Tag: wellness

It’s OK if You Don’t Feel Joyful During the Holidays

By Julie Thorpe-Lopez

Paradoxically, the pressure to be joyful during the holidays sometimes eviscerates the actual experience of joy. In addition to the regular stress of our jobs, family, and personal obligations, we are bombarded with pressures to celebrate, whether we actually celebrate a particular holiday or not. Adding to this already overflowing plate of stress is traveling or hosting guests, shopping, financial pressures, and spending time with extended family — with whom we may or may not positively connect. When things don’t go the way the holidays look in commercials or on social media (most of which is really unachievable unless your profession is “TV producer” or “social media influencer”), we feel a sense of failure. When our kids are going bananas without a regular school routine for three or four weeks, we feel like we are blowing it as parents. Plus, we’ve all endured a years-long pandemic and have been in fight-or-flight adrenaline overload for much longer than humans were made to endure. We still have tremendous political divisiveness permeating the media — another stressor that crops up with the extended family time we are expected to put in. It’s no surprise that joy and peace don’t always come easily during this time. Read More

Mindful Minute: A Meditation Practice Even Navy SEALs Use

By Amy J. Lepine

Do you ever feel disconnected or wish you could relate to people on a deeper level? Tonglen could be the answer. This ancient Tibetan practice in compassion breaks down the barriers of separation and allows us to share more readily in both the sorrow and the joy of others around us. And you don’t have to sit on a cushion or light any incense to do it. In fact, it can be done “on the street.” Literally translated to mean taking and sending, this practice focuses on breathing in the pain and suffering of others and breathing out relief, healing whatever is needed in the moment. Read More

Mindful Minute: The Balance of Gratitude

By Pauline Villanueva

 ’Tis the season to give thanks, count our blessings, and remember all the things we have to be grateful for. For some, this is a welcome reminder; for others, it is a challenge. Worse, it can make some of us feel resentful, as if we’re being pressured to feel “grateful” while simultaneously being forced to acknowledge our struggles. Read More

Mindful Minute: How My Day Planner Became a Journal of the Unplanned

By Heidi Weaver

I’ve understood my whole life that there are many wellness benefits to writing in a journal. Self-reflection, stress relief, and recording good ideas are a few that come to mind. I realized these benefits in my teen and early adult years, when I regularly poured my deepest (and not so deep) thoughts out in page after page of my diary. But as my obligations increased over the years with working full time and a busy family life, I started to see journaling every evening as yet another pressure-filled, time-consuming chore rather than a healing opportunity, and abandoned the practice. Read More

Dealing with the Grind

By Kevin Hambly

So you studied diligently for the bar, passed, and now you are a new lawyer.  Now, you find yourself experiencing more anxiety and stress in the practice of law.  From a fellow new lawyer to another, here are a few of tips for managing stress.  While these tips are not exhaustive (as simple things like adequate sleep, eating, and proper exercise can also help), hopefully these tips will give you some insight on how at least one lawyer, me, manages stress. Read More

Burnout: A Necessary Part of Lawyers’ Lives?

By Randall Christison

Talking to a lawyer-friend recently, one in practice for many years, I asked how he was.  “Working harder; enjoying it less.”  Far from flippant, he was deadly serious.  Everything in his voice and body language suggested he was at the end of his rope.  I asked what he does after he leaves his office each day: “home to my networked computer.”  In essence he’s in the office many hours and telecommutes the rest.  I asked about his résumé, down at the bottom, where we put hobbies and personal information, what did he have there?  With a mirthless laugh he responded, “You mean those things I haven’t done in decades?  That was a different lifetime.”  Maybe more accurately, that “was when I had a life, before the law sucked it out of me.” Read More

The Crisis of Purpose in the Legal Profession

By Marta Manus

Purposeful engagement is directly linked to a person’s overall well-being and quality of life. At the Yale School of Management, every MBA student takes a class on purpose at work. Unfortunately, my law school didn’t offer such a class. In fact, law school was primarily focused on creating individuals who “think like lawyers.” How do lawyers think? What are lawyers taught about the legal profession in law school and how is it serving lawyers, the profession, and the world at large? Read More