In this episode, Steve Fretzin and Jeffrey Bunn discuss:
Key Takeaways:
"The mind is always thinking thoughts and, from observing our thoughts, we can learn more about ourselves." — Jeffrey Bunn
Connect with Jeffrey Bunn:
Website: themindfullawgroup.com
Email: jbunnlaw@gmail.com
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/jeffrey-h-bunn-85bb719
Connect with Steve Fretzin:
LinkedIn: Steve Fretzin
Twitter: @stevefretzin
Facebook: Fretzin, Inc.
Website: Fretzin.com
Email: Steve@Fretzin.com
Book: The Ambitious Attorney: Your Guide to Doubling or Even Tripling Your Book of Business and more!
YouTube: Steve Fretzin
Call Steve directly at 847-602-6911
Show notes by Podcastologist Chelsea Taylor-Sturkie
Audio production by Turnkey Podcast Productions. You're the expert. Your podcast will prove it.
Jeffrey Bunn 0:00
Physical Fitness is one thing. What about our mental or emotional fitness? It's kind of the old hippie Mind Body thing. Okay, we've got the body check. What about the mind and the profane our profession and the legal profession. Taking care of one's mind is every bit as important as take care of one's body.
Narrator 0:21
You're listening to be that lawyer, life changing strategies and resources for growing a successful law practice. Each episode, your host, author and lawyer coach Steve Fretzin will take a deeper dive, helping you grow your law practice in less time with greater results. Now, here's your host, Steve Fretzin.
Steve Fretzin 0:44
Hey, everybody, welcome to be that lawyer. I'm Steve Fretzin. And I'm glad to have you with me today. And hopefully, you're, you know, things are going well with your law practice. And you're you're thinking about marketing, thinking about business development, not just sticking it in a drawer and, and waiting for things to change on their own. I think we all agree, we've got to be proactive. But that also means that it might, you might encounter some stress, obviously, you're taking care of your family billing hours, and then trying to think about business development on top of that can be stressful. Fortunately for you, I have a guest today that I think you're going to love. Jeffrey bond is the owner of the mindful law coaching and consulting group. And he's going to answer some questions and help us improve our stress levels and our mindfulness as it relates to surviving through being a lawyer. So how you doing Jeff?
Jeffrey Bunn 1:32
I'm doing great steve, how about you?
Steve Fretzin 1:34
Good. Is it Jeff? Jeffery? Which which direction?
Jeffrey Bunn 1:37
Totally Jeff. Totally, Jeff.
Steve Fretzin 1:39
Okay. Okay, cool, then I'm going to stick with Jeff, do me a favor and just share a little bit about your background, because you're, you're a longtime lawyer. That's I guess, retired. And now you're you're helping lawyers to be less stressed out. So give us a background?
Jeffrey Bunn 1:52
Well, first of all, thank you. A shout out to all the men and women who I worked with in the profession before I retired. great people. So a little bit about me. It's kind of funny, because for the longest time, I thought I was kind of weird. And now I know that I'm not so weird. What happened was, I was a you know, you're kind of your typical hard drive and type a litigation guy or gal, you know, a very stereotypical, I was walking the dog during the winter shoe years back, slippers, some ice tore my meniscus got scoped stop running, because running was long distance running was kind of my outlet. So I got, I found a yoga class in the Board of Trade building, which was that had noon hour classes. And I started doing yoga has kind of no impact, low impact alternative to running. And I got to know the guy who ran the studio, who on the studio was a former trader, who just decided he made his money and decided Screw it, I don't want to do this anymore. And through yoga, I became a little bit more aware of awareness, I guess, would be a way of putting it. And he came over to me after class one day and said, you know, are you a meditator? And I said, No, not really. I mean, I kind of know what it is. But no, I'm not. He said you shouldn't be. Because you would really benefit you would really get into it. And here's a retreat, yada, yada, yada, long story short is in took me a couple months, kind of mulling this over because it struck me at the time, as kind of out there. But Vinnie, what's the guy's name, God bless him, he turned me on to something really cool. And I was kind of freaked out at first. But I ultimately really kind of enjoyed it. And I thought, you know, I wonder if this can be applied to Is it just me? Or is it going to be applied to what I do. And for the longest time, I kind of thought it was a right brain left brain kind of a thing. And never the twain would meet. The more I thought about it, the more I realized this circles really overlap. And really our less right brain can inform our left brain and the practices of meditation and mindfulness for maybe a better person, I think maybe a better lawyer, most importantly, which is why, you know, after a year or two of kind of, you know, keeping that to myself, I thought, heck, I got to share this with with people. I've survived. I'm on the back end of or I was on the back end of a long career at the time and I somehow survived. I thought, you know what, there are a lot of young men and women who are working on I bet you've you've worked with a bunch of them too. They're working really hard and kind of stressing out because there were good days and they were bad days. The good things are great. The bad days are not so great. And results can sometimes be great results can sometimes not be so great, but I thought you know if I can help them get to the finish line. I then I want to do that, which got me out of law got me into this mindful this meditation world in earnest. And, you know, the rest, as I say, is kind of history.
