The following piece was contributed by Catriona Kirwan from Catriona Kirwan Coaching. Catriona is a high impact personal coach and the Evolve Marketing team were delighted to both speak to her and get her thoughts on stress in our lives. To get in touch with Catriona and learn more about what she does and how she can help you, please visit her website or send her an email at catriona@catrionakirwancoaching.ie.
Below, Catriona shares some tips to solicitors on managing stress better in your daily lives.
“Being a stressed-out solicitor can be tough, in this blog we want to give you a few tips to being stress free.
The first step in overcoming any challenge is recognising it.
- Self-Awareness. Check in with yourself and ask yourself how body and mind are feeling. Mindfully scan through the body and check for shallow breathing, any muscle tension, or headaches. How is your heart rate? Are you grinding your teeth or curling your toes holding on to tension? If this is something new to you, you might need to set a reminder on your phone every couple of hours to stop and check in.
- Take 2-3 minutes to do some breathing exercises. Take a deep breath in for the count of 4 seconds, hold it in for 7 seconds and exhale for 11 seconds. Continue to repeat until you feel the body calming down.
- Connect with other humans as much as you can and continue to build and develop strong relationships in the workplace. Our brains are social organs and perform much stronger when we feel safe and connected and like we belong.
Engage the ventral branch of the vagus nerve which goes down the front of the face and body – smile at whoever you are speaking with, laugh use the intonations in your voice. By activating the ventral branch, you are manually triggering the parasympathetic nervous system which is responsible for keeping the body in a calm and grounded state where we can perform much better. Follow this advice to be a stressed-out solicitor no more and contact us if you need any help with your business.”
