This one small tip will help rewire your brain

How was 2023 for you? Was it everything you wanted it to be? Or was it a damp squib that you’re glad to see the back of?

I’m ending this year with a post about gratitude. Yawn, yes I KNOW I’m supposed to feel grateful for everything but it’s not easy when you’re in the middle of December and you’re juggling 15 plates at once.

As I write, my daughter’s angel costume needs fixing for the school play in one hour (never let it be said that I don’t make the last minute count), I have wrapped zero presents, written no cards (I think that ship has sailed now), I have a letter of claim, a Response and an application to amend to get done workwise and I haven’t done any bills yet. And all I want to do is watch Elf and eat mince pies.

But hear me out on gratitude. Research shows that it helps guard against depression and other mental health disorders, which is why, every single night, I make sure to write down three things which have gone well today.

Not three things which I’m grateful for, as that was sometimes too difficult, especially during Covid. The slight reframe of “three things which have gone well” helped me to grudgingly acknowledge that, ok, I suppose I can find something. It’s usually involving food, to be honest. And sometimes, I really am scraping the barrel (I…got out of bed?) but still, I make sure I find three things.

The benefit to doing this practice is that it starts to rewire your brain to notice the positive things which happen during the day. It’s essential that we’re intentional about doing this as our brains are otherwise hardwired to find the threats around us; this is what has kept us safe in the past. I think this is particularly important for lawyers as we are trained to find risks (aka threats) everywhere.

We deal with worst case scenarios on a day-to-day basis, so it is so important to make our hyper alert brains feel safe by noticing the good things. This very simple practice takes one minute every night and has genuinely made me happier and better able to cope with the stresses of a career in the law.

~ Rachel

P.S. I’ll end with a joke which my dad saw in the paper:

A lawyer dies and arrives at the pearly gates. St Peter says “Welcome – we don’t get many people who are 130 years old.”

The lawyer protests that he is only 72. “I was going by your chargeable hours” says St Peter.