Mindfulness: How it's linked to a lawyer's well-being and why lawyers should practice it with Jeena Cho

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Hello everyone. Welcome to another amazing episode of the Dominate Law Podcast show. This is your host. Narrate. Dominate Law is a podcast that helps lawyers to create a bigger future in terms of time, money, purpose, and relationships. And it's a place where we listen to those who have interesting experience we can all learn from. Today I'm super excited to have as our guest, Gina Cho. Ms. Gina Cho. Gina is a California lawyer and a mindfulness advocate. When she was 10, she migrated from South Korea. Gina has always wanted to become a lawyer so that she could fight the evil of the world. Just has her favorite TV show, law and Order. She studied as at Francis Lewis High School, New York, and graduated from the State University of New York at Buffalo Law School in 2003. She also received a degree in psychology from the University of Buffalo in 2009.

I'm a big fan of psychology, so I really think that's a great idea because lawyers influence people, and psychology is really important in that, in that space. Uh, she initially started working at Cohen, Jason and Foster in 2004, and before opening her own practice, she worked in few different places as Assistant state attorney. In the year 2007, Gina and her husband Jeff Curl, started their own practice called JC Law Group pc. She was an adjunct professor of University of San Francisco Law School in the year 2014. She's a regular contributor of Above the Law, Forbes Business, uh, sorry, Bloomberg, D-N-A-A-B-A Journal, Lawyerist and Ms. Jd, she's the author of the book called The Anxious Lawyer, published by a BA, and also authored Lexi N Guide on how to manage your law office as well. She's currently hosting her own podcast, uh, if I'm not mistaken, she has done quite a few episodes, at least 80 the last time I checked, uh, it's called The Resilient Lawyer. Gina, welcome, welcome to Dominate Law Podcast Show.

Thank you so much for having me.

You have an interesting story, right? So you are from New York. Uh, where do you live, by the way? Right now?

I am in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Perfect. So you go across the country, but before you did that, you did your law degree and also, uh, a degree in psychology. Um, what did you, what do you feel you got from your psychology degree? Because I don't see too many lawyers, you know, studying psychology.

Well, you know, I think lawyering is all about human relationships, right? People typically come to us because there was some breakdown in the human relationships that we have with other people. And when people come to us, they're typically in distress. They're, you know, rarely do people come to see lawyers with happy news. So, so I think psychology is helpful for understanding the human mind and what makes people tick and kind of, sort of looking under the hood a little bit, looking beyond just the legal issue that the clients are presenting.

That's awesome. Yeah, that's absolutely true, right? Because, uh, you have to understand people, you have to influence people, you know, even jury is people, right? So even a judge is a person, so, right, you're in the business of human beings. Yeah, that makes ton of sense. Um, now tell me a little bit about, you know, what is mindfulness? Before we talk about mindfulness, I know we wanted to spend a bit of time today for all of you listening today to really figure out, you know, how can you, because law is pretty stressful. You know, either you are winning or you are losing, you know, if I were to use that term loosely, so it can, people can take things personally, and it can create stress, and, and then you have, depending on the type of practice, you may not get paid right away. You'll only get paid if things work out, you know, all of that stuff. But you still have to pay your people every month. So, uh, it can be a very stressful thing. And, you know, mindfulness is a technique that can help you with that. But before we talk about this, so for the person who has never heard the word mindfulness, can you define it for us, please?

Sure. Very simply put, mindfulness means to be in the present moment without preference and judgment. I guess to just give a practical example, I'm sure all of your listeners that had the experience of being at the office, maybe they're doing legal research or responding to an email or whatever you may be doing at work, and then your mind drifts away. You're thinking about, do I remember to pick up the dry cleaning or thinking about a conversation we, that you had with your child last night, or thinking about something that happened with your spouse? And so we're constantly in this state of distraction, and when we're being more mindful, we're noticing all of those distractions and intentionally returning the mind back to what is happening in this moment.

So, yeah, uh, I, I, I have practiced mindfulness a little bit, and I've taken some workshops. I have to be honest, I don't do it regularly, so I'm guilty from that sense. So mindfulness is not controlling your attention. It's rather noticing that your attention is drifting and then learning to bring the attention back to whatever it is. So if, if I'm eating, for example, just bring the attention back to eating and the smell and the, and, and the way the food feels in your mouth and, and the tastes and so forth. Am I correct?

