Sheldon. They conducted a theory-guided empirical research project to identify the activities and behaviors that correlate and contribute to lawyers’ well-being and life satisfaction.

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.

Author Bio: Joseline Jean-Louis Hardrick is an associate professor at WMU -Thomas M. Cooley Law School. She teaches Criminal Law and Constitutional Law and assists graduates with bar preparation. She is the founder and director of Diversity Access Pipeline. Inc., a nonprofit organization that runs the Journey to Esquire® Scholarship & Leadership Program, Blog, and Podcast to promote diversity and create access for law students. She is the author of Finding Joy in the Journey to Esquire A Guide to RENEWAL for Lawyers and Law students. She magically finds spare time, which she uses to paint, dance, and watch sci-fi movies.

Want to learn more about mindfulness and compassion? Check out the new book from our founder, Claire E. Parsons, called How to Be a Badass Lawyer which is now available.

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Review of Peloton’s Intro to Meditation Program

Image with title of blog post and picture of woman meditating with support of mobile device.

If you’ve followed the blog, you probably know by now that I am a fan of Peloton. Historically, however, I haven’t really used the Peloton platform to support my meditation practice because I prefer unguided meditation. Late last year, however, one of my favorite yoga instructors Aditi Shah announced the new intro to meditation program. As a maven of meditation, I did the program myself so I could tell you about it here.

Here’s an overview of the program, a summary of what I liked and didn’t like, and a bottom line conclusion for those of you considering it for yourself.

Program Structure

The Intro to Meditation Program structure is available on the Peloton app or any Peloton device. You don’t need any equipment to use it, though some headphones and a meditation spot or cushion sure help. The program is designed to be completed over the course of 3 weeks and consists of short (5-minute) instructional videos to explain basic concepts and 5 or 10-minute guided meditations for practice. The concepts covered include mindfulness of thoughts, mindfulness of body, metta (loving-kindness), and them mindfulness of emotions.

What I Like About the Program

Overall, I think the Intro to Meditation is a good start for those new to meditation and mindfulness. Here’s what I liked most.

It Has the Right Stuff.

In my new book, I created a structure for creating a mindfulness practice in 30 days. It included basic mindfulness, body awareness, reconnecting with joy (i.e. mindfulness of emotions) and loving-kindness. The Intro to Meditation program has these same concepts, though the order is different and it is presented in a different way. Thus, in terms of essential ingredients, I think Aditi and the Peloton team ticked the right boxes for the program.

I Love that It Includes Loving-Kindness.

This is a bit redundant from the point before, but it bears repeating: loving-kindness is a powerful practice that doesn’t get nearly enough attention. I was thrilled that the program devoted significant attention to the practice of loving-kindness. I was also glad that the program exposed those new to meditation to the practice because compassion is something that can make establishing a consistent meditation practice much easier.

Meditations Are Less Wordy.

I don’t normally do guided meditations because I enjoy silence, so I was pleasantly surprised that the program meditations actually included some silent spaces. I have done some Peloton meditations in the past that I wouldn’t even call meditations because they were so infused with imagery or storytelling that there was no space for my own awareness. These were comparatively less filled with words and allowed some space to experience the concepts taught in the program.

It Teaches Basic Concepts.

Peloton programs in my experience have instructed through the exercises themselves. I was pleasantly surprised when the Intro to Meditation Program included instructional talks to explain the basics of meditation and the science supporting it. In my experience, understanding the science of the practice has always helped me understand the “why” of what I was doing. As a result, I was glad that the Intro to Meditation program provided a context so that users could understand the practices as well as experience them.

Image with an overview of the 4 essential styles of meditation practice mentioned in the post: breath focus, body scan, loving-kindness, and mindful awareness of thoughts and emotions

Drawbacks of the Program

Even though I am a fan of Peloton and adore Aditi, I have to admit that the program is not perfect. Here are the things that I didn’t love about it.

Aditi Sounds Rehearsed at Times.

Aditi sounds pretty natural when I take her yoga classes, but she sounded rehearsed for most of the explanation videos. And, though I understand that Peloton sells fitness apparel, I thought it was silly that Aditi was wearing a sports bra with no shirt or sweatshirt when she was teaching the passive activity of meditation. To be fair, this was likely the result of a new format and the fact that Aditi was teaching in a new way. In order to get the content delivered in a time efficient way, she almost certainly had to be reading from a script. In other words, the experience of watching the explanation videos lacks the connection you might get even from other prerecorded Peloton classes.

Information Was Conveyed But Real Teaching Was Rare.

