Season 3, Episode 3 (Mindfulness) - edited with intro and outro
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[00:00:05] Speaker: Have you ever sent an email and then just immediately thought straight after you heard that little whoosh when it goes, oh no, what have I done? Is that gonna land the wrong way? Or have you walked out of a meeting and realized that you were actually just half present, you were already planning your response while someone else was still speaking?
[00:00:30] Speaker: I catch myself doing that more often than I would like to admit. These moments, they're really tiny, but they all add up and they're often where miscommunication, resentment, and overload start.
[00:00:49] Speaker 2: And what is so powerful is that we can train at different capacity, not to be zen, but to be more awake to what is happening as it's happening.
[00:01:02] Kathleen: You are listening to The Thriving Lawyer With Kathleen Brenner and Carla Ferraz. I'm Kathleen, a highly experienced lawyer and an International Coaching Federation accredited coach.
[00:01:14] Carla: And I am Carla. Like Kathleen, I am an ICF certified coach and I have worked with top leaders and professionals, many of them lawyers, at some of the world's biggest organizations.
[00:01:27] Carla: My focus is on using evidence based approaches to help my clients thrive at work and in the rest of their lives. Together,
[00:01:36] Kathleen: we bring you the Thriving Lawyer podcast, a podcast filled with ideas and inspiration, as well as practical tips to help you thrive. As a lawyer and in the rest of your
[00:01:48] Kathleen: life. Let's get into it.
[00:01:51] Speaker 2: So we can choose how to respond in the moment with more intention.
[00:01:56] Speaker: So welcome back to the Thriving Lawyer. I'm Kathleen and I'm here with my co-host, Carla. So in this miniseries, we've really been exploring what it takes to thrive under the conditions of legal pressure, the reality that so many of you loyal listeners face every day.
[00:02:15] Speaker: And so we've talked about that struggle of why lawyers can't switch off. We've zoomed into hypervigilance how the brain starts treating everything like a risk event, and that we talked about how our, the cultures of perfectionism and the need for lawyers to identify risk can really, um, magnify that.
[00:02:39] Speaker: So today we're exploring something that sits underneath both of that, and that's this idea of mindfulness. Now, I'm almost a little kind of nervous about bringing this up with you today, Carla and us talking about that. And the reason is, is that I can see a heap of lawyers rolling their eyes.
[00:02:59] Speaker: Getting the impression of like a whole lot of super zen yogis, uh, um, at Byron Bay sitting in a circle.
[00:03:09] Speaker: I, all that kind of imagery kind of comes to mind and I think there's a bit of a perception that, um, that it's been so overtalked about and I think we can definitely agree on. It is a bit of a buzzword, right? We hear it . So lawyers might think of just meditation or yoga or having to be calm and, you know, you and I, I think me more have been critical in terms of like, one of the things that made me wanna make this Thriving lawyer course business is the frustration that I felt that some of the training for lawyers for wellbeing and performance seemed to be bandaid kind of approaches.
[00:03:50] Speaker: A law firm might offer yoga classes or, or something like that. And so. That kind of intervention is not enough in my view. But that's not to say that those things are incredibly valuable. So what I am hoping that you, the listener, gets out of this is that if you do think that this is unrealistic or even irrelevant to you in terms of that image, to challenge that and to see how deep and profound this work can be and how far beyond it goes, then the techniques that you've probably just heard about. Carla, just a reaction to that first up.
[00:04:38] Speaker 2: Yeah, a couple of things. The first one that those practices like yoga, meditation, breath work, they are really useful. They're useful, not just because they give you that sense of calm and you feel less stressed. Or maybe with the yoga feel more flexible. They're useful because they help you train your attention.
[00:04:57] Speaker 2: They help you notice what is going on in the moment, your thoughts. through meditation, your breath for the breath work and free yoga and your body. Right. And the real magic really happens with mindfulness. 'cause mindfulness goes beyond the practice, goes beyond the the yoga mat or the cushion. It's the, what is happening in your brain is that your ability to notice what is happening as it is happening is strengthened, like it, especially like sometimes you started becoming better at, um, noticing your attention during tough negotiations, during the heavy workload, during difficult conversations.
