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Easy Celebration Tips for Busy Lawyers

I teach and write about the importance of celebration for lawyers, all the time. But I’ll be honest, it can sometimes be hard to do. Last week, I finished a critical case and I was fortunate to have the chance to celebrate right away. It made a huge difference in my outlook and energy levels.

This experience reminded me how simple but essential celebration can be for lawyers. As a result, I decided to share my experience to show that celebration doesn’t have to be something that is time-consuming, expensive, or difficult. Instead, it can be a simple sharing of experience with colleagues.

If, like me, you struggle to celebrate all your achievements, to keep yourself motivated in your law practice. This post will identify why celebration is essential for lawyers and the key ingredients of a good celebration.

Why Is Celebration Important for Lawyers?

The reason that celebration is important for lawyers is the same reason that it is hard for us to do. Lawyers are busy people who deal with difficult things. Our work involves risky situations, stressful cases with clients, and a lot of time in the office. We may also feel pressure because so many other people depend on us.

So when a case ends or a deal is done, lawyers can forget to take the time to feel good about it. We may move on to the next case or just go home and rest, but we don’t look back. Instead, lawyers often keep looking forward.

Over time, this can mean that lawyers experience a lot of negative things without much balance. We devote our attention and energy to things that stress us out. But we may miss many of the good things that come along the way.

Celebration is essential to remind us that there are also good parts of law practice. We may have clients that we care about, people in our law firms that we enjoy, and staff and the team members who impress us. If we don’t take the time to celebrate, we don’t reap the rewards of all these beneficial aspects of work. Due to the negativity bias in the brain, lawyers need explicit reminders of good things like these.

What Was My Big Celebration?

You may be wondering what my big celebration was. In reality, it wasn’t that big at all. My practice group has weekly conference calls, where we all meet on Teams to discuss our cases and workload. Because it was the end of our busy season, one of the practice group leaders decided that we should all share a drink. Some of us chose to drink mocktails, and some of us actually had a cocktail.

Fortunately, the day of the event, the leaders sent out an email reminding us of the special occasion for this call. A few hours before it happened, I resolved a major case that had caused problems and stress for my practice and client. So of course, I decided to rush out and buy some champagne to celebrate with my colleagues on the call. And let me just say, it was a lot of fun. It made me feel good about my practice and close to my team. It made me realize that the struggles we go through as lawyers are worth it. It really made a difference to my energy levels and outlook.

Image with quote that says "Celebration is essential for lawyers for the same reason it is hard for us."

The Key Ingredients of the Celebration

You may be wondering what made this simple celebration so great? The key ingredients I have identified are as follows:

first, it was planned in advance,
second, it involved a shared experience, and
third, it included an element of fun
fourth, it did not require extra work.

These items are easy to comprehend but I will explain why each was so essential me and why it may matter to other lawyers.

1. Lawyers May Need to Plan to Celebrate

The first element, planning, matters because it shows it was a priority. Planning is also a practical necessity, so we could make a point to be there and participate. In addition, we were reminded of the event the day of, so we didn’t forget to do something special. This reminded everyone that celebration and connection with each other were important.

I know sometimes it feels odd to plan out a celebration or even a small time to connect with colleagues. While impromptu gatherings can be nice, it is not something that busy lawyers can rely on. Instead, people with busy calendars need a plan. If you prioritize celebration, show you value it by planning it out.

2. Celebration Requires a Shared Experience

The second element, the shared experience, is of course the most essential. Even though it is non-billable time, most of my team make the time to come to our practice group meetings. This is in part because we like to talk to each other and hear from each other. We work in separate offices across a few states and don’t always get to see each other face-to-face.

All of us can celebrate victories and wins and getting through difficult times by ourselves. Doing so in the practice group meeting meant we got to do it together, and that made it better. As much as lawyers are around people every day, let’s not forget that loneliness and isolation are common for us.

For this reason, any chance to bring lawyers together for real community is a good thing. This is why a shared experience is essential to celebration.

