029 Focus on having a great life | Clarissa Rayward

“Put simply the pace of life coupled with a number of other things at the moment is creating a lot of havoc for a lot of people. It’s something we really need to start addressing, thinking about and making shifts in how we live so that we can be well and live as long as we can”

— Clarissa Rayward -

When I heard Clarissa’s key note speech at the We are Podcast conference recently I was moved by the statistic that 1 in 3 lawyers will struggle with depression, anxiety or some form of a mental health challenge at some stage in their career.  As Clarissa rightly says we consult a lawyer at our most difficult and stressful times in our lives so professionally lawyers are dealing with conflict and negative situations daily.

Clarissa’s journey as the “happy family lawyer” began in 2013 when she started writing a blog which has become a vehicle to not only create a shift in herself but to also to make a difference in her profession.

Inspire yourself with these essential insights from Clarissa  

We spoke about 

• Shifting focus to be a happy family lawyer

• Some of the drivers for the rates of depression in legal professionals

• Jerome Doraisamy’s experience as a law student and his quest to help others

• Creating a supportive environment in the work place

• Key elements to disengage from work

• The impact of the pace of life on our wellbeing

• What success looks like for Clarissa and how this differs to traditional legal measures

• The value of self reflection

• Supportive practices for living a happy life

• Clarissa’s book “Happy lawyer, happy life”

• Enjoying the relationships in your life

Value Quotes 

“I try and work with family’s in a way that keeps them outside of traditional court processes and gives them the best chance to move forward after a divorce with some semblance of a relationship intact”

“To open up a conversation around how we can live better as lawyers, manage the stresses that come with being a professional in this space and ideally try and reduce the statistic”

“We hear a lot of the phrase in our industry of ‘compassion fatigue’, where dealing with these difficult moments and tragedies all the time starts to rub off on our mental health as well and makes it more difficult for us to cope”

“One of the things that I think is really important to our mental health, wellbeing, just our capacity to live life well is rest”

“Rest comes in a number of different ways. Rest is nightly sleeping and many of us don’t get enough sleep on a day to day basis but rest is also the capacity to disconnect from your job”

“That seems to be another one of those big precursors to depression and anxiety as I just can’t disconnect and enable my mind the time it needs to heal itself”

“Put simply the pace of life coupled with a number of other things at the moment is creating a lot of havoc for a lot of people. It’s something we really need to start addressing thinking about, and making shifts in how we live so that we can be well and live as long as we can”

“We can get very caught up in other people’s success stories and their own markers of success rather than pausing and thinking what does it mean for me, what is important to me, what do I want to look back on at the end of my life…”

“Trying to have a positive mindset and seeing the world from a place of opportunity”

“I think you can be a great lawyer but it’s probably more important to focus on having a great life”

“Taking the time to allow yourself to enjoy the people around you, your family, your good friends, whoever it is. Make sure you make time for that stuff.”

If you got value from this episode if you have not yet done so please Subscribe, Rate and Review on iTunes or Stitcher. You can follow the instructions here.  If you know someone else that would get value from this episode as well please share it with them.

Until next time fabulous podcast listener, I’m Bev and I invite you to live the fab life with me now!

Episode Links

You can find Clarissa at:

Website: www.thehappyfamilylawyer.com

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thehappyfamilylawyer/

Clarissa’s interview with Jerome Doraisamy on overcoming anxiety and depression: http://www.thehappyfamilylawyer.com/podcast/episode-6-overcoming-anxiety-depression-jerome-doraisamy/

026 Act on unproductive anxiety | Kay Lindley

“Living fabulously is to think about your approach to life and the links of wellbeing from a physical, mental, spiritual and emotional perspective. To put that all together and be fulfilled to have that authentic life”

— Kay Lindley -

Hearing Kay say she lost who she was for a lot of her life made me realise how anxiety can rob you of your very essence. When someone is dealing with anxiety issues it can be easy to say ‘stop worrying’. However anxiety is a persistent pattern that the mind is locked into about something that may or may not happen in the future. Kay is a compassionate and insightful coach who is making a lasting difference to her clients and shares from a place of wisdom having conquered her own anxiety.

Inspire yourself with these essential insights from Kay

We spoke about 

• Kay’s passion for helping people become unflappable

• The impact of Kay suppressing a traumatic event and her way out of disabling anxiety

• The spectrum of anxiety

• Retaining the positive purpose of anxiety while letting go of unproductive anxiety

• Challenges for someone dealing with anxiety

• Side effects for people dealing with anxiety

• Ways people can tackle their anxiety

• The value of using truisms and belly breath to calm the body

• Taking the best life lesson from a difficult situation or event

• A focus on what you can do and not what you can’t do

Value Quotes 

“He really taught me to find the resources I needed to get back to normality”

“Know that when you are in an anxious state for long periods of time the front lobes of the brain are not working as they should”

“Like many people in that state, they don’t necessarily speak up and look for help, they just shrink their lives almost nothing”

“To get somewhere you have to spend more time in what you do want rather than what you don’t want”

“Anxiety is about something that hasn’t happened yet so it is a future kind of state”

“That anxious part of people wants to know about certainty but they don’t have certainty so they worry and get anxious”

“It could be something that happened in the past that is still there and morphs itself into other facets of their life for the future”

