Episode 5 - nature FINAL
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[00:00:00] Speaker 5: Have you ever noticed that you can leave the office, close the laptop, even put your phone down, but your mind is still sitting at your desk?
[00:00:08] Speaker 6: Yes, and I think so many lawyers know that feeling. You might be walking into your home, or you're sitting at dinner, or maybe you're even trying to sleep.
Your brain is still drafting that advice. You might be replaying that conversation that you had over and over again, thinking, "Oh, did I miss something?" Or trying to anticipate the problem that you might have tomorrow.
[00:00:35] Speaker 5: Yeah, and what is really interesting is that sometimes what we need is not another productivity strategy.
Sometimes our brain needs a different kind of recovery, and that's where nature comes in. Not as a luxury, not as something soft or indulgent, but as a real way to restore attention, to regulate stress, and to support sustainable performance in the long run.
[00:00:59] Speaker 6: So what we'll explore today, building on what Carla has just said, is, why stepping outside could be one of the most simple and most powerful practices for lawyers who wanna thrive.
[00:01:13] 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.
[00:01:26] 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.
My focus is on using evidence based approaches to help my clients thrive at work and in the rest of their lives. Together,
[00:01:47] 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
life. Let's get into it.
[00:02:02] Speaker 6: So welcome to The Thriving Lawyer, the podcast where we explore what it means to thrive in law and in life. I'm Kathleen Brenner.
[00:02:11] Speaker 5: And I'm Carla Ferraz.
[00:02:13] Speaker 6: And today we're talking about the power of nature and why it matters for lawyers, and how even small moments can help us recover, reset, and reconnect. And it's really relevant, Carla, because 15 minutes before we've sat down here to record, I've just got back thinking about this topic.
I went out for a half an hour walk to the beach. I got my bit of blue time, and it was interesting because I'd been trying to do some creative work, and I knew that we were gonna record this, and I was thinking, "I'm feeling a little tired. I'm not sure if I'm gonna be able to " and even just seeing the sea, like, it's the bay, it's Port Phillip Bay where I am, but there's quite a wide expanse, and I found that just looking at that, I had a greater perspective and came back and I'm feeling really ready to talk to you about nature.
[00:03:02] Carla: Amazing. So this is like an, a real time experiment, you know? What are we talking about?
[00:03:09] Kathleen: Well, it's funny you say that because you do have to remind yourself, right? Mm-hmm. Because it's so easy to just get too busy and you forget. And even, like, you know, I've been doing this science now for a while in terms of coaching psychology, and you and I, we're doing the peak performance subject at the moment, and we've been learning about all of this, and yet it's funny how sometimes even when you know the stuff, you've gotta relearn it over and over.
[00:03:35] Carla: Absolutely. It's the application of it, of it as well. Yes. Like experiment and then, like, notice.
[00:03:41] Kathleen: And I think lawyers, you know, we can kind of think that... we, we like to think of ourselves as clever, right? And so we think that if we think about something, like we have the cognitive process, oh, that's enough.
I think for me in this work, a lot of it is so much about, no, knowing is not enough.
[00:03:57] Speaker 5: Yeah, absolutely. It's, yeah, the application of it. Yeah, so this eight-satch a day, it's inspired by some of the research on attention restoration, psychological detachment, and sustainable performance.
So in the Thriving Lawyer podcast, we often talk about lawyer well-being in terms of stress management, recovery, like setting boundaries, be able to rest and sleep and manage your workload, and nature gives us another really interesting lens to look at recovery.
[00:04:25] Kathleen: And it's really relevant, I think, for us as lawyers because when we're lawyering, you know, it's a constant thing that we've talked about in the Thriving Lawyer too, is the demand on our attention that the work has.
We're, we're trained as lawyers to be able to focus, we analyze, we think about risks, we respond often quite quickly, and we're often dealing with some really complex problems.
So all of that is incredibly valuable, what makes us good as lawyers, and I think, you know, as AI comes to the fore, those skills are only going become more and more important to do that high-level work. But there is a downside, which is that there is a cost. So that same mind that will help you identify what the risk is in a scenario, that will help you prepare your argument or draft the whatever contract or document that you're doing or your advice, that helps you to respond to clients in meetings and give them, targeted advice, it's the same thing that's gonna make it really hard for you to switch off.