Image listing 4 essential ingredients of celebration for lawyers shared in the article

3. Celebration Should Be Fun

The third element, fun, should also not be overlooked. Fun had to be added in this situation, because if it wasn’t, it would just be another practice group call. If we didn’t add something fun, it wouldn’t be special. It would be another work meeting and not a celebration. In this case, the drink made the call more fun and took it in the realm of celebration.

I have written about alcohol before, and so we had to make sure that the cocktail element didn’t overshadow the intent. For this reason, I was glad the group did not put pressure on anyone to participate in a way that was not fun for them. The leaders in my group did this by telling everyone the could bring a cocktail or mocktail as their drink.

Regardless of whether their drink contained alcohol, everyone had fun with their drinks. Some even came up with creative names for their drinks or used a special glass. I decided to add a personal charcuterie board to my champagne. Everyone had a good time explaining whatever they chose to drink.

The point here is that celebration needs to be fun. Do something a little different or special to note the occasion and lighten the mood and it can turn a meeting into a celebration.

4. Lawyers Don’t Have Time for Extra Work

The fourth element: it did not require extra work. No one had to prepare anything or make time for an extra meeting on their calendar. Instead, we used the time already available and just decided to dedicate some of it to celebration. This increased the chances that we could all participate and really celebrate the occasion.

Sometimes law firms and companies get into trouble because they try to do celebratory events, which require a lot of work from their employees. Sometimes this effort is worth it, and sometimes it is not. When you’re planning celebrations at your office, be sure that it isn’t forced fun. Make it real fun that doesn’t require too much work or force participation at the detriment of the people who will enjoy it.

Celebration Should Be a Habit for Lawyers Instead of a Rarity

Here is my big point with this post. I shared this simple experience about a celebration for at work to show how simple it can be. Sometimes lawyers don’t celebrate because we think we’re too busy, and we think we don’t have the energy. This post shares an example of a way to celebrate with other lawyers in the office that doesn’t take extra time or extra work.

Of course, lawyers may not be able to celebrate every tiny thing or do it every day. But if we keep these tips in mind, we can make celebration a regular occurrence in our places of work and lives. And the more we make connection, happiness, joy a priority, the happier and healthier we may become.

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 to Respond Mindfully to Nasty Emails

Cover image for blog post entitled responding mindfully to nasty emails

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.

Image with a quote about why mindfulness is needed for responding to nasty emails

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.

Mindful Step 2: Acknowledge Your Feelings

I’ve said it before and I will say it again: mindfulness is not just about being calm. Despite the common saying about sticks and stones, words absolutely can hurt us. They can even hurt lawyers and professionals who deal with shame triggers at work every day.

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.

Image showing the five mindful steps for responding mindfully to nasty emails

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:

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The Truth about Compassion Fatigue that Lawyers Need to Know

Have you ever had touchy subjects? These are the topics that come up a lot and they always get on your nerves. You find yourself getting irritated and explaining something at length to someone who clearly doesn’t care about the issue as much as you do. For me, that thing is “compassion fatigue.”

Why on earth would this subject set me off? Well, it sets me off because the very term “compassion fatigue” gets the concept wrong. “Compassion fatigue” is a term that describes the physical, emotional, and psychological impact of helping others — often through experiences of stress or trauma.

There’s Some Confusion about Compassion and Empathy.

This is a true phenomenon that happens. Absolutely, it is one that affects many lawyers. The thing is, though, that compassion is not the real problem. The real culprit is empathy and the name of the thing everyone wants to talk about is in fact more accurately called “empathic overwhelm.”

Now, I bet you are the one feeling a bit touchy. I bet you are thinking “Empathy! Oh my stars! Empathy is so important. It makes us better people. It binds us together. How could we ever live without empathy?” Hold your horses.

I’m not arguing we should or even could live without empathy. I am suggesting, contrary to nearly everybody else on the internet, that empathy has some downsides. I’m also saying–along with some experts–that empathy and compassion aren’t the same thing. (If you want to know which experts, check out the The Craving Mind from Judson Brewer, the Science of Compassion from Kelly McGonigal, or the book Against Empathy by Paul Bloom.)

An image explaining the difference between compassion fatigue and empathic overwhelm

What Is Empathy?

So what is empathy? There are different types of it. The term sometimes refers to “cognitive” empathy, where we understand how someone else may be feeling. The other variety is “affective” empathy where we take on someone else’s feelings.

