Mindfulness:
An essential tool for the modern lawyer Cathyrn Urquhart* Your mind is like a snowglobe…keep shaking it and there will always be snow or glitter floating around and preventing you from thinking clearly. Put down the snow-globe for 1-2 minutes and the snowflakes settle, the liquid becomes clear and you can better see the object at the centre. The same can happen with your mind and mindfulness is the method to settle that snow. Mark Twain said that “Life does not consist mainly, or even largely of facts and happening. It consists mainly of the thoughts that are forever flowing through one’s head”. Don’t ask me how but researchers have calculated that people have up to 50,000 thoughts a day!! I’m pretty sure lawyers are to the far right of any statistical bell-curve with factors such as working in an adversarial system with tight deadlines, demanding clients and (many) recording time in six minute units. There is no shortage of research to show that lawyers are not only more stressed and at risk of experiencing mental health issues than the general population but also more than other professionals. And of these 50,000 thoughts, how many of them actually relate to what you are doing and how many are ruminating about the past or worrying about the future. Mindfulness is not magic. Nor is it about making thoughts and feelings disappear i.e., trying to achieve a “blank mind”. But it is a proven method to calm the mind and create significant improvements for the individual and teams. Plus, it can be practised in many ways from extended practices to micropractices and
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other options in between and so fit around/within a busy life. Dare I say that six minute practices might work well for lawyers. Mindfulness is about being aware: “(it) means paying attention to what’s happening in the present moment in the mind, body and external environment, with an attitude of curiosity and kindness” (Mindful Nations, UK Report). The opposite of mindfulness is being on autopilot where your attention is in the past or the future, you are distracted, less aware of your surroundings and tend to act based on habit, patterns and assumptions. Our brain loves to switch off and tune in to auto-pilot to save energy but this is not a good way for us to meander through life and certainly doesn’t seem to be the right way to be spending our work day. I love this quote: “Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response, lies our growth and our freedom” (Victor Frankel’s teachings summarised by Steve Covey). Mindfulness is one way to create a space or more space between stimulus and response. For example, the aggressive email from the other side or stressed client is the stimulus. Without space, you fire off a reply in the moment that is influenced by emotion or it’s your auto-pilot response. Need more examples? The staff member who has not followed instructions, the IT issue that caused a document problem, the unforeseen delay, the overflowing email inbox or X unreturned phone calls. These triggers can’t be avoided but we can create space to manage our response.
APRIL / MAY 2022
