As lawyers, we’re no strangers to stress, it is an inevitable (required?) part of life. But learning how to manage it effectively can significantly improve your mental and physical well-being. In today’s post, I’m sharing some simple yet powerful strategies to help you calm down when feeling stressed — these strategies are tested and proven to work for all busy women but especially attorneys. (We’re keeping it REAL simple around here!)

Trying not to cry? Fighting off a rage quit? These tools are available to you with minimal effort:

Deep Breathing

Deep breathing exercises help you center yourself and reduce the physiological effects of stress. Try one of these popular methods:

Try the 4-7-8 breathing technique:

Inhale for 4 seconds through your nose,

Hold your breath for 7 seconds,

Exhale slowly for 8 seconds through your mouth.

Try Square Breathing:

Also known as box breathing, this is equally simple and effective. It involves structured breathing in a rhythmic pattern that calms the nervous system.

Steps for Square Breathing:

Inhale slowly through your nose for a count of 4.

Hold your breath for a count of 4.

Exhale slowly through your mouth for 4.

Hold for 4 seconds before repeating.

Visualization: While doing square breathing, imagine tracing the sides of a square in your mind. This can help you stay focused and relaxed.

You can repeat the process as many times as necessary, typically for 3-5 minutes, until you feel more relaxed. It’s especially useful in moments of acute stress or anxiety.

Grounding Techniques

Grounding techniques connect you with the present moment, pulling your focus away from stressful thoughts and physical sensations. There are two main kinds of grounding:

Earthing Grounding Based in Physics: This method is a therapeutic technique that involves doing activities that “ground” or electrically reconnect you to the earth. This practice relies on earthing science and grounding physics to explain how electrical charges from the earth can have positive effects on your body.

Try out Earth Grounding:

This can be as simple as walking barefoot on grass, lying down outdoors, or using grounding tools like grounding mats, sheets, blankets, socks, bands.

Psychological Grounding: Engage your senses to bring yourself back to the present. These techniques work by grounding you in the present moment and pulling you away from intrusive thoughts or feelings. In this way, you not only have your “feet on the ground” but also your “mind on the ground.” By turning our attention away from racing thoughts or worries, refocus on the present moment.

Try out Psychological Grounding:

The 5-4-3-2-1 technique:

Name 5 things you can see.

Name 4 things you can touch.

Name 3 things you can hear.

Name 2 things you can smell.

Name 1 thing you can taste.

Progressive Muscle Relaxation (PMR)

PMR is an effective way to reduce physical tension and psychological stress by alternately tensing and relaxing muscle groups throughout your body, from your toes to your head. When we tense our muscles before relaxing them, you enable yourself to relax them more thoroughly after you release them. This helps to more effectively release pent-up physical stress and leaves you feeling more relaxed overall.

Try out PMR:

Tense each muscle group for 5-10 seconds.

Release and relax that muscle group for 20-30 seconds before moving to the next.

Mindful Meditation

(You knew this coming!) Mindfulness meditation involves training your mind to focus on the present moment. This can help reduce racing thoughts and create a sense of calm. If you are new to meditation techniques, check out my podcast episode Meditation 101: Benefits and Basics to learn more about starting your own meditation practice.

Try out Mindful Meditation:

Sit quietly and focus on your breathing.

When your mind wanders, gently guide it back to your breath or a point of focus. Even a few minutes of mindful meditation can lower stress levels and promote relaxation.

Need help? Check out the Lawyer Life Podcast’s 5-minute meditation series, released every other Wednesday!

Move Your Legs!

Go for a walk. Taking a short walk, especially in nature, can reduce anxiety, depression, and even boost creativity. Studies have shown that just 10 minutes of walking can improve focus and elevate your mood. Try incorporating walking into your daily routine to manage stress more effectively.

Write it Out

Journaling allows you to process and express your emotions in a healthy way. In fact, 2018 research shows that writing down our deepest feelings and thoughts can improve our physical and psychological well-being. Writing down your thoughts can help you gain clarity, identify stress triggers, and manage your feelings.

Benefits of Journaling:

Identify fears and worried thinking that is causing stress or anxiety

Recognize triggers that exacerbate feelings of stress

Practice positive self-talk to build your confidence

Identify and reduce unhelpful thoughts and behaviors

Improves overall mental health by recognizing and addressing unhelpful thoughts.

Try out Journaling:

Write down your thoughts and feelings at this moment. Getting them out of your head and onto paper can provide relief and clarity.

Visualization

Visualization is a very simple relaxation technique that involves using your imagination to access positive feelings such as peacefulness, confidence, or motivation. Visualization can also help reduce feelings of nervousness.

Visualization involves creating a mental image of a peaceful or positive scenario, such as a tranquil beach, a personal goal, or a feeling of self-compassion.

Try out Visualization:

Close your eyes and imagine a serene scene that makes you feel calm and relaxed.

