Legally Bond
Legally Bond
An Interview with Janet Thompson Jackson, Well-Being in Law
In this special Well-Being in Law Week episode of Legally Bond, Kim speaks with Janet Thompson Jackson, founder of Paraplu Wellness and Well-Law and Wellbeing, Diversity & Inclusion Officer for the Faculty of Law at University of Groningen in the Netherlands.
Drawing from her unique background as an attorney, law professor and wellness coach, Janet offers practical wisdom that challenges the profession's glorification of "the grind." She explains how the legal culture of perfectionism and chronic overwork slowly erodes health and human connection, while providing accessible alternatives that don't require radical lifestyle changes.
Hello and welcome to Legally Bond, a podcast presented by the law firm Bond Shettick King. I'm your host, kim Wolf-Price, so if you're a listener of the podcast, you know that one of my roles at Bond is to serve as the chair of the firm's well-being committee, and I also chair the New York State Bar Association's Committee on Attorney Wellbeing. So I'm really thrilled today for this episode where we'll be discussing well-being with a special guest who spends a great deal of time and professional focus on the issue of well-being in the legal field. Janet Thompson Jackson is an attorney barred in Maryland who currently works as a Wellbeing, diversity and Inclusion Officer for the Faculty of Law at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands. She's still affiliated with Washburn Law School in Kansas, one of our states for the firm, and she's an Emeritus Professor of Law there. So welcome to the podcast, janet. So good to have you here.
Speaker 2:Thank you, kim. Thanks so much for having me. It's a joy to be here and I can't wait to share Well Law and all of my wellness stuff with you.
Speaker 1:That's terrific. Thank you so much. Well, it's really important that we talk about this at any time, but May is Mental Health Awareness Month and, of course, the first week of May is Wellbeing Week in Law. So Janet and I met through Wellbeing at Work Summit US, the New York program held last month, and while we thought this was going to be our first international recording, jen's actually in the US right now because she's participating in another of these multi-industry conferences focused on wellbeing and her topic, of course, is wellbeing in the law, and she will be in Chicago for that program. So Janet was our moderator and leader for the program in New York. She's doing that again in Chicago for that program. So Janet was our moderator and leader for the program in New York. She's doing that again in Chicago. So I'm really so excited to have her with us.
Speaker 1:Now, when I asked you to join the podcast, I really I honestly don't know if I got out much more than hey do you want to join me on the firm podcast to talk about lawyers and wellbeing? And you're like yes, like that was it. Yeah, that's about right. So it's fantastic. So thank you again for that immediate yes. I'm so grateful to get to know you and learn from your work in well-being. And so today, if you wouldn't mind, if you could first start out by sharing a bit of background about your company, well Law and the work you're doing, give us some of the overview, maybe, of the Well-Being at Work Summit. Did that work as an outline for today's conversation? Sure, yeah, all right. Well, on Legally Bound, we have a tradition where we start each episode where we ask our guests to give a bit of background on themselves. I think it gives listeners the chance to learn a little bit about who's speaking to them today. So would you mind sharing a bit about yourself and your personal journey?
Speaker 2:I do not mind at all. So I was raised in Cleveland, ohio. My family of origin included my parents and my sister. Both of my parents worked. They were in the public sector. My dad was in the Ohio State Legislature and my mom was an audit supervisor for the state auditor. So I grew up in an environment that was very kind, of public service oriented. I have an older sister with whom I'm extremely close. We're three years apart. I always say that we are twins born three years apart. She still lives in Ohio with her husband, and my now nuclear family is my husband and daughter and, as you have said, we live in the Netherlands, in a city called Groningen, which is in the north of the country. Our daughter is studying psychology at the University of Groningen there and, as you mentioned, I am the Wellbeing, diversity and Inclusion Officer at the University of Groningen. Actually, I'm one of two. I have a counterpart there, so that's pretty much my family.