[00:05:30] Carla: Yeah.
And, and I think this episode fits really well with the themes that we have been exploring here in our podcast, especially this year, right? The hypervigilance, loop that we discussed before, the pressure to be constantly available, and the idea that sustainable performance really requires real recovery.
And so this conversation, today, we're going to explore what happens when attention becomes depleted, why nature can be very helpful to restore our attention, and how lawyers can use n- nature in very practical ways.
Not necessarily by going on a week-long retreat or disappear into the wildness, but much more of building small moments of recovery into the ordinary, legal life.
[00:06:14] Speaker 6: Yeah. And of course, there's nothing wrong with going into the wilderness and getting that deep thing of nature, but I think that's the key message is it doesn't just have to be all or nothing.
[00:06:24] Speaker 5: Absolutely.
[00:06:25] Kathleen: So I might start here because I think that lawyers often have a complicated relationship with switching off.
It's been the theme that we've covered, as you kind of highlighted with some of those recent podcasts that we've done, and I think it goes to the fact that, I, I've been in many a planning day as a lawyer, where we've thought about what it is that makes a good lawyer as, the trusted advice of the professional.
And one thing that will always come up is responsiveness, right? How responsive are you as a lawyer to your clients?
Now, of course, being responsive and meeting the needs of your clients is absolutely fundamental to what we do. However, I think sometimes what that can look like is that, , if you reply quickly, oh, that's a sign that you're committed. If you're available late at night, that's another sign that you're dedicated and committed.
So it's about how far we take that and the costs of that if it's all about immediacy and constancy and never, ever switching off, right? It's just the work hours can get crazy. And, you know, I know the reality. Like, I can hear already the skeptical lawyers kind of saying, "Oh, but that's just life.
That's what comes with the job. I signed up to it. That's just the reality. And yeah, sometimes your work is gonna be really urgent, and there will be times when you have a court hearing, when a client has a particular emergency of some kind. There's a particular transaction that's going through at, you know, 12 o'clock tomorrow that needs to be done.
When you're trying to negotiate an outcome there might be high-stakes situations, right? But the problem is, is if that is always the norm, and you're simply just not taking that time. You are feeling like you absolutely always have to be available, you always have to be alert, and you're always thinking ahead through to the next problem.
[00:08:32] Carla: And that, that connects beautifully with the concept of tele-pressure. Which describes this, the research as this psychological state where we feel worried about the messages and having the urge to respond quickly to emails, to texts, to instant messages. So this urgency to respond, coupled with the blurring of the boundaries between work and the rest of life, often creates this un- unhealthy psychological attachment to work, and so common in our working environments today.
We are constantly thinking about our jobs even when we're, outside of it.
[00:09:12] Speaker 6: Yeah.
[00:09:13] Speaker 5: Often
[00:09:13] Kathleen: when we're trying to sleep, right? I, I know lawyers who are like that, right? Mm. They're checking their email at 10:00 PM or on their phones when they shouldn't have the work- ... email accessible at all at that...
Unless there is a really good reason for a particular something that is an emergency. But yeah, it can be incredibly unhealthy.
It's not just that we work long hours, it's that the work stays psychologically alive even when our workday is technically over.
That example of the lawyer I just gave, right, where they're at home but they're still thinking about the problem, or they've had dinner with their family but they're still thinking about the email that they haven't got to. They're on holidays, but they're still checking their work emails, or they're trying to sleep, they're still going through things.
Does that resonate, Carla?
[00:10:04] Carla: Absolutely, and, and I think this is really important because when we talk about recovery, we often think about physical rest. Mm-hmm. And for many lawyers, one of the most important forms of recovery might be that psychological detachment from work, from, you know, from what is going on.
And that means mentally disengaging from work-related thoughts during non-work time. And the psychological, um, detachment is so important to preserve work and life integration. And without it, work concerns can spill live into all other domains of our lives, right? You can be with your family and not be fully there.