That's right.

Right. So, um, one of the experiments that, uh, one of the things they taught me is, you know, to, to, you know, taste the raisin, and it took a, it took a three minute exercise, so mm-hmm. <laugh>, yeah. It put in your mouth. And can you talk about that? Uh, if you, if you know what I'm, I'm sure you know what I'm talking about. So,

Yeah, it's, it's a very common exercise that they'll teach a lot in any mindfulness class that you go to and you take one raisin and you begin by really looking at it. I mean, rarely do we actually look at the food that we're consuming and perhaps thinking about, you know, the journey that that little raisin had to take to get into your hand. You know, someone had to plant the seeds, grow the grape, harvest the grapes, dry it in the sun, ship it, pack it, you know, get into your store, and then, you know, of course, the people that's working at the supermarket had to put it up on the, the shelves, and then it somehow made its way to you. And I mean, there's just sort of a miraculousness about, you know, that whole journey. And then when you actually look at a raisin, like really closely look at it, there's just, there's different textures. There's, um, there's a smell to the raisin as well. And then when you start eating it, if you eat it really slowly and with intention, you'll notice there's different layers of flavors happening. There's of course, the sweetness, but then there's also a little bit of a tartness. And so, um, so often they'll use the raisin eating exercise as a way to teach how to eat more mindfully.

Right. And what I got out of it is that, uh, I never thought raisin was so interesting after the exercise.

Mm-hmm <affirmative>. Yeah.

Most of us are busy, busy, busy, busy, busy. We just chug off food. Even when we are sitting and talking to our kids or spouse or anybody else, Uhhuh, Uhhuh, we are not there. We are like somewhere else. Mm-hmm

<affirmative>. Right? Exactly. Right.

So talk about that. You know, so talk about what real live life is like for most of us, you know, versus a mindful life or a mindful existence.

Yeah. You know, I, I think as I mentioned earlier, like all of us have has this natural tendency for our mind to be someplace different than where we are physically. And I think for lawyers, that has a very practical implication, right? When you're sitting with a client and the client is, you know, telling you a story or they're telling you some details about their case, you wanna have all of your attention on that client. Because if not, you can miss important facts. You can really miss, uh, you know, an opportunity to connect with your client. And, and of course the same goes through when you're doing legal research. You wanna have sort of all of your mind, all of your effort on the research assignment that you're working on, and noticing when you're distracted, and then actually noticing that moment of choice where you can say, okay, I am, I am noticing that I'm distracted and I can come back to the thing that I'm working on. Or, you know, it's perhaps you might just decide, you know what, I, I need a break so that I can refocus on what it is that I'm working on. So it's all about, um, just noticing the mind as it, you know, as it does what it does, right? It will go through cycles of distraction, it will go through cycles of awareness, and then the choosing to recommit to whatever is happening in the present moment.

That's great. So you're saying, um, what's the benefit though? I mean, lawyers, you know, get paid by the minute, so why do I need to do this? Like, I mean, like how can this benefit me as a person, my family? Like, can you share, like, let's take one by one. So can you tell a story or, because you work with a lot of lawyers on this, right? Yes. You, you talk, uh, around the country, you, you do courses for bar associations, you do lots and lots of work on this. So, uh, you have tons of experience with this. How long have you been doing this with lawyers?

Uh, several years. Three, four years.

Right. So give us, gimme one ex. So let's take different parts of life. So talk to me about a lawyer and, and how this perhaps, you know, impacted his, uh, work.

Sure. Um, so as to, you know, start with, um, I remember before I started practicing mindfulness, I would get up in the morning and do, what many people do is look at the calendar, right? And I will have series of meetings, maybe there's a hearing, you know, there's lots of stuff happening in the calendar, and it would just feel completely overwhelmed that my mind would go through all the different events that I have, all the different things that I have to do that day. And then the mind also has this natural tendency, especially for lawyers to imagine the absolute worst case scenario is I'm thinking about the hearing that I have to go to later today. And I'll sort of imagine, you know, the case just kind of going off the rails and really thinking about all the different ways in which things may not go my way.

