The Cheapest Stress Management Tool: Laughter

The Cheapest Stress Management Tool - Laughter

In today’s fast-paced world, stress has become an almost unavoidable companion. But what if I told you that managing stress doesn’t require expensive treatments or complicated techniques? You might be surprised to learn that one of the most effective tools we possess is something as simple and natural as laughter. Not only is it free, but it's also readily available to everyone.

Understanding Stress

Stress is a state of mind, often stemming from our perception of life's demands and our ability to meet them. It is driven by various fears, such as the fear of failure, the fear of criticism, and the fear of the unknown. Understanding these underlying fears is crucial because it allows us to target the root causes of our stress.

What Happens to Your Body Under Stress?

When we experience stress, our bodies react in a way that prepares us to face the perceived threat. This response, known as the "fight or flight" response, can be helpful in short bursts but detrimental when experienced over long periods.

Effects of Stress on the Body:

• Increased Heart Rate: Stress causes your heart rate to rise, increasing blood flow to muscles and important organs.

• Elevated Blood Pressure: Continuous stress can lead to chronic hypertension, which is a risk factor for heart disease.

• Impaired Immune Function: Stress suppresses the immune system, making you more susceptible to illnesses.

• Digestive Issues: Stress can affect the digestive system, leading to issues like stomach ache, diarrhea, or constipation.

• Mental Health Impact: Prolonged stress can contribute to anxiety, depression, and other mental health disorders.

The Fears Fueling Stress

The Fear of Failure

The fear of failing is a common stressor that can paralyze us from taking action. This fear often stems from societal pressures to succeed and the internalized belief that failure is a reflection of our worth.

Overcoming the Fear of Failure:

• Reframe Failure: View failure as a learning opportunity rather than a personal shortcoming.

• Set Realistic Goals: Break tasks into manageable steps to reduce the pressure of achieving perfection.

• Celebrate Small Wins: Recognize and celebrate progress, no matter how small.

The Fear of Criticism

No one enjoys being criticized, yet fear of judgment can prevent us from expressing ourselves authentically. This fear often arises from a desire to be accepted and a fear of rejection.

Managing the Fear of Criticism:

• Accept Imperfection: Embrace flaws as part of the human experience.

• Seek Constructive Feedback: Focus on feedback that helps you grow, rather than dwelling on negative comments.

• Build Self-Confidence: Develop a strong sense of self-worth that is not reliant on others' opinions.

The Fear of the Unknown

The uncertainty of the future can be daunting for many. The fear of the unknown is rooted in our inability to control or predict what lies ahead.

Addressing the Fear of the Unknown:

• Practice Mindfulness: Stay present and grounded in the moment to reduce anxiety about the future.

• Embrace Change: View change as an opportunity for growth and new experiences.

• Plan Strategically: Prepare for potential future scenarios while remaining flexible to adapt as needed.

Laughter: Nature's Antidote to Stress

Laughter is a natural and powerful antidote to stress. It can alter your mood, improve your mental and physical health, and help you connect with others.

Benefits of Laughter:

• Reduces Stress Hormones: Laughter decreases stress hormones like cortisol and adrenaline, while increasing endorphins, the body's natural feel-good chemicals.

• Boosts Immune System: Frequent laughter improves your immune system, making you more resilient to stress-related illnesses.

• Relieves Pain: Laughing releases endorphins that have pain-relieving properties.

• Improves Mood: Laughter can instantly lift your spirits and reduce anxiety and depression symptoms.

• Enhances Social Connections: Sharing laughter strengthens relationships and fosters a sense of belonging.

Finding the Funny: S.T.R.E.S.S.

To effectively incorporate laughter into your stress management routine, consider the acronym S.T.R.E.S.S.—Seek the Ridiculous, Enjoy Silly Situations.

S - Seek Humor

Actively look for humor in everyday situations. Whether it's a funny video, a humorous book, or a comedy show, make it a habit to seek out sources of laughter.

T - Take Time to Laugh

Set aside time each day to laugh. This could be through watching something funny, sharing jokes with friends, or simply recalling a humorous experience.

R - Relate with Humor

Use humor to connect with others. Sharing a light-hearted moment can strengthen relationships and make social interactions more enjoyable.

E - Embrace Silly Situations

Allow yourself to be silly and not take life too seriously. Engaging in playful activities can boost your mood and provide a much-needed break from stress.

S - Smile Often

Smiling, even when you don't feel like it, can trigger positive emotions and make you feel happier.

