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Key points
- An obsession with work doesn’t lead to mental health and wellness.
- You have to find a right balance with physical activity and free time.
- Even a short walk each day can better your overall health and mindset.
- The goal is to achieve wellness through healthy practices.
After landing his new job, Mr. Lauren was busy. Most law firms that make a “lateral” hire from another firm expect these hires to come with a portfolio of clients – in fact, that’s part of the draw. But in Mr. Lauren’s case, the last thing any new firm wanted was the crowd of white-collar criminals that had got him into trouble. In effect, he was hired on spec, and in spite of his previous business connections.
So, in addition to settling into his firm and jumping into the middle of several cases, Mr. Lauren was out most nights hustling clients. He also joined three Bar Association committees. He audited a course on legal marketing, and started blogging on a legal website.
Did he sleep? Intermittently, but he was determined that this time he wouldn’t flunk out. In fact, he tried to be so busy that he’d literally have no time to fall back into his old patterns of cowboy lawyering – that is, of thinking up new ways to get clients out of jams. “I’ll just keep my head down and work,” he said.
But he wasn’t sure he could pull it off. He lacked the self-confidence to assume that he’d be a success in his new endeavor. He had to prove himself to himself every day. He had to break his own records for churning out work and turning in billable hours. He drove himself. He knew people thought he was “a little obsessive,” but he didn’t care. “I’m working for myself at this point,” he said, “not for them.”
He saw being worn out as a means to a happy ending. He told himself that it wouldn’t last forever, but he didn’t put up any guard rails or limitations. His commitment was total, unyielding, and tended to seal him off from everything else except work.
In that regard, he was making himself curiously dysfunctional, insofar as he was able to do little except work and attend to the growing needs of his family. Work became a means of keeping him from what he feared was a renegade self. It was helping him prove, over and over, every single day, that he was an effective lawyer.
In the minimal time that he had to spare, he was still mopping up the fallout from his screw-up at his previous firm. “It’s amazing,” he told me, “how you think a matter is finally resolved, but it isn’t. Problems hide out in the woodwork, like rats.” I was struck by this imagery, and realized that his recent past seemed to him like a horror show that wasn’t done yet. All this work, day and night, was a way of keeping “rats” from coming out and literally eating his lunch. He was motivated by wanting to do better and further set things right. Still, fear had triggered the basic human flight-or-fight response, and he had chosen to fight.
So, I had my work cut out for me. Obviously, Mr. Lauren would not have been in my office if he’d thought that his current exhaustion and obsessiveness were just the way things should be. He knew he needed to slow down, but he didn’t know how.
I asked if he ever got any exercise, and he said no. I suggested that at least a walk each day, for 15 or 20 minutes, would be good for his mind and body. My thought was that he’d like the idea because he could still spend time thinking about work, if that’s what he wanted, or preferably other matters. He’d at least relieve the strain of a highly focused regimen of unremitting work. Even when things are hard—like intense and stressful work—a change of pace and environment can produce positive effects.
There would have been no point telling Mr. Lauren to train for a marathon (too much time, too exhausting on its own), but there was plenty of reason to show him that other activities were not mere distractions and, moreover, could give him a good feeling, even a sense of some accomplishment. Lifting weights, running, swimming fifty laps: These energize the body but also encourage a new type of self-esteem. I hoped that he’d feel that he wasn’t letting himself down by getting out of the office for a while.
Mr. Lauren preferred the gym. After all, the gym was like the office even though it wasn’t the office. It was a challenge; it provided a sense of accomplishment; you needed a shower when you were done. I also hoped that it would be a segue into meeting new people. Even if Mr. Lauren met only a couple of people, he’d reacquaint himself with the sheer fun of talking about stuff that wasn’t involved with one’s personal existential crisis. He’d get back into the natural rhythms of one person’s sharing their life with another, however superficially.
Of course, we talked about other activities he might try. Why not sign up for art history, or Greek mythology, or wine appreciation! The point was to break up the frenzy and realize that, notwithstanding, he could still survive. If we’ve talked ourselves into destructive patterns, it helps to prove to ourselves that we can break from them. We need empirical evidence that we’re not boxed in.
He had options. The goal was (and always is) to achieve wellness through personal growth and understanding as well as physical activity. In the time that he had been at his new firm, now almost a year, Mr. Lauren had accomplished a lot. People respected him. They knew he was committed. He didn’t have to turn himself inside out for people to maintain their high opinion of him. His long-term self-interest required that he start acting, right now, in ways that would keep him from collapsing. We forget, sometimes, that correlative to the idea of delayed gratification is the belief that short-term stability is necessary if we’re to reach our long-term objectives.
No one says that it’s easy to come back from a tough break. But we have to take care of ourselves along the way.
Mr. Lauren is a classic example of how “self-help” can go too far. Because we care desperately that we recover our previous sense of well-being, we don’t always know when to stop. So, it’s important to regain perspective.
The point is to maintain a kind of balance, so that no aspect of our lives becomes so dominant that we lose ourselves as whole human beings.