Speaker 1:That's great. Well, and then your professional journey and career. You know I said that you're a Bard attorney. You have faculty and academic background, so do you want to tell us a little bit about how you know, after Ohio, what started the road for your professional journey?
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know, I've always thought of my journey as being this kind of crazy, circuitous journey that I was always asking myself does this make sense? I mean I'm, I have so many different parts and now that I'm doing the work that I'm doing, I totally understand and see why I needed to do all of those different things. But between college and law school I actually took what they now call a gap year yes, and I worked for the late Senator Paul Simon from Illinois. After that I went to Howard Law School and during my second year of law school my father died of lung cancer and I mentioned that now because it's important in tying into my story a little bit later. But that was definitely a significant event for me in my life for several reasons.
Speaker 2:After law school I practiced big law at Buchanan Ingersoll it's now Buchanan Ingersoll Rooney in Pittsburgh, pennsylvania, for three years, and then I went to a smaller communications regulatory firm in Washington DC where I practiced for almost three years. I thought that going from a large firm to a smaller firm was what I needed. I was feeling a lot of anxiety. I was feeling like this just isn't for me big law. It was too much. I had an ulcer. By the time I was 26 years old. Okay, not good, not good very early in practice and I thought, well, what I need is to just go to a smaller firm and maybe go back to DC, where so many of my friends are, I have more of a support system. So I did that and I realized I still wasn't really happy and wasn't feeling fulfilled. So I moved over to a nonprofit organization and basically ran a nonprofit for almost eight years in Washington DC that helped homeless and at-risk families get transitional housing, case management services, job training and job placement.
Speaker 2:During that time I did a couple of other things. I started in mediation, so I was conflict management and I was a certified mediator for a while. And I also started adjunct teaching at the University of the District of Columbia Law School. And that's where I realized, okay, I'm feeling my path. I'm either going to be a full-time mediator or I'm going to go into teaching.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I so enjoyed the interaction with the students. I felt like I really can give something back here, I believe. So I decided to go into full time teaching and that started at the University of Baltimore's law school where I was a clinical fellow in the community development clinic clinic and after that that really affirmed for me that I wanted to do teaching full time. So I pursued a tenure track position and I ended up at Washburn in Topeka, kansas, and I started the small business and nonprofit transactional clinic there and I also started out teaching property, I think for the first eight years race in the law. I taught and nonprofit law, entrepreneurial law, and ended up also helping to build and lead their externship program called 30 Year Anywhere.
Speaker 1:That's great, so that's so funny. When I hear people's full stories I'm like, hey, I was the director of the externship program at the law school for a little while. Oh, I went from big law to a smaller law firm to get Well, this is why we get along so well.
Speaker 2:I think Exactly.
Speaker 1:So you're at Washburn and you became really active in well-being in the state of Kansas. Is that right?
Speaker 2:Yes, I did and I am. I'm actually on the board of directors of K-Lab and have been since 2021. So that's really important to me. What really led me into well-being, I've got to say it was my students. As I mentioned, for the first eight years I was teaching property. I started the clinic there, and when students would come to my office they would say you know, I want to talk about the property exam or I have a question, or it was a clinical student and I always knew that there was something more than just the question about the exam or question about the content. And one day I asked a student how are you doing? And she said I'm doing great. And first of all, they kind of looked at me like I had two heads or something because no one was asking them that question. Right, and there ended up being lots of tears in that conversation and I thought, oh okay, and so I started asking that question a little bit more. And then students started to come to me and I had a box of tissues always ready, ready, and they would just kind of pour out and I thought, ok, we need to do something about this and we had a great dean of students, but sometimes students, as other people do, students kind of choose who they talk to about certain things. Choose who they talk to about certain things and, as one of the only people of color in the building who was a faculty member, there were many students who were students of color who came to me to have conversations. I was also the faculty advisor for BALSA and so I found myself in the position of not just students of color, all students, but certainly there were people who wanted someone who had similar experiences and backgrounds. So that's kind of how it started and I thought, well, I really want something more for my students. I want to be able to help them in a more significant way.