Along the same lines as the point above, the Intro to Meditation program provides information about meditation but it doesn’t really teach the subject. Clearly, this is a result of the forum and the intent for the program to only be an introduction to meditation. Even so, the explanation videos could have provided a few more stories or examples to give the content more life. The few that Aditi offered in the videos appeared heartfelt and were effective, so I hope future Peloton programs will dig a bit deeper on this point.

The Order of the Program Felt Scattered.

As I experienced when writing my book, it can be hard to identify the “best” starting point when teaching meditation. Though meditation practices often select a single focal point, our experience is rarely so isolated and usually includes a mishmash of sensory information, body sensations, thoughts, emotions, and external stimuli. Though I like that the Program included the right topics, I found the order somewhat confusing and scattered.

The Structure May Not Be the Best Tool for Establishing a Habit.

I am adamantly anti-perfectionist when it comes to meditation. I admit that I miss practice all the time and regularly have to revamp my own habits. Even so, when I do, the tried and true approach for me is getting back to a daily practice. My recommendation for those starting is to strive for a daily practice, even at shorter intervals, to put the habit on autopilot. The Peloton Program is not set up for daily practice, perhaps to avoid the “perfection trap.” While I respect that tactical choice, the drawback is that users of the Program may have a bit more difficulty establishing a practice.

Image of founder meditating with overlay of social media quote with conclusion from blog post

Overall Conclusion

The Intro to Meditation Program is an accessible tool to help the millions of Peloton users worldwide learn the basics of meditation practice. Though the Program doesn’t stand on its own to support a long-term meditation practice, that may not be a bad thing. It will likely leave users wanting more but meditation practice is to some degree about exploration. Because the Program makes trying meditation simple and easy, it is a good start for anyone new to meditation but hopefully not a final destination.

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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Four Simple Words to Help You Start a Meditation Practice

This post was originally published as a guest piece for Constellation Marketing in July, 2021. It still rings true today and is perfect for anyone considering meditation for the new year.

I get all kinds of questions from lawyers who are interested in starting a meditation practice. It’s normal to have questions with anything new; and us lawyers love exploring things as concepts before we jump in with both feet.

So, they ask me all the things: how often should I sit? How long for each session? What’s the best app? Do I need a cushion? What if I can’t clear my mind? What if I get fidgety? And on and on. I answer these questions with understanding because I once had them too, but I think the best way to answer them all is with 4 simple words:

Just start.
Start small.

Why Getting Started Is Essential for Meditation

There are a many ways to learn about meditation. At first, I learned the practice from books and podcasts. Those offer great tips and tools, but nothing changed in my life until I started meditating consistently. That’s because meditation is an experiential practice – you have to do it to understand it.

It’s sort of like civil procedure. Do you remember how hard it was to make sense of the civil rules in law school from just reading about them? I do, but I’m a litigator now and they make sense (at least most of the time) because I have used the rules when litigating real cases. In much the same way, you will not fully understand meditation until you do it for yourself. So just start.

Learning the Right Way to Meditate Requires Experience

Maybe it’s true that you don’t know how to do it “right” but if you start to sit, you’ll notice things about your mind, your body, and your life. Over time, you will learn what it is right for you because you’ll notice what you need more or less of to be a happier, healthier person. Besides, in the beginning, all you really need to do is build up some tolerance for sitting and doing nothing, develop some inner resources for handling adversity, and get acquainted with your mind.

Don’t worry about doing it wrong because, if you make meditation a lasting habit, you will 100% do things wrong or learn that aspects of your practice need to change. That’s not just okay and part of being human, it is the path you have to take to learn any new skill, including meditation.

Starting Small with Meditation Makes Sense

If this sounds scary, remember that my next tip is to start small. And by this, I mean very small. If you can sit for 5 minutes right away, go for it. I started with 1 minute because it was all I could handle. My thoughts were copious and judgmental and doing nothing was not my forte. But I quickly discovered benefits from tolerating the awkwardness and added minutes until I eventually worked up to 30.

In other words, starting small doesn’t mean staying small. It’s just a foot in the doorway to a life with an active meditation practice. Once you get started and learn a few things, you can let your practice grow at a pace that works for you.

Starting Small Makes Sense for Lawyers

Starting small is not only less intimidating, it’s also practical. Small increments of time are easier to work into a busy calendar than big ones. In addition, short sessions are ones that you could conceivably do every day and that makes it much more likely that your experiment with meditation will become a habit.

Moreover, since the early part of practice is about building skills, you are less likely to get disgusted with yourself and meditation if you give yourself some time to adjust.

I love talking and writing about meditation. I love answering questions for other lawyers who want to learn how to bring mindfulness into their lives. But what I hope you get from this is that you don’t have to know everything (or honestly much of anything) about meditation to benefit from it.