[00:05:39] Speaker: Yeah. I think, you know, I'm just reflecting like I do yoga. Several times a week. And for me, what comes with the mindfulness practice that I do in that is a greater ability to perspective take and also to have a greater level of resilience for the difficult moments. Because when I am stuck in the things that I find hard in the moment, I'm much more able to identify that this will pass.
[00:06:16] Speaker: So I'm interested to hear from you because you know, you and I have read some of the same materials, but I'm interested in how you would define, based on your understanding of some of the literature here about what are we actually talking about when we refer to mindfulness?
[00:06:40] Speaker 2: Yeah, so there's two evidence based scholars approach that IL like to use as a definition of mindfulness.
[00:06:48] Speaker 2: The Ellen Langer approach, Ellen Langer is, is um, a social psychologist, I believe from Harvard, and she defines mindfulness as active noticing. So she really flips the usual image of mindfulness on its head.
[00:07:05] Speaker 2: So for her it's not about meditation and being calm, it's much about, about noticing, paying attention to what is new and staying sensitive to the context, seeing the things from multiple perspectives, as you said, and staying flexible rather than rigid. So like when you notice, like in your yoga poses, when you are practicing, you know, a safe to fail experiment on dealing with a challenge, right?
[00:07:40] Speaker 2: You have your practice, you're notice and you are there with your breath. You are really noticing what happens in those cycles, right? So it gives us the ability, we bring that outside the yoga mat as well in other aspects of, of our lives when we are feeling challenged. So coming back to her definition, so the opposite of mindfulness, for her it's mindlessness.
[00:08:03] Speaker 2: So it's autopilot its those, um, assumptions that we make. It's missing what is right in front of you a lot of the times.
[00:08:16] Speaker: What I find so interesting about that is that it, were on a number of levels. There's a few thoughts that are coming to my mind. One is. As humans, we're so guided by habits and the subconscious, right?
[00:08:32] Speaker: So that so often the habits we're not even aware of the auto. So often when we are operating on autopilot, we're just kind of going through the routines that we've had. Without that Liberalness, then I'm thinking about the nature of the world today and in this hyper technology environment, social media, algorithms, the ping of our phones, our addiction to our phones, the ability to just like people, you know, you see it in the queue at the supermarket that people can't just be, so often when they're waiting, they have to automatically get their phone and scroll.
[00:09:15] Speaker: Because I don't know, and perhaps they're afraid of being alone with their own thoughts, and they're also just stuck in those habits and routines with the addictiveness of all of that. So I'm thinking about that.
[00:09:26] Speaker: So I think most people in Western societies are probably like dealing with these challenges.
[00:09:32] Speaker: And then what's coming to mind is like, well, what would it mean for lawyers, right? Because we're so busy, those pings, the demands are so high in the profession that I think that, the lawyers listening, I hope that you recognize it not only in your daily life, but in your lawyering and how it shows up and how easy it is to just fall into that mode of, well, this is just the way we're doing it.
[00:10:02] Speaker: Or somehow assuming that we know what another person means when they're trying to communicate something, or perhaps when we rush because we're under pressure, Carla what comes to mind when I bring that up?
[00:10:22] Speaker 2: Yeah. Immediately my mind went into, when you spoke about the habit, because we mastered that habit, so well, we've done it so many times now that become second nature and, and then it, you know, we, we are not actively noticing anymore.
[00:10:40] Speaker 2: It's like in sports, like the people they're trained to do, uh, to play tennis or to play golf, like they, they know what to do. The brain takes them there, right? Like they practice so much that, that some aspects of that practice, they have so much mastery that they know exactly how to deal with those situations.
[00:10:58] Speaker 2: So they don't need to be constant paying attention to every single, you know, like when you started driving, like it's a great example when we started driving, there's so much we have to carry now. Like, you know, okay. The indicator it like
[00:11:10] Speaker: break all of it. Yeah.