Speaker 2:So over the years I had been doing a lot of yoga. I became a yoga teacher, yoga and meditation teacher. So I started offering meditation sessions for my students and you know we would just block a room for an hour or so or half an hour and anyone who wanted to show up could show up, started doing that and then the pandemic hit and I took those meditation sessions online and not only would students show up, but faculty and staff would show up as well. And you know, just to I would do a little talk about a topic and then we would do a meditation session and my students also, especially clinic students, had access to me, more access than my other students, so they could call or text me. And students would call me and just kind of be in a little bit of a panic sometimes and I would try to calm them down.
Speaker 2:And I recognized all of this because I had been a very anxious student. I like to say that I think I was born anxious, so I had. I recognized the anxiety and I said to my husband one time when I got off of the phone with my students, said you know, I feel like I'm a wellness coach. Is that even a thing? And I Googled it and it was.
Speaker 2:And I thought, well, maybe this is some way of getting more skills and structure to be able to help students. So again, this is about the time that, right before the pandemic hit and everything closed down, when we went into lockdown and everybody was just at home doing everything from home, remotely, I actually decided to sign up for a training program to be a holistic wellness coach and it took about 10 months but I did that and we had to come up with a signature program and I thought I know exactly what I'm going to do. I'm going to create a program that helps law students. That's how it started and that evolved and grew into Well Law, which is a comprehensive digital and live resource that helps not only law students but lawyers and anyone working in the legal profession.
Speaker 1:That's fantastic, I mean it's. It takes a lot of self-awareness on your part to realize like this is the something I'm passionate about, this is something that, like I, can see myself having an impact on, and you did that multiple times during your career. So I have to ask from Kansas to the Netherlands.
Speaker 2:Okay, wow, the first time we were in the Netherlands was the 2018, 2019 academic year. My daughter was in eighth grade that year. What happened was when she was a child, we've always talked about doing a year abroad, spending a year abroad. And finally she was getting older and my husband and I kind of looked at each other and said if we're going to do this, we need to kind of do it soon. That's right. We decided we wanted to do it before she got to high school. So we looked at a lot of different places. We would have these kind of family meetings about where do we want to go. My husband is a big spreadsheet guy, so we had a spreadsheet of all the countries, all the different categories. We were rating them.
Speaker 2:The Netherlands kind of kept on popping up. I had spent a summer teaching there back in 2009 and and we really loved it and we loved the lifestyle and our daughter was pretty young back then, but she remembered enjoying it too. So it was always a possibility and, as it turned out, I had an opportunity to be a visiting professor at the University of Groningen. So we decided that's what we're going to do and so we were there. I was a visiting professor at the University of Groningen. So we decided that's what we're going to do. And so we were there. I was a visiting professor, I was planning on taking a leave of absence but my dean who was a new dean coming in. I had been on the dean search committee and so we had developed a relationship and she was like I really don't want to find someone to teach your clinic because I was the only one doing a transactional clinic. Don't want to find someone to teach your clinic because I was the only one doing a transactional clinic. Can you do it from the Netherlands? And I thought you know, not only can I do it, but I actually want to add in, as a learning outcome for my students the ability to be able to practice with anyone anywhere in the world. And adding this remote element to it was actually good in a sense that it was a transactional work, and I wanted them to get familiar with how to do this, because again, now this was before the pandemic, so no one was doing the transaction, the remote work, and so I said okay, so I was running my clinic from the Netherlands and being a visiting professor there, so it was almost like two jobs.
Speaker 2:My job at Washburn would start at three o'clock in the afternoon in the Netherlands, because that was the morning I would often work, and sometimes I had a faculty meeting that you know had me up at midnight or something like that. They were long days, but I did that for a year. We moved back to the States. After what? A few months the pandemic hit.