You can be trying to, you know, have a conversation with a friend and be planning something else at work. And I think it's-- this is where nature can be really helpful because for many lawyers simply deciding to switch off, sometimes it doesn't work. So it's not you can, you can tell your mind, "Oh, stop thinking about this matter right now," especially if your mind has been trained for years to stay on.
So nature gives the mind something else to land on, and potentially can help create this transition, can interrupt the loop
[00:11:25] Speaker 6: So that's a good point, I think, to talk about attention, this idea of attention and the attention cost of legal work, because I think that's really important in why nature can matter so much.
And one of the things I've been fascinated to kind of learn and read about recently in this psychology of peak performance subject that you and I are both in the midst of at the moment, was the idea that, we often talk about losing our concentration, but one of the points from the academic research was actually you never lose your attention, you just direct it somewhere else, right?
So you're always attending to something.
That said, when we are using it constantly and we're getting tired and we've been involved in a whole lot of complex cognitive thinking we lose our ability and our capacity to control and direct the attention where we would like to put it. And so there's something called directed attention fatigue, right?
When that system becomes tired, it can affect how we think, how we plan, how we make decisions, how we regulate our emotions, how we interact with others, and how we behave. Okay, so like that little example that I gave when I went for a walk, I was feeling like when I was doing my work that I was losing my productivity.
I wasn't quite being as effective as I was. I was feeling a bit tired. And so that walk for me, seeing the water, seeing a few trees, was what made me come back and feel like I can record this with you.
So look, when we're thinking about lawyering, though, it's an important point, right? Because we were just talking about the kind of attention that we need and focus for lawyering.
And so that is like a lot of directed attention. We are closing in on something very narrow and engaging in an intellectual cognitive process around some problems or relational, right? And we're having to behave in particular ways, too. You know, if I think about my lawyering, I'm often reading really complex emails, legislation, cases.
I'm drafting advice. You might be doing those same things. Perhaps you're drafting contracts. Perhaps you're a barrister in court. Perhaps you're, negotiating. Whatever it is in lawyering, it's not passive, right? It's really demanding
[00:14:15] Carla: Yeah. Yeah. The directed attention is the kind of attention you use when you have to force yourself to stay with something that is complex, that is demanding, and it's not naturally easy.
And it's the kind of attention you use, you know, when you're tired, but you still need to be on to read carefully. You know, and sometimes you wanna check your phone, but you need to stay in this contract here, or you are emotionally activated, but you need to remain professional.
And when that system becomes depleted, and, and many lawyers might recognize these signs, like you become more irritable, or you might struggle to make decisions or very often we miss the social cues.
You know, we can feel restless or scattered. You might have very little patience left by the time you get home
[00:15:07] Kathleen: Yeah. And so this is where we need to be careful not to over-personalize it. So, you know, it could be you've had a really, really long day. This happens to me occasionally. Get a little grumpy, or maybe you're not grumpy, but you're a little emotionally flat.
It doesn't necessarily mean that you're failing as a person or in your role, or that you're somehow not good enough. You know, plenty of women, for example, often have that imposter phenomenon, so they might interpret those kind of feelings in that way. It may mean your attention and self-regulation systems are just depleted.
You've just been doing a lot. And the other thing about this is, you know, we've talked before on this podcast about this idea of self-compassion.
And looking at it through this light is being really kind to yourself. It's a com- passionate reframe. 'Cause, you know, we lawyers are trained to be really harsh sometimes, to be skeptical.
Um, and we often turn that, we misdirect that onto ourselves. So we might think, "Well, why can't I cope better? Like, why am I so reactive?" But if you've been using those high levels of directed attention all day, it might just be that you're really exhausted. You just need a rest.
[00:16:25] Speaker 5: Yeah. And the answer might not always be to push harder, right?
Sometimes the answer is to restore, to recover.
So this brings us to the attention restoration theory, uh, which is one of the central ideas that we are using here in this episode today. And the theory suggests that the natural environments are restorative because they engage a different kind of attention.
Nature gently draws our attention without requiring the same level of effort. So instead of forcing the attention in one direction, we experience a ki- a kind of a soft fascination, right? Nature is not just rewarding, but it sort of evokes this attention processes that are largely involuntary. It provides rest for prolonged or intensive use of directed attention.