[00:11:11] Speaker 2: Break all, you know, all the bits and you've gotta sort of repeating and knowing and being very aware at one point in time.
[00:11:17] Speaker 2: Now we've completely, we don't need that anymore, right? Because it's, it is automatic. So we started not paying much attention to, and I think some of those habits are, I'm wondering, I don't know for sure, but I'm wondering if there is some sort of, we become such a masters in certain things, but certain things doesn't serve as to be masters of, it is better to be paying attention because not all situations are the same.
[00:11:45] Speaker: Yeah,
[00:11:46] Speaker 2: especially around like assuming what other people are expecting of us without knowing for sure.
[00:11:51] Speaker: I wanna tie that before we just go into the other perspective of definition of the mindfulness that we're going on, I just wanna link back everything we've said to that definition that you just gave that Ellen Langer talked about.
[00:12:02] Speaker: I discovered her work about a couple of years ago. First, I think it was an episode that she gave on Steve Kotler's Flow Collective podcast, which I can put the link into the show notes. A fabulous episode. You know, Ellen Langer has been around for decades. You know, she was fundamental. I think probably, I'm not sure whether the sixties or the seventies, but definitely like for at least 40 years, you'd have to say, if not much longer.
[00:12:27] Speaker: And when I discovered her work, I did change something, which is that I had been going, I act, I in fact, listened to her podcast, walking on the beach. I live five minute walk from a beautiful beach here. Very lucky, but I find that really crucial for my wellbeing. But what I was doing too often was listening to podcasts on the walk.
[00:12:49] Speaker: Now that is good. Often, sometimes, you know, I had got to listen to something. I learnt some great things. But what I stopped doing, I actually stopped doing that after I listened to her because I thought, actually I can do that another time when I'm cleaning or driving or just at home cooking. I love listening to podcasts then, but I wanted to be much more present in those walks, to let my mind wander, to notice the environment, and to just be more aware of my thoughts.
[00:13:24] Speaker: And that for me has been something that has been very useful in that time. I still try to carve out those moments where I don't have the option of getting distracted by my phone because I leave it at, not only do I not listen to a podcast, but I don't take my phone. So I just wanna, yeah, perhaps that's a good opportunity to bring in the second perspective, which is a classic one, and many of you have probably heard of this man, John Kabat Zinn.
[00:13:54] Speaker: I hope I'm pronouncing his name correctly. I've read it many times now. For him, mindfulness is much more about present awareness, like present moment awareness and being non-judgmental. So he defines mindfulness as paying attention on purpose in the present moment without any judgment. He founded mindfulness-based stress reduction in the late 1970s, and he's being credited as probably one of the main figures, if not the main figure, who brought some of that eastern mindfulness from Buddhism and transferred it to, um, a American Western, whatever term you want to use kind of audience.
[00:14:39] Speaker: And so it's really powerful. I am very keen, I want to do a mindfulness based stress reduction course in the future because this is something that I'm very interested in, have played with, and it has decades of evidence behind it. That show that adopting these practices can really result in significant reductions in stress, stress, and anxiety.
[00:15:03] Speaker: So I think when we think about the experience of lawyers, given the pressures that we so often exist under and deal with, um, you know, we've got constant deadlines, particularly in the common law system. The system is very adversarial. What I think this can do is build the inner capacity to stay grounded instead of being reactive.
[00:15:27] Speaker: So what can we take from those two definitions? Carla, I'll let you, like, how would you bring them together?
[00:15:37] Speaker 2: Yeah, so Langer gives that better perception, noticing what is happening right now, and that flexibility to choose a different response to notice new things about your environment is a different, and Kabat-Zinn in like gives us that steadier presence, that groundedness.
[00:15:55] Speaker 2: Hmm. And that comes with, that comes regulation, like less anxiety, less the feeling of stress that brings, you know, we, we come back to the present moment.
