The daily practice of law
The day-to-day life in the legal world is surrounded by activities: creation of pieces, reading processes, visits to clients, organization of documents, hearings and others that make the routine of the legal professional challenging for the body and mind.
If you are part of the legal community you may have heard about several recurrent disorders in many professionals: depression, wear and tear anxiety, exhaustion, general personal well-being among other problems that are already part of the ‘legal culture’.
But this is not the scenario for the full development of a legal professional. Some changes can enhance the quality of life of lawyers and, consequently, influence their results.
Therefore, we have separated some tips that can improve the mental and emotional well being of lawyers and attorneys. Check them out:
Start meditating, think deeply and calm your mind.
Meditation can help you to have more fluidity of thought and reconnect your mind to your body. Everything will depend on the practice: in the first exercises an average of 15 minutes and over time evolve to 30 minutes or more. Maintaining the recurrence of these activities is of utmost importance to make the meditation process efficient. Some applications, such as Calm, are very functional because they create thematic routines and exercises that adapt to your daily life.
Mental Visualization keeps the focus on what matters.
You can use visualization techniques to help maintain focus on your goals. This exercise should be done in a quiet place. Start visualizing an activity, identify what results are possible, and apply them in practice. You can create your own visualization scripts or find free scripts and tutorials on YouTube.
Be positive: surround yourself with things that make your routine lighter.
Write down positive dictations to neutralize negative thoughts. For example, if you’re constantly saying, “I’m so stressed, I don’t have time to do anything,” try saying to yourself daily, “I have all the time I need to succeed. Repeat this action in moments of greater intensity and peaks of stress.
Practice Mindfulness and be more conscious of your activity and your body.
Many of the techniques we have already discussed incorporate full attention. With a quick Google search, you will find walking, eating and driving exercises in a conscious way. Also, how to organize your workspace. The perspective of what surrounds you and your space will give you more focus to perform activities that require a high degree of analysis.
Find a professional to help you.
There is a ton of free and useful information out there, like this article, on how to improve your mental and emotional well-being. However, nothing beats working with a professional to evaluate your specific needs and create customized strategies to meet them. This becomes of the utmost importance if you work in a particularly emotional area of law (family court, immigration, bankruptcy, criminal law, etc.) and absorb many secondary traumas.
Do you know the Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT)?
It is a combination of head, face, and chest beats while concentrating on certain places you are trapped (such as setting aside an argument you had or releasing stress). There are some activity scripts and tutorials on Youtube with different types of exercises and moments to do them.
Don’t be so hard on yourself. Practice self kindness!
You have chosen a difficult profession and many responsibilities that often make you feel you need to have perfect deliveries and no possibility of error. Although your search for the best results is legitimate, you will make mistakes (unless you are a robot-advocate). An environment where lessons learned and awareness of your limitations guide your activities, is the healthiest scenario for your mental health.
How bad is it? Take a deep breath and try the 3Rs.
When you feel on the verge of collapse, try these three quick and easy steps to “get back on track”: 1) Recognize that you are facing stress in your body. 3) Relax by participating in one of the techniques mentioned above (or anything else you like, like yoga, listening to music, walking the dog, etc.). 4) Redirect the negative thoughts that you were having generating propositive solutions for them.
The techniques to make your work environment lighter and more propositive are infinite but none of this is possible if you are not ready for a change in your daily life. The workflow in the offices requires a considerable amount of analysis and decision making, so keeping a healthy mind to develop these activities is paramount to making deliveries more efficient.
