Changing Your Legal Mind to Reduce Stress

Being Mindful with the Spiritual Litigator

n this week’s podcast episode, I discuss stress, why its effect on lawyers is important and how to use mindfulness to manage it.

The cognitive model introduced by American psychologist Albert Ellis set forth the A to E process in which humans process events that lead to stress:

An Activating event, your Belief about that event and your Consequential emotion as a result of that event.

From there, he explained that the way to change negative beliefs is by Disputing those beliefs and Exchanging those negative thoughts with better ones.

When you practice mindfulness in your daily life, you can identify the beliefs and stories you are telling yourself in response to an activating event. If that belief is causing stress in your life, you can choose to change the way you are thinking about that event by disputing it and exchanging it for a better feeling thought.

This isn’t an overnight quick fix. This is a day to day application. But, you know that too much stress can harm your career, relationships and overall life satisfaction. And when you know there is a way to improve all areas of your life just by changing your beliefs, it is a game changer.