Speaker 2:Everybody was remote again and then our daughter said, who did ninth and 10th grade almost exclusively from her bedroom, said I want to finish high school in the Netherlands. Is that possible? And I thought, okay, well, I don't know, but I was very fortunate in that my law school allowed me and my dean allowed me to go back and to teach remotely again, because everything had been remote, and by then I was. We were opening up the externship program, which third year anywhere is. We place students all over the country, so they're remote anyway and that was the main thing I was doing. So anyway, it worked out. It was an easy fit.
Speaker 2:We went back and after that first year, when she was in 11th grade, I thought I cannot do the two things.
Speaker 2:It's not sustainable for me, it was not good for my own well-being, and so I decided to retire from Washburn after 18 years.
Speaker 2:I was going to do well law full-time at that point and the faculty of law at the University of Groningen. I had been doing a lot of well-being work, talking to PhD students and their supervisors, mostly with the faculty of law, but university-wide, doing a lot of talks on well-being, diversity and inclusion and leadership, and the Faculty of Law decided to institute a well-being, diversity and inclusion office and asked me basically to take a look at it to see if I would be interested in interviewing for the position. Well, I read it and I thought, well, this is everything that I do and it's everything that I've been doing here. So I decided to do that part-time so that I could spend the rest of my time dedicated to Well Law. And that's really how things evolved. Our daughter then decided to take her own gap year after graduating from international school in Groningen and to start at the University of Groningen in psychology actually this year, and so we kind of decided we want to be on the same continent as our only child.
Speaker 2:So that's our life now. Yeah, and I come back here about four times a year and work in person with legal employers and with law schools here.
Speaker 1:That's fantastic. So I think then you know, because, well, law is such a big part of what you do, do you want to tell us a bit more about your work there and how you work with law firms and law schools?
Speaker 2:Yes, well, law. Really. It began when I was training to be a holistic wellness coach, but it really was born out of two decades of experience as a lawyer, a law professor, as a coach, as a yoga teacher all of that and it was born out of a deep concern about the mental health and well-being of law students and legal professionals. I just saw and experienced how the culture was driven by pressure and perfectionism and chronic overwork and the grind right.
Speaker 1:The grind was like the goal.
Speaker 2:Exactly, and the grind was a badge of honor. Yes, yeah, you know. I mean, I remember when I first started practicing and saying to almost with pride that I worked seven days a week. Yeah right, it was definitely yeah, yeah, and so. But what I didn't realize and so. But what I didn't realize and what I experienced myself and didn't see at first that it just slowly erodes your health and connections, healthy connections with other people. Address this systemic problem and I wanted to offer proactive, sustainable support that prioritizes our humanness and prioritizes the ability for us to thrive and not just show up for work.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think one of the big parts there is people are actually more productive when they're thriving than they are when they're burned out.
Speaker 2:That's true, and one of the things that is difficult to get people to understand, though, or to do, is to back off from the way they have been doing things for so long, because it's been working right, and we also have this idea that it's our grind that is producing the results. That's right. Yeah, you know, if I'm doing this and I've been successful, I must need to keep doing it in order to keep on being successful, and we don't realize a lot of times until it's too late the damage that's been done and that it's not sustainable, the cost, basically, of this, and so it takes a while to raise awareness. That's really, I think, one of the most important things is to raise awareness about the other side, the damage that's done, both mentally and physically, to that chronic busyness and overwork, and to help people to integrate different practices into their lives so that they can actually start to pause and take breaks, and to build healthier habits that allow them to be happier and actually more productive.
Speaker 2:I was giving a talk at Law Student Summit, Wellness Summit, recently, and someone said to me why does more productivity have to be the goal? And I said you're absolutely right. For some people they do want to be more productive without the health cost, but other people it's no. I have been operating at this level for so long. I just want to be able to slow down and still be productive, but not more productive, I just want to do good work, yeah.