[00:16:06] Speaker 2: But Kathleen, I, I'm wondering like, is there a a, a real day-to-day example that you can bring to illustrate mindfulness for lawyers?
[00:16:18] Speaker: Look, absolutely. But before I just go into the specifics of the example, I just wanna also say that I think what is important there is that those definitions that we've just given and that you so beautifully brought together there really highlight the point that what we understand by the buzzword doesn't do the concept justice.
[00:16:45] Speaker: And that if you think mindfulness is just about taking the odd moment to meditate. Or go to a yoga class, you are not getting the full benefit of it. We can like, those things can absolutely be profound. So it's not to understate those things, but just that there are opportunities in our normal day to day lives, whether we're at work or in the rest of our life.
[00:17:11] Speaker: To take this stance of curiosity, I think that underpins what you said, like in order to have that better perception, the flexibility, you talked about steadier presence and regulation, right? That's how we bring those definitions together, that what it essentially involves is, yeah, that stance of curiosity, like you're stepping back, you are creating that space between the stimulus and the response that is so fundamental.
[00:17:39] Speaker: We'll talk about it in so many different ways in our podcasts and the work that we do at the Thriving Lawyer, and so for us. As lawyers and the us, I mean me and the audience here, I think what we can do is identify moments, notice.
[00:18:00] Speaker: Just notice a bit more. We are never gonna be perfect about it. We're always gonna stumble, but we can begin to maybe obtain a greater degree of flexibility about the options that are available and what we've missed.
[00:18:16] Speaker: And so to bring that really home. I talked earlier a little bit about all the challenges that lawyers experience. We've talked about it so often on this podcast in terms of the pressures of client demands can be really unrealistic with the deadlines. Um, whether it's a client imposed deadline, whether it's a court deadline, which you really have no flexibility with in terms of litigation, whether it's juggling the massive client matters with all these competing demands without mindfulness, and I know that I fall into this, if I've got a particularly high workload, for example, at a time, I find that it's really easy for me to forget and kind of almost go into this kind of the autopilot that we were talking about before, right?
[00:19:12] Speaker: Where we're not aware of it, we're kind of rushing, assuming, just reacting to whatever is right in front of us. So I think what this work can do and where I have been practicing it. Actually using the lessons that I'm learning in my yoga elsewhere to increase my capacity to notice. But also what I've learned in coaching and particularly around noticing my own thoughts, feelings, behaviors, and physiology to kind of notice like, what's going on?
[00:19:52] Speaker: What capacity do I have in the moment? What questions should I be asking? What agreements could I form? And so with that, I think the benefits can be that it's can strengthen our relationships. So for example, if you work with junior lawyers and you are setting them work or you are dealing with them, you might give them a deadline that just in your reactivity you think is reasonable, they miss it because you didn't check with them their capacity before or the priorities, or you didn't make clear what was needed.
[00:20:40] Speaker: You get annoyed or disappointed that they have missed that. I think in that scenario, I've been there, that if I paused, if I listened, if I noticed what was going on, maybe there would've been an opportunity to create some kind of agreement that worked for everybody.
[00:21:06] Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah. Beautiful. And, and, and personally, mindfulness can reduce stress, can improve your emotional regulation.
[00:21:17] Speaker 2: And can also help you reconnect with your purpose. Why did you become a lawyer in the first place? What tends to happen when we practice is that we get better at noticing, noticing what is happening inside us, what our thoughts. We also get better than noticing what is happening around us. You know, like you're going for a walk and not taking anything and just noticing what is happening in nature.
[00:21:52] Speaker 2: You might be able to spot a dolphin or something. Yeah.
[00:21:56] Speaker: Which it has happened.
[00:21:58] Speaker 2: Actually. It has
[00:21:58] Speaker: happened. I remember I was with you. I couldn't believe it.
[00:22:03] Speaker 2: And how, you know, once you started noticing what's happening inside, what's happening outside, and then we started open noticing also some of the dynamics that we get caught up into.