It's super useful, especially like you just described in your example here today, where you had been doing work and, you know, narrowing your mind, and you went outside and you were able to walk and see the bay, and panoramic views. That brings- A different kind of rest, right? So this- Yeah ... like walking by the ocean or sitting under a tree can feel so different from sitting at your desk forcing yourself through one more task, narrowing your attention towards another.
[00:17:50] Speaker 6: Yeah. Absolutely. And just to add, also different to ta- taking a, what you think is a break, but looking at your phone and checking- Mm ... Instagram or LinkedIn or Facebook and scrolling. Because so many people will just do that in the breaks. And I know that I'm guilty of that and have to really watch that.
By putting my phone away in a different room or, or being like I was this afternoon where like, no, actually what I need is not to look at another screen. It's actually about getting out into that nature. Yeah. Right? So, you know, watching those waves, and there weren't many waves in the bay today, but, you know, there was at least- Mm
a whole lot of movement of water. You know, there were birds about. The weather had been beautiful today, even though it's like, you know, mid-May now. We're getting sort of a la- it was a last sort of lot of beautiful sun and reasonable warmth. Not too warm, pretty, still a bit chilly. But you know, just really beautiful, and so it was restorative.
So, you know, one type of attention, that real focus that you have drains you, and that other bit can really restore you. And it matters because, you know, so often we just will go, "Okay, I'll just have another coffee. I'll be more disciplined. I'm gonna make myself sit here for three hours till I finish that advice.
I'm just gonna stay looking at the screens or push through."
[00:19:11] Speaker 5: Yes, and sometimes that is the least helpful thing you can do.
[00:19:15] Carla: Yeah.
[00:19:16] Speaker 5: Especially if your attention is already depleted. Yeah. It
[00:19:19] Speaker 6: actually takes you longer to write that advice right.
[00:19:21] Speaker 5: Absolutely. What you may need, it's not more effort, right? But it's a different attentional state, so in nature can give the directed attention system a chance to recover.
[00:19:34] Speaker 6: So I think that's a really powerful message for lawyers because I think it makes nature feel like less a nice extra, less a bit of a fuzzy thing, and more like a part of maintaining your professional capacity. '
Cause, you know, I think lawyers can be really skeptical and be like, "Oh, why are these coaches telling me about nature?"
Like, yeah, I know. But do you really? And do you actually do it? And are there opportunities for you to really focus on making this part of your life?
It's not just about how we relax. It's, it's about strengthening the capacities that you have so that you can come back and do your job better.
And be more well, be happier, be more content, and actually a better lawyer.
[00:20:19] Speaker 5: Mm. A- and it taps into such an important point, Kathleen, because, yeah, we're telling you about a theory and what people studied, but until you experiment and you try it for yourself and then notice.
I always ask my clients, "Try something and then re- reflect on it. Is it useful? Was it helpful?" You know, like, how do we apply that?
[00:20:41] Kathleen: So let's get back then to this idea of attention restoration theory, and this is a theory, Carla, you and I have just been studying it, and it's a theory that comes from research from Kaplan and Kaplan.
We'll put the journal article reference in the show notes because I think if you're interested, it's a really great article to read. It's certainly really challenged and changed my understanding about attention and how to choose interventions or experiments to really restore attention. So let's unpack the key kind of elements in the theory because what Kaplan and Kaplan did is they talked about four key ingredients that deal with that.
And so one is being away, right? Extent. Now, we'll explain what that means in a little bit. Compatibility and fascination. Now, that probably doesn't make much sense right now, but just bear with us so that we unpack what that means and why these ideas are really useful.
[00:21:45] Carla: Yeah, so the first one is being away, and this does not necessarily mean traveling far away, but it means having a sense of psychological distance from the demand of everyday life
[00:22:00] Speaker 6: Yeah, and so, you know, that could be on the weekend that you go away to something or like a h- or the wilderness thing is the extreme.
But it doesn't have to be that because it might just mean during your day, a normal day at work, that you find little opportunities To go away. So it might mean that you leave your desk after a difficult client meeting, or even just before a big meeting to give yourself the preparation and the mental space you need to be ready.
