Mindfulness

I know a lot of lawyers will think, “Self-compassion? Isn’t that for weaklings?” It is precisely this thinking which makes our profession suffer so much. Thanks to a recent study by the ABA and Hazelden, we now have empirical evidence of how the stress of the legal profession affects us. Wouldn’t it be great if the act of honing and refining your mental processes through higher education led to being free of the stress caused by our fight or flight …

Avoid the “post hoc fallacy” of your daily work life There was once a wise man named Nasreddin, who had a wicked sense of humor. One day, he was observed in his garden sprinkling bread crumbs. A servant asked him what he was doing. He replied, “I am sprinkling bread crumbs to keep the tigers away.” The servant replied, “But there are no tigers within 1000 miles!” Nasreddin smiled and said, “See? It is working!” Nasreddin was poking fun at …

Happy Thanksgiving to everyone! This time of year we are reminded of all we are grateful for, if only because we have a holiday forcing us to stop, reflect and focus on the positive things in our lives (and our favorite pies). Noticing the good things in our lives and work brings balance and positive feelings, and reminds us of all the good there is in our lives. You probably won’t be surprised to learn gratitude has been associated with …

We all know that our sympathetic nervous system can be triggered if we face a physical threat or danger. Someone shouts at us, we almost get into an accident, we are attacked physically and we go into fight, flight or freeze. This causes our brain to trigger our sympathetic nervous system, release adrenaline and send blood to the major muscle groups and away from the executive functioning part of the brain. Hence, we can run away from the threat. Psychological …

Having implicit bias means we are not consciously aware of having limiting judgements and pre-conceived opinions about a certain segment of society — whether racial, gender, age or some other defining set of characteristics. Another way to understand implicit (or unconscious) bias is to think of your subconscious automatically, or involuntarily, processing a set of impressions about another person in a way that forms a negative judgement of said person, resulting in unintenti