Ep. #16: Panic-Free Legal Writing

In this week's podcast episode, I discuss how to use mindfulness to change the beliefs that cause lawyers to panic when working on a legal writing assignment or project such as a brief or memo.

Sometimes we can turn a brief into a monster of an assignment.

 

We associate our overall self-worth with the outcome of the underlying motion.

We start to panic about all the work we need to do to finish it and panic over how we don't have time to do any of it.

We lose sleep while we panic.

None of it is necessary.

But how do you stop all of those feelings of stress, anxiety, hopelessness, and dread that inevitably creep up when a deadline is looming ahead?

By mindfully identifying your beliefs, understanding the consequences of those beliefs, disputing those beliefs, and adopting effective new beliefs you can break the panic cycle.

Mindfulness can lead to an acceptance that your beliefs about the writing assignment, and not the writing assignment itself, cause of all your negative emotion, panic-looping and procrastination.

Then, you can come to the realization that you have the power to just let all of those negative beliefs go.