Steve Fretzin 5:16
And I'm just curious, because I've studied a little bit of this myself and went through some programming in the past and with my family, actually. And is there a particular style of meditation that you're teaching? I noticed a number of different types.
Jeffrey Bunn 5:28
Yes. I mean, the, it's an original goes back to like Buddhism, Buddhist, I'm from the Vipassana School, which, in terms of the anchor that one chooses, during the course of meditation is the is the anchor that a lot of people probably know of, which is the breath and learning to watch the breath and use that as an anchor to kind of rest your attention because intention is always on. It's just going, Yeah. But you got to put it someplace sometimes where you're trying to it's like, okay, cool, that's great. Do your thing. But I'm going to do my own thing. So here, here's a shelf, phone, and the shelf, so to speak, the anchor is a breath, passing is what
Steve Fretzin 6:14
I do. Very cool. Very cool. And, you know, I think this is maybe a rhetorical question to some degree. But, you know, why are lawyers so stressed out? What makes them as a group generally more stressed than, say, teachers? Or, you know, other other types of workers?
Jeffrey Bunn 6:31
Great question. Stephen is one that I wrestled with for the longest time, because I thought, again, I thought it was me. And then I realized, there's something about the profession is that like, I want to get down on it at all. I had a fantastic career, I love practicing law. And I think the men and women who are in the practice are great people. But there is something inherent about that. And it comes down to you know, for the longest time, I thought it could be, you know, client interactions, it could be interactions with other partners, or senior partners or, you know, co workers, all those kinds of things. And they're very intelligent men or women who will call call you out big time, if you start kind of going out there. But I think a lot of it is I kind of dug through some of that and got down to the bottom of it, I thought it has to do with uncertainty, there is just so much uncertainty in the world, the litigation deals, then that if your transaction, man or woman, or a litigator, it just doesn't matter. We all promote ourselves to our clients, as agents of certainty, I can get this deal done, I can win this case. But it's not that easy. It's not that simple. So on the one hand, in terms of business development, which I know is something that you are very passionate about, certainty is, for a lot of people a component, the ability to communicate that, that I can get this done for you, puts a lot of pressure, we put end up putting pressure on ourselves, because, in fact, and we will do the best we can do will fulfill all of our ethical, professional obligations, and we're gonna we're gonna have Anna, but you know what, the way the system is built, somebody wins, somebody loses. And even though there are a lot of people who try to promote the kind of in between, that's the kind of mediation thing we can, we can find some middle ground. In most cases, there is a perceived, if not actual winner or loser. And, you know, once we put ourselves in that game, it's just kind of where it is. And you know, certainty is something that is just built into the law. When we go through law school that goes with the whole idea of like starry decisis, this case, this issue has been decided, and if I can kind of, you know, you know, kind of Marshal my argument in a way that conforms with prior cases, I can win. Wow, it just doesn't work that way. So I think uncertainty is a big one word answer.
Steve Fretzin 9:16
Yeah. And I think in addition to uncertainty, what I'm observing, because this is something I have to deal with, in my space is just the time right? I mean, we're we like to think that we can control the time but you've got the billable hour, you've got the influx of emergencies that are constantly being that are popping up, you know, people popping in your office are now popping or you know, popping up an email, and then you've got the family pressure. And then of course, business development, just pile it on. So we're trying to, you know, they're trying to juggle three, four or five, you know, balls in the air at the same time, and it just seems overwhelming, I think for them in their, in their particular in that particular industry.
Jeffrey Bunn 9:57
Sure. It's like one more thing that I have to do seriously.