Speaker 1:And people have to realize who they are as as part of this and what, what's their goal Right, and and make sure they're in the right place. What I liked about what you said and I know we've talked about it before is that wellbeing in law is for everyone who works in a law, because, if I may point fingers at us lawyers, we are good at sharing our stress with other people in our work environment. So your paralegals, your admins, your electronic discovery, whoever else is working with you you're really sharing that, so I really like that you're approaching this as a as holistic within our field as well. But when we say well-being in law, what do we mean?
Speaker 2:Yeah, really good question. So I think that well-being in law means creating and sustaining conditions where legal professionals and not just lawyers but it's something that's foundational to what we're doing every day. It's foundational to the quality of legal work that we are bringing to our clients and to the community every day, and that includes not just our mental health, our physical health, our emotional, our relational everything about us, because we bring everything about us to our work, and so it has to be a holistic approach.
Speaker 1:And you and I have talked about this as well when you say we have to bring our whole selves. That's why there's such a nexus with inclusion and well-being, Because if someone does not feel they can be themselves at work, then they are fighting an additional battle and it really impacts well-being, doesn't it Absolutely?
Speaker 2:You really have to be able to know that you can show up authentically, that you feel a sense of belonging, that you have a voice, that you can make mistakes and it's going to be okay. It's a safe place to make mistakes and to grow. We all learn by trial and error, and sometimes we feel because we're made to feel, and sometimes we put the pressure on ourselves to be perfect, and that is just. It's not possible, it's not sustainable, and so we have to be in an environment that allows for mistakes and allows people to understand that. That's how we learn and that's how we grow.
Speaker 1:Absolutely, absolutely. It's such a good point, one of the things you know. You mentioned that yoga and meditation and then coaching. That was all part of your background and I think that mindfulness becomes a buzzword that some people can hear and really take in and then other people immediately push back from there, like I know that's not for me. You talk a little bit about this because you know you mentioned that we just sometimes need to take the pause and for me, sometimes that's what mindfulness really is just taking the break using a breath. So can you talk a little bit about those sort of more practical pieces?
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely, and, kim, that's right. Sometimes it really is taking a break. Mindfulness doesn't have to mean long, silent retreats or complicated rituals. At its core, it's really about paying attention on purpose, in the present moment and hopefully without judgment. So for legal professionals who are constantly looking at problems, maybe anticipating what the next crisis is and how to manage that, even a small pause can be transformative, and that's why I tell people I'm not even asking you to take five minutes.
Speaker 2:You can take 30 seconds or a minute. Before you walk into a meeting, before you walk into court, before you get on the next call, and just notice your breath. I mean right now, kim, if we were just to take a moment and I asked you to focus in and just notice the breath coming in and out of your body. Just notice that you're taking an inhalation. Maybe you feel your stomach move out with the inhalation and move back in with the exhalation. Maybe you notice where you're feeling your breath in your body or the pace of the breath, simply bringing your attention to your breath. And if you can do this for a moment with your eyes closed, that's even better. But even if you're walking, just bringing the attention to the breath, that takes us from that rushed state to a calmer state, and even those moments make a difference for our overall health Absolutely.
Speaker 1:And the listeners should know that I totally just did that. I closed my eyes Absolutely. And the listeners should know that I totally just did that. I closed my eyes because I even do it before I walk into the building every day. I mean I love what I do, but it just gives me a minute of like okay, and I take a couple of deep breaths and I walk to the elevator and it just like gets me focused, it just gets me in the mindset. Here I go. And so I think that those things people always say to me oh, I can never shut my mind off and I say that's a good thing, not asking you to shut off your mind.