Focus on sensory details: sights, sounds, smells, and feelings.

Visualization can reduce the flight-or-fight response and ease nervousness, bringing a sense of peace.

Stretching

Stretching helps release muscle tension and improves your range of motion, posture, and overall relaxation. Incorporating stretches into your daily routine, especially at work, can reduce pain by up to 72%.

Try out Stretching:

Simple stretches for the neck, shoulders, and back can have immediate calming effects. A simple search on YouTube can help you find an office stretch routine that suits your needs and/or areas of pain.

Music or Sound Therapy

Confession: I have meditation or targeted hertz level music playing for at least 8 hours every day: my husband hates tolerates it, but I’m obsessed. Did you know that listening to calming music, nature sounds, or binaural beats can soothe your nervous system and reduce stress?!

But let’s take this even farter: Solfeggio frequencies, which range from 174 Hz to 963 Hz, have been found to generate vibrations in the body that promote relaxation, balance, and emotional well-being.

Interesting Fact: Ancient theories suggest that certain frequencies have the power to heal and even affect DNA positively. You can experiment with different frequencies and music styles to find what relaxes you the most.

Try it out:

You can easily search for healing/Solfeggio frequency playlists on Spotify and other music providers. My favorites: Pineal Glad Activation 963 Hz for your third eye chakra & healing + cleansing frequencies.

Hydrate and Nourish

Dehydration can intensify stress and anxiety. Basically, when you’re dehydrated, your body is stressed, and when you’re stressed your brain releases stress hormones, setting off a chain reaction of the stress response in your body.

Drinking water or eating a small, healthy snack can calm your physical stress responses. Staying hydrated helps your body stay balanced and less reactive to stress triggers.

These simple tools can help you manage daily stress and bring you back into a state of balance. Whether it’s deep breathing, grounding, stretching, or simply listening to relaxing sounds, incorporating these practices into your routine can make a significant difference in your overall well-being.

Try it out: Begin each day with a hydration plan — you do NOT need to carry a gallon jug around all day. Calculate your daily water intake goal and determine how many refills you need during your day to get there. Track your daily progress each day — habit tracker, anyone?

Over the next few weeks, I will tackle each of these challenges separately. Today, I want to focus on burnout.

I’m starting with burnout because unless we are able to recognize burnout and its symptoms and separate them from emotional and mental stress, things get a bit fuzzy.

So, what is burnout? The Google box tells me that “burnout” is a “state of emotional, physical, and mental exhaustion caused by excessive and prolonged stress. It occurs when you feel overwhelmed, emotionally drained, and unable to meet constant demands.”

For me, and in my opinion, burnout is not about stress. When you experience stress, you can feel it in your body, you can observe the thoughts associated with the stress or stressors, and often times stress heightens productivity and ignites the biological fight or flight responses. Many of my clients are attorneys and stress heightens their productivity and senses. They thrive on it. Burnout is beyond that stress.

Burnout is characterized by a general apathy about life. It mimics many of the symptoms of mild depression. It’s like a car that is nearly out of gas and running on fumes – it’s moving but more out of inertia than choice and nothing that comes along will create a heightened response. It is seemingly immune to outside stimuli. Similarly, when someone is in burn out, they respond less readily to normal stressors. They just don’t care because they are just out of gas.

When I see clients who are experiencing burnout, the approach is entirely different than the approach I use when someone is stressed. Burnout is characterized by a general disengagement in life and inability to sense emotions properly or develop long-term plans or goals. When someone is in burnout, as a coach, my work is to help them engage in the bigger picture. See life for more than whatever is causing their burnout.

The burnout spiral is not conducive to examining one’s thoughts, goals, motivations, and dreams. There is a general lack of emotion and interest in life. A pervasive numbness. (To be clear, burnout can sometimes be more properly classified as clinical depression, in which case, it is essential to see the support of a licensed medical provider for support.)

The only solution to burnout is to reconnect with life. Take an inventory of your life and recognize which areas you have been neglecting and steer your course in that direction. Call in sick. Take a spa day. Go to the gym and get to the office late. Take a vacation. Take whatever time you can away from the primary stressor driving the burnout. Spend time with friends and family. Talk with those closest to you about your situation. Connect with your community through volunteer work or environmental endeavors. Whatever can help you see that life is so much more than the job, relationship, money, or person associated with your fatigue. Take space. That is the first step to curing burnout.

If you are burnt out, you suffer from tunnel vision. You have difficulty seeing the big picture and, as a coach, I can’t bridge that gap for you. You must rebalance and refocus your vision before we can start coaching toward a brighter future.

I have experienced burnout numerous times throughout the course of my career. When I experienced burnout, work was like a dream. I was floating through the motions. I hated being there but also didn’t really care one way or the other. I didn’t care about any deadlines, I wasn’t concerned with any office drama or chaos, I was just beyond the ability to care. I had accepted that this was my life and I was just going to get through each day as simply and easily as possible and just. keep. moving.

