If you could go back ten years, what’s one decision you’d make differently in your law career?

For me? I’d stop accepting chronic stress as “just part of the job.”

Like many others, I chose law for practical reasons. Specifically, Big Law because I had Big Debt. Plus, having grown up with financial insecurity, I prioritized salary above all.

And for a while, it worked. Sort of.

But over time, I began to normalize things that weren’t normal:

• Anxiety
• Insomnia
• Carpal tunnel
• Frequent respiratory infections
• Exhaustion
• Chronic busyness
• Headaches
• Overwhelm

If you’ve been consistently experiencing these, you might be on the path to burnout.

Having recovered from burnout during my 15-year legal career, I now help women lawyers create careers they don’t have to recover from.

The World Health Organization defines burnout as a work-related syndrome caused by chronic workplace stress that hasn’t been successfully managed.

How Stress Impacts Us

Not all stress is harmful. Short bursts of healthy stress (called eustress) can help us grow.

Think:

• An interesting case that challenges you and that you feel is important
• Preparing for an oral argument that you believe in
• A leadership opportunity that energizes you

But chronic stress?

It wears down the body and mind, a process researchers call allostatic overload.

This is the accumulation of every stressor or challenging circumstance to which you are exposed:

• High billable hour quotas that seem impossible to meet without sacrificing your well-being or relationships in some way
• Managing the common rollercoaster of having too little and then too much billable work
• Caregiving responsibilities
• Health challenges
• Fertility challenges
• Bodily changes from perimenopause or menopause
• Relationship tensions
• Unprocessed grief
• Internal stressors from anxiety and mentally living in the past or the future
• Concerns about climate change, social injustice, human rights violations, politics, or other things you care about that may be outside your control
• Media overload

The cumulative effect of this load can lead to burnout.

So What Can You Do?

Burnout prevention starts by:

1. Reducing the stressors you can reduce
2. Increasing your capacity to handle the ones you can’t

Consider:

• What external stressors can I reduce, at work and at home?
• What internal stressors (like perfectionism, people-pleasing, or worrying about what’s outside my control) are adding to my load?
• How can I reduce these internal stressors?
• How can I build more capacity for stress resilience?

What About You?

Zooming out, how is your current “allostatic load?”

Do you commonly experience stress as short-term and beneficial (eustress) or long-term and damaging (chronic stress)?

If you suspect you may be on the verge of burnout, what external stressors can you reduce to alleviate your load?

How can you reduce internal stressors and build more resilience?

While there are many ways to do this, research shows that mindfulness meditation is one effective way.

Studies show that practicing mindfulness meditation over time:

• Reduces rumination
• Reduces symptoms of depression
• Reduces emotional reactivity
• Reduces stress
• Reduces anxiety
• Improves emotional regulation
• Improves working memory
• Improves focus and sustained attention
• Improves cognitive flexibility
• Improves information processing speed
• Improves resilience
• Improves relationship satisfaction
• Improves communication skills
• Improves self-awareness
• Improves access to intuition
• Improves immune function

See American Psychological Association (APA), “The neuroscience of mindfulness meditation.” https://www.apa.org/monitor/2012/07-08/ce-corner

For additional support, download my free guide: 7 Keys to Succeed Without Burnout.

In your corner,

Jessie