And what I realized after I started practicing mindfulness is that those thoughts are not helpful. <laugh>, it, it may be true that I might go to the hearing and things may not go my way, but it's also possible that things will, and rarely do, we think about the situation in which we walk into the courtroom and the judge, you know, grants your motion and you walk out in 30 seconds or a minute. So kind of noticing the mind, um, is always in this state of imagining the worst case scenario. And then actually shifting the thought away from that and saying, okay, what is actually happening right now? And in this moment right now, I'm sitting here drinking my coffee, so let me just sit here and enjoy drinking my coffee, rather than thinking about, you know, the 150 ways in which things may not go my way. 'cause that's not really productive, you know, it's, it, all it does is just increase anxiety and stress.

Yeah, that's a great point. So a lot of us, I guess the older we get, we realize life is right now this second, we don't own the last second, we don't own the next second, we just own this second.

That's right. But

Most of us, because things like mindfulness are never taught, miss the this, and which means we are missing life. Hmm. Right? You can have 300 cups of coffee, but you don't remember having any of them because you're busy doing something else. Mm-hmm <affirmative>. So what you're saying is you, I mean, yes, you can have a busy career, you can have all these things, but you can really have happiness as in as more moments than you would otherwise with mindfulness.

Yeah. Yeah. Um, and you know, the other part where mindfulness has helped me so much is, you know, and I think a lot of lawyers also experience this, is that we're constantly in this state of, um, self-doubt. You know, we, we question our ability to be a good lawyer. We question ourselves. We, and I think there's just some level of feeling that, that discomfort and just being in, in my own skin, you know, I used to always believe that I wasn't good enough. You know, I wasn't smart enough, I wasn't as good enough lawyer, I didn't go to the right law school. Um, you know, I wasn't working hard enough, just like this constant sense of failing at life. And I, I realized that those thoughts are not true. They're not facts. Right? And, and also that all the thoughts that go through your head are not necessarily facts.

You know, your mind just will produce these random thoughts that all it does is harm you. Um, and, and also you can sort of detach yourself from those thoughts, you know, when my mind is saying, oh, you know, you're, you're terrible at this, you know, you're just going to blow this hearing and, and the judge is going to rule against you, and your client is gonna, you know, fire you and all, you know, on and on and on. I can just look at those thoughts and go, oh, they're just thoughts. They're just random thoughts, and I don't have to give it any weight, and I can think about something completely different.

Yeah, that's an excellent point. Um, because a lot of people who become lawyers are hardworking. They study, they're smart, so they win in most life. But unfortunately in law, usually there's one winner and one loser. That's right. It's the way it is, right? Because if you are getting that motion, somebody else is not getting what they wanted, you know what I mean? Mm-hmm <affirmative>. So, so it is what it is. So, but what we, what makes it worse, what you're saying is those stupid thoughts that we make up because one day something bad happened and all of a sudden we are imagining that bad thing happening again. Now when you walk into that law room, you are already kind of thinking, I'm gonna lose this. Mm-hmm <affirmative>. Already not being the best version of yourself. You're already in doubt. And of course, when you're in doubt and when you're not in that positive mind frame, more likely things could go wrong.

Right? Right. So you're saying is you're getting anxiety, pressure, stress, all of this stuff about nothing based on this stupid voice in your head that's telling you all this nonsense, <laugh> and mindfulness. It allows you to notice that and say, it is nonsense, it is stupid thoughts. I have, it is not, it doesn't happen yet. It none of this is true. So instead of being negative or going in with the mindset, oh, I'm gonna lose like that other time and so forth, you can really choose to have totally different thoughts. You can choose to visualize the day when you had a grade, you know, uh, similar, you know, meeting or whatever, whatever you're going into. Am I, am I making sense? Am I understanding? Yeah,

<laugh>. Yeah.

Right. So you're saying mindfulness helps you realize these are just not real. It's, it's like, it's almost like we have this thing speaking to us in our head, and, uh, a lot of us sometimes believe that more than we believe reality. What you're saying is mindfulness taught you to realize that it is what it is, just a voice in your head, which is not really real. It's based on your fears and, you know, whatever it is.

Right, exactly.

And do you find after you practice mindfulness and do this, these kind of negative thoughts, the self-doubt, slowly start vanishing?