S - Stay Positive

Maintain a positive outlook by focusing on the lighter side of life. A positive attitude can help you navigate stressful situations with ease.

Conclusion

In the journey of life, stress is an inevitable companion. However, by understanding the fears that fuel it and embracing laughter, we can transform stress from a debilitating force into a manageable aspect of our lives.

As you embark on this journey, ask yourself: How can I incorporate more laughter into my daily routine? What fears are holding me back from living a stress-free life? By addressing these questions, you can begin to harness the healing power of laughter and live a more balanced and joyful life.

Lawyers and Stress: Is Laughter the Secret Ingredient to Managing It?

Stress is often worn like a badge of honor in the legal profession. For many lawyers, the fast-paced nature of the job, combined with the pressure to deliver flawless results, creates a perfect storm of anxiety, fatigue, and burnout. But while the tailored suits, designed coulter apparel and sharp rhetoric give the impression of control, the emotional and psychological toll of the profession often goes unnoticed except to those who suffer in silence. 

The Demands of the Job

 For many the problem is that being a lawyer is not just a career—it’s become a way of life. Their long hours, complex cases, and ever-looming deadlines leave  them little room for rest or a personal life. They are expected to juggle mountains of paperwork, court appearances, client meetings, and meticulous legal research, often all within the same day. Add to that the adversarial nature of the job,  and life happening all around them;the result is a profession where high-stakes pressure is the norm.

But what’s behind the endless pursuit of perfection? The truth is, many lawyers feel the weight of not just their own expectations but also those of their clients, colleagues, the firm partners and bosses. A single misstep could lead to significant financial losses or even reputational damage. As a result, the stakes for lawyers are always high, driving up stress levels to dangerous heights.

Stress Statistics Among Lawyers

Research consistently shows that lawyers are more prone to stress, depression, and anxiety than most other professionals. According to a study by the American Bar Association, 28% of lawyers struggle with depression, and 19% have reported severe anxiety. Additionally, rates of substance abuse among lawyers are alarmingly high, with many turning to alcohol or drugs to cope with their stress. We won’t even mention the number of suicides among lawyers, especially trial lawyers.

One reason for this is the adversarial nature of the legal profession. Unlike other careers that may focus on collaboration, lawyers often find themselves in confrontational situations, whether in courtrooms, negotiations, or even internal meetings. This constant state of conflict can lead to chronic stress and mental exhaustion.

 The Silent Impact on Health

Stress has tangible consequences on health. From insomnia and headaches to more severe conditions like hypertension, heart disease, and immune disorders, the long-term effects of chronic stress can be debilitating. Many lawyers experience these physical symptoms but often ignore them, believing that stress is just part of the job. This mentality can prevent them from seeking help, pushing them further into burnout.

Mental health is another critical area affected by stress. Anxiety, depression, and burnout are all common among lawyers. The stigma around mental health in the legal profession is slowly fading, but many still fear that admitting to stress or mental health issues will be seen as a weakness. This only exacerbates the problem, as lawyers continue to suffer in silence rather than seek the support they need.

 Why Humor Might Be the Antidote

Given the high-stress environment lawyers operate in, finding effective ways to cope is crucial. While traditional methods like therapy, mindfulness, and exercise are all effective, there's one often-overlooked remedy: humor.

Humor can act as a powerful stress reliever. Studies have shown that laughter reduces cortisol levels, the hormone responsible for stress, and triggers the release of endorphins—the body's natural mood elevators. In an industry known for its seriousness, integrating humor into daily routines could offer a surprising antidote to stress. After all, even in the most intense legal battles, a little laughter can go a long way.  Everyday laugh on purpose.  If you take the time to look around you, whether you are at home, in the office or just out and about the town, you will observe something that someone is doing or saying which will make you laugh.  Don’t do a quick chuckle.  Let out a good hearty full body laugh. Don’t worry about you might hear you or see you.  You are laughing for your health and your sanity.  

 Conclusion

The legal profession is undoubtedly demanding, but the mental and physical toll of stress shouldn't be the price of success. By addressing the issue head-on and encouraging conversations around stress and mental health, the legal community can begin to create a more supportive environment for its members. Whether through mindfulness, therapy, or simply finding moments to laugh, the key is to acknowledge that lawyers, like everyone else, need tools to manage the pressures they face and they need laughter too.

"The Verdict is in: Lawyers Need Laughter Too!"

Sense of Self- What they don't teach you in Law School.