Speaker 2:And that's one of the biggest misconceptions people have about meditation. And one thing that people are kind of repelled because they think well, my mind never shuts off. I just can't do that. I was just coaching someone the other day who said that and I said okay, I'll tell you what. Number one I don't want you to shut off your thoughts. What I'd like you to do is notice your thoughts, set your timer for three minutes I don't want you to do this for more than three minutes and if you can only do one minute, that's okay. And what I'd like you to do is to count the thoughts that come into your mind Okay, that's one thought and allow them to just pass by like a cloud. Oh, that's a thought. Oh, that's another thought. Well, that's another thought.
Speaker 2:And what that teaches us to do is to understand that we have thoughts, but we don't have to attach to them. It allows you to see those thoughts as separate from you and if you can allow them to just pass by, and even if you're counting them, you realize okay, I'm doing the practice of counting these thoughts, but I'm not going down the rabbit hole of a thought. And even if you do, as soon as you have that awareness of. Oh, I've been stuck on my grocery list for the last few minutes in my mind. That's okay, bring yourself back and say for a few more seconds. I'm just going to count my thoughts and watch them pass.
Speaker 2:That sounds like it could be just a useless exercise, but it really is important in helping us to see that we're not our thoughts and the moments of wow. What happened between those thoughts? I actually think I had a couple of seconds of just peace. Those seconds will grow into greater seconds and greater seconds and we'll realize that our mind is being trained to have a little bit more calm space between the thoughts. That's just space between our thoughts.
Speaker 1:Yeah, because that space is what helps us sort of reground ourselves, isn't it? Absolutely so. You mentioned earlier that you're still involved in K-LAP and that's the Kansas Lawyers Assistance Program. Most states have a lawyers assistance program you can reach out if you're seeking help, if you're an attorney and other professions I'm sure have them. Other businesses have what are called employee assistance programs, somewhat of a similar model. But so I have to ask in the law that the conversation about well-being is, I think it's definitely more prevalent than it ever has been, seems more open, but is there still a stigma around? I was going to say seeking help but even just taking a break or focusing on well-being, is that getting better?
Speaker 2:It is getting better, but it absolutely is not where it needs to be. I think that we've made a lot of progress in normalizing the conversation, especially around stress and burnout. I think that there still is stigma for people who are experiencing challenges with substance abuse or with alcoholism substance abuse or with alcoholism and I still hear that people don't talk about the fact that they're in recovery or that they are still struggling, and so I think that there's still stigma around that. But the stigma even around mental health challenges still, and even just basic stress and overwork it still lingers and there many times is not enough mental health support. Many times people find it very difficult just to admit that they feel vulnerable. So in a profession like ours that really values control and competence, and we're asking for help can feel like a huge risk that you just don't want to take. We still have a ways to go.
Speaker 1:I couldn't agree with you more, and I do think that one of the most important parts is that we keep talking about it.
Speaker 2:Absolutely Right and it's also important for leadership and whether it's in a law firm, in-house department, wherever it is that leadership is talking about, it is modeling what needs to happen and is creating the environment, the culture of well-being in the work environment. It's really not going to happen if it doesn't happen at the leadership level and ensuring that people have the environment where they do feel safe.
Speaker 1:Yeah, are there some first steps that maybe leaders can take? Is it talking to Well Law? Are there first steps that leaders can take?
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely Talking to Well Law is actually a great start, I think it is yeah, we have a wellness workplace inventory that legal employers can take to see where they are, they can survey their leadership, but we have a list of things that they can just look at and say how are we doing in these different areas? It does start with awareness. It starts with the ability for leaders to say, hey, I can be doing this better. There are some changes we can make. We have training programs that help people to not just in leadership but also to understand the wellness culture of their organization, to have just basic skills that they can develop around well-being. So our trainings are geared toward both the individual and teams and the entire culture. We do group coaching, one-on-one coaching, executive coaching and, of course, we have our Well Law app which people can use so that they have well-being resources right at their fingertips, and we have the conversation cards that you can start to feel familiar with.
Speaker 1:Yes, exactly, we're just going to start using those, for we're going to start doing wellbeing week in law.
