Join the free 5 day "Polka Dot" challenge

Alright lawyer friends! Due to the wonderful response from all those who participated in the ‘7 Day Happiness Challenge’, ‘Reset Challenge’  or ‘Plan It Out Challenge’ in previous years, in 2024 we’re bringing a brand-new challenge your way. So, welcome to our never-before-seen challenge, to help us all achieve our best and more this coming year. Come and join me for 5 days to ‘Polka Dot’ your #lawlife for a happy 2024! 

 You can expect 5 days of tips, tricks, laughs and fun as I share some of my learnings on the things that have helped me build a career in the law that I (mostly) love – and how taking the time to implement the smallest of things in our daily routines, can help us in every part of our lives. 

Over the past few years, I have spent a lot of time researching the concept of ‘Happiness’ in law and in life. There is a good chance you have heard about or read my book, ‘Happy Lawyer Happy Life’- How to be happy in law and life.

While happiness has been the focus of our previous Happy Lawyer challenges, and while it remains a central theme, this year we’re doing things a little differently. A big part of sustaining both happiness and success is reminding yourself to bring a element of mindfulness and calm to your work and more importantly, doing the things that you love throughout the year. This challenge is designed to help you do exactly that –  to start really thinking about how you can shift your mindset.

I can hear you saying “What on earth is a polka dot challenge Clarissa?”

Well let me explain…

Despite our growing awareness and focus on building a strong and ‘well’ profession, the research and sadly still showing us that lawyers continue to struggle with burn out, stress and very high rates of psychological distress. I am interested in this quandary as I feel we are more aware than ever of the drivers of these challenges, but we continue to dance a little around the edges when it comes to tackling the cause.

I have forever been fascinated by the world of neuroscience- the growing area of research about the human brain, that lets us better understand why we feel the way we feel, why we do the things we do and importantly, how we can change those feelings and actions. The neuroscientists will tell us that we lawyers need a highly functioning pre-frontal cortex to go about the work we do every day. And yet, so many of our work practices and workplaces are in conflict with what the research tells us we need to be at our best every day.

And this is where those pesky polka dots come in….

Most of you have experienced first hand my love of confetti- who doesn’t smile when they see confetti? (ok, if you are one of those people who can’t smile at confetti, no need to email me about it today but I know, you are there somewhere….)

Confetti and law didn’t really go together until I decided they should… and so for the past 10 years I have been sending confetti filled packages to law firms nationwide to the point we even have a line of #oneofthoseconfettilawyers merch! Confetti, to be, is a symbol of what it will take to change our industry for the better. It will take different thinking, new ideas and probably some colour, mess and even some fun if we are focused on making life in the law easier for us all.

And what is confetti? It is a pile of polka dots, usually of all shapes and sizes, ideally with a few sparkles in there for good measure.