I remember my days of practicing law. The stress was constant and very intense. I found it hard to make time to go to the gym, see friends, or go to an art gallery. My productivity at work suffered. I felt constantly behind the eight ball. Over time, I became so frazzled that I was often too tired to connect with people and loved ones when I finally left work. My life felt more and more out of whack as I let the pressure of practicing law slowly pull me away from myself and what was most important to me. Ultimately I the balance became so lop-sided in favor of work that I had to leave the practice of law because I was burnt out mentally, physically and emotionally.
Increasingly, law firms are paying attention to issues of work/life balance because of the critical role it plays in the retention of talented attorneys. Much of the current work-life balance discussion centers on firm policies that support flex-time, part-time, compressed work weeks and virtual workplaces. However, while the firm’s policies are important, it could be a long time for policies catch up to the needs of working attorneys.
At its core, the concept of work/life balance is the result of the perception that you can complete your work and still have enough energy to connect to the people and things you love outside of work. You, as an individual, play an enormous role in feeling like you can finish your work, avoid burnout, prevent stress-related illnesses and stay engaged and connected to your loved ones and hobbies. Surprisingly to some your BODY is the key!
Anxiety and stress bombard you all day, but you are probably largely unaware of their on your body. Consider the following scenario:
You are driving to work and get stuck in traffic or delayed on public transport. The whole way, you worry about not arriving on time for an important client meeting. You tightly grip the steering wheel, clench your jaw and hold your breath. You arrive at work to find out that your assistant is out sick and a quiet case has “heated up“ requiring lots of immediate work. You hold your breath and literally brace yourself for a hard day by tightening your chest as you head into your client meeting 10 minutes late. The meeting goes well, but you now have a mountain of work ahead of you. Again, your breathing becomes more shallow because your diaphragm is rigid from holding it together and your blood pressure is increased. By noon, your shoulders are creeping up towards your ears from all the tension and holding. You run out for a power work out at the gym, but you are rushing so much to and from that it hardly gives you a break from the tension of your day. You don’t even notice that you were clenching your jaw the whole time and held onto the stair master with a grip that could strangle a small animal. When you return to the office you have received an unexpected motion for discovery from opposing counsel and just about “lose it” as your heart rate and blood pressure increases. But you hold it together by again contracting your stomach and chest, holding your breath while your shoulders continue to creep up so that you finally resemble a headless horseman. Just as you are about to leave for the evening, you get a nasty and contentious call from opposing counsel. You definitely feel shaken as your heart rate and blood pressure shoot up dramatically. You have a headache and pain and tension in your neck and hands. You rush home to spend time with your spouse and kids but you are exhausted and would rather tune out by watching TV.
For most of you, this is a common day. Your body is constantly responding to day-to-day stressors—getting more and more wound up each day without you really noticing. And, if you do notice, you tell yourself to grin and bear it or tough it out.
Most people in corporate America view the body as the mechanism to haul their brain from meeting to meeting and ignore the critical role the body plays in coping with stress. We rarely consider how our own self-image and ability to perform at our best is affected by our own posture, breathing, and muscle tension etc. In reality, the body and mind are far more integrated than we could ever imagine. It may be surprising to learn that your body, posture, muscle tensions, and facial expressions actually affect your ability to think clearly, perform at your best, regulate your emotions and mood, and your ability to renew and rejuvenate. The intimate link between the shape of the body and our ability to perform is understood more clearly everyday because of exciting new research in the field of neuroscience. And, it’s why the field of Somatic Coaching, which works with the body as well as the mind to develop great leaders, is continuing to gain momentum.
The bottom line is by paying attention to the subtle changes in you body and learning to leverage the wisdom of your body you can perform at your best and feel a sense of balance—whether that means a high conflict situation with opposing counsel, the day to day stress of work, or simply connecting to your loved ones after work. Let’s look at why and how focusing on your body can make this happen.
Continue Reading January 14th, 2009
Will power is a topic of many a coaching conversation. How do we get ourselves to undertake lifestyle changes and tasks that are difficult? Many of us believe it’s simply a matter of putting our heads down and pushing through—using willpower to force our way through. But in my experience, this approach leads to eventual burnout. It does not lead to sustainable change because our ability to bully ourselves into action will eventually cease. But how else can we move to take on new behaviors or tasks?
Moshe Feldenkrais, a physicist and judo master, spent years studying how people learn. He developed a system of movement education based on increasing one’s awareness of how one moves. He believed that it is possible to create conditions for success that allow people move to action without forcing it through willpower.
In our society, effort is rewarded. In many instances, finding the path of least resistance is somehow less admirable. Feldenkrais points out that if one can do something without the sensation of effort, it is not good enough.