Instead, what you really need is curiosity, a little bit of courage, some self-compassion, and an open mind. If you invoke those traits as you begin your practice, you will be able to answer questions about meditation and so much more for yourself.

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Can You Be Enough and Still Want More? Celebrating 100 Posts and 2 Years

I have been watching the clock today because I know I am supposed to write a blog post to be published tomorrow. It’s my 100^th blog post and tomorrow (December 27th) is the second anniversary of the founding of the blog. You’d think the words would flow like the bubbles from a bottle of champagne, but they haven’t. After publishing my first book this November, I think I am a bit celebrated out. And, I have a work-related project that is occupying my mind.

I was praying for an idea to come to me, and then one of my LinkedIn contacts did a post reminding the world in this season of goal setting and resolutions that we are all “enough.” It was a beautiful post with a message I endorse but I immediately thought “Rude! Not helpful.”

Celebrating Does Not Always Come Naturally to Lawyers

As I have written before, I am a self-doubter. On a normal day, I would have liked the post and said something encouraging. But on this day, when things were not going as I had planned, the post made my mind start to churn.

“Wait,” it posited, “am I letting myself be enough by struggling to get this post written just because of some arbitrary numbers?” When I couldn’t answer the question immediately, it sensed weakness and roared “Were you letting yourself be enough when you started this blog?”

Image with question "why does meditation help when your thoughts are tangled up?" and answer "Have you ever had to get a knot out of a necklace? You don't do it by pulling tighter on the knot. You do it gradually and gently by opening the knot up."

I bet you’re hoping that I refuted the voice with a bold assertion of my self-worth, but I didn’t. Instead, I did what I’ve learned to do when my mind is noodling away on a problem that seems unsolvable: I did nothing. That is to say, of course, that I meditated.

Mindfulness Can Open Up Space for Reflection and Celebration

Over the years, I have learned that it is the best way to take care of myself because it lets the thoughts have space and bounce around until they settle down on their own. This may sound painful; at first it was. But experience has shown that it works. Have you ever had to get a knot out of a necklace? You don’t do it by pulling tighter on the knot. You do it gradually and gently by opening the knot up.

And when I sat with my mind in a jumble, it opened right up. Yes, the uncomfortable thoughts bounced around. Yes, my doubts danced before my eyes. But eventually they drifted away, and I was left with a few moments of clarity.

In this lull, came the commonsense notion that being enough and pursuing goals aren’t antithetical at all. In my case, I didn’t start pursuing the goals that mattered just to me until I had realized after years of struggle that I was enough.

Being Enough and Pursuing Goals Aren’t Antithetical

Though it takes effort and sometimes causes frustration, this blog isn’t an albatross of work for me. As I have written before, it’s fun, it lets me explore some silly and hilarious ideas, serves as self-care, and has helped me develop a community I never would have had without it.

In addition, I didn’t start the blog to prove some point. Instead, I did it to celebrate getting certified to teach meditation and because I know my struggles with anxiety, overthinking and depression aren’t unique.

Beyond this, I don’t think there is anything that declares “I am enough” more than creating work of your own. Like a magician, you get to wave your wand and make something appear in the universe that wasn’t there before.

Like a brazen, unruly woman, you get to boldly take up space on the internet and declare your truths to the world. And, like any parent who fiercely loves the beautiful, imperfect child they made, you beam with pride even as you share your story full of missteps, screw ups, fears, and misgivings.

We All Need Reminders that We Are Enough

Of course, I have had to remind myself that “I am enough” by occasionally slowing down. I have republished or repurposed old content for weeks when I felt uninspired. I have learned tricks to create content quickly to just get the job done.

I have learned to have faith that an idea would appear when I needed it. I looked to pop culture for inspiration to keep things lively. And, I even took a two-month hiatus from writing new posts when life changes and the creation of my book left no space for extra writing.

Image that says "Thank you to our readers and followers! 100 Posts & 2 Years!"

To my surprise, getting through those hard weeks didn’t make me feel less than. They inspired confidence and helped me reflect on the vast difference between progress and perfection. They reminded me that I am enough, not because everything comes easy to me, but instead because I don’t give up as soon as things get hard.

Thank You for Reading and Celebrating with Me!

As we head into 2023, I hope that you are reflecting on the fact that you are enough. I hope you know that you don’t need to accomplish huge goals or amazing resolutions in the new year to be enough. But when you’ve got being enough down, I hope you celebrate it and share it with the world. I hope you let yourself thrive and take the weird paths your soul asks you to take. That’s what I have done these past two years. I’m so grateful I had enough faith in myself to do it and to all of you for celebrating it with me.

