by George H. Bean

Many people, especially lawyers, have racing thoughts and spend great effort avoiding their own imaginings and the consequences. Thoughts of the past trigger regret, thoughts of the future cause anxiety. The thoughts themselves, as pure data, are not the problem; it is the emotions we attach to them that damage our peace of mind or impel us into inadvisable action. Thought-driven emotions often motivate avoidance behaviors, such as substance abuse, other addictive behaviors, even self-harm.

Lawyers can be particularly prone to fear- driven thoughts. We are up against a smart opponent who wants to win, and we have to please our client and our boss. This can create vertiginous dread every day of a lawyer’s practice. Our thought-conduct is normally not malicious or intentionally self-sabotaging, but is likely traced back to the motivator of all motivators, our survival instinct, the root of most emotional structures.

Assuming we cannot entirely eliminate our high-horsepower brains from bringing data to our attention, the goal would then be to manage the emotions that result from the feelings we attach to the data. The torture of persistent thoughts comes from the emotions they trigger, and our compulsion to grind on the thoughts, rather than letting them pass as unimportant. The thoughts just come so fast, one replacing the next, only departing to seemingly make room for another. It is the work of a lifetime to control one’s thoughts and emotions. This is the real battlefield!

If you expect to compete in the only game that really matters, your inner life, you must have some tools. Primarily one must meditate, contemplate, pray, or find some other way to patiently observe, and eventually control, one’s inner mind-life. We cannot avoid all thoughts, but we can impartially notice them from the outside and see them for what they are. Thoughts are either the result of our physiology, our 86 billion neurons busy at work, or part of some mysterious consciousness. Either way, there they are. One way to take the sting out of their persistence is to observe them dispassionately and marvel at the wonder of the very existence of a thought. Never mind the content of the thought, its very existence is quite a mystery and marvel.

Most lawyers’ thoughts likely come in the form of words, sentences, or even paragraphs. We are quite dependent upon language for our living. There is a narrator in our heads, commenting on every observation we make (judging!), and on the thoughts that arise, making the noise continuous and often cacophonous. We have so much to do: client intake, discovery, motion practice, trial preparation and, oh yes, go out and network to get even more clients! Just like we have thoughts about our thoughts, we may also be afraid of our fear. Lawyers are twice as likely to be problem drinkers as the general public, 20.6% versus 10%. See Patrick R. Krill, Ryan Johnson & Linda Albert, The Prevalence of Substance Use and Other Mental Health Concerns Among American Attorneys, 10 J. Addiction Med. 46 (2016). In 2022, a staggering 75% of lawyers reported a negative impact on their mental health since becoming a lawyer. ALM Intelligence, 2022 Mental Health and Substance Abuse Survey. Lawyers are twice as likely as the general population to experience suicidal ideation. Patrick R. Krill & Justin J. Anker, Stressed, Lonely, and Overcommitted: Predictors of Lawyer Suicide Risk, 11 Healthcare 450 (2023). Twenty-four percent of licensed attorneys in California do not even practice law, despite the financial upside. State Bar of California, Historic Demographics, https://www.calbar.ca.gov/About-Us/Who-We-Are/Historic-Demographics. I personally know a lot of lawyers who keep their license active but practice in other, or related, fields.

Well, this is a depressing article, you might say. Yes, but it must be addressed. Whatever the flavor of the resulting avoidance technique, it comes back to our emotional reactions to our perceptions of the world. I say perception because most of the time we are fearing things that will never happen. We “awfulize” the future. We see the world through a filter or lens, informed by our past, by our individual makeup, and tragically by our fears. “My life has been full of terrible misfortunes most of which never happened.” Michel de Montaigne, The Complete Essays of Montaigne 134 (Donald M. Frame trans., Stanford Univ. Press 1958) (1580).

So, don’t take your thoughts so seriously! Are they even real? Or even true? Of course, they are real inasmuch as they have consequences, but only the consequences you allow or create. But, you say, the world is so real and the consequences are so real. Are they? Can you accept the world just as it is without judging or letting it bring you down? Learn to observe your thoughts as if you are outside of yourself, just watching, dispassionately. Ultimately, you will see them for what they are, just thoughts, barely even there, barely even recognizable if you don’t give them power. How can you do that? Meditate, contemplate, pray if you like. Guided meditation is great for beginners. It is a lifetime practice, and even a bad meditation is a successful event. If you sit still for twenty minutes, you win! A quick internet search for meditation techniques brings up endless results.

Does this mean a lawyer should stop thinking during the day? Nope, we still need to make a living, and we are uniquely qualified to solve complicated problems. We owe it to ourselves and our fellow attorneys to use our powers for good. But we certainly should not be awake all night, twisting over things we cannot control. And even during the day, we can take little mindfulness breaks. I have an alarm on my iPhone that goes off twice a day just to remind me to breathe. My 87-year-old father-in-law, who does not speak English, said it best. “If you can control it, you don’t need to worry; if you can’t control it, you don’t need to worry.”

Don’t be ruled by your inner tyrant anymore. It is simple, but not easy. Good luck, I’ll be thinking about whether you liked my article or not.

George H. Bean is an employment attorney and workplace investigator who earned a B.A. in Philosophy in 2013, which seemed like a good idea at the time. He can be reached at george@georgebeanlaw.com.

Out of Office is an occasional column in which authors share ways to make life meaningful and fulfilling during and outside of the practice of law.