Pause or Push: Grow Your Resilience by Taking a Break

Why is everyone talking about resilience these days? Resilience is the key to coping well with stress. As the news reports more and more calamities in our world, and as we juggle more and more responsibilities in our lives, our stress levels rise. As our stress levels rise, the more resilience we need to bounce back from stressful events.

Yet the harder things get, the more our optimism fades and the less motivated we feel to learn or practice resilience tools that help us bounce back. When this happens, we may feel like the only way through is to keep pushing forward instead of taking time to pause and reset. For lawyers, judges, and law school students, the urge to push through may be constant. With continual bombardment of things to do and problems to solve, taking time to grow our resilience may seem superfluous or even burdensome.

However, burnout prevention research shows that in order to stay resilient, we must take breaks to reset between stressors. While it can feel impossible for those of us in the legal profession to get meaningful “down time” at work or at home, making a habit of pushing through instead of pausing works to our detriment. Neuroscience research shows that in the long run we work less efficiently if we push, and more efficiently if we pause and reset.

Taking a break doesn’t have to mean a week-long vacation or a year-long sabbatical (though those are great too). Short breaks throughout our day allow our system to relax, our perspective to broaden, and our creative problem-solving skills to come online. A break can be a five-minute walk around the block, or five deep breaths on your way to the bathroom, or a few minutes to gaze out the window at a cloud. A mindful pause allows the brain to rest and come back to a task refreshed, much like a muscle resets and strengthens with a pause between reps. Be mindful to take a break that truly refreshes your mood and your mind—which may leave checking social media or the news out!

The next time you feel the urge to push through, take a moment to pause and take a breath instead. The more you try it, the easier it gets—the more productive you feel and the more enjoyable life will be.

Laura Mahr is a NC lawyer and the founder of Conscious Legal Minds LLC, providing mindfulness-based resilience coaching, training, and consulting for attorneys and law offices nationwide. Her work is informed by 11 years of practice as a civil sexual assault attorney and 25 years as a student and teacher of mindfulness and yoga, and a love of neuroscience. Find out more about Laura’s work at consciouslegalminds.com.

If you would like to connect with other lawyers interested in learning about mindfulness and resilience in the practice of law, join Laura as she presents at these upcoming events:

• January 18, 2020: Cumberland Co. Bar Association Wellness Day. Laura will conduct a one-hour mental health CLE (cumberlandcountybar.org).
• January 24, 2020: “Self Care and Ethics in the Immigration Law Practice,” AILA Midwinter CLE Conference, Curacao (https://agora.aila.org/Conference/Detail/1636).
• On demand: “Mindfulness for Lawyers: Building Resilience to Stress Using Mindfulness, Meditation, and Neuroscience” (online, on demand mental health CLE credits), www.consciouslegalminds.com/register.

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