It might mean just walking outside the building or walking to your window if you really don't have much time and just looking out. I used to do that when I worked in the city, and my office or my desk overlooked a beautiful park, and sometimes I would just stand up and take 30 seconds or a minute just to, to look out the window.
So that's not yet quite being away in the sense of physically, but I was e- even in that kind of tiny moment, able to just momentarily be away through where my gaze was.
[00:23:04] Speaker 5: Yeah. That disconnection, right? And the second element- Yep ... is the extent, and this is the sense of entering a coherent other world.
A natural environment can feel spacious and immersive enough that it gets your mind, it gives your mind a break from the usual cues.
[00:23:23] Speaker 6: And that's why it's good to go beyond just the window example- Mm ... and to actually go outside. So that's where, going to that park that was next to the office was sometimes really useful, even for 10 minutes.
But it could be the beach, it could be a garden, it could be a tree-lined street. Sometimes you might not have a lot of nature around you, but any green can be helpful. And you know, you often find, like, I think in a lot of urban architecture now, there's increasing emphasis on using these principles in how buildings are designed for us to be in.
I've seen increasing amount of offices will have these kind of principles built in to the design of them.
[00:24:03] Carla: Yeah, green spaces and everything, right?
The third element is compatibility. So the environment needs to fit with what you need. Some people restore through quiet solitude, others restore through walking with someone.
Some may need a tree, some may like the ocean. Some may need movement. Some may need stillness. It's, it's really important to understand what do you like, what restore you is the most important here.
[00:24:31] Kathleen: And obviously, when you're not working, right, and you can travel a little bit, even, like, the half an hour drive, you've got more choice.
Right? In, in the middle of the workday, you might not have a lot of choice, but even in terms of the location, right?
[00:24:42] Speaker 5: Mm.
[00:24:42] Speaker 6: But you still have choice in that, in terms of whether you go with somebody, whether you're just needing that quiet moment to do a mindfulness exercise. So You know, it's useful to think about how it's not really prescribed in any one particular way.
Like, this is not something where there is a right way to do it and there's a wrong way to do it. You know, if you've been really busy with a whole lot of clients in- that you've been engaging with or a big moment in, in the courtroom, you might just need a quiet moment to yourself. But if you're like me and you're working remotely most of the time, maybe you wanna get out of the house and go for a lunchtime walk with somebody.
Or a partner of a law firm, for example, might just need 10 minutes in a garden before they go home just to kind of swap modes, right? Um, I often see, like, down the beach here, um, office workers and stuff coming after work in their cars and just sitting there for five or 10 minutes before they drive off.
And I th- I'm guessing that that's probably what they're doing.
[00:25:51] Speaker 5: Yeah. Yeah. I know that, like, when I, I changed my office recently, and I have-- I now look out of the window and into the trees.
And sometimes it, it's just looking up, it's enough. Like, just to be able to see the greens and that's compatible. That's, like, made the difference- ... to have this ability to just have a break, and you look out of the window, just maybe even get up from my computer, and there's nature there.
Okay, so the fourth element is fascination, and this is the effortless attention that nature evokes.
You do not have to force yourself to notice the waves, the birds, the trees, the clouds, or the light. They gently come to your attention. It's like watching a beautiful sunset, and it gives you that sense of awe
[00:26:39] Speaker 6: Yeah. And so, you know, it's almost hard not to pay attention to them.
Mm. But so easy, right? Because you're just sort of, you're in it. You're looking around, and that's really, really different to the kind of attention, that focused attention that we have to use when we're actually engaging in our lawyering. You know, that, as we said, it's, that kind of thinking is really intense and effortful.
But when we're in nature, it might be a lot softer, and that's actually part of the restoration.
[00:27:09] Carla: Yeah. Yeah. So in a nutshell, it's really important to restore in an environment that feels right for you. So the idea of experiment is really, the key here. Um, I love the language that you've started even using already today here, the green mind and the blue mind.
Now, the green mind refers to the restorative effects of green natural spaces like trees, gardens, parks, forests, and mountains, and blue minds, uh, refers to water-based environments like ocean, rivers, lakes, waterfalls, rain, or even looking at the sky. So which one do you prefer? Which best helps you recover and disconnect and this reconnection to yourself?