[00:22:15] Speaker 2: I do that, I respond this way. Even the example that you just give, you know, giving a deadline to someone that maybe you haven't spoken about, maybe create some resentment and sometimes we get caught up in those cycles and those dynamics. So the, yeah, that awareness gives you more space to choose your response rather than react to, to it.
[00:22:41] Speaker 2: And also, you know, without mindfulness. We can fall into old assumptions. We can start becoming really rigid with our thinking. A lot of the times we become really defensive. We can't take feedback, you know, without even being, realizing that we are caught up in such patterns, right?
[00:23:02] Speaker 2: Because again, we, we became habitual. We don't even look at them. And that can sometimes lead to snapping at someone. Pushing through exhaustion, like you're super tired exhausted, you can no longer work. Your body's asking you to rest, but you, you are, you are so used to not listen to it, not noticing anymore, and that defaulting, this is how it has always been done.
[00:23:28] Speaker 2: So with mindfulness, we create the enough pause to see the alternative, to take that perspective, like improves our perspective taking capacity, and we choose more skillful, behave behaviors that are really more efficient to the situation that we are currently experiencing. So over time, that's how learning and growth really happens.
[00:24:00] Speaker 2: We grow into a different way of being.
[00:24:03] Speaker: Hmm.
[00:24:06] Speaker 2: So let's bring this down to earth now. So how can, yeah,
[00:24:09] Speaker: we're going very high up there. Carla How do we make this work practically? Like we've got a busy lawyer here. Yeah. They, they love that like, talk, but they're like, oh, this doesn't seem realistic. How do I make it work for me?
[00:24:21] Speaker 2: Yeah. So how can lawyers actually practice mindfulness? Look, there are, I am a big fan of the more structured practices, you know, around meditation, you know, actually sitting and, and watching your breath or like, or yoga practice. They're really powerful because they really help you train your attention.
[00:24:42] Speaker 2: You know, meditation and the mind yoga anchors the body and the breath. And over time, these strength is our ability to notice what is happening without being swept away by the stress and autopilot. So attention control.
[00:24:59] Speaker: The beauty of what you've just said is that like there's a number of entry points, but you really don't have to start with something that's massive.
[00:25:07] Speaker: 'cause I think with any of these things, we can overwhelm when we begin, even begin to become a bit perfectionist about trying to be mindful. But even a few minutes, what I'm hearing from what you're saying can make a difference. It's just a matter of like consistency. That doesn't mean doing it all the time or engaging in a marathon, but just trying to notice more often.
[00:25:32] Speaker: But, so what about the lawyer who's like, well, you know, I'm just constantly on, I'm busy, I've got court, I've got all of these matters. I've got kids at home as well that I'm trying to deal with. I don't have space. What do you or I, I, and I dunno how to get started even if I want to. What do you say to that lawyer?
[00:25:52] Speaker 2: Yeah, you can stand small with micropractice. Because Micropractice meet the lawyers where they're at. So one example is a mindful pause that we mentioned even before, like when you feel triggered, when you start, recognize some of those triggers. Just pause for a minute. For some people take a, a deep breath.
[00:26:15] Speaker 2: And then you can ask yourself what's really needed here? What is the situation asking of me? What's the best response? We just digest what we are thinking. Another one is using the Langer's approach to active notice. Like in a meeting, notice three new things that are something that is different or new.
[00:26:41] Speaker 2: It breaks the autopilot and opens that creative thinking. Then you, you can also start like having micro breaks. Just sit for two minutes, deep breaths, or just notice the body. You know, like I I, I have a scheduled micro practice around exactly that. Five deep breaths after each coaching session that I have, and it just helps me reconnect to that present moment, to leave that meeting and be ready for the next one.
[00:27:19] Speaker: That can be really challenging, right? When you've got back to back clients and they've got such heavy issues sometimes to leave the, the, the weight of one conversation and be ready for the next coaching client in a really deep way so that you're not still distracted in by the previous conversation
[00:27:39] Speaker 2: and look, and a lot of the times me creating space for that.