It is affective empathy that is most powerful but also most dangerous for us as lawyers. Affective empathy allows us to share in the emotions of other people. In good times, this can be amazing. If you’ve attended an awesome concert or sporting event and gotten swept up in the emotion of the crowd, you’ve experienced this.

The More Accurate Term “Empathic Overwhelm”

But empathy isn’t restricted to good, soft, or beneficial emotions alone. Have you ever had someone yell at you and your first instinct was to yell back? Has this ever happened even before you fully understood what they were mad about? Guess what? That’s empathy too.

Humans are social animals and so this trait of picking up and sharing emotions is wired into us. It can bind us together, whether that’s a good thing or not. The other downside is that empathy gets tired really quickly. It takes a lot of energy to feel big emotions. And doing this taxes our nervous system pretty quickly.

If we are in an otherwise stressful situation (and of course lawyers usually are), we can get overwhelmed very quickly. And this is why the experience is correctly called “empathic overwhelm.”

An image explaining empathy and that it is not restricted to positive emotions

How Is Compassion Different?

Now, you may be wondering why the name of this particularly icky experience is so significant. It matters because compassion can actually be a solution to empathic overwhelm. As I have shared before, compassion is not merely feeling someone else’s feelings. Instead, compassion is presence with suffering plus the willingness to help.

Compassion is not about an individualized experience of pure emotion. Instead, it’s about our connections to each other and our common humanity. Empathy is powerful because it spotlights an individual’s feelings and then mirrors that experience in us. Compassion is powerful because it is the human capacity to face difficulty with a kind intent.

Unlike empathy, compassion is far more durable. It does not get easily overwhelmed. In addition, the experience of compassion actually rewards us on the back end with the release of positive hormones, like oxytocin, dopamine, and serotonin. If you pay attention after a compassion response, you may notice a warm glow or feeling of stability and deep well-being.

Why Should Lawyers Care about the Terminology?

And this brings me to the real true reason why this matters for lawyers. Despite my overbearing start, my point with this post is not to criticize terminology. Instead, my point is to address the assumptions underlying the terms used. By calling it “compassion fatigue”, the suggestion seems to be that lawyers could use less compassion, need take a break from compassion, or are harmed just by helping people.

In truth, the research does not bear that out for most cases. Helping people is not what harms lawyers. Instead, it is the way we help people that matters. Despite this, society sends us the resounding message that empathy is the one thing that will make the world better.

But that advice for lawyers is really problematic. Lawyers, who deal with high emotions in their clients, opposing counsel, and colleagues and have to remain stable enough to offer good advice, need to feel other people’s feelings more?

Compassion Is a Potential Solution and Not the Problem.

I don’t think so. Lawyers need the bandwidth to be able to have some cognitive empathy for clients and others. But uncontrolled empathy in the midst of legal conflicts is not ideal at all. Thus, what lawyers actually need is the ability to monitor and temper empathy.

An image comparing empathy and compassion

That’s what compassion and it’s sidekick mindfulness can do. These faculties don’t take empathy away. Instead, they can help balance and stabilize it. One reason this is most of interest to lawyers is that compassion, unlike empathy, is big enough to include oneself. While empathy almost forces us into someone else’s emotional storms, self-compassion can help us recognize and honor our own need for support.

The even better news? Even though we can’t uproot empathy and I don’t think we should try, we can cultivate mindfulness and compassion with formal and informal practices to have more stability and presence in our lives and work.

Conclusion: Say Empathic Overwhelm Instead.

In short, if someone says the term “compassion fatigue” to you, I hope I can count on your help in educating them that a better term is “empathic overwhelm.” You don’t have to get as touchy or overbearing as me either. You can just let them know that compassion is beneficial for us, but empathy gets worn out quickly. If they want a longer explanation, just send them this post.

Want to understand more about this? Check out the recent webinar that our founder did for the Kentucky Justice Association on this topic:

In addition, if you want a practice to check and monitor empathy in yourself, try our new guided meditation. This practice will help you build the skill of checking in with yourself so you can recognize and honor your own needs.

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