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Why You Can’t Clear Your Mind in Meditation and You Don’t Really Want To

The other day, my good friend Talar Herculian Coursey shared a post on LinkedIn about the most common problem new meditators experience: the inability to “clear one’s mind.” In response, numerous people commented that they “couldn’t” meditate for this very reason. As I shared in my new book, I tried my best to explain that this isn’t the purpose of meditation. Nevertheless, the comments kept coming, so I am explaining here why you can’t clear your mind in meditation and you don’t really want to anyway.

When I speak about mindfulness, I often joke that this isn’t really a bad thing because it’s a surefire way to know that you are still alive. If you meditate long enough, you’ll eventually come to the realization that one of the functions of the mind is to generate thoughts. So, a thinking mind, annoying as it can sometimes be, is a healthy one.

Even so, many of us lawyers don’t have the best relationship with our minds. Some of us may view our minds as bullies who boss us around, shame us, call us names, and annoy us when we are trying to focus or sleep. When we sit to meditate, we may have grand delusions of regaining control over our lives by silencing the bully in our minds.

But if the mind is a bully–and I have had my own experience with this–does it really make sense to think more bullying is going to solve the problem? I mean, if we want our minds to be kinder and gentler to us, doesn’t it make sense instead to learn to be kinder and gentler with our minds?

After I had meditated long enough, I started to see my mind much less like a bully and more like a child. Sometimes my mind wanted to babble and play and make up nonsense songs like a baby or toddler. Sometimes it wanted to create stories and share them like an excited little kid. And sometimes it would argue for the things it wanted or call names when things didn’t go its way.

What’s the big difference here between bully and child? The difference is that I was bothered, incredibly bothered, by the bully mind, but I could let the child mind be. In a word, the difference is acceptance. At a certain point, and I can’t tell you exactly when, meditation helped me see that the mind just made thoughts and they didn’t always have to control what I did or how I felt.

Once I came to this realization, the whole dynamic changed. I could hear my mind tell me I am an awful person and a failure at life and I didn’t automatically believe it. That would empower me to challenge it with logic, console myself, or reach out for support. I could see my mind spin stories about how my plans would all come to ruin and my loved ones would reject me. And I could just reflect on the fact that my mind was spinning yarns again and redirect my attention to the present moment.

How did this magical power emerge? It came from never learning to clear my mind. I’ve been meditating for a decade. I have undertaken special training. I have not found a way to clear my mind and I don’t think there is one. My goal at this point is to convince everyone else of the same thing.

What you can learn to do, however, is to find clarity about your mind. Meditation can help you do that because (certain forms of it) require you to sit and watch your mind. Though it seems like it sometimes, this is not a cruel joke. You aren’t supposed to learn how to clear your mind. You’re supposed to see that the nature of the mind is not to be empty, but you can still find clarity in it.

Clarity comes from meditation practice because, if you don’t give up, you will eventually learn that there is no choice but to accept your mind as it is. In other words, you learn to stop fighting all the thoughts. You learn that control, the strategy that you have relied on for too many things for most of your life, is not the only way. Because what happens when you stop fighting all the thoughts? Most often, that’s when they settle down. That’s when you are likely to experience periods of clarity. That’s when you will experience what space between you and your thoughts looks and feels like, so you can more often be aware in your daily activities when your thinking mind is activated.

If you start meditating and you notice that you can’t clear your mind, perhaps consider this as something other than a pain point or a personal failure. Instead, it’s a preliminary realization that can lead to far more significant insights if you let it. Yes, you can’t clear your mind, so stop trying to clear your mind. Accept it. Accept yourself. Go back to the breath. And see what happens next.

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Spirited, Moral Injury, and Examining the Concept of Redemption

This post contains references to suicide. It is published with permission from and deep respect for the family of the affected attorney. It is written by my dear friend, Robyn Smith, who I met in law school. Though we have handled cases on the opposite sides of the “v” for much of our practices, we have remained friends and benefitted from sharing our different experiences. We recently shared a post from Bob Coursey, an employer-side employment lawyer. This post from Robyn offers a different perspective but I think you’ll find that both Robyn and Bob think humanity and decency are essential to law practice.

Just in time for Christmas, Ryan Reynolds, Will Ferrell, and Octavia Spencer star in Spirited, a musical comedy adaptation of A Christmas Carol. It’s a fantastic story of human struggle, self-loathing, and redemption. If you have not yet seen the movie, go watch it right now. We’ll wait.

[INTERMISSION]

Finished? You’re welcome. It was great, wasn’t it?