Steve Fretzin 10:01
Yeah. Now, right now I got to exercise. Now I got to do meditation. So we're, you know, when am I going to fit in meditation in between, you know, getting up and having my day on and then wrapping up and the kids are all over me. Right? You're telling me I gotta meditate. So?
Jeffrey Bunn 10:16
Yeah, that's absolutely right. And I wrestled with that because time I've been there. I know, I know what that is. And I know that people are looking for there may be a group of people out there, yes, I think a large segment of the lawyer population that are inclined to do something or open to the idea, but they struggle with as, as you say, very succinctly, the time factor, how do I how do I fit this into everything else? What I've come up with is, is both a conceptual and like a practical metric. Finally, we figured out physical fitness, if we wind the clock back 10, 15 years, whatever the time might be, and you and I had lunch, and then I called you and said, See, can we reschedule lunch, I'm going to go for a run and said, you know, what, okay, get, you know, get your act together, man, where's your head. But somehow, over the last 10, 15 years, most of us have figured out that physical fitness, it's actually important to benefit not only ourselves, but also benefit our clients, or customers, whatever. And we've made because of that, that connection, we've made time in our day, whether it's first thing in the morning, whether it's during lunch hour, whether it's to the end of the day, for exercise, it's this is something that hitherto had not existed, we made time for it. So I'm thinking, Okay, let's piggyback that. Because for the longest time, I what was going around in my head was kind of like, I get the physical fitness thing, and I'm big time into that. But what about our physical fitness is one thing What about our mental or emotional fitness? It's kind of the old hippie Mind Body thing. Okay, we've got the body check. What about the mind, and in the profession, our profession in the legal profession, taking care of one's mind is every bit as important as take care of one's body. So okay, if we make a half hour or an hour, we've made that time for ourselves. For physical exercise, well, let's use our like our cooldown time, whether we're running or pumping iron, or swimming, or whatever, there's a little bit of time in between the exercise and kind of chilling out and getting back to whatever, take that time, take five minutes from the top of the hour that you've created for yourself, and use that while you're cooling down for your, for your mind as well. And, you know, the idea of I think everybody gets this really wrong impression, I think that meditation we have to meditate like a monk, we have to sit down and carve out what was the right amount of time is it 10 minutes, 20 minutes.
Unknown Speaker 13:05
Let me let me let me share that, you know, the, what I went through with my wife and my son years ago was trans Transcendental Meditation. And for for that specific one, and again, this is the basic level not advanced, was 20 minutes twice a day. So for some people, that might seem insane, because that's 40 minutes in a day where everything is coming crashing down around, but but the way that it works, if you're smart, and I've did this for a while, and my wife does it still religiously, and I do it, you know, for other reasons, in different times. But to get up, so you get up at it normally at 530, we'll get up at 510. And from 510 to 530, there's your 20 minutes. And then before dinner instead of watching the news or whatever, if there's a way to just take 20 minutes before dinner to schedule that in. But I think I think you know, I had a great guest, Walt Hampton, who's a time mastery guy who came on a few weeks ago, months ago, a month ago or so. And he basically said, Look, you can actually control time time is, you know, an abstract, you can control yourself. And you need to focus on how you control yourself to get the time in. So whether it's 20 minutes, five minutes, but what it sounds like you're suggesting is that what you're teaching and working on is a little more flexible and in less rigid than what I went through
Jeffrey Bunn 14:26
it totally. I think meditating like a monk is a great thing. If you've got the time, maybe we get maybe some weekends, maybe it's maybe we need to make that time. Maybe you want to go for a longer push. That's great, but it doesn't I don't think invalidate at all. little chunks of time during the day is what I call me time and a lot of it can be in it's all about intent. intention. There's a great I just did a blog piece about a Dutch concept. The word is Nixon ni k And the idea is like doing nothing, or whatever you're doing, you're not doing with an intention that's going to result in a particular benefit. And I think it's important to have a little bit of me time that where you have no intention, it's also really important to have time that's for yourself with that is intentional. And a lot of it has to do with I think of meditation, it's going to brain training, it's using it's like sharpening a knife. You can do that for the longest time if you want to do that. Or you can just do it a little bit, little bits. And I think as an analogy, that's one way of working that we all figure out our own way. If we want to try to benefit ourselves, we figure out how
Steve Fretzin 15:47
Yeah, if it's important, if it's important to us, we get it done, we figure out a way to delegate something else, or put something aside or work after hours like we we have the ability to work out we have the ability to watch TV or watch a show we have ability to eat meals mean those things aren't always just not happening. They always I don't think I've missed a meal, I can't even tell you how long so so it's because it's important to me to eat regular meals, I make it to the dinner table on time. I also have some my wife's a fantastic cook, so shout out, shout out to my wife, Lisa. But
Jeffrey Bunn 16:21
That's always a good thing.
