My Books - Positive Psychology for Lawyers

This article, second in an occasional positive psychology series, examines the benefits of developing and using strengths of character in the practice of law.

Psychologists associate the regular application of character strengths or positive traits— such as optimism, zest, gratitude and curiosity—with the promotion of positive emo- tions, which, in turn, create overall well-being.

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What is the science of character?

Using one’s character strengths in the practice of law pro- motes a productive path for attorneys to increase their life satisfaction and success while working in a profession replete with depression, anxiety, addic- tion, dissatisfaction and ill health.

In the early 2000s, psychologists Martin Seligman and Christo- pher Peterson led a three-year project involving 55 distinguished scientists devoted to examining character traits across cultures and time. Out of this project, Seligman and Peterson identified six universal virtues —wisdom, courage, humanity, justice, tem- perance and transcendence— in which 24 character strengths reside. Their assemblage of virtues and character traits forms a scientific knowledge base and classification system of what is best about human beings and what builds fulfillment and happiness. One of the key findings about character evident from this project and hundreds of subsequent research studies is that each individual possesses all 24 character strengths in different degrees and combinations relative to context, resulting in a unique profile.

To determine your predominant character strengths, Seligman and Peterson developed VIA-IS, a free, 240-question survey found online at the Values in Action website: www.viacharacter.org. The survey helps people understand the differences between who they are (their character) versus what they can do (their talents) and what they like (their interests.)

Generally, our top character strengths occur easily without much effort and resonate as being so natural one could not help but use them. These strengths are energizing as we embody them, and we would feel a deflation of spirit and emptiness if we could not express them. When people use their top strengths, they report feeling more energized and self-actualized, which allow them to fulfill their potential to a greater degree. We also have situational strengths that we can call on when needed. Additionally, other strengths can be developed to benefit our clients, the legal profession and ourselves.

What are some ways character strengths can be used in the practice of law?

Making regular use of one’s character strengths is a good mental health practice as well as an effective business strategy for attorneys. Employing character strengths provides motivation to stay in a challenging profession and helps prevent burnout. The resultant greater job satisfaction averts unwanted consequences such as employee turnover or malpractice, often caused by alcoholism and depression.

Developing a balanced use of intellectual, self-oriented “head” character strengths and emotional and interpersonal “heart” character strengths can also be a valuable law practice tool. For example, an attorney who is strongest in “head-focused” character strengths—prudence, bravery, persistence and self-control— that are most useful for analytical aspects of lawyering, can benefit from training that enhances “heart-focused” strengths—kindness, grati- tude and social intelligence that are well-suited to the relationship aspects of law such as management, mentoring and rainmaking.¹

Attorneys can learn to modulate their strengths to reach desired results. “Head” strengths may temper “heart” strengths such as applying prudence to lessen a tendency to micromanage or be overzealous, and in the area of collections, the “heart” strength of kindness may temper the “head” strength of persistence.

Finally, it is highly desirable to be able to shift between analytical head strengths and relational heart strengths to change communi- cation styles. While the pessimistic or prudent way of thinking is inherent and required in the practice of law, it may be destructive in one’s personal life where an optimistic thinking style and prac- tice of the heart strengths (kindness, gratitude, social intelligence and love) lead to positive relationships that also build emotional resilience. In other words, legal cross-examination can stay at work and use of heart strengths can help one hone a conciliatory communication style for use at home.

What is the correlation between strengths’ use and attorney life satisfaction, well-being and success?

Many of us are doing OK or “pretty good.” Still, life may feel flat and depression rates are rising. We know from positive psychology that a meaningful life provides greater overall life satisfaction and well-being. Many of us spend more of our lives at work than with family or friends so the question becomes, “What can we do to give our time at work more meaning?”

Daily use of our top character strengths enables us to live a meaningful life where we enjoy what we are doing and feel pride and satisfaction in our work; it also energizes us, increases our pro- ductivity and helps us make the demands of the work worthwhile

Some lawyers find more meaning and can bring their strengths to fruition by making a difference, helping clients, being a trusted advisor, bringing in business, finding satisfying intellectual stimu- lation, or creating good office relations and collaboration. Landing a job in a niche in the law that capitalizes on your top strengths provides meaning and a better way to perceive your work as a calling rather than a job.

Additionally, as we are always in control of our perceptions, we can change the way we think about our job or our relationships with our co-workers. We can restructure how we approach work by reshaping certain attitudes in order to find more ways to embellish and access our strengths. If you have little latitude to make decisions, perhaps you can recraft your job tasks for more perceived control or practice character strengths in your relation- ships at work, over which you have high control.