“It shows how creative the mind is for it to be able to think of all those things that could happen but might not”

“You might develop a fear of the feelings itself that it brings upon you, so an anxiety attack rather than the initial worry”

“You can help someone build a really strong metaphor that they could anchor and it might be a suit of armour or something that they want and can really embrace that can be triggered”

“There’s a lot of options to pretend in your head that you are doing it the way you would like to do it rather than the way you fear you might do it”

“If she can keep herself in the present then the anxiety doesn’t take hold”

“We know that the things that we think, our body posture, our breath are all interrelated and all of those things create the behaviour that comes out or the outcome”

“Wellbeing is an assistant to living longer and living a more fully functioning life”

“When you get them passed the anxiety you get more self-love, more creativity, more of their ability to give love and be who they really are”

“Living fabulously is to think about your approach to life and the links of wellbeing from a physical, mental, spiritual and emotional perspective. To put that all together and be fulfilled to have that authentic life”

“Have your best life. Focus on what you can do and not what you can’t do”

If you got value from this episode if you have not yet done so please Subscribe, Rate and Review on iTunes or Stitcher. You can follow the instructions here.  If you know someone else that would get value from this episode as well please share it with them.

Until next time fabulous podcast listener, I’m Bev and I invite you to live the fab life with me now!

Episode Links 

You can find Kay Lindley at:

Website: http://mindandbodyconsultancy.com/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mindandbodyconsultancy/

If you experiencing a personal crisis help is available by calling Lifeline Australia on 131114 or find resources at https://www.lifeline.org.au/

025 Transform your stress | Margie Braunstein

“You need to be willing to live fabulously. Keep seeking and don’t accept less than living fabulously”

— Margie Braunstein -

To open the series on mental health, I spoke with the highly experienced and beautifully pragmatic Margie Braunstein from Heartnicity™ about stress, it’s impact on our lives and health and simple things to do to turn negative stress around. I really love that we spoke science, biology and avoiding stretching ourselves to breaking point with there being no value to soldiering on.

Inspire yourself with these essential insights from Margie 

We spoke about 

• Reducing the overwhelm people are living with

• The role of personal development and purpose in Margie’s life

• Background to the term stress and it’s definition

• The difference between positive / good eustress and negative / bad distress

• The role of good stress

• The disservice of soldering on

• Awareness of the signals you are reaching the tipping point

• How stress affects people differently

• The interrelated impact of stress on an overloaded nervous system

• Building in our “insurance” against stress

• The physical impact of stress on the body

• The relationship between stress, poor sleep and how we function

• The 3 step Heartnicity™ method of awareness, acceptance and action and it’s application

• Living on a path of heart being constantly aware of moving toward or away from a stressful life

• Simple practices for managing daily stress

• The impact of ruminating thoughts and how to manage this more effectively

• Indulging in loving self-care every day

Value Quotes 

“When people practice relaxation and meditation the nervous system is given a chance to relax a bit”

“There’s nothing better than discovering that there’s more to discover”

“It’s all about actually how to use your heart to have a better life and to manage your feelings better to manage your life better”

“Stress is generally seen as something to be avoided, stretched too far or stretched to breaking point”

“When you reach a limit, you need to replenish yourself”

“In our world we keep getting the message, keep going, soldier on and we go over the tipping point and head over the other side of the hill towards exhaustion and breakdown”

“We need to give our nervous system as much rest and support to come back to a relaxed state as often as we can throughout our day, our week, our life”

“Between our comfort zone and the tipping point there’s a sweet spot that’s very joyful and vitalising”

“Too much inflammation in the blood especially by cortisol is really seen as underpinning most disease processes”

“When you are stressed your amygdala becomes hyper vigilant to anything that could be dangerous even sleep”

“Becoming aware of how you think and feel. Once you become aware then you can make different choices. You can transform the way you see the world.”

“If you resist people or situations they don’t actually go away. But by resisting it you give more of your attention to it and it becomes this vicious cycle”

“Once you let go of resistance you kind of liberate yourself, body, mind and spirit”

“Moving away from the victim mentality and then you move into a kind of state of heightened personal power”

“When you act from a place of personal meaning it activates all the chemicals in our body that are really good for us”

“Consult your heart not just your mind when you make decisions”

“Feelings come and go, thoughts come and go, but I remain stable”

“You don’t want to believe everything you think. Most of it is delusional”

“There’s no thought without a feeling.  They are parallel, they always there together”

“Bad stress really underlies so many of the problems we have in our world and so I really want people to transform stress”

“Once you start to give your body a little bit more support, the nervous system more support to relax you actually find you start to have more energy for life and relationships”

“You need to be willing to live fabulously. Keep seeking and don’t accept less than living fabulously”

If you got value from this episode if you have not yet done so please Subscribe, Rate and Review on iTunes or Stitcher. You can follow the instructions here.  If you know someone else that would get value from this episode as well please share it with them.

Until next time fabulous podcast listener, I’m Bev and I invite you to live the fab life with me now!

Episode Links 

You can find Margie Braunstein at:

Website: www.heartnicity.com

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Heartnicity/

The path of heart exercise can be downloaded here

If you experiencing a personal crisis help is available by calling Lifeline Australia on 131114 or find resources at https://www.lifeline.org.au/