My burnout was the product of emotional fatigue that reached a pinnacle. I felt helpless and lost and unwilling to “fight the good fight” any more. I felt empty and uninterested in the battle. I was just going to “do my job” and forget about the rest – no emotional or personal investment, life was simply a transaction. I did my time at the office, completed the assigned tasks, received my paycheck. Nothing more, nothing less. My work became the least enjoyable aspect of my life, just a means to an end.

It was a miserable existence.

It wasn’t until I got some space from the office that I realized how unhappy I was. I realized that the current work environment was a toxic relationship and I was ready to break up.

Spending some time meditating by the ocean and enjoying time with my family, I realized how much I had to be thankful for and how much I had felt disconnected from the goodness of life. I was able to address my burnout and rejuvenate myself.

With a clearer head and a renewed focus, I started drafting my new life. I had something to look forward to.

To be clear, stress and burnout are not the same. Working hard and hustling are not burnout and do not create burnout. Burnout, as I use the term, is a general lack of connection and engagement in your life/profession/relationships, etc. It is disengagement and apathy often preceded by stress and a disorganized brain.

If you are experiencing burnout, I so relate to you. I spend my time working with professional women to address and remedy burnout and stress. That is not the way we were meant to life! We all deserve better. Schedule a free consult with me and let’s get a plan in place to make space, release the burnout, and refocus on your future. You deserve a life you can be invested in and excited about. Don’t sell yourself short any longer.

Moving can be a lot of work and, like most humans, it left me feeling a bit frazzled and frantically searching for that one thing that “I know I put it in a box somewhere…”

Upon returning to work, I found myself struggling to focus. Every request for support or input ruffled my feathers and made me want to go hide until 5pm. I felt like I was crawling out of my skin…If I don’t get out of here and get some time to relax, I’m going to jump out this window…

In lieu of leaping from a tall building, I sat down and did some self-reflection. Why was I feeling so irritable? Why couldn’t I focus and enjoy spending a day NOT lifting boxes or cleaning our old house? Wasn’t this a nice respite?

I did a quick thought download and started working through each thought, quickly discovering the culprit: I am just so tired. It was like my mantra…I am just so tired. I just need a break. Over and over, I kept returning to those thoughts.

Admittedly, I was a bit physically taxed: my muscles ached, and my back was screaming but after a few visits to the company masseuse, I was really feeling pretty okay. I had gotten plenty of sleep and had made an effort to enjoy some nice long baths at the end of each moving day. So why was I feeling so irritable?

Because I kept telling myself I am just so tired.

When I sit with the thought I am just so tired, it makes me feel hopeless and it creates an avalanche of similar thoughts: I have so much to do, I can’t handle this today, I don’t want to do any of this stuff, I just want to be left alone, etc.

Whenever I feel hopeless, it creates a lot of indecision. I spin out, second-guessing how to spend my day, agonizing over my to-do list, trying to figure what to do next, then I remind myself that I’m just so tired and then the feelings of hopelessness resurface along with all the other ugly thoughts and the day just falls apart.

In the end, my thinking I’m just so tired, created a cycle of indecision and unproductivity that made me feel worthless at the end of the day because I didn’t accomplish anything. I just spent my day spinning in mental misery, beating myself up and mentally wearing myself out. I was exhausted at the end of those first few days because I wasted so much energy in this cycle, going in 1,000 different directions and carrying around indecision, self-judgement and heavy hopelessness.

After this realization, I acknowledged that, while I may be physically tired, carrying around the thought I am just so tired was making me absolutely miserable and was truly making me exhausted at the end of the day. It wasn’t that I was “so tired” I couldn’t be productive and focus, it was the trajectory I created for myself when I kept telling myself I am just so tired. Physically tired or not, that thought was not serving me; it was making my current state even worse. Seeing this, I tried on another thought:

I can do hard things. I can be a good employee and a good partner during this transition period. I have done harder things before.

We all have days when we are tired and operating with a low tank of gas but when your thoughts compound that physical tiredness, it is a recipe for disaster.

Don’t let your thoughts compound an already difficult situation. Use your thoughts to shift from a meltdown to a triumph.

So many of our thoughts seem innocuous and others like I’m just so tired, can seem like hard facts. That is rarely the case.

Thoughts like this can seem so lovely and founded in self-care yet create all sorts of emotional chaos and stunted action. Only by examining your thoughts can you truly get to the root of the problem.

For me, it wasn’t physical tiredness that was bogging me down, it was tired thoughts and the feelings those thoughts created.

If you are feeling like you are in a funk or just can’t seem to get it together, just one coaching session can make all the difference. Check it out. I promise you won’t regret it. Try out a free coaching consultation to see if I’m a good fit to help you create the life you’ve always wanted. I would love the opportunity to meet you and see what we can do together!