And I think many people instinctively know this, you know, but there is something about being ne- near the ocean or walking in nature that changes your state, and it might be different for different people. For some people, it might be green spaces feel more grounded. For others, it might be blue spaces feel more expansive.
So people need the quiet of a forest, and others need the, you know, the movement of the waves. It's just experiment with it. For me, I know that, like, the green spaces is where I feel most at home.
[00:28:23] Kathleen: . I'd just like to add there, too, I, I think it's not even a matter of preference all the time. It might be your particular needs in a moment. Mm. So the example I gave, like for me at the bay today, it was looking up from the screen and getting that big perspective taking expanse of the bay-
just changing my, like the scope of my focus, like the, my perspective, 'cause I can get very narrow if I've been focusing on a problem.
[00:28:50] Speaker 5: Yeah.
[00:28:51] Speaker 6: And so I find blue space useful for that sense of expanse, right?
[00:28:55] Speaker 5: Mm.
[00:28:55] Speaker 6: But I also love and find, like walking in a really dense, say rainforest or just bushland even really relaxing in a different or restorative in a different way. So yeah, it's not even one either/or, it's perhaps experiment with different moods and, you know, of course, what is available to you in the moment.
[00:29:17] Speaker 5: Yeah. And what captures your attention, right? Like-
...
[00:29:19] Speaker 5: But sometime, but knowing sometimes that your preferences helps you creating more space for that to exist in your life, right? Like we talked a lot about walking and we both have a practice of walking in our lives, and we, we, we, we know that's what it gives us.
So there's a mix of blue, green, you know, whatever. But at least once you started like playing around with those things, you became, you become more aware of it, and you know that the benefits are there. And once you are in it, then doesn't matter, right? 'Cause whatever capture your attention, captures your attention.
[00:29:55] Speaker 6: What you're getting at there too really brings up for me, I can be quite a thinker, right? Like, I get stuck in my head, and I think that's like a lot of lawyers. You know, it's the analysis, it's the language, it's the writing, it's the, the evidence, all of it we've... stuff we've been talking about.
And it's easy for me to forget that I'm, I have a body, right? That I'm actually a human with a... It sounds stupid to sound like that, but I, I know. Like, I get like that. And so what that does for me, it's similar to the exercise that I do, like my gym work and things, is it's bringing me back to the physical, to the body.
The nature is really sensory in that way. You know, feeling the ground under my feet, the stones, the air, breathing in the air, getting the sounds noticing how cold or hot it is, or how light or dark or, you know, what's moving. It's, it's about that kind of real physical direct experience. And I think there's another important benefit there because not only, like, when I do that am I brought back to the physical, but that then in turn reminds me that I'm more than just my work.
And that's what I've seen lawyers get caught up in, right? So often, because there's a sense of importance about their work, and it's easy for their identities to be caught up in that. They can't imagine themselves outside of being a lawyer, and therefore that be- can become all-encompassing. But just that disconnection, that being in the nature, it's like you are a whole person, and that is what we are fundamentally about when we come to you with these podcasts and everything we do at The Thriving Lawyer.
You know, Thriving Lawyer, it's not just about being the productive lawyer. It's actually about thriving as a whole human. The irony, of course, though, is that if you are thriving as a whole human, you will be a more productive lawyer. That's the secret.
So with that in mind, you know, none of this has to be really dramatic. You know, we're not saying you need to go and take a week off and hike through the wilderness.
So it reminds me of this book that I love called The Nature Fix by Florence W- Williams, and she does talk about having, like, little mini breaks and at least one week fully in nature she thinks is the ideal from her research, right? In terms of really getting that connection.
And I know that I have done that before. You know, the year before last I went with a lawyer friend and we were hiking in the mountains high in North Italy for a whole week. I've done the same thing hiking for a week in Tasmania. And, like, there is no doubt that there is something incredibly special and deep and nourishing, and if you can do it, I highly recommend it.
But I think that it's a bit dangerous if we just think about it in those black and white terms. You know, we've been talking about getting the moments, right? Because most of us in the day-to-day work we're so busy we can't just at the drop of a hat take a big week off to go somewhere deep in nature.
