STEPHANIE LEWIS: BOARD MEMBER
MINDFUL LEADERS IN THE LAW: An interview with Stephanie Lewis
By Christopher J. Lhulier
Welcome to the October 2021 edition of the Mindful Leaders in the Law interview series. This month we are fortunate to learn more about Stephanie Lewis and her well-being practice. Stephanie is a MILS managing board member, practicing attorney and founder of LiveWellFlow.
Like many of us in the legal profession, Stephanie was drawn to mindfulness at a time when she was stressed and burnt out. She paid for it with her health and along the way experienced life changing events, professionally and personally. Fortunately, she had the awareness to see those events as an opportunity to better care for herself. Based on that knowledge and driven by an inner calling to be of service, Stephanie created LiveWellFlow, a coaching firm that helps professionals discover how to care for their well-being in the context of their own life- professionally and personally. I asked Stephanie about her journey towards well-being, helping others with their self-care and her advice to legal professionals who want to balance their career success with their well-being. Many thanks to Stephanie for making the time, on short notice, to do this month’s interview!
Q: How did you begin practicing mindfulness?
A: It started with a tai chi class I took about a decade ago. I was exploring different self-care practices and had always been curious. My instructor invited me to come to his sitting meditation class. And it was hard - that sitting with the busy mind. It wouldn't stop. All that nonsense chatter was really getting on my nerves. I really took to the ancient Chinese practice of qigong, a form of moving meditation or mindful movement, and without it I doubt I would have gone on to develop a deep meditation practice. It really helped to start to calm my nervous system. Once I began to make the sitting meditation a regular part of my practice it all really came together as the different approaches to mindfulness really reinforce one another.
Q: Can you talk about the burn-out you experienced and how it led to you pausing your career and eventually to you practicing greater self-care?
A: The burnout was from the accumulation of years of a lack of any kind of balance in my life. And I wasn't really listening to my body along the way. The body will ultimately demand to be heard though and I started experiencing physical health consequences. I knew if I didn't make a shift, my health would really suffer, and I would regret it. Also, not long before then a close friend of mine from law school had died from cancer. Of course, that had started me thinking about what I was doing with this "one wild and precious life" as the late poet Mary Oliver put it. I ended up doing some traveling and consulting work and was surprised when I returned to the practice of law, but in a different environment. I thought when I left the firm that I was leaving the law. It was after I left the firm that I really delved deeply into self-care practices. I am still driven but my days are structured differently, and mindfulness and family are well integrated into my life. I do not want to look back when I'm 80 or older, should I be fortunate to reach that age, and have regrets about how I spent the time I've been given.
Q: Did practicing greater self-care affect your view of yourself as an attorney and your approach to practicing law?
A: Yes, absolutely. I realized just how much my ego was tied up in the label of lawyer and how much I had neglected other parts of my life to feed that ego.
Q: Do you feel as if by teaching and coaching self-care practices, you are also, to some degree, learning how to more deeply integrate those same practices with yourself?
A: Absolutely. We teach what we most need to learn, right? That's how we get interested in a topic or practice. The more I teach or coach meditation, Qigong, mindful eating...the deeper I practice myself.
Q: What advice would you give young lawyers and law students who want to balance their career success with their overall physical, emotional and psychological wellbeing?
A: Bake in time to care for you even if it's only 10 minutes per day. Don't try to fit it in "when you have the time". That doesn't work. Be clear on your priorities and learn the skill of saying “no” so you have time to devote to priorities without burning yourself out.