By Heidi Weaver
Usually when I read an article or attend an event in the Wellness space, I come away with a to-do list of helpful action items that I have every intention of trying to implement in my busy life to improve my wellbeing. But we all know that adding stuff to your to-do list can be overwhelming, which can of course have a deleterious effect on your health and wellness.
So now I’m wondering if rather than an ever-increasing to-do list, what we all really need is a stop-doing list. I started thinking about this when I heard the song “Stop” from Tina Fey’s hit musical Mean Girls. The lyrics are a laundry list of self-destructive, impulsive behaviors that teenage girls should really stop doing, like sending selfies to people they barely know, getting ill-advised tattoos, pretending to be stupid in math because they think it makes them more attractive, and things of that nature. The song has a refrain that goes something like, “Stop / You gotta stop… / I know it’s hard but try… / Stop.”
Now, lawyers aren’t teenagers, but like them, many of us exhibit impulsive behaviors that if we could just stop doing, we might be better for it. Some examples of items we should add to our stop-doing list are:
1) Stop skipping our daily walks and lunch breaks because we think that those extra 30 minutes spent working are going to get us ahead in life. They’re not, and every study out there says skipping your breaks is actually counterproductive;
2) Stop beating ourselves up when things don’t go according to plan. We turn ourselves into our own personal punching bags, when in fact we’re all doing pretty well under challenging circumstances, and we should give ourselves some credit where credit is due;
3) Stop saying “I’m sorry” as the opening line when we want to talk or make a point. There are much more powerful and effective ways to interject ourselves into conversations without apologizing for anything;
4) Stop checking our phones constantly to see if the partner or client emailed us. It’s possible to set boundaries and still show you’re on top of things without feeling smothered; and
5) Stop sacrificing your personal time because a client thinks something needs to be done right away when as the professional in the relationship, we know that, in fact, it does not.
Surely there are many more things you find yourself impulsively doing that, if we could exercise a little more impulse control and stop doing them, the result would be very beneficial to our health. Like the song says, “Stop, stop stop / You really gotta stop / Honestly, everyone stop.”