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Finding Balance: Lessons from Philosophy, Structure, and Resistance

If balance isn’t what you escape to, but what you build from, then the next question is obvious:
How do you build it?

Not just in theory.

In a world that runs on overstimulation, scarcity mindset, and status games:

How do you actually live differently?

The answer isn’t in hacks or habits. It’s in philosophy.

The kind that orients you when ambition is loud and clarity is quiet. The kind that helps you walk away from things that reward you for abandoning yourself.

Balance isn’t just about rest. It’s about rhythm, resistance, and re-centering, again and again.

1. Rhythm: You Are What You Repeatedly Do

Aristotle said it best: “Excellence is not an act, but a habit.”

What he really meant is: the shape of your life is formed by what you do consistently, not what you feel inspired to do once in a while.

That includes your inputs: what you read, consume, scroll, and rehearse in your mind.

It includes your defaults: what you say yes to without thinking, what you say no to because you “should.”

It includes your silence: what fills your attention when no one is asking for it.

If you want balance, you need rhythm.

And rhythm means making space on purpose, before the world fills it for you.

Ask yourself:

What are you building repetition around? Clarity, or chaos?
What time of day belongs to you, without negotiation?
What anchors you when you’re off-center, and do you actually return to those anchors regularly?

2. Resistance: You’re Allowed to Not Want the Same Things

Stoicism is often misunderstood as suppression.

But Epictetus wasn’t telling people to be numb.

He was teaching them to guard their energy, to distinguish between what’s in their control and what’s not. Because the more noise you react to, the less signal you can hear.

In today’s context, that’s a revolutionary act.

Because the system doesn’t just reward overwork; it shames you for wanting less.

It pathologizes rest. It glamorizes imbalance.

It makes ambition feel like obligation, and burnout feel like progress.

Balance, then, becomes a form of resistance.

It’s how you reclaim your time, your nervous system, and your identity from a culture that treats your worth as performance.

Ask yourself:

Where have you internalized urgency that isn’t even yours?
What values are actually yours, and which ones were just inherited from the environment?
Are you okay with being seen as “less ambitious” if it means being more intact?

3. Re-centering: You Need a Philosophy, Not Just a Schedule

Viktor Frankl wrote, “Those who have a ‘why’ to live, can bear with almost any ‘how.’”

He was writing about survival under the worst conditions imaginable, but the lesson holds in everyday life: if you don’t choose what your life is for, something else will choose for you.

The point of balance isn’t to feel relaxed.

The point is to remain aligned, so that your output reflects your values—not just your fear or momentum.

That means checking in regularly. It means zooming out from metrics.

It means seeing your calendar as a moral document, not just a logistical one.

Re-centering isn’t an emergency button. It’s a regular practice.

Ask yourself:

What does success feel like in my body, not just in my inbox?
What would my week look like if it reflected my actual priorities?
What am I tracking, and is it helping or distracting me?

Design the Balance Before the System Designs You

You need a structure that protects your time before law school starts—not after. You need to know what hours are yours. What thoughts are yours. What parts of your identity aren’t up for negotiation.

You need:

Mornings that belong to you, not your inbox.
A body that isn’t treated like a taxi for your brain.
Relationships that don’t just tolerate your goals—but remind you who you were before them.

If you don’t set that rhythm early, the default will become your design. And once you’ve built your ego on that design, it’s much harder to undo.

Bonus: You Don’t Have to Be Chill to Be Balanced

There’s a trap that shows up, especially for high-performers.
We think if we’re anxious, tense, or reactive, we must be “off-balance.”

But balance doesn’t mean calm.
It means not losing the thread.

Tricia Hersey, in Rest is Resistance, reminds us: the system was not built for your healing.

So of course rest feels unnatural.
Of course silence feels boring.
Of course boundaries feel selfish.

That’s not a personal failure. That’s conditioning.

Balance isn’t a vibe. It’s a discipline.

One that protects your clarity, even when you don’t feel clear.
One that steadies you, even when you’re overwhelmed.

