Mindfulness For In-House Counsel:Enhancing Resilience, Focus and Well-Being

Association of Corporate Counsel – Northeast Women’s CommitteeWilmerHaleMay 8, 2019

Brenda Fingold, JD, MAAssistant Director, Workplace and Leadership EducationMindfulness CenterBrown University School of Public Health

Program Overview

Science, benefits and practice of mindfulness

Challenges for sustaining health and well-being

Navigating stress with more ease and effectiveness

– Power of focus and working with thoughts

– Understanding and reducing stress reactivity

– Making ”real” choices around health and values

Ways to integrate mindfulness into work and life

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Harvard

Business

Review

Mindfulness Can Literally Change Your BrainJanuary 8, 2015

“Mindfulness should no longer be considered a “nice-to-have” for executives. It’s a “must-have”: a way to keep our brains healthy, to support self-regulation and effective decision-making capabilities, and to protect ourselves from toxic stress.”

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National Task Force on Lawyer Well-Being

“Mindfulness can enhance a host of competencies related to lawyer effectiveness, including increased focus and concentration, working memory, critical cognitive skills, reduced burnout, and ethical and rational decision-making.”

“Well-being is an indispensable part of a lawyer’s duty of competence.”2018 Report of National Task Force on Lawyer Well-Being (consisting of ABA law practice division, ABA CPR Professionalism, Lawyer Assistance Programs, Conference of Chief Judges, etc.)

The Neuroscience of Mindfulness

Mindfulness creates functional and structural changes to network areas of the brain involved with:

Attention regulationEmotional regulationSense of selfInteroception (body awareness)

Challenges to Lawyer Health and Well-Being

2016 Study of 12,825 Attorneys

Significant levels of depression, anxiety and stress (28% struggle with depression)

Higher rates of problematic drinking than other professional populations (more than 1/4 of all attorneys)

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Study conducted by American Bar Association and the Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation

The Lawyer Brain: Wired for Stress

Trained to find problems and weakness (negativity bias)

Trained to look for fault

Required to imagine all possible negative outcomes

Often immersed in conflict and the unexpected

Serve clients who are often stressed, angry, frustrated, afraid and/or highly emotional

Aware of the consequences of mistakes

Manage huge volumes of work often requiring intense concentration

Opposed, objected to, overruled, denied…

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“Thinking like a lawyer” is the foundation for legal excellence. Yet research into the lawyer mind is increasing showing that these very characteristics can also interfere with the ability to be present, to relax, be optimistic, flexible, authentic, healthy and happy.

Common Stressors for In-House Counsel

Managing limited budgets and resources while maximizing quality Overseeing “bet the company” issues Dealing with C-suite oversight Multi-tasking and juggling competing and often complex priorities Often involved in critical strategic business issues Managing relationships with and expectations of internal and

external clients and other support groups while fulfilling responsibilities for legal and compliance oversight

Information overload and added complexity around globalization regulatory requirements and change

Always on - tied to technology and 24/7 modes of communication Overscheduled days leaving little space for reflecting, innovating,

aligning with intentions and self-care

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High demands, fast-pace and reduced time for self-care create an environment for the brain’s threat radar to automatically kick in. The result:

• Hard to focus on work

• Can’t learn, be innovative or flexible

• Will default to old conditioned habits

• May shut down

• Will likely overreact in ways you may regret

The Amygdala Hijack

Daniel Goleman, “The Brain and Emotional Intelligence: New Insights” (2011)

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Mindfulness as an Antidote:The Power of Enhanced Awareness

Trying to relax

Going slow, being passive or being any particular way

Stopping thoughts

Mindfulness is Not

MINDFULNESS PRACTICE:COMING TO OUR SENSES

We Cultivate Mindfulness by:

Paying attentionOn purposeIn the present momentWith curiosity and non-judgment

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47% of waking hours are spent thinking about something other than what is going on

Killingsworth and Gilbert, Harvard University

Working With the Mind:Focus as a Superpower

The worst enemy is an untrained mind

The untrained mind is like a flywheel, spinning out thoughts, emotions, images, stories, likes, dislikes, and reactions to it all. There is ceaseless movement, filled with plans, ideas, and memories. ~ Jack Kornfield

Mindfulness helps us “see the waterfall” that is the nature of our human minds and get out from under the cascade.

The average worker:

Checks Facebook 21 times a day

Checks email 74 times a day

Shifts computer screens an average of 566 times a day (i.e., switch from document to email to website)

Distracts and interrupts themselves almost as much as they are getting externally interrupted.

There is a high cost to multi-tasking and interrupted work: forgetfulness, redundancy, increased mistakes, longer completion time, increased frustration and stress, harmful changes in the brain relating to multi-tasking, lost opportunities for creative and innovative ideas.