Like, that has to be planned, right? Mm. We might be able to look forward to that, and you know, I planned my week's hike months and months before, right? But if we- only look at it in that lens, it could feel like, "Oh, well, I don't have time for that, therefore I'm not doing enough and I'm failing." It's yet another thing, right, that they're failing at.
But it can be accessible, and I think it's much more powerful when you integrate it into those just part of daily life, you know. Whether you're getting a coffee in and rather than getting a takeaway cup, get it and sit down at the cafe on the curb and enjoy what's going past. Or, um, if you're, particularly if you're in a park or, or somewhere, or if you get the takeaway, like maybe go sit on a park bench, okay, if you can.
Walking around the block, right? Eating lunch under a tree, taking a phone call outside, walking after court, walking to the train without actually checking your emails, noticing. Now, you might be in a very urban environment, but even in Melbourne, like you can be in the middle of Collins Street and you've gone and got big trees around.
There are heaps, there's heaps of nature in Melbourne. Yesterday I was in the city for the Writers Festival, and we were in the CBD going to different events and had a couple of hours break between them, and within five minutes we were from the center of the city into the gardens, and you wouldn't have known that the city is just there.
Like it's doable.
[00:35:07] Speaker 5: Melbourne's a beautiful place for that, aren't
[00:35:10] Speaker 6: they? Yeah.
I'm sure Sydney and Brisbane and all of these other Australian cities- Yeah ... will have spaces like that too. I don't wanna be accused of being too Melbourne-centric here. Um, but also like, you know, it doesn't have to be even that, you know.
It could just be, I don't know, bring a plant into the office and put it on your desk- Yeah ... and water it when it needs to be watered. Have a look at it, you know, observe it. Um, spend 10 minutes in the garden after work.
[00:35:38] Speaker 5: Yeah. Beautiful. You just gave so many examples, right? It doesn't need to be complicated.
It, nature can become this transition ritual between even work and home. For example, after finishing a really difficult task, instead of immediately jumping into the next one, you can just step outside for a couple of minutes, or at the end of the day before going into family time, you might take a short phone a short walk with no phone, or maybe it's, you know, a long walk on Sunday morning.
Create a, you know, a simple ritual about, you know, of going somewhere. I- i- it's, it's-- the invitation is how do we bring this more into our lives with these small, we're calling breaks or rituals, whatever you wanted to call them.
[00:36:29] Kathleen: Yeah. And if you are really busy and you just don't think you have time for this, try 60 seconds.
I'm sure you can find a minute here and there. Look at the sky. Step outside. Notice a tree. Even just let your eyes move away from the screen. You know, it's so important. We're not adding another performance demand. We're creating a small doorway into recovery. And given that, we've got so much more that we want to talk about in respect of nature.
But I think this is probably a good place to stop for this episode. And what we want you, though, to go away with is just to think about those examples and make a commitment, just one. And this is what I would challenge you to do. What is one small change or experiment that you can take this week to just see how you can begin to use nature better to help you restore your attention?
To think about it not just as a break, but something that is actively restoring your attention and your ability to focus. Carla, is there anything you'd like to add to that as we wind up for today?
[00:37:46] Carla: No, I, I think you just stated everything. I would just, reinforce the invitation. Just experiment with something and notice what it gives you.
[00:37:56] Kathleen: Yeah. And that's the mindfulness that we talked about in our, was it last episode, I think? Definitely recently when we talked about Ellen Langer's idea of mindfulness.
You know, it's not meditation necessarily, but what it is is just about being very conscious and deliberate. And I think that we can really bring that spirit of mindfulness- to our work to think about, like, our attention. Like, are we using it to such an extent that it's running out and that we need to take action and notice how we feel and how things change when we do really engage in that nature and take those moments? All right. Thank you, Carla, for another great episode.
Mm. And I'm really keen to hear from the lawyers as to how they find this. So please, you know, send us an email or a, a comment or, you know, we'll share things on social media too. So, all those links we'll put in the show notes, and we'll be back with another episode next week, which we'll go into a little bit more.
We've still got a bit more we wanna say about nature.
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.
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