Steve Fretzin 16:23
But I love so So in thinking about the tips for meditation, I think I've already picked up a few but one in particular is that it doesn't have to be, you know, a long drawn out structured thing, it can be a five minute thing here or there to get your mind trained and to sharpen the sign and or think about nothing or say so I guess that's a good question, are we thinking about nothing, because I know like in some areas of that it's it's it's thinking about breathing or thinking about nothing in really calming the mind versus meditation where maybe there's something else going on. So what's happening in your system in your world?
Jeffrey Bunn 16:57
In my world, in my mind, it's not about going blank at all. It's about observing the mind. Okay, this is what this is what I'm thinking about. And the idea that we are not our thoughts, you can extend that even to like feelings, emotions, we are not, we can be feeling really sad. The question is like, Oh, this is what sadness, it really is. And kind of be curious about that explain this is what feeling mad is, etc, etc. So the idea is for me, not to kind of blank out, but rather to detach a little bit observe and become really engaged in watching the movie. Because the mind is always sleeping thoughts. And if we watch longer than we can, from those from observing our thoughts, we learn a little bit more about ourselves. This is what I'm thinking about. These
Steve Fretzin 17:51
I'm not pushing back, I'm just thinking as you're talking about, like, what would happen to me, if I did that, it'd be like, I would start thinking I'd start observing. I go, holy crap, I forgot to do this. Or I forgot. I forgot, I forgot to pick something up from the grocery that I was supposed to pick up. I better get out of here. But that's not what you're talking about. You're talking about really being like being internally reflective on your feelings on your thoughts on what's going on with you.
Jeffrey Bunn 18:19
Yeah, exactly. And again, it does get back to the very kind of base. It's, you know, a term that doesn't do any of what we're talking about justice, but anytime it's about me, we spend again, back to lawyers, we spend all day worrying about and dealing with other people's problems. What about me? So take a little bit of meat I used to have if I had a call with friends, and I knew first of all freshmen who is a jerk, and hypothetical, just a hypothetical jerk. We're not going to agree upon anyways. So what I would do is I had worked out a system with with my admin, where I'd like close the door, turn off the lights in DMV, power down the computer, like five minutes before that phone call with Steve. I wouldn't instead of thinking about what an sob, Steve is, and how he's gonna say this, and I'm gonna say that and get myself all riled up. I would just like chill, and try to take it down. And either think about nothing perfect about whatever, but not our conversation. We're engaged in some guided meditation depending on what, where I was at the moment. It always helped the conversation. We didn't necessarily agree. But there was a there's a great quote that I think applies to lawyers too, that I read. I was reading an article recently about a meditation and a woman. Sharon Salzberg is there. No, she gets a lot, I think and she's a very knowledgeable person, a great teacher, too. And she said, you know, mindfulness or meditation doesn't mean we don't fight. We just don't hate. And I thought, Wow, that's a really important thing. Because I think a lot of lawyers, particularly like managing partners, who are thinking about the idea of how can they maybe involve or evolve programs that, you know, my fighters won't fight anymore, they're going to become, you know, kind of Kumbaya hugging trees and stuff. And if that's not the case, at all, we still have things we care about passionately. But we just don't, we're not invested in the same way. It's, we can still fight, I could still fight. I don't have to hate you to fight you. It's like, dude, okay, fine. Bell, bell rings bump, up comes in or off come the gloves. And that's just the way it is.
Steve Fretzin 20:53
So I think I think just to kind of recap some of the points you've made, you know, this doesn't have to be a big investment, this can be little chunks of time that you figure out throughout the day or haphazardly to get your mind, straight into it to be self reflective, that that meet time as a priority is is critical that we spend all of our day worrying and doing other things for other people. What about us, we need to really, because if we can't take care of ourselves, how are we going to take care of others is my summation. And then last, just it might be helpful to do this type of meditation or mindfulness before doing something difficult. So before having a tough call before, you know a big, you know, I play platform tennis before big paddle match to just give five minutes to, to be thoughtful or to in to chill out and get prepared for what I'm about to go into. Sounds like those are some of the some of the key, you know, core competencies of what of what you're teaching people.