Finally, knowledge of one’s individual character strengths may prompt certain lawyers to seek a more strengths-compatible practice or work environment.

Conclusion

Character can be learned and practiced. Research has established that regularly using one’s character strengths provides meaning in life, predicts fulfillment and success, and increases positive emotions, well-being and resilience.²

In the traditionally analytically based legal profession, heart strengths need not be sacrificed to head strengths. It is possible and advantageous to use both heart and head strengths and to identify practice areas that profit from each to build our best law practice and life.

¹ Snyder, P. Super Women Lawyers: A Study of Character Strengths. University of Pennsylvania Scholarly Commons, 2012.

² Seligman, M.E.P., Authentic Happiness: Using the New Posi- tive Psychology to Realize Your Potential for Lasting Fulfillment, New York, NY, 2004.

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Learn and Practice: Exercises for Developing Character Strengths

You can strengthen your character strengths by focusing on thoughts, emotions and behaviors. One exercise is to focus on a top character strength in a new way each day for a week. Another proven exercise to develop optimism is to regularly recall and savor three things that went well each day. Not only will this lift your mood, but it will also identify the good things that are working well for you and, over time, create benefit-finding neural pathways in your brain.

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The emerging scientific field known as positive psychology helps us understand how the brain can change, and that we can purposefully change it to create more positive emotions. Positive emotions, in turn, broaden our cognitive capacity allowing flexible, openminded thinking for creative problem solving and building of personal resources such as skills, knowledge and relationships.

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Positive psychology matters a lot in the field of law because, while many lawyers are actually happy, there are perhaps just as many who are not happy. It is well documented that lawyers are more likely to suffer from depression than any other occupational group. In a Johns Hopkins University study of more than 100 occupations, researchers found that lawyers led the country with the highest incidence of depression.

What makes so many lawyers so unhappy?

It appears the world view that makes lawyers effective in their profession can pollute other parts of their life. In other words, many of the qualities that help lawyers succeed in practice such as prudence, aggression, and critical and judgmental thinking are traits that can have disastrous consequences when applied in one’s personal life.

Take “prudence,” for example. Martin Seligman, Ph.D., former president of the American Psychological Association, and the “father” of positive psychology notes in his book, Learned Opti- mism: How to Change Your Mind and Your Life,2 that a prudent lawyer strives to uncover every conceivable trap or disaster that might occur in a legal situation. This skill of anticipating a range of problems is highly adaptive for lawyers who then foresee even implausible outcomes and defend against them.

Seligman stresses that the trait of prudence makes a good lawyer, but does not make a happy person. This is because lawyers cannot readily turn it off. What operates in the legal world as “prudence” often determines your thinking in the non-legal world because

the brain is wired to think that way. In the non-legal world, prudence is called “pes- simism.”

Pessimistic thinking is a way of interpreting the world in which the worst is routinely expected. It affects how we in- terpret failure and events that don’t go well. For example, a pessimist experiencing failure often interprets the event globally: “I’m no good; I’ll always fail.” Sadness is interpreted as everlasting, with one believing that everything is going to be ruined. The pessimist experiences negative events as pervasive, permanent, and uncontrol- lable, which can create an all-encompassing unhappiness.

In contrast, an optimistic interpretation style, which can be learned, views negative events as specific, temporary and change- able. When an optimist fails for example, he or she experiences the hurt as specific to the event, and asks “What can I learn from the failure and how can I do better the next time?” The optimist is not immune to sadness, but thinks and experiences it as specific to the event and knows it will pass.

Pessimism in one’s personal life creates a high risk for depression. The challenge then is to remain prudent in the practice of law and contain this tendency outside of one’s practice. This is where positive psychology comes in. There are exercises that can help lawyers who see the worst-case scenario in every setting become more discriminating in their personal life. Seligman has termed this adaptation as “flexible optimism.”

Another common thinking style lawyers have is “perfectionism,” which similarly can be corrosive in one’s personal life. According to Dave Shearon, who has a master’s degree in positive psychology and is former director of Continuing Legal Education in Tennes- see, “lawyers tend to be highly ambitious and overachieving, with a tendency toward perfectionism not just in their legal pursuits, but also in nearly every aspect of their life.”