Speaker 2:That is excellent. I'm so happy to hear that and so those cards can start a conversation. They're actually conversation and practice cards, so it's an easy way to start talking about these issues within your organization. And also you can use the practice cards for little challenges and things like that. It just makes it a little bit easier. It's a, it's a bridge to be able to bring this into the workplace.
Speaker 1:That's fantastic and I did mention that we met because you were involved in the wellbeing summits and I took part in the New York ones. Can you tell us a little bit about those summits?
Speaker 2:Yes, wellbeing at Work was started by a man named Chris Cummings, who is from the UK, and he was inspired by his partner's mental health challenges at work and the fact that his partner wasn't getting the support that he needed at his job. So Chris decided to start an organization that really highlighted well-being in the workplace and it turned into this global organization that does summits all over the globe. I think that they have summits on every continent, so during any month of the year there's going to be a summit going on someplace in the world. Chris and I first met in London. We were both speaking at the New York International Bar Association there, and he said I'd like you to get involved in well being at work. And so, of course, I was living in the Netherlands at the time, well still, and I first was at the Amsterdam Wellbeing at Work Summit, and since then I'm in Chicago now for the US Midwest Summit, and this is my fifth summit. It's the third summit.
Speaker 2:The panel that I'm involved in is specifically on lawyer mental health and well-being, which is what we did in New York. So I'm really happy to see that this particular panel is continuing and that we're really highlighting and talking about this, because the statistics are still really awful. In fact, the most recent surveys comprehensive surveys that have been taken, show that the mental health and overall well-being of lawyers is not getting better, it's getting worse. The depression rates, the number of people who have contemplated suicide those numbers have gotten worse. The legal profession is still the loneliest profession. It has one of the highest incidents of depression and one of the highest incidents of suicide. And so we still again. We've come a long way, but we have a long way to go.
Speaker 1:So, janet, if an individual is curious about how to focus on their individual well-being, what are some steps they can take?
Speaker 2:That's a great question, kim. I always say start with self-awareness. You can ask yourself what feels life-giving to me right now, what feels like it's helping to restore me and what feels like it's life-depleting for me. And you can kind of take an inventory and things in your work life, things in your personal life, your relationships, and just ask those questions what's life giving and what's life depleting so that you can have an awareness and make some decisions about that. And then, when you're ready to make changes, just start on one small thing at a time.
Speaker 2:You don't have to make big overhauls, but think about what's one small thing I can do today. What do I need today? That may be a walk, that may be journaling a little bit, it may be talking to someone you trust, it may be setting a boundary that you haven't yet set. And just remember that well-being isn't about perfection. It's not about making big resolutions. It's sometimes about just micro practices that you can integrate into your day that are meaningful for you, and letting that slowly, slowly, make the changes to your life that need to be made.
Speaker 1:That's terrific advice, thank you. Well, I'm so grateful that you're leading these conversations and that I don't know who at the you know Wellbeing at Work Summit put me on that panel and reached out. But I'm so grateful because I really enjoy learning from you and you know the more of us who are pushing this forward and having these conversations and saying sometimes it's okay to not be okay, even for lawyers.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, and I am so glad that we met as well, and thank you for your contribution to the panel. I hope that we get to work together again. Yes, it's great and having this conversation on your podcast. I'm grateful for that because it's just so important that people know that, as you said, it's okay to not be okay, but it's also okay to ask for help.
Speaker 1:That's right. Well, on that note, thank you so much from producer Kate and myself for joining us. I hope we can bring you back to the podcast with updates soon and I really do look forward to working with you again. Thank you, jim. Thanks, kim. Thank you for tuning into this episode of Legally Bond. If you're listening and have any questions for me, want to hear from someone at the firm or have a suggestion for a future topic, please email us at legallybond at bskcom. Also, don't forget to rate, review and subscribe to Legally Bond wherever podcasts are downloaded. Until our next talk, be well.
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