And there could not be a better cinematic explanation of people struggling with something called moral injury – a concept that describes the price paid by people like us, attorneys who work as we are taught, and who exist within a system that tests our personal senses of right and wrong … and who are hurt by it. Moral injury, according to Veterans Affairs, is a psychological injury that comes from perpetrating, failing to prevent, or witnessing events that go against a your deeply held moral beliefs and expectations.

These injuries have been studied in the instances of combat veterans who have had to inflict harm on others, as well as health care workers who have had to turn away people in need of care. Scientists have noted that it changes the brain, but not in the same ways as PTSD. Spirited depicts several folks struggling with their own pasts, presents, and futures, as their choices and career paths have consequences.

The Spirited character to have watched was Octavia Spencer’s. She does as she is told. She conducts the opposition research. She works up the facts. She discloses the truth. She knows how it will be used. She is hurt as the fruits of her efforts are used to destroy other people’s lives. She knows that’s how it will go. But she is just researching, like we do. She’s just portraying facts, like we do. She’s just doing her job … like we do.

And she hurts because of it. Like we do.

I believe that the law industry is designed to subject lawyers to moral injury. We are trained to work in our clients’ best interests and to keep their confidences. We are permitted to withdraw from representations most of the time – but not all. We may only raise an alert when a client is about to inflict certain types of injuries on other human beings. We have knowledge that can weigh on us. We have to argue things that we do not admire or respect. We are complicit in systems that oppress and injure. And whoever structured this industry decided that was okay, at our peril.

Not all of us, and not all of the time, of course. But our ethical rules do not allow us to prioritize our own morality – ever. I don’t think I’ve met a lawyer who has not had to take a position she abhors, or oppose a person she truly believed to be in the right. In those circumstances, we are told, we have to consider our clients’ best interests, the integrity of the tribunal, and a handful of other things that are not our own precious peace of mind.

I represent workers, including attorneys. Some of them know what is happening around them is wrong, and they feel gaslit by the failure of others to speak up or break free. It’s a lonely feeling. Some of the people I admire the most are people who, astonished, have asked me “Am I crazy?” after recognizing a severe and unbearable moral injury and declaring the pain of it. And suffering the fallout. Speaking out against the machine is taboo, isn’t it?

I had an attorney friend who undertook a very important job overseeing Kentucky’s unemployment insurance agency in early 2020. When the pandemic set in, he went to work, putting every ounce of his energy into connecting newly locked-down workers with the money they needed to buy food, medicine, diapers, and medicine. He would call it “the most important thing I’ve ever done.” He saw problems with the system, some ethical, others legal. He rationalized what he could. He opposed the rest. My friend was fired.

He spent the next several months watching in horror as the benefits system crumbled, with workers spending endless months without benefits, hitting metaphoric brick walls in the agency, and having nobody in the agency empowered to advocate for them. My friend gave an interview to a national media outlet, and when the reporter asked how it felt to watch all of the people in pain as they waited for help that was promised but never provided, he responded simply, “It kills me.” A few weeks later, my friend took his own life.

For well over a year, I did what many people affected by suicide do. I talked with people. I raged against the people who hurt my friend and his family. I blamed myself. I researched and read, looking for something to make it make sense. I looked at studies. Everything I learned about depression, anxiety, PTSD, secondary trauma, and how they affected lawyers was really insightful, but never really a complete picture.

Then one day, I was in my car, listening to a science podcast about the “invisible epidemic” of moral injury. I gripped my steering wheel and yelled, struck by the realization that this was the piece that fit. When a principled person leans into his moral fortitude at a time when very little else is available, and when that sense of morality is shattered … it’s a whole lot to come back from. And we are made of flesh and bone, not iron and steel.

I had been staring into the same abyss as my friend. Because the fact is that I truly believed that I had let him down. And I carried with me every cut from every point in my career when I had helped people advance their own interests against my own sense of morality. In recent years, I opened my own firm. I represent only people I want to and do a lot of pro bono.

While I don’t represent people I don’t want to represent, I am still at risk for moral injury every time I see the justice system (that I prop up) hurt people who don’t deserve it. I’ve watched my opposing counsel wince as they open old wounds in my clients in depositions because it is their job. I’ve heard a government lawyer lament, “Robyn, I have no discretion here” when a person’s ability to feed a family was at stake. I’ve seen it, I’ve felt it, and I know that it’s real.

You are reading this piece on a blogsite where my dear friend Claire gives you tools to process, understand, and heal. You are here to learn about the tools to help you work within the sphere of your own control. But in case nobody has told you this lately, it’s okay to conclude that the things outside your control might be wrong. Real wrong. And you are not a freak for wanting to break free from it. It’s incredibly okay to leave. To adapt. To grow.

