The Mindfulness Blog

Ouch-- the truth hurts. When it comes to lawyer wellbeing (of which mindfulness and meditation are important components) there's an increasing amount of talk in the legal profession, but precious little action.

It seems that most of the "enlightened" Baby Boomers who are managing our firms and shaping the future of the profession have forgotten the importance of mind/body, and gone all in on just the body.

Physical fitness? Tricked-up exercise spaces and token participation in what are largely social affairs disguised as athletic events, are the current best evidence of interest in wellbeing, but despite that apparent evolution there isn't much of an appetite for real change.

Taking care of lawyers' minds-- their thoughts and emotions as well as their bodies-- would mark real change, but that would require us all to rethink our image of what, or who, a being a lawyer really means. Physical health? Check. Mental/emotional health? Not so much.

I'll say it again-- self-care is not self-ish. In a very real sense, self-care is self-less, because it's the beginning of caring about others. If we're talking about lawyers, we're talking about clients, assistants, work peers-- even opposing counsel. Wrap your head around that!

It's totally OK to disagree-- that's what we humans do. But it's an entirely different thing to hate-- that's something we don't need, and to the extent hate may be creeping (some might say, galloping) into the present day state of argument, it needs to stop. It needs to change.

Training ourselves to disagree, without being disagreeable-- maybe through mindfulness and meditation-- would take us all a good long way toward that utopian state, but it would not be easy. Among other things, it would require us to reexamine the way many of us organize and articulate our thoughts.

Examination (particularly, self-examination) is not easy, but it's one way to evolve in a manner that brings about real change!