Amanda is the founder of WOLELA and the director of the Centre for Integrative Law. Her mission is to bring healing, higher levels of thinking, awareness and consciousness to those lawyers who want to be part of transforming the legal profession. Amanda speaks at various events about the global Integrative Law Movement with the dual goals of improving public perception of lawyers and inspiring lawyers to view their roles in a new light. "I want you to understand what doing too much looks like. I want you to understand what the payoffs are - and what the very high costs of being an over-achiever can be. I want to encourage you to be explicit in defining what success looks like for YOU. and by that I mean A SUCCESSFUL LIFE and not just a successful career. Because sadly the way society currently portrays a successful career seems to preclude a successful life. I want you to have compassion for yourself as you seek more balance, more peace and more joy. "

1. LAWYERS WHO DO TOO MUCH
Amanda Lamond, 20 April 2017
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3. SUPERWOMAN SYNDROME
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In sociology, a superwoman (also sometimes called
supermom) is a Western woman who works hard to
manage multiple roles of a worker, a homemaker, a
volunteer, a student, or other such time-intensive
occupations

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The Superwoman Syndrome is a range of
physical, psychological, and interpersonal
stress symptoms experienced by a woman who
attempts to perform perfectly in multiple or
conflicting roles or goes overboard in one role.

6. WHY DO I KEEP TALKING ABOUT THIS SUBJECT?
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A Superwoman measures
self-worth entirely in terms of
productivity and tangible
accomplishments.

9. MY MICROWAVE MOMENT
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We get so used to doing too much,
to overfunctioning, that we start to
believe at a subconscious level:
It doesn't take a village—it takes
me.

11. LET’S DO AN EXERCISE
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13. CREATING A LIFE: PROFESSIONAL WOMEN AND THE
QUEST FOR CHILDREN ~ SYLVIA ANN HEWLETT
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• US survey of highly educated, high-earning women
• career and fatherhood, high-achieving men don’t have to deal
with difficult trade-offs
• 79% of the men I surveyed report wanting children—and 75%
have them
• women are dealing with long and lengthening workweeks
• Women pay an even greater price for those long hours because
the early years of career building overlap—almost perfectly—the
prime years of childbearing

14. SUPERWOMAN VS SUPERMAN
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15. WHY WOULD WE PERSIST IN HIGH RISK
BEHAVIOUR? WHAT’S THE PAYOFF?
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16. PHYSICAL PAYOFF
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17. DOES THIS SOUND LIKE YOU?
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“Overachievers live off the fleeting high that
comes from responding to that one extra
email, getting that additional project out of
the way, or checking one last thing off the
to-do list."

18. QUICK NOTE: GENDER DIFFERENCES &
CORTISOL
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19. MENTAL PAYOFF – AND CAUSES OF DOING TOO
MUCH
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• Our phones buzz with emails from the boss and
requests from coworkers, and it takes a lot of willpower
not to check them.
• we wear our work stress like a badge of honour
• Underlying belief systems tell us “it’s noble to be of
service to others”

20. THE EMOTIONAL PAYOFF: NOT FEELING
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21. SPIRITUAL PAYOFF OF DOING TOO MUCH
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If I’m not proving my worth by doing — then what
am I?

22. ARE LAWYERS MORE PRONE TO DOING TOO
MUCH?
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Susan Daicoff summarizes the "attributes associated with effectiveness as a lawyer,”
• Need achievement,
• Be extroverted and sociable,
• Be competitive, argumentative, aggressive, dominant, cold,
• Show low interest in people, emotional concerns and
interpersonal matters,
• Have disproportionate preference for Myers-Briggs thinking v.
feeling,
• Focus on economic bottom-line and material concerns, and
• Have a markedly higher incidence of psychological distress and
substance abuse.

23. THE DISTINCT LEGAL ENVIRONMENT
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24. DO YOU WANT TO DO LESS?
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"Success is peace of mind, which is
a direct result of self-satisfaction in
knowing you made the effort to do
your best to become the best that
you are capable of becoming.”

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In order that people may be happy in their work,
these three things are needed: they must be fit for it;
they must not do too much of it; and they must have
a sense of success in it.
-John Ruskin, author, art critic, and social reformer
(1819-1900)

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1.Understand risks and warning signs
2.We need someone – usually a coach
3.We need to exercise self discipline
4.If you’re in a management position you
need to lead by example

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1. Take a week and commit to stop doing it all, and watch how that feels.
2. Spend some time re-prioritizing. Accept that you cannot do it all and you’ll have
to let some things go in order to fulfill others.
3. Outsource. My Life Organised. Post on FB.
4. Make a commitment to single tasking. Stop thinking that multitasking is more
efficient – read up on why it is NOT.
5. Spend an hour downloading some relaxing music - Enya, meditation music,
panpipes, classical - and use your car as a sanctuary from the busyness of home
and work.
6. Say no. without giving reasons.
7. Buy a juicer or blender and replace one coffee a day with a juice.
8. Spend time mapping out how many hours a week you have and how you want to
spend them. If getting fit is really important to you - where are you going to put
that in?

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1. Choose a time to switch off your phone each evening and stick to
it. Do not leave your phone by the bed. Buy an alarm clock.
2. When you go on leave, even for 2 days, put an out of office
responder on and ensure clients can reach someone else. DO
NOT check your mail during this time. Trust your colleagues to
bring crises to your attention.
3. List stuff you used to find fun and find ways to bring it back. Allow
yourself to go for a walk instead of a run. To watch clouds and the
patterns they make. To catch tadpoles with a kid.
4. List 3 leadership qualities you can acknowledge in yourself - and
then stick them on a post it on your desk / your phone and see if
you can use it to remind yourself to make enough time to let these
qualities shine through.

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