Health / Wellness

How To Relax The Thinking Mind

Thinking about your cases and your clients -- over and over again.

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Ed. note: This post is by Jeena Cho, a Legal Mindfulness Strategist. She is the co-author of The Anxious Lawyer (affiliate link), a book written by lawyers for lawyers that makes mindfulness and meditation accessible and approachable. She is the creator of Mindful Pause, a self-paced online program for creating a more sustainable, peaceful, and productive law practice in just six minutes a day. Jeena offers actionable change strategies for reducing stress and anxiety while increasing productivity, joy, and satisfaction through mindfulness.

As lawyers, we value the mind. We value thinking. We value our analytical prowess. Yet, the thinking mind can be a terrible roommate. Often, lawyers feel distressed by the constant and persistent thoughts. The obsessive planning. Constantly feeling on edge. Thinking about your cases and your clients — over and over again. It can feel as though there’s a broken record in your own mind without an off switch.

Mary Cranston, retired CEO of Pillsbury, Winthrop Shaw Pittman, LLC, also the first woman to head a major global law firm, who has been meditating for over 30 years describes it in this way:

While the “thinking mind” is a critical tool for lawyers, meditation relaxes the thinking mind, allowing new and creative insights to surface. Most of my best trial strategies and business initiatives emerged in this way! But the real benefit is the peace and calmness that meditation has added to my life.

Retraining the brain to get out of the hyper-stressed, anxiety driven state to a more relaxed state doesn’t happen just because you decide it’s time to relax. (If only the mind worked in this way…) Rather, it requires that we create the right condition in which the mind can naturally relax.

Read the entire article over at Jeena’s website…

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