Jeffrey Bunn 21:49
Absolutely. And simplicity is actually a good thing. And the thing that I take a deep breath, you know, yeah, there's, there's a lot to that we I can talk to for half hour righteous. But I, for the longest time fell into the trap of thinking that if I had, if I when I was getting all jacked up about with something complicated, that the solution had to be complicated, actually, so shouldn't be very simple. It could be very short to..
Steve Fretzin 22:15
Well, let me let me share something I learned from meditation. And I'm sure you know this analogy very well. But I think it's important for me to share because I think the visual of it is so powerful for people listening. And that is, if you imagine that you're on on the top of the ocean, in a boat, a small boat, and it's huge waves and storms, and in a in a hurricane and in crashing water, and you feel like you're gonna get thrown over and drown. And then you go 200 feet down to the bottom of the ocean, it's absolutely calm, there's nothing going on. little fishies is swimming around and saying hi to an octopus, and it's really, really nice down there. And that's an analogy for most people's lives, they're at that top of that water just being thrashed around in meditation is an opportunity to go down to the bottom where things are calm. And even if it's for five minutes or 20 minutes to have that calmness, and that thoughtfulness and that self reflection is going to be so helpful to your brain and your body, then then always staying on top of the water where things just never seem to calm down.
Jeffrey Bunn 23:19
I love it. I love it. It's that's, that really pretty much wraps it up. I mean, it tells the story. And the other thing too, I've heard you talk about the idea in terms of business originations and going out and, and hustling, which we all need to do is the idea of creating a habit of doing that. And this is what we're talking about is what I'm talking about is making a habit of doing this. Just little bits, little bits, you know, in creating the reward system, the reward system is actually I can deal with a difficult situation, be at a conversation via an oral argument, or whatever. And feel a little bit better about that. So yeah.
Steve Fretzin 24:02
So let me ask you, Jeff, kind of in wrapping up, I mean, so people are listening to this. They're going you know what I don't I don't do this, I don't have this. This is not something that I've tried before, but I want to take a shot at it. I want to learn what Jeff knows, I want to be involved in this because I can see myself on that boat at the top of the water and I need to get I need to get below the surface. How do they get in touch with you? How do they get started in in learning this stuff and starting to be someone that's mindful?
Jeffrey Bunn 24:30
Well, thanks for asking. I mean, the easy thing is to search my website, which if you just whatever your search engine is, rather give you an address, if you search themindfullawgroup.com , you'll you'll get to the website. It's my website, there's a contact button, you can go through that. Or you can email me directly if you want to use Jbunnlaw, no dots or Jbunnlaw@gmail,.com. And the last thing I would say on that score is to teach a class that's being sponsored by the Chicago Botanic Garden starts in February, I think on Saturdays. It's about what is it? It's the hows and whys learning the hows and whys of meditation, then there are different each, it's like a six week kind of thing. And we have guests that are gonna be coming in talking about different kinds of meditation, that when they're just offered a suggestions, really, this is something that you might do
Steve Fretzin 25:26
you want to it sounds really interesting. And again, an easy way to kind of get introduced into this to be go through a little a little course or program with a number of different presenters. So
Jeffrey Bunn 25:35
I think it's really important. Yeah,
Steve Fretzin 25:37
yeah. Thanks so much for coming on and sharing your insights and you know, as a lawyer and someone who's been there, that's figured some things out I think this is super helpful to to my audience and to lawyers listening
Jeffrey Bunn 25:50
is my delight to share ammos This is a drama I'll bang all day long.
Steve Fretzin 25:56
Standing Well listen, I appreciate you. I appreciate my listeners and listen, you know, these are just these are continual, you know, things we need to consider whether it's time management, whether it's mindfulness, and listen everybody just want to thank you for listening today and and hopefully you're one step closer to being that lawyer, someone who's confident organized in a skilled Rainmaker. Take care, everybody.
Narrator 26:20
Thanks for listening to be that lawyer. Life Changing strategies and resources for growing a successful law practice. Visit Steve's website Fretzin.com. For additional information, and to stay up to date on the latest legal business development and marketing trends. For more information and important links about today's episode, check out today's show notes.