My favorite scene from Spirited is a deleted scene showcased in the credits. Will Ferrell’s character wants to know what the everlasting effect of a single act can be – a “ripple.” He wonders, “I have to believe, inside the worst of us there is some decency there … we can achieve something miraculous if we only dare.” That’s true. It is. It’s true of our clients, and it is always true of us.

Because it’s not about winning. Or raking in money. Or having other people be afraid of you. That’s the old way of evaluating success in our industry. The new way, and the way Spirited has considerately reminded us of, is that you can take account of your own worth. And you can decide when someone has asked of you the unaskable. And you can say “no.” You can heal, and you can help others heal. And you can determine your fate from there.

Robyn Smith is an employee-side lawyer at The Law Office of Robyn Smith in Louisville, Kentucky. She chose the area of employment law to protect workers, who she believes are Kentucky’s greatest resource. Robyn has represented workers in litigation against massive institutions, both public and private. She is also a mother of two and committed to improving her community and the profession. Robyn has been honored for her pro bono work, is a coach for law school client counseling competitions, and teaches Law Practice Management at the Louis D. Brandeis School of Law at the University of Louisville.

Want to learn more about mindfulness and compassion? Check out the new book from our founder, Claire E. Parsons, called How to Be a Badass Lawyer which is now available.

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Tortured No More: How Drinking Less Alcohol Helped Me Write My First Book

Our culture has this trope of the long-suffering tortured artist. There’s this idea that creativity comes from strife and is fueled by addiction and misery. I don’t say things like this often, but I want that idea to die.

First, it’s not true. Sure, there are many wonderful artists who struggled with or even lost their lives or careers to addiction, but there are also many, such as Anne Lamott, Stephen King, or the musician, Riopy, who went into recovery and thrived professionally after. Second, the idea is dangerous because it suggests that creative living is off limits to people who want to have a happy life.

I get upset about both issues because I experienced the opposite of what the trope claims. I experienced an extreme uptick in my creativity after limiting alcohol. In addition, the expansion of my creative efforts has resulted in more happiness, not more suffering.

This year I hit a major life milestone: I wrote and published my first book. I didn’t quite sell as many copies as Stephen King (yet) and I admit that I didn’t say anything nearly so perfect as Anne Lamott did in Bird by Bird. But, by god, I wrote a damn book. I wrote a book while practicing law, raising kids, managing a blog, and surviving two job changes in my household at the same time. I wrote a book even though I could have easily continued to think about it, as I had done for many years before.

Like the trope, this book had its origins in some suffering. It came from my own struggles with mental health and it was inspired by some of the darkest moments in my life. In addition, so many steps that led to me writing the book came out of the angst, grief, and upheaval of the pandemic. Oddly, one of those steps was the realization that I had relied too much on alcohol during the initial months of social distancing.

This is where the trope of the suffering and addicted artist explodes. Other than my initial bout with shame and denial, I didn’t have a torturous experience addressing my alcohol usage. Instead, I implemented some reasonable limits and supports, noticed an improvement, felt good, so kept going. At no point in the decision-making process did I consider limiting drinking because I wanted to be “more productive.”

That’s exactly what happened though. No, I didn’t get more productive in the breakneck way. I didn’t sacrifice sleep, or fun, or time away from my computer. Instead, I found a few extra hours here and there at night and on weekends where I felt like writing.

Think about it. When do most of us drink? Nights and weekends. When do most lawyers have free time to write and pursue personal hobbies or goals? You got it. Nights and weekends. When I started limiting how frequently I drank, I created more pockets of time in which I felt energetic and clear-minded enough to write. And, when things calmed down a bit and I had longer stretches, I could reliably bank a few thousand words at a time until I had a book.

Perhaps this story isn’t as interesting as the long-suffering artist, but it’s a whole lot more hopeful and in more ways than one. It suggests that steps to major life goals might, for any of us, be just around the corner. It suggests that doing the everyday basics to take care of oneself may be one way to reach the highest heights.

And here’s the best thing. Maybe I was a bit of a suffering artist in the early days of the pandemic. Maybe I used alcohol somewhat to avoid the suffering I believed I couldn’t handle. When I decided to make a change, the suffering didn’t swallow me up. Instead, it forced me to grow and make space for something new. It’s easy to get caught up in our habits or the tropes of identity, but it’s possible to break out of them. Even better, it feels really good when you do.

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Tranquility by Tuesday Can Change How You Feel about Your Time

How many times have you read a book and thought or proclaimed to a friend that it “changed your life”? While it can be exciting at first to see new possibilities open up in your mind after reading a book, the true test is whether it helped you change your life in meaningful ways. Time management guru, Laura Vanderkam, is a writer, speaker, and podcast host whom I have followed for nearly a decade. Having had time to see the difference, I can honestly say her work changed my life.