Um, yeah, I think those voices, the, the voice of the inner critic, um, it does subside a lot after a while, but also, you know, I can just identify it as such, right? So when those thoughts come up, I can just say, oh, there's my inner critic, you know, go and, and she's, and she's being very loud in my own head and not take those thoughts so seriously. So I think that's really the key is recognizing that, you know, not all of your thoughts deserve the same amount of attention and that, or have merit and, um, and taking your yourself and your thought a little less seriously, which I think kind of, you know, then naturally opens up the possibility of having a more enjoyable life. 'cause you're not constantly sort of enslaved to all of these thoughts that are going through your head.

That's an excellent point. So it's not necessarily, these thoughts will come less, but the power these thoughts have will go become less and less mm-hmm

<affirmative>. Exactly.

Right. And now, like they say, life is a self-fulfilling prophecy. So instead of going in with a thought that I'm gonna lose, and I didn't go to the right school and I'm a terrible lawyer, and my client is gonna fire me, and I hate firing me in public, you're going with a positive mindset. Because, because otherwise you're thinking the whole day about this, you know, meeting or being in front of a judge and you're ruining your whole day and perhaps even ruining that event because you're already having all these negative thoughts. Instead, you can have a wonderful day. The thoughts come, you know, to, it goes away. It doesn't make you feel stressed out. And then you actually go in for that, you know, hearing, and you have a great hearing,

Right? Yeah. And, and also, you know, I think the other place where we can often get trapped in these thought loop is remembering the past. So I know this is true for me, and I think this is probably true for most lawyers, is that you can probably think of a hearing or some, maybe it's a jury trial or some experience you had from your career in the past. And, and for some reason the mind just keeps repeating it over and over and over and over again. You know, I remember I had a jury trial where I just felt like the judge just completely made such the wrong decision and ended up dismissing the case mid trial. And you know, when I, I can tell you right now, when I think about that case, it doesn't matter that it happened 10 years ago. It's as though it's happening to me right now. You know, I can, I can notice my heart starts to be faster, you know, I can feel all the stress and I, I can feel myself feeling angry and hostile and, you know, and that's not helpful, <laugh>, right? Right. All it's doing is just adding extra stress and anxiety into your life right now. And there's of course, nothing I can do about this jury trial that I lost, you know, 10 years ago,

Right? I mean, lawyers are in the business of fighting battles. So if you're fighting 3000 battles, you're gonna have probably thousand that didn't go your way. So, so instead of reliving it, what you're saying is you learn to let go of it,

Right?

Makes sense. So it is what it is. So you're in the business of fighting battles. So not let anyone battle that didn't go your way, run the rest of your life or, you know, keep coming back. So, so mindfulness allows you to notice that and, and, and, and, uh, you know, um, let it go. So that's awesome. Um, now, can, can we do an exercise? Can we, can you, so, so people kind of get a feel for mindfulness. Can we do a couple of exercises? So just one exercise.

Yeah. Um, so I, you know, we, we'll do a very short sort of 60 minute, uh, 62nd, um, meditation practice. And I know for so many lawyers when they think about meditation, they're thinking about, you know, going to some ashram somewhere sitting cross-legged on the floor, you know, or they think of like monks and their orange, um, <laugh> robes or something like that. And really, when I talk about meditation, all we're talking about is training the mind for optimal performance. So just as if you are an athlete, you would train your body for optimal performance. You can also train your mind. So we can train our mind to focus more, to have longer sustained periods of concentration. So we'll do a very short meditation right now. So to start and just beginning by finding a comfortable seated position, so actually observing your posture for a moment. And I know for myself, I'm constantly sort of hunched over because I'm working on my computer. So if it feels good, you can roll your shoulders back and open up the torso area.

And if you'd like, you can allow your eyes to close and just noticing whatever it is that you may be able to notice after you close your eyes and perhaps taking a couple of deep breaths. So breathing in and breathing out. And so we're going to use the breath as an anchor. So for the next little while, just noticing the breath as it moves in and out of the body. So not changing how you're breathing in any way. The body knows how to breathe, but just resting the attention and the breath. Join the sensation of non-doing, non-striving, just simply being here with the breath.