[00:27:43] Speaker 2: Right, like it's, it's setting out, I don't know, obviously it's not possible all the time, but at least like look at in your schedule once a day, is there a possibility that a meeting, you know, you can have a gap between one or the other, where you can maybe be able to sit that, in my case, I have a gap between sessions now.
[00:28:01] Speaker 2: Like I don't book back to back meetings, so I have at least 15 minutes, if not more, if it's possible. But if in a busy day is 15, it's very different nature of work and I'm not suggesting that people should be doing that. That's, and, and it took me a long, long, long time to discover, but it's experimenting with your reality.
[00:28:19] Speaker 2: You know what, what feels possible.
[00:28:21] Speaker: Yeah. Do you know, I've been trying that a little bit before meetings or between, because one of the things, and it happens often when you work in or with government where the meetings are booked on the hour to hour. So potentially there's some days that you might have hours where you can't even get up because you, they're really tricky. I try and at least in those moments, do that at the end, even if it's like one minute.
[00:28:50] Speaker 2: Yeah.
[00:28:50] Speaker: If I can't get the two.
[00:28:52] Speaker 2: Yeah.
[00:28:54] Speaker: Even I can't be three minutes or two minutes. It might be five breaths. Yeah, two breaths, three, like just a few really deep ones.
[00:29:01] Speaker 2: And what does that give you?
[00:29:04] Speaker: It just means that I'm free and it prepares me to kind of show up as I need to. Yeah. So that I'm not stressed or worried or showing whatever's going on, but that I can, well be fully present to the meeting and what is going on and the needs of, whether it's a colleague or a client.
[00:29:21] Speaker 2: A lot of the times we we're moving from different things as well. Like there's a lot of tasks to switching between meetings and what we are talk, and sometimes it's just the ability just to create that space, right? I'm going to leave this meeting here and that's there for a minute and now I'm putting my attention elsewhere.
[00:29:41] Speaker: It's hard though because it's like, that's one of the exhausting things I think about what lawyers are facing. 'cause there is a huge, and we'll talk about this in other episodes, I think is, you know, that huge cost of task switching.
[00:29:52] Speaker 2: Yeah.
[00:29:52] Speaker: But if that's the reality, this is one little technique that can help us notice and be ready to keep in the present when we are dealing with those really high demands.
[00:30:02] Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. And some, and some other ideas as well is just mindful listening. You know, if you approach a conversation with someone, I know for the, for a bit of that conversation, I'm just going to listen without rehearsing and in reply, really be with the person in front of you.
[00:30:23] Speaker 2: You know, notice the words, the tone, what's underneath, what are some of the,
[00:30:30] Speaker: this is when I need to, like I know that this is a weakness that I often do that and I catch myself sometimes, but not all. Sometimes not till it's too late. And I've already launched and I've interrupted. And I think that too is probably linked.
[00:30:48] Speaker: I mean, I'm a bit opinionated. I always have been. But also the legal training with that means that we are trained to be experts in the law, right? And the expert wants to give their expertise. And that's one of the challenges of the coaching approach is a totally different lens to view the world so that you're actually stepping back from your expertise.
[00:31:14] Speaker: It's interesting 'cause as coaches, like we're going through a masters, right? We're developing a huge amount of knowledge through years of study. And our experience as coaches, but in that moment, what we do when we are with a coaching client is listen and step back and withhold that judgment in the moment as much as we can.
[00:31:35] Speaker: We'll never be able to totally avoid assessments, but we bring a very different approach to that, that is mindful.
[00:31:49] Speaker 2: It requires a lot of mindfulness, right? Because it's about, like in my eyes, is hold your perspective lightly. It's here you have your opinion, of course, in this matter, as a lawyer, you've got, you've gotta give the advice, right?
[00:32:04] Speaker 2: But you're holding it here lightly for a minute and then you're tap it into somebody else's world for a bit. And understanding, and then you, then you pick up your bag again, your perspective, and you give the, and a lot of the times that helps create rapport, helps create trust, help create a lot of things as well as the, the expertise and, and, and the service that you are providing.
