Tag: #mindfulminute

Categories : WellnessTags :

Fuel for Thought: How Energy Management Affects Your Engagement and Enjoyment

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By Marta Manus

Now more than ever, our attention is pulled in a thousand different directions throughout the day, and it’s easy to mindlessly move through each day. We all have a finite level of energy. Think of your energy as a magnetic field that informs your perspective in every aspect of your life. It is the lens through which you view the world and your perspective and attitude. Understanding how your energy affects your engagement in life and how you show up is key to being more productive, increasing your overall wellbeing, and being more effective and engaged in your personal and professional life. You may not be in control of the external things that are going on in your life, but you can change the energy, or perspective, with which you experience these things. This is where your power lies. Your power lies in your ability to change the lens through which you experience life. Read More

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

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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

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Lettuce Meal Plan

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By Heidi Weaver

It’s kind of a running joke here at the law school where I work that lunchtime can be feast or famine. Some days you’re lucky if you can grab a stale granola bar or some Pirate Booty from the snack tray in our department, while other days there’s leftover pizza, In-N-Out burgers, and yellow curry coming our way from all the midday programming events that are going on. Neither of these extremes is particularly healthy, but I’m always grateful for any form of sustenance I can get since I’ve never been great at making and packing a lunch for work. Such a thing for me connotes meal planning, and meal planning is an activity I’ve just never been drawn to. In my mind, meal planning means spending all Sunday at the supermarket and then being stuck in the kitchen laboring over cookbooks and a hot stove. A lofty goal, but never a practical one when I only have minutes to spare. Read More

Categories : Law Practice WellnessTags :

Mindfulness & Curiosity

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By Jim Eischen

“Seek mindfulness.” This persistent mantra echoes in the wellness community. Thought leaders in the business, healthcare, and yes, even legal communities, preach mindfulness as a necessary solution to nearly all present-day challenges. If mindfulness was a prescription drug, it would be proliferating our healthcare system as a zero-risk cure-all for every ailment.  Read More

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“Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune.”

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By Amy J. Lepine

This single line from Desiderata expresses the basic reason I practice at wellness. The habits that we cultivate in our lives, whether consciously or not, are very powerful. Most often, we are not aware of the patterns of the mind. We’ve developed shortcuts for our perception that rob us of the true import of the moment. But in the same way, developing positive habits that bring us back to the present moment can erase those tendencies and bring us closer to reality, and wellbeing. Read More

Categories : Law PracticeTags :

Mindful Communication

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By Phillip Stephan

Pause. As attorneys, we are inherently attuned to the power of words. We seek to use them to persuade, to disarm, to indicate, and for other functions related to our practices. More than a few practitioners in our legal community have a way with words. The main goal of the words in this article is to persuade you to embrace the absence of words: not silence, but rather active listening, sincere consideration, and creating the space for dialogue by ensuring your partner in conversation has finished their thoughts and felt heard. Read More