I have a pair of full length caramel leather boots that are mocking me. They are flopped over in my porch next to the shoe cabinet they don’t fit in. Of course, I don’t see them often because the front door is only used now for Tesco and DPD deliveries. Because my husband’s study is a flight of stairs nearer the door than my office…
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Are you there yet? How to get the benefits of a holiday from your home.
HOLIDAY [ Hol-li-day] any day of exemption from work EXEMPT [ig–zempt] to free from an obligation or liability to which others are subject; release: – Dictionary.com I live just at the edge of my town, my road running off a lane that starts with a school and church and peters out to fields with horses and rabbits. Every now and again my Mum will be in the car…
Is compartmentalising stress the best strategy for lawyers?
This week I heard a retired Judge speak to a non-legal audience about the challenges of doing High Court cases. * The audience was treated to just fifty minutes of well-told stories about children forced to deal in drugs for the County Lines gangs, children trafficked from the Philippines, vulnerable women from India enticed into surrogacy arrangements they later regretted. When questions were invited, the very…
How to stop your inadequacy button being pressed.
This morning I was happily listening to a podcast when the writer being interviewed said something that pushed right on my Inadequacy Button. He was being asked about his writing process. He was a night writer, he explained, because, although he got up at 5 am and had a little time to read contemplative material and mediate over breakfast, the youngest of his five children…
The real gift of 2020
My coach took me through an exercise last month in which he asked me to write down a memory for every year of my life. The first interesting observation that cropped up was that the supposedly best years of my career, the nineties ,ended up blank. These were my years at the Bar and conference speaking, the ones which set me up for the judiciary…
How to create a legacy for the world every day.
Would you like to think that something you did today made the world a better place? Even though you are at home in your slippers and yoga pants, all by yourself, do you long to feel significant? Maybe it’s your whole career that you feel needs some sort of major upgrade so that you can feel you left a legacy that was worth all your years…
Have you been and gone and done it again?!
Are you beating yourself up because, once again, you have done something you vowed not to do? Maybe it’s getting so exhausted with work that you got sick the moment you took time off. Maybe you said yes to a request when you know that for your sanity you should have said no. Or perhaps you got all snippety and cross with that truly annoying…
Are your warning lights on?
The electric warning systems on my car have gone a bit bonkers. The parking sensors beep even when there is nothing but dust motes within two feet of the bumper. Random messages pop up telling me that my tyres have dangerously low pressure. At first I kept getting out of the car to check for unseen two year olds or wounded pheasants on the road….
Are you being kind enough to yourself?
A tale from the Court of Protection reminds us why it is important as professionals to be kind to ourselves.
Extended court opening hours – the threat and the power of choice.
The statement in my inbox held no punches. The woman who wrote it told me she was ‘struggling’, that her ‘mental health was spiralling out of control’ that she ‘lived a daily nightmare’. As a Family Law practitioner, I am sadly used to tales like this. What I am not used to is these stories not being about the clients of lawyers but about the barristers…