Mindful Moment

Have you ever had one of those moments at work when you say to yourself, “Who stole my self-confidence and why am I hiding in this corner?” While we may not literally go to a corner to hide, we may find other ways to hide professionally. For example, attorneys might:

  • refrain from sharing their opinion in a case meeting due to doubts about their ability to clearly articulate their thoughts;
  • delay responding to a client due to doubting their ability to handle the client’s emotions; or
  • procrastinate writing a brief because they doubt their ability to organize their thoughts well and persuade a fact finder.

Judges might delay ruling on a case because they doubt their ability to see the evidence with impartiality.

Self-doubt is common among most people, and even more common among high-achieving professionals like attorneys and judges. In the legal field, we are required to try new things with uncertain outcomes—often with high likelihood of external scrutiny. Our legal minds are trained to think of the worst possible outcome, so we can imagine 100 different scenarios in which we could be wrong, and/or face public humiliation, both which can exacerbate self-doubt.

Self-doubt is often a complex tangle of past experiences and current emotions to unravel. Try asking yourself the questions in the three categories below as a starting point for dismantling your self-doubt:

  1. Turn toward the concern the doubt is trying to alert you to:
    1. What specifically is the doubt trying to alert me to? See if you can hone in on the specific concern that your doubt has; narrowing it down can prevent your system from feeling overwhelmed and paralyzed by doubt.

      For example: I don’t want to embarrass myself in front of my colleagues like I did last year in the all-staff meeting.
  1. Try on confidence:
    1. What would it feel like if I believed in my abilities right now? See if you can actually feel in your body what confidence would feel like in your arms, legs, shoulders, abdomen, and/or face.

      For example: My arms and legs want to move, my shoulders feel strong, and my abdomen and face feel relaxed.
    1. What could I say to myself that would instill more self-confidence in this situation?

      For example, “While I’ve never done this before, I’ve done something similar, so I can transfer those skills to this situation.”
    1. What are three examples of places in my life where I do feel confident right now? These can be seemingly small and achievable things. Thinking of areas where you are confident can shift your thinking from a negative mindset into a growth mindset.

      For example, “I feel confident about my ability to plan a good vacation” or “I feel confident about my ability to make a healthful dinner tonight.”
  1. Remember a time when you felt confident doing something similar:
    1. What is something that I learned in the past that I can apply to this situation?

      For example, if you feel doubt about an upcoming deposition, remember a past deposition that went well. “I recall that taking a break was helpful for me and my client, and that once I get in the room and 'in the zone,' I’m fine."

Overcoming self-doubt generally takes time and may require assistance from a professional trained in trauma recovery—especially if your feelings of doubt are connected to past experiences in which you were humiliated, shamed, overwhelmed, or felt unsupported. Turning toward ourselves when we feel doubt by using the inner dialogue prompts suggested above is a step in the direction of dismantling self-doubt. Sometimes all it takes to get us out of the corner of self-doubt and into the room with self-confidence is a mindful moment with ourselves to remind ourselves of our strengths.

Laura Mahr is a North Carolina and Oregon lawyer and the founder of Conscious Legal Minds LLC, providing well-being consulting, training, and resilience coaching for attorneys and law offices nationwide. Through the lens of neurobiology, Laura helps build strong leaders, happy lawyers, and effective teams. Her work is informed by 13 years of practice as a civil sexual assault attorney, 25 years as a teacher and student of mindfulness and yoga, and eight years studying neurobiology and neuropsychology with clinical pioneers. If you are interested in learning more about Laura’s CLE offerings that grow your team’s window of tolerance and build resilience, contact Laura through consciouslegalminds.com

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