“From early childhood we are taught to strain ourselves. Parents and teachers seem to receive sadistic satisfaction from compelling children to make an effort. If the child can do what is demanded of him with no apparent forcing of himself they will put him in a more advanced class or add something to his duty just to make sure the poor thing learns “what life really means.’… [O]ne is not supposed to be satisfied unless one really feels the strain of pushing the limits.” (The Potent Self p. xii)
If something falls into place easily, we often assume it a fluke. We may even repeat the act just to make sure we strain ourselves the second time and thus feel like we have accomplished something. This type of behavior is glorified as sign of great willpower.
But, as Feldenkrais notes, “….willpower is necessary only where the ability to do is lacking.” (The Potent Self p. xii) He goes on to say that in learning new ways of directing oneself, it is essential to bring about optimal conditions for success. When you ask someone else to do something for you, there are ways of asking that make it more likely that the person will oblige. When you bully or nag the person, they are less likely to want to help you. No one responds graciously or willingly to nagging. So, just as there are ways to ask someone else to do something that are more or less objectionable, there is the same distinction when we are asking ourselves to do something. Nagging oneself is as bad as nagging another. If you direct yourself rudely—blaming yourself for being lazy, weak, clumsy—you can rarely oblige willingly. (Moshe Feldenkrais, The Potent Self p. xii )
Continue Reading December 17th, 2008
“Your trouble and mine is that we are trying to behave correctly, as one should, at the cost of quenching, with our own consent, our individuality. In the end, we do not know what we want, to the point of believing that what we are doing is what we really want to do; moreover the annoying status quo becomes more attractive to us that what we believe or say we want.” (Moshe Feldenkrais, The Elusive Obvious, p. xii, 1981)
So Moshe Feldenkrais advises you to stop trying to behave correctly and instead understand how you do something. Unless you know how you do something, you have no alternatives because there is no choice. Thus, you are simply acting compulsively and this lacks individuality as well as consent. Conversely, if you learn how you do something, you will be able to generate alternatives and thus choice. And you escape your compulsions and the status quo. You will uncover your individuality and be able to act accordingly. If instead, you are simply trying to behave correctly or as one should, you will lose connection yourself, your desires and your dreams. So, Feldenkrais advices, do as you want, not as you should.
Practice:
Chose one action in your upcoming week and decide to do it as you want, not as you should. For example, do not go to a party that you don’t really want to go to. Don’t go to the gym because you should. Notice how you chose what to do–what events or obligations to partake in. Chose an alternative action (something that you want to do) and notice how you do it. How did you make the choice? What did it feel like in your body to make a choice to do something you want as opposed to should? When you did the action, how did you do it?
December 17th, 2008
If you’re a corporate attorney or business executive, you probably have intense demands on you time. There may feel like there is never enough time to get your work done and stay connected to what matters to you most. Over time, you are overwhelmed and don’t recognize the person in the mirror. You may even feel that you are one person at work and another at home. While it’s never an easy amid such intense pressure it’s important to realize you play an enormous role in maintaining productivity, as well as preventing burnout, insomnia, and stress related illnesses.
Following are some ways that you can take an active role in remaining more fully engaged and less stressed at work.
1. Develop a calm readiness that allows you to respond appropriately and remain resilient in the face of stress. Anxiety is stored and expressed through your body, breathing and posture. When your nervous system and body are calm the mind, emotions and thoughts have can be calm and clear. Help yourself stay calm and clear headed when you are stressed by taking long deep out breaths, and looking for areas of tension that you can release to reverse the anxiety response in the body. Unclench your jaw, soften your chest, soften your gaze and work on regulating your breathing.
2. Remember to take regular breaks to switch gears and renew yourself. Renewal is the key to high performance. Coaches working with world-class athletes found that the key to gaining the winning edge in high-level sports usually has more to do with adequate rest and renewal than differences in skill. Muscle fibers and the brain grow best when they are challenged slightly beyond their limits and then given a period of rest and recovery. Therefore, just as a marathon runner needs a break after a marathon, so does the corporate workforce. The body has a natural 90-120 minute cycle, called the ultradian rhythm, in which the body craves a period of recovery. You can quickly and effectively renew yourself in conjunction with the ultradian rhythms by working to release tension in the body and switching gears for a few minutes to take a few deep breaths, listen to a song on your iPod or walk around the block. Also remember to give yourself longer breaks after periods of intense mental focus such as going to trial or writing a brief.
Continue Reading November 16th, 2008
Why Incorporate the Body into Coaching?
In the technological age of increasing efficiency, we have lost connection to ourselves as embodied beings. We have become increasingly disconnected from the wisdom or our bodies and the physiological reality of our emotions. Our bodies have become the mechanism to haul our brains from meeting to meeting. As people become alienated from their physical experience and emotions, life becomes abstract, theoretical, and one-dimensional. It becomes more difficult to evaluate decision-making factors because they are lost in an endless list of pros and cons without a felt sense of the right course of action. Often times, people lose their passion, as life becomes mechanistic and automatic. There are increasing concerns around work/life balance, burnout, and productivity.
Continue Reading July 19th, 2007