We lawyers have a lot of demands on our shoulders. We have clients, staff, opposing counsel, and judges who keep us all very busy and expect a great deal from us. Our bar card brings with it big responsibilities, and we are expected to spin many plates at the same time. Many of us also have families. There are only so many hours in the day to handle all our responsibilities. The pressure of being a lawyer is real, and sadly, our profession has a disproportionately high rate of anxiety, depression, addiction, and suicide compared to other professions. I come from a family riddled with addiction and even homelessness. As a result, I experienced trauma at a very young age. This brought with it a tendency to catastrophize everything. That way of thinking and looking at the world only became worse after I became an attorney because we are trained as lawyers to hunt for and expect problems. I was getting burned out for the first 15 years of my career as an attorney. A few years ago, I decided to prioritize my mental health so that I don’t crash and burn out from all the stress. Here are three ways that I intentionally structure my day so that this wonderful but very hard profession does not overwhelm me.
Meditation
If there is such a thing as a magic bullet, I found it in meditation. One morning three years ago, I was brushing my teeth, and, out of nowhere, it occurred to me that I had missed a statute of limitations. A violent lightning bolt of stress coursed through my body. My catastrophic brain immediately thought I was going to get sued and disbarred. That night, I decided to try meditation. Since then, I have never stopped meditating, and it has made me a much calmer person, as well as a more resilient lawyer. Meditation allows you to sit and observe that thoughts are constantly coming into and out of your head. However, we don’t have to attach to our thoughts. This allows us to become more grounded, mindful, and present. Meditation has helped me become a better parent, spouse, and lawyer. I encourage you to give it a try if you need to create some needed space for yourself. The key is to stick with it because that is how you start to see results.