Languishing is the topic of the moment. Psychologist Adam Grant wrote an article about it for the New York Times back in May 2021 and since then his ideas have gone viral with any number of publications recycling his comments. It hit a nerve because the term ‘languishing’ explains perfectly the ‘meh’ feeling that so many people around the world have as the pandemic lingers….
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How to square the circle of ‘wellbeing fatigue’.
Last week Lucy Reed wrote a , eloquent and thought-provoking blog entitled Wellbeing Fatigue. The rant (her word) should be read in full here , but the nub of it was that she was sick of wellbeing tips. She stated ‘the problems that were frying our resilience and longevity are structural not internal to us as individuals – take away the ‘look how busy I am b***s**t’ and there is…
How easy should excellent work be? (Clue: Easier than you think.)
Mr Carson* was my second-year chemistry teacher. My sister remembers him for his dandruff ridden comb-over and predilection for taking the eighteen year old male sixth formers to the Abbey pub at lunchtimes. I remember him as the man who unfairly ruined my Effort Card. Every term we were sent home from school with a two-columned card on which every teacher had given us two…
Finding interest in the boredom of lockdown
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…
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…