Starting Small

• Author: Jeena Cho
• Pages: 28-29

Starting Small

It’s time to make an achievable lawyer well-being resolution

By Jeena Cho

It’s the new year. Time for new or

renewed resolutions. Perhaps, like many,

you have high aspirations for increasing

your well-being. Maybe you will st art

going to the gym reg ularly, eat more

vegetables or get more sleep. Yet research

indicates that 80 percent of New Year’s

resolutions fail by Februar y.

Lawyers tend to be overa chievers; we value perfection

and doing things well. Oft en it is this mindset that

deters lawyers fr om achieving their goals. Rather

than focusing on mak ing small, incremental changes,

we expect substa ntial, rapid results.

When I teach mindf ulness and well-being courses

to lawyers, I ask t he attendees to set a goal that can be

accomplished in just six mi nutes per day. The reason

for this is twofold. One, lawyer s often measure their

time in six-minute increments, so it’s famil iar. Second,

it’s easily achievable.

Assume you haven’t jogged since high school. Rat her

than proclaim you w ill run one hour per day, start with

committing to a six-minute wa lk during lunch every day.

The key is to keep the goals ea sily achievable so that you

can experience t hat sense of accomplishment.

Inevitably, as with creat ing any new habits, you’ll hit

stumbling blocks. This is a cr itical moment.

Because of our perfec tionist tendencies, lawyers will

engage in negative self-talk. “I c ommitted to running

every day and I haven’t run for a week. I’m so laz y. I’m

a failure.”

Don’t waste precious time and resour ces berating

yourself. No matter how long you’ve broken your

resolution, simply begin again. Th is idea of beginning

again has been cr ucial in forming what has become

my daily meditation prac tice over the last six years.

WHAT IS LAWYER WELL-BEING?

As discussed i n the recommendations released

in August by the National Task Force on Lawyer

Well-Being, it isn’t merely about an absence

of illness. Well-being is multifacet ed.

The task force defi ned lawyer well-being

as a “continuous process whereby lawyers

seek to thrive in ea ch of the following areas:

emotional health, occupationa l pursuits,

creative or intellectua l endeavors, sense

of spirituality or g reater purpose in life,

physical health and soci al connections

with others.”

As lawyers we ca n spend

an inordinate amount of time

ruminating, a nticipating and planning for the worst-

case scenar io. Mindfulness is useful for recog nizing

when our thoughts are helpful or destr uctive. This

includes when we’re engaged in problem-solving or

simply replaying thought loops.

We know from a February 2016 ABA study that

the levels of depression, anxiet y and stress among

attorneys are sign ifi cant, w ith 28 percent, 19 percent

and 23 percent experiencing sy mptoms of depression,

anxiety a nd stress, respectively.

The reason why lawyers must c are for their own

well-being is that it is the cornerst one of being a

competent lawyer. Rule 1.1 of the ABA Model Rules

of Professional Conduct states t hat lawyers owe a duty

of competence to their clients. Compet ent representation

is defi ned as requiring “the legal knowledge , skill, thor-

oughness and preparation rea sonably necessary for the

representat ion.”

Rule 3-110(B) of the California Rules of Professional

Conduct states that “ ‘competence’ in a ny legal service

shall mean to apply the … mental, emotiona l and physi-

cal ability rea sonably necessary for the performance of

such service.”

One task force recommendation for mai ntaining

lawyer well-being is mindf ulness meditation. Research

indicates that mind fulness can reduce ruminat ion,

stress, depression and an xiety. At their core, all medi-

tations share the featur e of bringing one’s attention to

the object of focus—commonly the breath , sounds, other

physical sensations or repetit ion of a mantra.

I started pra cticing mindfulness meditat ion after

I was diagnosed w ith social anxiety d isorder. The

practice of bringi ng the attention back to something

that is constant and a ccessible, such as the breath,

was helpful in soothi ng the anxious mind.

It makes sense since anx iety is the

subjectively unpleasant feeling of dre ad

over anticipated events. By commit ting

to be in the present moment, I natural ly

spent less time anticipating, playi ng the

“what if” ga me.

Meditation has been shown to re duce

negative reactions to st ress, to improve

reactions to depression and t o increase

overall workplace satisfa ction.

AN 8-WEEK MINDFULN ESS PROGRAM

In 2016, I partnered with the National

Association of Women Lawyers and the

Seyfar th Shaw law fi rm to o er an online

mindfulness t raining program. In total,

On

Well-

Being

PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF THE JC LAW GROUP

28 || ABA JOURNAL JANUARY 2018

Jeena Cho

Practice