True Wealth is Health!
“Doctors won’t make you healthy. Nutritionists won’t make you slim. Teachers won’t make you smart. Gurus won’t make you calm. Mentors won’t make you rich. Trainers won’t make you fit. Ultimately, you have to take responsibility. Save yourself.” Naval Ravikant
Generally, lawyers are saddled with enormous responsibilities. Being a lawyer can be satisfying, fulfilling, edifying, even remunerative, yet, it comes with great stress and challenges. Lawyers have tales of being overworked, stressed, and sleep deprived which directly or indirectly affect their health conditions and mental state.
The work life of a lawyer is usually sedentary and does not align with the principles of a healthy lifestyle. Lawyers spend long hours at work mostly sitting in one position; ranging from the office, to the courtroom, and the study room at home, a lawyer often finds himself sitting down to perform almost all his duties.
Lawyers do not equally seem to maintain a healthy eating plan as a result of their busy work schedules which does not enable them to have a healthy meal plan as they are always on the go. This however is no excuse as unhealthy lifestyle is dangerous regardless.
The following tips will help a lawyer kickstart a healthy lifestyle:
Self awareness
The first step to solving a problem is identifying that there is a problem. So, the first thing to do is to access yourself and confirm that you have a health problem that requires urgent attention. Learning how to listen to your body and how to respond is also a part of being self-aware. If you notice a headache, do not just assume that taking an over the counter drug is all you need. A headache maybe a sign of a more serious underlining ailment. Both lawyers and judges have slumped inside the courtroom and died. These categories of people may have avoided this, had they not ignored the slightest sign of may be fatigue, numbness, light-headed, headache or some ache. Once you master the art of listening to your body and responding, you would most likely not find yourself caught unawares.
Time Management
For a busy lawyer, 24 hours in 7 days is never enough. But that is all you’ve got. It is therefore important to ensure that you manage your activities to ensure that you make do with all that you have; 24 hours in a day. A typical work routine is Monday to Friday. Saturdays and Sundays are majorly off duty days for most lawyers. Why not make adequate use of them. Why not create a rigid health routine for Saturdays and Sundays as you have for work days? After all, nobody is indispensable.
Eating Healthy
One should be able to draw up a meal plan that works. How do one achieve this? On weekends one can simply draw up a food chart that will take care of the week ahead. This food chart may suggest healthy meals to eat notwithstanding the stress and work schedule, without necessarily eating junk foods throughout the week. Snacking and poor meal choices at work play a major role in our overall health. It is not just enough to draw up a meal plan, the aim rather is to eat healthy meals. (It is important to note that breakfast should not be skipped no matter what).
Exercise
Daily exercise is good for optimizing health. Going to the gym, walking some distances, taking some meditation classes, are great ways to stay healthy. It is obvious that lawyers have one of the most busy schedules, but it won’t be a bad idea at all to squeeze out a little time to still keep fit. Court sittings start 9:00am or so soon thereafter, taking an hour of exercise maybe 5am-6am won’t in my opinion be a bad idea.
Handling Stressful Situations
As lawyers, we are prone to encountering stressful situations more often than not. This is as a result of the nature of our over busy schedule. No matter the situation at hand, it is important that one tries to take a deep breath and calm down particularly in stressful situations. Where the stress level is high particularly in some hard nut to crack cases, it is ideal to put on a low relaxing music, sit out in a quiet place meditate for a little while, and at the end you will be fine. The aim is to find a strategy to reduce your stress level at every point in time.
Hobbies
In order to lead a healthy lifestyle, you should be able to find out what interests you apart from work. You have to set aside times when you totally have to engage in some other work unrelated activities. It is not enough to set boundaries but to keep to the hobbies is another different kettle of fish. Find what interests you and keep to it. Make out little time for those things that interest you and keep doing them as and when due in order to keep mentally fit.
Alcohol Limitation
Alcohol’s effects on the brain can be felt quickly. Not only can drinking cause temporary complications such as memory loss and coordination, it can also lead to long-term side effects that are sometimes irreversible.
Prolonged and excessive alcohol use can interfere with how the brain functions, as well as how it’s structured. I am not by any means of the opinion that alcohol intake is bad, but there should be a reasonable limit to what should be consumed.
Conclusion
It is to be noted that spending too much time working is not only unhealthy but counter productivity. A healthy lawyer should equally try to maintain a good family relationship with his family in order to ensure a good working environment.
No matter how busy our work schedule might be, time management will always be an important factor in our everyday lives.
Linda is a Lawyer practicing in Lagos State. She can be reached on 08134449847 lindanwosu02@gmail.com