When I first encountered Vanderkam’s work, I was in the throes of young motherhood with an out-of-control litigation case load. I felt like I was doing everything wrong. I had no energy and I assumed somebody out there must have some answers. When I read I Know How She Does It: How Successful Women Make the Most of Their Time on a friend’s recommendation, I suppose I was looking for hacks and tricks to make things easier. What I got, instead, was far more valuable: reassurance that my messy life was normal and a reminder to be practical instead of perfectionist about my time.

Over the course of years, the mindset shift to dispense with all or nothing thinking made a huge impact on my life. Gradually, I began incorporating more of what I wanted in my life (writing, exercising, time with friends, etc.) and I let go of the doubts, worries, and guilt that got in the way.

Instead of assuming that I didn’t have time for the things I wanted or couldn’t commit to a new habit, at some point I decided to let myself try. Fortunately for me, meditation was one of the first habits I established. Because it gave me a quick way to recharge, mental space for insights and ideas, and awareness, other good things soon followed. I quickly got more active in my community, started writing more, and established a regular fitness routine.

Now, I find myself with a law practice, a family, an established blog, and a newly published book. Though I am doing more, I don’t feel as time strapped as I did all those years ago. The major difference is that I got more intentional about the use of my time. That is, I decided some of my time—even the tiny bits of it—was time I deserved to spend on me.

Of course, Laura Vanderkam is not the only person to credit for this awakening. Friends, family, therapists and coaches have all helped me understand and craft this for myself. But I just listened to Vanderkam’s latest book, right as my own first book was coming out, and it hit me that I had unwittingly put into place so many of her time recommendations.

In Tranquility by Tuesday: 9 Ways to Calm the Chaos and Make Time for What Matters Vanderkam shares more than a set of 9 steps to manage your time. Instead, this book is about managing how you feel about your time. It’s not a tome that tells you how to manage a to-do list or claims you can simply delegate the tasks you despise. Rather, it recognizes that you may be busy for good reason. In light of that, though, it offers strategies that can help you experience your life as rich and full instead of just overscheduled.

I can’t say that I have put all 9 steps into practice but many of them have been essential to helping me open my mind and my schedule for more of what I want. In particular, fifteen minutes of Friday planning has helped me envision the coming week and prioritize personal and work goals. Likewise, moving early in the day has helped me manage stress and start my days off with energy. Finally, the biggest shift came when I started to prioritize what Vanderkam brilliantly calls “effortful fun.”

Though that sounds like an oxymoron, it makes senses. It means fun that takes a little more effort than standard relaxation. I had never heard the term before I read Tranquility by Tuesday but I can tell you that allowing myself to pick effortful fun more often in my life is one of the most important changes I have made.

When people ask me how I manage so many things, I think they assume that my writing is work. It certainly is, but it’s also a kind of fun I can’t get from watching Netflix, playing a game, or even going to a concert. When I recognized this, I let myself write more and more until it became a habit. Though it takes energy and effort, consistent writing gives me back so much more.

This is the shift that Vanderkam’s work can help you make. She has five kids, two podcasts, numerous books, and a well-updated blog. Even so, I reached out to her to ask for a quote for the blog and she responded within an hour with this gem for all the lawyers and professionals who read the blog:

I think that one of the biggest misconceptions with demanding jobs is that there isn’t any time for other things. There may not be much, but “not as much as I want” is a very different story from “none.” The first story invites us to study our schedules, and see where this time may be, and how we can make the most of what we have, and scale this up over time. The second story is just defeatist. So the first, which is more truthful, is a better option.

I also think it’s important to look at life in terms of weeks. Individual days might be long. But often, over a week, there is space for the things outside work that make us feel like whole people. There are 168 hours in a week. If you work 60 hours a week, and sleep 8 hours per night (56 hours per week) that leaves 52 hours for other things. Again, it is not an infinite amount of time, and you might need to be creative to seize it. But there is likely time for some exercise, reading or hobbies, and quality engagement with family. Think of it as a quest to find this time, rather than dwell on how little there is.
Laura Vanderkam

Indeed, lawyers rarely have as much time as we want but most of us have more than none. If you want to learn a few ways to make the most of the time you have, check out Vanderkam’s work and her latest book, Tranquility by Tuesday. I don’t promise that it will change your life, but if it changes your mind on a few things that will be a pretty good start.

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Inspirational Interview with a Lawyer Who Climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro

This month, I am talking and thinking a lot about possibilities. It’s a fitting theme for me because a totally new possibility opened up for me when I published my first book How to Be a Badass Lawyer. No, the world didn’t stop and it wasn’t an international bestseller overnight, though I was ecstatic when it attained #1 New Release status on Amazon.