The year 2018 brought us news of the suicides of two very famous and rich people. I have often thought of suicide as a permanent solution to a temporary problem. As I read of Kate Spade’s death, I wondered why. To those of us on the outside looking in, she had the perfect life. She was a designer whose name was worn on the shoulders of many women across the world. Even though she sold her company, she profited a great deal from the sale.

We followed Anthony Bourdian around the world as he introduced us to new cultures. At the time of his death, he was in France filming another adventure. So what would make a father of an 11-year old think he had nothing to live for and there was no hope for a better life?

For the past two years, I have been working on educating attorneys about mental health, depression, and alcoholism within the profession. The American Bar Association and many state bar associations have come to recognize the dire situation facing the legal profession with more and more attorneys across the country committing suicide, suffering from depression, and/or succumbing to alcoholism. I questioned what is the common theme for all of these suicides. Recently, I heard the motivational speaker extraordinaire, Les Brown, say it. The common theme is that they were missing a sense of self. They either didn’t know or could not fully appreciate who they were.

When you set out on the journey to discover a sense of self, the first question which must be answered is, who are you? Who are you when the esquire is stripped from your name? An attorney is just one of the titles you have, it doesn’t or shouldn’t define who you are as a person no more than the title wife, husband, daughter, son or parent. Those are the roles you occupy in this thing we call life. None of the roles define you. To determine who you are, you must examine what are your values in life? What brings you joy in the morning and what makes you cry at night? When you look in the mirror, are you pleased with the person you see looking back at you? If not, why not and how do you gain that sense of self that will help you get through the challenges life will surely hand you? Wouldn’t it be great if in the first year of law school there was a class titled “How to maintain your sense of self while practicing law.”

When you bring practicing law it doesn’t matter how much money you make or how successful others may say you are, if you don’t like the person you are. You must first like yourself if you are to be satisfied with the life you are living. You must be able to look at yourself and see the wonderful creation that you are to be able to stand in the face of adversity. Having a healthy sense of self will give you the confidence to go toe to toe with any other attorney no matter how many more years senior they are to you.

I remember a time when I was not very pleased with the person I had become. I attribute this to all the negative things I had been told about myself as a child. When we are young, we believe what adults around us say to us about ourselves. If your parents never praised you for the good you did, but always lectured you about the wrong, you will start to think you can’t do anything right. Unless you stop and work through those negative feelings about yourself, you will mature into an adult who, no matter how successful, will still see yourself as a failure.

The image of ourselves that we carry around every day can get so heavy that we want to stop carrying it, but we don’t know how without doing harm to ourselves. Most people give up because they don’t see any other solution. They have not learned how to develop better sense of self. People with high self-esteem are not inclined to have suicidal thoughts. They are more confident in who they are and their ability to overcome any challenge that life throws their way. I was 10 when my father died and I was left to live with my stepmother who said very little about the good things I could do. She told me that I would be pregnant by the age of 15. /based on what i heard from her, almost daily, I should have been a statistic. I had to search out people who saw the potential in me. Once I was in college, I went to seek counseling on campus. I didn’t think I was suffering from a mental illness, but I knew I needed to get help to improve my sense of self, if I was to have any success in life. I spent hours walking around campus alone. While I walked I would tell myself not to believe the negative things she had said. I learned to celebrate my victories, even the small ones. I reminded myself that I had managed to graduate high school at the top of my class without getting pregnant, as she had predicted. I celebrated the fact that I had obtained a tuition scholarship to a prestigious college. Later, I celebrated being accepted and graduating from a highly accredited law school. The more things I found to celebrate, the stronger my self-esteem grew.

After becoming an attorney I noticed when my friends were introducing me to someone, they felt the need to add to the introduction that I am an attorney. No longer was I just Lynn, now I was my friend Lynn the attorney. Others began to relate to me through my profession and not just me the person. I had to stop my friends and let them know although I might have more knowledge of the law now, I’m still the same person they have known for years. Having my law degree doesn’t make me a better person or friend.

What I have learned over the years is that having a sense of self doesn’t come from what other people say about you, but it comes from what you say about yourself. The need to have a sense of self is not something they teach you in law school. It is not something that the partners in your law firm are going to discuss as they sit around the conference room table. Having a sense of self is not taught at continuing legal education seminars. Having a sense of self is something you have to want to develop for yourself and sometimes by yourself.