Balance isn’t just the absence of stress.

It’s the presence of structure, space, and sovereignty.

You build it by remembering, daily, that your life is not an accident.

It’s a design.

And it’s still yours to shape.

Author bio: Moshe Indig is the founder of Sharper Statements, a premier law school admissions consulting firm known for its depth, strategy, and results. A former litigator, Moshe helps aspiring lawyers craft powerful
narratives that reflect both who they are and where they’re headed—without sacrificing voice, clarity, or balance. Drawing from years of experience inside and outside the legal system, he teaches applicants to
center precision and authenticity in every part of the process. Read more at sharperstatements.com.

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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How Law Firms Can Support Attorney Well-Being

Though I often teach strategies that individual lawyers can take to manage stress, I always balance this with the reminder that law firms have a big impact on attorney well-being. When I joined my law firm, Bricker Graydon, a few years ago I saw this first hand. While I had generally positive experiences at prior firms, the firm’s commitment to well-being was deeper and more explicit.

Many staff members at the firm help make this happen, but one I want to mention today is Mina Jones Jefferson. She’s the Chief Culture and Engagement Officer at my firm. I’ve worked and presented with Mina on topics relating to stress management and attorney well-being. She’s so knowledgeable on these subjects that I asked her to join me on the FDCC FedSpeaks podcast to discuss steps law firms can take to support attorney well-being.

Keep reading to learn more about the insights from the interview, where to listen, and how to learn more about this subject.

Attorney Well-Being Should Be a Law Firm Priority

One of the things that Mina shared first in the interview is why law firms should make the well-being of lawyers and all staff a priority. In the interview, Mina explained that supporting attorney and staff well-being was not just the right or feel-good thing to do.

Instead, she explained how mental health directly contributes to law firm business goals. Mina shared studies showing that how employees feel about their work contribute to the quality of their work. It can also correlate to absenteeism, which translates to lost work time and billable hours. Or, in the alternative, presenteeism where employees don’t miss work but their performance suffers.

In general, Mina explained, happy lawyers and staff members are more productive and do better work for clients.

How Law Firms Can Monitor Attorney Well-Being

The idea of mental health can sometimes seem hard to define, but Mina didn’t skip a beat when I asked her about this. First, Mina explained that there are many signs that firms can monitor to gauge the well-being of their employees. As noted above, these include sick days uses, absences, and productive work hours.

To get more information, though, Mina suggested that firms should consider asking their employees regularly how they feel about work. She shared about the value of employee engagement surveys to gather information from attorneys and staff members directly. This can help law firms identify practical steps that may need to be taken to make the work life of their employees better or more satisfying.

Image of podcast guest, Mina Jones Jefferson, with quote from the interview shared in the blog post which says "Attorneys with the lowest risk of attrition are in law firms where they feel valued for their skill, talent, professionalism, or inherent worth as a human being. This shows that the value system of an employer can affect employee mental health."

Simple Steps Law Firms Can Take

Armed with this qualify information, Mina explained that law firms can make good decisions to support employees better. This can include reviewing internal policies, benefits plans, wellness offerings, and employee assistance programs.

It can also include leadership strategies that keep mental health a top priority in the law firm’s culture. These can include things like “leaving out loud”, where firm leaders don’t hide the fact that they prioritize things outside of work. It can also include simple strategies, such as honoring business hours for email and text communications.

As Mina also shared, however, it should also include a review of broader firms policies and procedures and leadership. In some ways, Mina explained that attorney and staff well-being is a function of a well-run organization.

Where and How to Learn More

This blog post was just a summary of the insights that Mina offered in the interview, but I strongly encourage you to listen to the full episode to hear it straight from her. If you want to listen to the full interview, you can find it on Apple Podcasts here. You can learn more about Mina Jones Jefferson and her work at Bricker Graydon on LinkedIn.

For more great interviews relating to lawyer well-being, check out the following episodes of FDCC Speaks:

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Severance: A Thought Provoking Show about Controlling Thoughts

How would it feel to be fully present at home, without a thought or worry about any work-related issue?