[00:32:33] Speaker 2: Okay, so self-compassion, it's another one like started noticing the relationship with yourself, you know, the harsh, sometimes self expectations that we create for ourselves. So what agreements can I make with myself that is supportive and realistic right now?
[00:32:53] Speaker: Can I just add, I think that's a big challenge for lawyers too, right? Because self-compassion is often low because we are taught to be highly self-critical or critical of other things. We are critical of ideas, we are critical of situations. That's our job is to identify the risks, the problems, to be problem solvers.
[00:33:13] Speaker: But if we apply that self-critical lens to ourselves, we can get ourselves in a lot of hot water. So look, just stepping back, Carla, what I really like about what you've just set out there is that all of those things, no matter how busy you are as a lawyer, no matter what the demands are on you, these are not things that require you necessarily to do one hour meditation or to go to the yoga class if you can.
[00:33:52] Speaker: We highly recommend it, but all of those things you can do in the context of a highly busy day. A pause for a moment, a decision to notice something in a meeting to breathe can be two minutes, maybe it's only a five breaths. To make that conscious decision about how you go about that, listening to make that decision in the moment about the self-compassion.
[00:34:22] Speaker: To me, I think, I hope that if you are that skeptical lawyer who had that view of mindfulness in terms of the buzzword and was a little bit de dismissive, dismissive of it, I hope that gives you enough to maybe challenge your thinking and see if there's an opportunity to just maybe take one of those up.
[00:34:46] Speaker: But Carla, where to from here?
[00:34:50] Speaker 2: May, maybe just to link back to that episode that we, 'cause we mentioned mindfulness there as well. Expectations versus agreement, right? Like usually we have, we create assumptions, those expectations about a conversation with someone about somebody else, right? And they're usually one sided, is just what we are expecting and we don't even check.
[00:35:12] Speaker 2: And agreements is that part, how do we check our assumptions and expectations? How do we create a clear and an accountable agreement with someone? And mindfulness supports this because when we are present, we notice about what is being said. The, you know, the body language, the tone, like our internal reactions, you know, when someone is saying the, like, giving me a feedback, I become defensive.
[00:35:41] Speaker 2: Oh, okay. We, we, we are gathering data, right? So that presence slows us down enough to clarify, to check whether an agreement is actually in in place or we are just assuming something.
[00:36:00] Speaker: Yeah.
[00:36:01] Speaker 2: Well, and how important is that in law?
[00:36:04] Speaker: Massively. Right? Because it comes to those demands that we're constantly under. And I think that too often when we are busy, it's that reactivity that I talked about earlier, right? Let, let's just respond to the most urgent thing that's right in front of us.
[00:36:21] Speaker: There's a lot of assumptions that can creep in there, right? That we just, that the others around us know our priorities. That we don't need to communicate that, that our clients have just assumed a particular timeline or we assumed that something was of a particular a priority. Without talking it through, teams thinking that the work somewhere else or you know, any kind of misunderstanding I think, or lack of communication.
[00:36:49] Speaker: I think what this work has the potential to do is like taking those moments, just maybe catching them a little bit earlier, so noticing if we feel that there's tension rising, knowing if we've starting to get that feeling that maybe something's off, pausing. Just taking that moment to really try and clarify and then having the conversations.
[00:37:15] Speaker: That's how the agreements are actually created rather than those expectations. But then again, coming back, and I've talked about this. Quite a bit in the last few episodes is this idea of acknowledging the reality of the bigger picture and the systems that we exist within, and the fact that many legal cultures still do ultimately reward speedy responses.
[00:37:39] Speaker: There's often very traditional hierarchies. There's deeply ingrained habits about the way that you're supposed to go about doing your work. All of that or what it even means to look like a successful lawyer. And I think those expectations, whether they're unconscious, say they're unconscious or just habitual, those autopilot kind of ways of doing things can create those feedback loops Where we're caught in those cycles could be a cycle of overwork, could be miscommunication.
