Embrace the ironies: wellness pairings to consider

Relax. Work out.

Limit screen time. Stay informed.

Don’t overspend. Treat yourself!

Never, ever, ever give up. Just quit.

And, my favorite:

Everything in moderation, including moderation.

These days, well-intentioned advice on well-being can present oxymoronic goals. Ironically, even wellness messages can be stressful.

In May 2020, when we were all rebalancing everything, I inserted a conjunctive phrase, “and well-being practices,” into one of the educational objectives for my summer externship students.

The newly edited educational objective now reads, “[This] externship course includes offering the students the opportunity to…develop their professional identity with an intentional exploration of the values, guiding principles, and well-being practices considered foundational to a successful legal practice.”

At Indiana University Robert H. McKinney School of Law, the spring semester of 2020 ended with 100% online exams, pass/fail grades for most law school courses, and a virtual graduation ceremony.

Nevertheless, the summer legal externship students enrolled in my course were at state government law offices, in their parents’ dining rooms, or somewhere in between. I was at home, learning more about Zoom than I ever imagined.

For many of the students, this was their first professional experience with our shared profession; for all of us, it was our first experience of living with the COVID-19 pandemic.

While I had informally discussed and hopefully modeled well-being practices as a clinical law professor, I had never considered well-being as a syllabus item.

Before the spring of 2020, doing so seemed, to me, unlawyerly, not academic, and, really, not my business. However, that spring changed my attitude about my place in this space for good.

In addition to altering the educational objective, I invited those summer 2020 externship students to submit a brief report to me about either: their experience with a new-to-them wellness activity and how that experience influenced the quality of their externship or a conversation with their supervising attorney about the connection between well-being and a successful legal practice. But, I wondered, would it work?

Would adding “well-being practices” to the list of things for externship students to explore be useful? I expected pushback from the law students. However, none came.

Instead, this experiment began a practice of sharing concrete connections between well-being, professional success and satisfaction with work.

That conversation, begun in the summer of 2020, has bloomed into much more than a line of communication about wellness between my students and me. Some alumni continue to let me know when they’ve tried a new-to-them wellness activity. Supervising attorneys regularly thank law student externs for raising this topic.

Since that summer, I’ve continued to include well-being practices as something law students should consider as they explore our shared legal profession through academic externships. Further, I’ve converted the initial invitation into a course requirement.

Also, I now raise well-being as a topic in the mid-semester conversations that I have with every student’s supervising attorney.

By my math, that’s almost 400 little conversations about connections between well-being and the practice of law that otherwise may not have occurred. I’d like to think that this conversation of well-being has nurtured our profession for the better.

The collective observations, experiences and willingness to share them have been enlightening to me as a teacher and a lawyer. However, as indicated above, the ironies have not gone unnoticed.

Based on my reflections on this topic since the inauspicious summer of 2020, here are some pairings to consider when confronted with well-meaning but counterintuitive wellness advice.

Relax. Work out.

When your professional schedule does not allow time for either, consider taking five minutes to do both. Give yourself the luxury of a long, big muscle, easy stretch at any point in the day for any reason for just five minutes.

If you can, include 10 pushups into your routine. (This takes about 20 seconds.) In my mind, such a pairing thus qualifies the entire five minutes as relaxing and working out.

Limit screen time. Stay informed.

Try a three-day experiment. Temporarily remove yourself from a couple of text chains. (You can just let the text group know that you are trying an experiment for a few days, so as not to offend or alienate your friends and/or family.)

Silence or turn off a few app notifications, and move apps that you do not absolutely need from your phone’s home screen.

Then, make a plan to spend some time (when you want to do so, not in response to banners flashing across your phone) to check the news and connect with family and friends. See how it goes. After three days, adjust accordingly.

Don’t overspend. Treat yourself!

When you find yourself e-shopping or dream scrolling to your heart’s content, maybe consider taking a break in between clicks to treat yourself to a lovely memory. For example, consider closing your screen when your basket has three or more items.

Then, reflect on the last time you did any of the following: laughed till your stomach hurt, saw something beautiful, found a lost item (finder’s joy!!) or re-read a love letter.

Pleasant memories are free and deserve to be cherished. Plus, even a few minutes away from e-shopping has the potential to save money.

Never, ever, ever give up. Just quit.

Author and activist Glennon Doyle has beautifully challenged the “winners never quit, and quitters never win” narrative. So, inspired by her, I suggest doing both. Doyle advises that the “strong wise thing to do” is to quit, and quite often.

She writes, “Oh, I do quit! Quitting is my favorite. Every day I quit. Every single day. I wake up and I care the most amount. And then — at some point — I put it all away and melt into my people and my couch and food and nothingness. And I care not at all. I forget it all. Then I go to sleep and wake up and begin again. Begin and quit every day! Only way to survive. Embrace quitting as a spiritual practice.”

Everything in moderation, including moderation.

Being compulsive about “good habits” (e.g., running 12 miles every week, eating a banana every morning) can have negative impacts on daily activities and obligations.

Try switching things up every once in a while, just for fun. For example, instead of running four miles, dance to four consecutive songs of great music. Instead of a banana breakfast, have a chocolate bacon donut!

Experts agree that the concept of well-being is necessarily calibrated to what is beneficial to a particular person, not some objective standard. So, when faced with well-meaning but counterintuitive bits of well-being advice, note the irony and have a laugh.

Then, consider one of the above pairings. But always be willing to recalibrate. You may be surprised at what works. And, if it does, please share it with another lawyer. Let’s keep this conversation going! •

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Cynthia A. Baker is the director of the Program on Law and State Government and a clinical law professor at Indiana University Robert H. McKinney School of Law. She also serves as a JLAP volunteer.