How would you feel if you could experience that same presence while at work?

If that sounds appealing, would you ever consider a procedure that could create complete work/life separation?

That’s the premise of Severance, a sci-fi series set in a fictional town in which employees undergo a surgical procedure to separate their thoughts about work and home. Employees who are “severed” can’t think about work once they leave the office and they can’t carry their home stressors into the workplace.

I binge watched the series this summer and I can’t stop thinking about it, both because of its stellar cast and the thought-provoking questions it presents.

The first season focused on Mark, an office worker who undergoes the severance procedure as a way to deal with the loss of his wife. The procedure enables him to shed his grief each day as he rides the elevator to his office. Once the elevator doors open, Mark has no awareness of his life outside the office, which enables him and his colleagues to focus solely on their work.

At least that’s the intention. The reality is that the severed employees spend a tremendous amount of time thinking about their “outies,” their selves outside the workplace. They wonder if they have families, whether they are good people and if they are happy. And when they need support, the severed employees are treated to stories about their “outies,” which suggests that the company understands how important it is for the workers to understand all aspects of their lives.

Although the show provides an extreme example of corporate culture and the quest for work/life balance, it presents some fascinating questions like:

What does it mean to be fully present? Is it necessary to clear our mind from distracting thoughts in order to focus on the present moment? If you’ve studied or practiced mindfulness, you know how unrealistic that is. And even in the fictional world of Severance, the goal of having a singular focus is not achieved, despite surgical intervention.
Is there an expectation that we can (or should) be able to compartmentalize our lives? In the show, the severance procedure is touted as a way to be more productive at work and to be more present at home. But is separating these parts of our lives a good thing? Do we want coworkers who can’t draw on life lessons, ambitions and beliefs formed outside the workplace? Is it good for them to be severed from the connections that ground them and the commitments that provide the motivation to tackle hard things? Conversely, don’t we want people to apply lessons learned on the job in their lives outside the workplace? And don’t we want coworkers to build connections and support networks outside the office?
Do we sometimes use work as an escape? Mark’s choice to undergo the severance procedure to escape his grief is not unlike the choices many people make to keep themselves busy and avoid feeling difficult emotions. [Spoiler alert] In the show, as in real life, that doesn’t really work.
What happens when we can’t find meaning, purpose or a reasonable amount of autonomy in our work? Mark and his team work in the Department of Macrodata Refinement sorting numbers. Aside from being told that their jobs are “mysterious and important,” they don’t understand the purpose of their work or how it fits into the larger picture. Instead, they are given rigid instructions, kept under constant surveillance and given meager incentives like company branded finger traps and team photos. Not surprisingly, this creates discontent, makes them less invested in their work and [another spoiler alert] sets them on a journey to change things. It is not that hard to see how this part of the series is an example of the disconnect that often exists between what employers think will lead to job satisfaction and what employees need or want.

My takeaway from Severance is that a complete separation of thoughts about your work and home life is neither achievable nor desirable. Although you may view the person you are at work as different than the person you are to your family and friends, the reality is that we bring our whole selves to the workplace – our experiences, our biases, our feelings, our thoughts, our hopes – all of it. And when we leave the job at the end of
the day, a piece of that work self comes home with us.

The story of Mark and his severed coworkers also shows what can happen when we are stuck in a life that exists solely for work. It demonstrates how connection is a powerful motivator and that even surgically induced-work life separation or carefully curated employee incentives are no match for the human need for community and purpose.

Laura Anthony is a lawyer who is fascinated by the intersection of law and human behavior. She is an education lawyer as well as a mediator, investigator and hearing officer and often draws upon her background and interest in psychology in her practice. She is also a not-so-regular practitioner of yoga and meditation and brings her real-world struggles making healthy choices to her role as the chair of her firm’s Wellness Committee. Laura can be found posting about her practice and her love of chocolate and libraries on Twitter and on LinkedIn.

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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