[00:38:10] Speaker: Now, trying to adopt a two minute breathing practice isn't gonna solve those systemic issues. Right? And we wanna be very clear, like sometimes I get very frustrated when there's fixes that are proposed that put it all on the individual lawyer. But on the other hand, the individual lawyer has so much power in their control.
[00:38:33] Speaker: But we are never going to have a magic wand, right? To change all of those systemic issues. But we can use these techniques and tools and ideas as a foothold, a small opening to change ourselves. And also, I think, I wanna think about, you know, there where we, some of us will have the ability or the power. I think power is probably the right concept to influence the system to a greater degree.
[00:39:03] Speaker: And that might be a result of your leadership position within that. So for the leaders listening, this is really important work because if you are not leading and showing this, how can you possibly expect your team to, and how can we change our teams and the broader culture if we're not starting with ourselves?
[00:39:25] Speaker: So I've just covered a lot there. You too, Carla. How can we even bring this back more simply? Like what would be the simplest way if a person has never really played in this space, or even if they have, they wanna take another step? How could someone start without wanting to be perfect?
[00:39:51] Speaker 2: I would invite the person to experiment, create a safe to fail practice, and just experiment for one week.
[00:40:03] Speaker 2: And it can be any of the things that we mention, I mean, of those micro practices, you know, can be just a mindful pause. When you feel triggered, or maybe it's an active noticing, going in a meeting and noticing something new. Maybe it's three deep breaths between meetings or maybe mindful listening in a conversation and treat us data.
[00:40:27] Speaker 2: Practice that for a week. And you know, if we're just gonna practice for a week, depending on what it is, it may be good to have a reminder or create that space for the space for that practice. And then notice what happens. You know, notice what happens with your performance. Notice how you feel, you know?
[00:40:45] Speaker 2: And for those that have more time, maybe it is going on practicing one, you know, of the other things that we mentioned that are also good.
[00:40:54] Speaker: There's so much in what you've just said there, Carla. So I also just wanna add one final point, which is that mindfulness isn't always gonna be comfortable because what you might notice might be ambiguity or tension.
[00:41:08] Speaker: And it might not make us feel good, but that's where it's actually really important, I think, or even more important, you know, we don't wanna rush to fix, to avoid something or to control something, but that really what it can do is help us provide an anchor, right? Help us hold steady in uncertainty. And this is something that I think is really critical for all of us.
[00:41:33] Speaker: Humans and lawyers are no exception, to be able to better deal with those gray areas. So in the next episode we are gonna build on this. We're gonna talk about decision fatigue and how to design your day so that you are not just relying on willpower. 'cause I don't know about you, but for me, willpower is not a great technique when it's not a accompanied by other tools.
[00:42:00] Speaker: So thank you for being with us. If this episode resonated, please share it with a lawyer friend, and if you want the structured system behind these practices, that's exactly what we teach at the Thriving Lawyer. So thank you.
[00:42:24] Kathleen: Thank you so much for listening to this episode of the thriving lawyer with Kathleen Brenner and Carla Ferraz, if you like it, please share it with your lawyer friends and colleagues, and tag us on Instagram at @thriving lawyer or on LinkedIn via the links in the show notes. And if you liked what you heard, please drop a review in apple podcasts.
[00:42:46] Kathleen: It really helps spread the word.
[00:42:49] Kathleen: If you'd like to work with us, check out our free resources and our signature course, the thriving lawyer which you will find at www.thrivinglawyer.com.au. You can also download our free guide, the lawyer's guide to thriving: a sustainable roadmap for success.
[00:43:09] Kathleen: It's filled with great tips and ideas so that you can begin to make real change. You'll find the link to that in our show notes.
[00:43:18] Kathleen: We hope this podcast has given you massive value. And that you can use it to begin to create your own thriving life. A life where you
[00:43:26] Kathleen: can
[00:43:26] Kathleen: thrive as a lawyer. And in the rest of your life.
