Well-Being in the Legal Profession

Research suggests that a healthy lifestyle can promote mental health and can be used to both prevent and treat a variety of mental health conditions. A healthy lifestyle is defined as including six different types of practices or behaviours:

• Minimize or avoid harmful substances or behaviour.
• Incorporate physical activity throughout the day.
• Eat a healthy diet, however that looks for your individual circumstances and as recommended by your physician, and minimize or avoid food that is processed or contains artificial ingredients, refined grains and excessive sugar.
• Engage in mind-body practices, such as yoga, tai chi, meditation or other mindfulness activities.
• Prioritize sleep hygiene. 
• Seek out social connection. In addition to the community and support tips listed above, you can find connection outside of work through family, friends and hobbies.

Tip

One way to incorporate some of these healthy behaviours into your life is to treat them like an obligation that you wouldn’t cancel. Schedule your physical exercise, mind-body practices and social connection activities as appointments in your calendar and attend to them like you would any other appointment.  James Clear’s Strategy Guide provides other tips to build these healthy behaviours into your daily routine.

Beyond a healthy lifestyle, there are many self-care acts you can incorporate into your life to alleviate stress and safeguard your well-being. Self-care is any activity that we intentionally do to take care of our well-being and can look different depending on our needs and interests. Common examples of self-care include spending time with pets, spending time in nature, journalling and engaging in a hobby. Engaging in quality self-care requires self-awareness to identify your emotions and reactions to difficult situations and figuring out what activities work best for you to regulate those emotions and reactions.