And now let's close the practice by beginning to wiggle the fingers and toes and moving your body in any way that feels good to you. You can stretch your arms, stretch your spine, and when you feel ready, allow the eyes to open. So that was it, just a very short guided meditation, and you can practice this throughout the day. You know, so often when we talk about stress management, I think lawyers tend to think about it as these giant, I don't know, some big project, like, oh, I'm gonna go on a vacation and then I'll de-stress. But really, the stress management is all about having regular practices throughout your day where you can allow your stress level to return back to homeostasis. So there's a set of physiological responses that happen when you're under stress. And what most lawyers do is that they don't have practices to allow distress to subside. So we wanna have regular good, healthy habits to help us let go of the stress. 'cause we can't control the stress inducing events of our lives, right? 'cause they're external to us. And so the only thing we can control is our response, our reaction to these stressful moments,

Right? So mindfulness is something is about noticing, right? So here you're anchoring and noticing your breath. You could notice the smell of the coffee you're drinking mm-hmm <affirmative>. But it's about focusing your attention on one thing at a time. Am I correct?

Right. Exactly.

Right. The smell of the coffee, the way it feels, the way it tastes. So really just even when you're having lunch, you can have a mindful lunch. Many of us don't even remember or feel what we tasted like because we are thinking about something else.

Yeah. And we tend to go through so much of our life that way, you know, when, um, you know, we, we sit down and we have meals that we don't remember, or we haven't enjoyed a single bite of, you know, we have conversations with friends and colleague and loved ones, and we are just not fully there. And, and I think we can, we all know the experience of having someone just fully there listening to you, and they are just, you know, really connected to you. And then you can also notice the difference when someone is really distracted. You know, you can tell when someone is thinking about their to-do list and, you know, their mind is sort of going off. And so I think just cultivating that ability to be more present to whatever is happening is so critical for lawyers.

Right, right. That's, that's great. That, can you tell us, I, I, I think there's so much we can talk, um, is is there a resource, is there a way to get to know what you're up to about mindfulness? What are some of the things that people could look up if they're interested in mindfulness?

Sure. They can visit my website. It's gina cho.com. J-E-E-N-A-C-H o.com. Um, they can also check out my book, the Anxious Lawyer, published by the American Bar Association. And as you mentioned earlier, I have a podcast called The Resilient Lawyer.

Right. And how do I get to the podcast?

Uh, you can go to iTunes or anywhere where you can download podcasts and just look for the resilient lawyer.

Perfect. Perfect. Gina, I really enjoyed this, and maybe we should do this again at some point, but, uh, uh, to wrap up, can you give us a little bit of a history of mindfulness? Because like you said, it didn't come from some monk somewhere, right? So tell us a little bit about where did it come from?

Um, you know, so I mean, mindfulness and meditation is of course a very ancient practice. Um, we know that it, people were using meditation as a way to still their mind and body, even before the age of Buddha. So, you know, certainly, and I am certainly not an expert on, on the history of mindfulness and meditation. Um, but, but I think more recently people have just become more interested in this topic of mindfulness and meditation because we are now able to use science to verify all of these things that I think, you know, uh, people throughout history sort of knew intuitively. We know that these practices, um, actually changes your brain and it actually changes your physiology so that you can become more resilient so that you're not so, so swept away by all of these events in your life so that you can feel more stable.

Right. Um, yeah, I, I think I've heard the name John Ki, what is the name?

John Cabon. Yes, John. So he, so he's often, um, thought of as sort of the person that brought these practices from the east into the United States. So he's a researcher at, um, university of Massachusetts, and he went to India and really learned these practices and wanted to bring it back and also teaches in a very secular way. And so kind of removing it from the religious context or connotations and offering it as tools that people can use, um, to better themselves, you know, to live a more fulfilled and joyful life.

Right. Sounds good. I really enjoyed talking to you, Gina, and, um, I want to thank you for your time and I want to thank our listeners. Um, and please, if you have any questions on mindfulness, reach out to Gina and, uh, if you have any questions on digital marketing, uh, because that's something we, we, we work with a lot of lawyers on, reach out to us. Thanks for listening. If you like, like this podcast, please feel free to share it on social media and also, um, you know, write a review for us on iTunes. Um, we look forward to seeing you again. Have a wonderful day.

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