The more things you encounter in life and make it through, the stronger your sense of self should be. You hae to be able to look at yourself and see the good person that you have become. It has to go beyond, “ I’m a successful lawyer.” Remember, that’s just one of the roles you occupy in the world. Look deeper inside so you can say, “I’m a good person and when you strip me of my esquire, I’m still comfortable with who I am.”

Stepping Out On Faith

“Stepping out on faith” is a common phrase used by people who purported to be believers. I, myself, had a decorative license plate which I proudly displayed on the front of my new Mercedes Benz after opening my own law practice in 1992. I don’t remember if it was because I purchased the car and was trusting that my business would continue to be successful enough for me to pay for it or if it was because I had started my own business and was trusting it to be successful. Either way I broadcasted to the world that I was “stepping out of faith.”

One thing I have learned about “stepping out on faith”, you can’t just step out there if you don’t have something backing you up. I mean, you can’t quit your job and say that you are going to open a beauty salon if you don’t do hair and nobody you know does hair. “Doing hair” is how we say in my neighborhood, you might prefer to say, “if you are not a beautician.” Doing hair works for me. Now back to my point. I couldn"t just open a law practice and trust God to send me clients, if I didn’t let anyone know that I had opened the door. Yes, I stepped out on faith but I wasn’t totally prepared. 

I speak from experience, because see although I had some resources to open my law practice, I didn’t have the knowledge on how to run a business and protect my business. I made a lot of money my first year, but I forgot to put aside some money for Uncle Sam. You know him, the Tax Man. Well let me tell you this, you might forget about him, but he doesn’t forget about you. He will find you and eventually, he will get his money. So after the first year I couldn’t pay the income taxes I owed. You would have thought I would have learned and been more prepared the second year, but I didn’t. So the second year, the same thing. Finally, in the third year I learned and made arrangements for my taxes to be taken out. By that time, I owed quite a bit, which ended up growing to over one hundred thousand ($100,000.00) dollars with penalties and interest. 
By the time it reached this amount other things were happening in my life which made me realize that I needed to do something different. So I was able to secure a job in a law firm which allowed me to merge my practice with theirs, at least then I didn’t have to worry about getting paid. That is until the day I got the telephone call that my salary was being garnished to pay my outstanding tax bill. I was told that I would be receiving only five hundred ($500.00) dollars per paycheck. Of course my bills amounted up to more that number. My mortgage alone was over one thousand dollars. Stepping out on faith was not helping at that time. At first I was frantic. But then I thought about it and I remembered how much I had already survived in my life so I got on the telephone and made an agreement with IRS for payments to them of five hundred ($500.00) dollars with me keeping the rest of my paycheck. 

Just so you will know, eventually I got a better job and was able to refinance my house so I could pay off the entire balance of my past due tax bill. 

Stepping out on faith requires that you put forth some type of effort and to make a plan for what you are doing. I ask you, would you go to bungee jump off a bridge without first checking to make sure you had a bungee cord? I was going to ask would you buy a house knowing you didn’t have a job and just trust that God was going to send manna down from heaven to pay for it? I changed my mind because I know people who have done just that. 

Even that little book I like to read, some call it the Bible, asks the question, “which of you, intending to build a tower, sitteth not (that means sits) down first, and counteth (figures out) the cost, whether he have sufficient to finish it? Then it goes on to tell why it is important that first you figure out if you can afford it. The reason given in that book is if you start it and can’t finish it, people will laugh at you. Think about it you know houses that were started and the foundation was laid and then the people couldn’t finish it. Others have purchased property in that state at very low costs and finished the house and turned them into beautiful edifices. The ones who were unable to finish were viewed as foolish. Or perhaps they were stepping out on faith with a plan or without first sitting down and counting the cost. 

I’ve heard people saying, “I was trusting God to provide for me. The Bible says He will provide your every need.” And they are right it does say that. But it also says, “the slothful shouldn’t eat.” I paraphrased there a little. While you are trusting God, God is trusting you not to be foolish. He trusts you to be mindful of your actions. He trusts you to be a good steward of the talents he has given you and to not sit on those talents but to put them to use. It is amazing when you take what you have been blessed with and do your part to make your dreams come true what God will do with your faithfulness. That is when you can really step out on faith and know that everything is going to be alright. So the next time you think about stepping out on faith, think first, “Have I counted the costs on this? Am I going to be able to finish this? Am I just being foolish and expecting God to do it all? Remember don’t step out without a plan on how to stay out there.

Continue to drive through the storms, because the party's not over until God says so.

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