When rigidly applied, the propensity to be a perfectionist can impede happiness. Tal Ben-Shahar, Ph.D., provides another model that offers a more balanced perspective as an alternative to perfectionism. He calls it “optimalism” and describes it in detail in his book Being Happy - You Don’t Have to Be Perfect to Lead a Richer, Happier Life.3

The “optimalist” believes that when appropriate, “good enough” is the best option, given the demands and constraints of life, Ben-Shahar writes. The optimalist also appreciates life as a whole and regards successes and even failures as opportunities to learn and grow.

In addition to the influence of thinking styles and traits, the heav- ily charged negative emotions inherent in the legal environment also play a part in lawyer unhappiness.

Take litigation, for example. Litigators are paid to resolve conflict, often between two hostile and irrational sides. In most conflicts that necessitate obtaining a lawyer, the lawyer usually is brought in after things have already gone horribly wrong. In the courtroom, tensions mount and anger, self-righteousness and combative behavior may dominate.

Another source of negative emotions—handling clients’ negative situations and hearing their negative stories on a regular ba- sis—can cause secondary trauma. Counselors and therapists are trained how to handle this to keep it from tearing them down. In the legal world there is little precedent for recognizing the trauma, much less addressing it.

Negative emotions also occur with the high pressures, expecta- tions and stress of the profession. These are exacerbated by many lawyers’ tendencies to focus on the implications of past decisions or events and anxiousness about possible future events.

Fortunately, positive psychology provides realistic solutions to the predicament of negativity in legal practice by offering interven- tions and exercises that generate positive emotions. One such exercise has us consistently noticing and genuinely appreciating simple pleasures. The word “appreciate” means “to be thankful or grateful,” which is the opposite of taking something for granted. Research on gratitude has repeatedly proven that when we ap- preciate the good in our lives, we enjoy higher levels of well-being and positive emotions, feel happier and more determined, and are more energetic and optimistic.

An exercise in appreciation: On a regular basis, choose three everyday things you’ve encountered in the past few days or that are around you right now (e.g., warm sunshine on your face, the smell of fresh coffee, trees or flowers, your laptop or mobile device, a person dear to you) and write a few words or sentences addressing what you genuinely appreciate, enjoy or find amazing

about each one. To “genuinely appreciate,” it’s important to allow enough time for the enjoyment and amazement to sink in and the good feelings to linger. Research has proven that regularly experiencing moments of genuine appreciation changes our brains and help us overcome our negativity bias.

The therapeutic yoga exercises and other techniques including Yoga Nidra, described in my book Yoga for Lawyers - Mind-Body Techniques to Feel Better All the Time,4 also help to de-stress and positively boost overall levels of well-being.

Positive psychology introduces ways to change the brain. We can rewire our brains to affect:

the way we interpret and experience the world, helping us feel more upbeat and optimistic more of the time;
the way we bounce back from hardships and setbacks, helping us become more resilient; and the way we behave, helping us feel more balanced and levelheaded more of the time.

Further, positive people experience enhanced work productivity and are more successful. They typically enjoy a better work-life balance, greater overall well-being and happiness.

We already changed in law school. Neuroscience proves and the experts agree that if we want to, we can change again. Positive psychology offers the empirical research, proven interventions, and exercises to create and deepen the neural pathways that lead to reduced stress. Incorporating these practices can boost your positivity and provide you with many professional and personal benefits including the broadening and building effects of positive emotions.

Attorney Hallie N. Love, www.fitmindbodybrain.com, cum laude law school graduate, is nationally certified in positive psychology with Tal Ben-Shahar, Ph.D. Love uses positive psychology exercises as well as therapeutic yoga exercises and other techniques from her book, Yoga for Lawyers - Mind-Body Techniques to Feel Better All the Time, to help lawyers de-stress, develop greater positivity and elevate their overall well-being.

A 2012 ABA Law Practice article states that burnout in the legal profession is greater than that of other professions.

Why does law practice lead to such extreme results for so many attorneys? This article will examine data from a broad spectrum of scientific research in positive psychology, exercise science, neurobiology, neuroscience, and complementary and alternative medicine (the new mind-body sciences) in order to identify factors that may lead to attorney burnout and to explain why those factors may contribute to attorney distress. Further, this article will introduce work trends that utilize the emerging mind-body sciences to pioneer smarter ways to be more productive and thus avoid burnout. Finally, this article will offer an overview of scientifically proven interventions and recharging techniques that may provide a buffer against the occupational hazard of attorney depression and burnout.