We Live in an Age of Continuous Partial Attention

Study of employees of high-tech companies from Dept.of Informatics at U.Cal

The Weight of Our Stories

MINDFULNESS PRACTICE

Reacting vs. RespondingTo Stress and Challenge

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“Anything that threatens our sense of well being – challenges to social status, ego, strongly held beliefs, desire to control things or to have them be a certain way –can trigger (the flight/fight/freeze) reaction to some degree.

--Jon Kabat-Zinn, Full Catastrophe Living

Rushing Around to Get Things Done

...what we know from looking at the brain scans of people that are always rushing around, who never taste their food, who are always going from one task to another without actually realizing what they're doing, is that the emotional part of the brain that drives people is on high alert all the time. When people think: "I'm rushing around to get things done,” it's almost like, biologically, they're rushing around escaping from a predator.

~ Mark Williams, professor of clinical psychology at Oxford; author of: Mindfulness: Finding Peace in a Frantic World

Stress as a Function of Perception

The perception of a physical or psychological threat and the perception that one’s resources are inadequate to deal with the threat.

BIASA ASSUMPTIONS

Past Experience

Fear and Worry

Perception

How We See Things Determines How We Respond to Them.

Other Influencers of Perception:• State of mind/mood• Stress level• Fatigue level

Mindfulness can break the link between perception and behavior

Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction

“The very first and most important step in breaking free from a lifetime of stress

reactivity is to be mindful of what is actually happening while it is happening.”

Jon Kabat-Zinn, Full Catastrophe Living

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Mindfulness Practice: Paying Attention to the

Direct Experience of the Moment

AWARENESS

THOUGHTSs

BODY SENSATIONS

EMOTIONS

MINDFULNESS PRACTICE:THE MINDFUL CHECK IN

The Stress CycleAUTOMATIC

THOUGHTS/STORIES

I’ll never have time for all this

work.

FEELINGS

Overwhelmed anxious

frustrated resentful

irritable sad

BODY SENSATIONS

Low energy can’t focus indigestion

fatigue headache

muscle aches

BEHAVIORS

HABITS

COPING STRATEGIES

Work excessively; skip meals;cut sleep and/or exercise; snap atcolleagues, family, others; missimportant events; isolate; cutcorners; avoid tasks; makeimpulsive judgementsto get things done; too much alcoholor other numbing behavior

As soon as you notice you’ve been triggered:

Stop BreatheObserve with curiosity – What’s happening here?

Check in with body, mind states, emotions, urges, environment.

ProceedBy intentionally stepping out of autopilot, reflexive habits, judgements about how it’s always been or how you want it to be, or being lost in stories or emotions, you can more fully engage with the nuances of the actual present moment to choose a skillful response to the question: “What’s called for now?”

* Know your personal stress warning signals *

With Mindfulness, we can optimize our capacity to:

Stop habitual, autopilot-driven, reactive modes of activity

See ourselves, others and information more clearly

Understand situations more fully

Choose effective, contextually relevant solutions.

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Making “Real” Choices Around Health,

Well-being and Values

Eustress, Acute Stress, Chronic Stress, Burn Out

We modulate between these zones all day long

Can you stop and notice where you are?

What does it feel like to be in each zone?

What tools to you have to shift zones?

dgComfort Zone

Too Much Zone

Growth/Stretch Zone

Challenge/Learning

Overwhelm/Distress

Urgent Not urgent

Imp

ort

an

t

I Crisis

Deadline – deliverable due

tomorrow

Pressing problem

II Most self-care and stress management

Long range planning

Relationships

Leisure time and doing things you love

Making space for creativity, innovation,

inspiration and leadership

No

t im

po

rtan

t

III Attention callers:

Phone “needs” answering

Interruptions

Certain emails

Things that may not be your priority

in this moment

IV Time fillers and distractions

Too much TV, internet

What is it for you?

Time Evaluation Matrix

Ways to Integrate Mindfulnessinto Work and Life

Regular

And

Consistent

Practice

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Formal Practice“Money in the Bank”

The more you build the muscle of mindfulness through a dedicated daily practice, the more naturally and consistently it will arise in the course of your day.

Sitting Meditation Body Scan Walking Meditation Mindful Movement – Yoga, Stretching, Tai Chi

Informal Practice: Short Moments/Many Times

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• One minute mindful pause

•Bring mindfulness to walking or stairs

• Use transitions to drop into the present moment

• “Center before you enter”

• Practice mindful listening

• Mindful task v. multi-task

Mindfulness in the Workplace Suggestions

OPPORTUNITY

“There is nothing more powerful than an idea whose time has come.”

Victor Hugo