Still, I have wanted to write a book for years. When you achieve a long-term goal like that, it causes you to reconsider who you are and what you can do. I have a lawyer friend, Christon Halkiotis, who recently did something that caused the same reflection. She’s a lawyer in North Carolina and climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro this September to raise money for Multiple Myeloma Research. All told, her group raised $200,000.00.

It’s a pretty amazing story and Christon has some others to share too. She started her law practice just before the pandemic started, she learned to market her practice on social media, and she is one of my awesome co-authors for the bestselling book Networked.

I had Christon join me on Instagram Live for one of the blog’s Easy Like Sunday chats. She shared her story and dropped some knowledge, badassery, and inspiration. What I loved most was that Christon explained that mindfulness helped her get through the toughest parts of the climb. Check out the interview here.

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How to Be a Badass Lawyer

The word “badass” may not be the first one that comes to mind when most people think of lawyers. Some people may not like the word. Though the term has been thoroughly adopted into contemporary slang, I’m aware some people may be mildly offended by it. Still, it’s hard for me to deny that being a lawyer is pretty badass.

Yes, we are supposed to be rule followers. In many cases, we are hired because we are experts of the rules. But anyone who has practiced law knows that there are times when the rules don’t tell us everything. Sometimes the rules shift suddenly. And there are instances when we have to blend creativity and ingenuity to chart a course around, through, or alongside the rules for clients.

This is why lawyers, steeped in rules as we are, are not mere rule followers. Instead, our jobs position us to be badasses. Our role is to help our clients shape the future for their lives, their businesses, or their families.

Much the same way, “badass” may not be the first word that comes to mind when you think about mindfulness and compassion. The popular image of mindfulness these days is a blissed out yogi sitting on a cushion. We are more likely to think of our grandmas than a superhero when it comes to the word “compassion.”

But when you understand either of them, you realize how badass they really are (and maybe how badass your grandma was too). At it’s heart, mindfulness is accepting reality as it is without judging, resisting, or fighting it. Compassion, warm and cuddly as it sounds, is nothing less than courage. It means staying present for suffering and remaining willing to help.

In recent decades, some amazing pioneers have begun teaching lawyers about mindfulness. Much of the discussion, however, has focused on the calming aspects of mindfulness practice. To be sure, meditation can offer that and it’s not a small thing. But, my experience as a practicing lawyer has shown me that meditation has helped me so much because it helped me be okay with not being calm.

This may be hard for some lawyers to hear. I know we can feel like we need to look composed. I know it can feel awkward and vulnerable when you can’t control your emotions. Breathing strategies can help in these situations but at a certain point something else is needed too.

That magic ingredient is compassion. It’s a word that I have seen mostly absent from discussions of stress management for lawyers. I think some people have believed lawyers wouldn’t listen. Some may have believed talking about mindfulness by itself would cover the bases.

Over the years, though, I have used compassion for myself and taught other lawyers about it. They do listen and I don’t believe merely talking about mindfulness by itself is enough. Mindfulness and compassion work together. In combination, they don’t just make us calm and soothed. They allow us to soothe ourselves and others and find clarity and stability in even the most troubling times.

What could be more badass than that? And it’s clear why lawyers – who readily take on challenges for clients in the midst of risk and conflict – could use this. This is why I started teaching mindfulness and compassion to lawyers and professionals years ago. This is why I founded this blog. And, today, this is why I wrote and published my first book: How to Be a Badass Lawyer: The Unexpected and Simple Guide to Less Stress and Greater Personal Development Through Mindfulness and Compassion.

I wrote it as a short and simple guide to help lawyers (or anyone else) understand the concepts of mindfulness and compassion and build a meditation practice of their own. Having meditated now for nearly a decade, I understand that meditation can be a challenge so the book creates a four-week program for you to build skills and stamina for meditation. As you do the practices, you’ll cultivate mindfulness, compassion, body awareness, and emotional intelligence.

The book includes no metaphysical discussions, little complicated terminology, and is actively and ardently anti-perfectionist. Admittedly, it’s a self-help book but only in the sense that it may offer some new skills, strategies, and ways of thinking that may allow you to help yourself. Explicitly, the goal of the book isn’t to change you in any way. It’s to help you see how awesome you are because your clients, your family, your community, and the world needs it.

Check out the book to learn more, reach out to me to discuss, or leave me a comment below. I can’t tell you how thrilled I am to have written it. Achieving a goal like this has caused me to look at myself in the mirror and think “yeah, I am kind of a badass.” I want all of you to feel the same way.

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