Decide which startup law office space is right for you here in the second post in our Startup Questions series. Many practitioners start out practicing in a home office to keep costs low. However, a home office has its drawbacks, including distractions,…
Given the regular occurrence of tragedy in the news, it is not uncommon to fluctuate between feeling numb to tragic news and feeling overwhelmed and hopeless. The Franciscan friar, Richard Rohr aptly states that “If we do not transform our pain, we will most assuredly transmit it.” Emotional pain is one of those experiences that can influence people to react in as many different ways as you can imagine (from productive to destructive). Grieving and enduring emotional pain (disappointment, rejection, sadness, etc.) is an important emotional experience. Despite the desire to avoid or minimize emotional pain, it is often the expression of pain that strengthens relationships and social support.
Our natural instinct toward the things we fear is to avoid them. Our logic, although most often beneath our awareness, is that if we ignore it, it will go away. Ignorance is bliss. Or at least we hope it is. Unfortunately, this approach leads to increased anxiety, as opposed to a decrease. Anxiety (unhealthy fear) is like a weed. It often grows to take up the space that you give it. Avoiding something that makes you anxious usually results in that anxiety growing and impacting your life to a greater degree.
Advice like “Don’t make too much of it,” “don’t overthink it,” “Simplify your life,” and “Keep it Simple Stupid” are generally good things to keep in mind. However, there are times when making things more difficult can actually help you think better. There is a theory that says we have two ways of thinking: a quick, easy, intuitive way based on emotions (System 1) and a more calculated, deliberate way based on logic (System 2). Many times we make decisions and based on familiarity or intuition. If you have ever tried to proofread something you have written you may know the difficulty in finding an error in something so familiar. This is because when our brains think that something is familiar, we naturally want to process it quickly and come to a conclusion. For example, read the sentence below.
When a friend shows us pictures of a party we attended, we are probably most interested in the pictures that include us. That’s normal. We all want to be involved in the stories that our friends tell because we want to be important in their lives. We also want to be important in our clients’ lives. If a client is happy, we want to know that it is because of our efforts. If a client is upset, it is difficult not to feel at the center of that emotion, particularly if you have any self-doubt.
In a previous post I talked about the importance of working less in order to engage in different activities (working less and playing more). One such enjoyable activity might be the popular game Sudoku. If you have never played it I encourage you to check it out. In addition to being a fun activity (if you enjoy such things), the benefits of Sudoku on your brain range from improving your concentration and memory, improving analytical thinking, practicing “if, then” thinking, increasing awareness of the interdependent relationships among various factors, and it has been said that it can decrease the chances of developing Alzheimer’s Disease.
Most everyone has heard about the importance of a work-life balance. We have all heard that it is important to get good sleep, eat well, exercise, have good relationships, and have other interests outside of work. “If you have a well-balanced life, your life will be better.” We’ve heard the sentiment, yet many have not adopted a healthy balance. Why is this? At the heart of this resistance is fear. Fear of not producing, not working hard enough, not excelling in a profession that you worked so hard to be involved in.
Charity Anastasio, our counterpart at the Washington State Bar's LOMAP, found inMailX in the exhibit halls of ABA TECHSHOW 2016. We haven't tried it yet, but if you deal in high volumes of email attachments, it definitely sounds like a…
Many of us have endured the excruciating situation in which a loved one is caught up in an addiction and we have very limited ability to protect them from themselves. In most cases, this is where options like Intervention or resources like Al-Anon can be helpful tools. When addictive behavior remains active and imminently life-threatening (a possibility of which we are all more aware lately in light of the surging rates of opioid overdose), a possible stopgap action is to seek to compel a period of involuntary alcohol/drug oriented hospitalization in a locked setting.
Our Keynote Speaker at this year's James A. Brink Fellowship Dinner is the Honorable Ralph D. Gants, Chief Justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court. You can listen to him now in the following video, recommending all Massachusetts attorneys think…