Well-Being Week Daily Schedule
THURSDAY: May 8, 2025
Connect
Social Well-Being
Building connection, belonging, and a reliable support network. Contributing to our groups and communities.
Share a Meal with Someone Today
Connect with people over food today. It can be as simple as coffee with a colleague or as celebratory as a fun team dinner.
- Today’s “social prescription” builds on the U.S. Surgeon General’s Recipes for Connection campaign, which highlights the power of connecting at mealtime in combating loneliness. It also draws on a global survey by Gallup finding that people who regularly eat meals with others are happier.
- Can one meal solve loneliness? No. But it can be a meaningful first step toward deepening relationships, building belonging, and strengthening well-being—both individually and across the profession.
- Resources to help you plan a meaningful gathering are available under the “Recipes for Connection Resources” tab on the WWIL website.
Send a Quick Gratitude Note to Tell Others They Matter
Take a few moments today to show others that they matter, are valued, and belong.
We suggest sending 3 notes of appreciation to colleagues, clients, friends, or family members. To make it easy, you can use IWIL’s free e-message tool:
- A loneliness epidemic has hit American workplaces. Chronic loneliness is related to poor mental health and workplace functioning and is a clear barrier to team thriving.
- Attention has focused on employees being alone at home as a main cause of rising loneliness. But workplace loneliness is not about being alone but about feeling unseen, unheard, and insignificant.
- Feeling a sense of belonging and that one matters is the opposite of feeling lonely. It flows from feeling accepted, included, respected, and contributing to our work and workplaces.
- Feeling and expressing gratitude to others also can benefit you. It can help protect and promote your own physical and psychological health and strengthen your relationships at work and at home.
- For more information and ideas about gratitude, see this brief article How Gratitude Makes You Happier. For ideas about everyday acts of kindness to help people feel they matter, see the Acts of Kindness Guide.
Connect With Others Across Difference: Seek Discomfort for Personal Growth
When confronted with perspectives that conflict with your own, don’t bail out: Recognize that your feelings of discomfort are a sign of personal growth.
- The quality of our relationships suffers when we avoid people with whom we think we disagree, close our minds to different perspectives, or bail out of conversations at the first sign of conflict.
- A new study (summarized by Greater Good Magazine) has identified a mental habit that can improve our resilience: Reframing our discomfort as a sign of growth.
- In the study, all participants engaged in stressful activities—such as journaling about difficult topics or reading challenging information about COVID or gun violence from a news source they wouldn’t usually read.
- Some participants were told that their goal was to feel uncomfortable, awkward, nervous, anxious, or even upset. They were asked to push past their comfort zone and know that feeling uncomfortable is a sign that the activity is working.
- The study found that, across activities, participants asked to positively reframe discomfort felt more engaged and motivated to persist.
- According to a study author: “Growing is often uncomfortable; we found that embracing discomfort can be motivating. People should seek the discomfort inherent in growth as a sign of progress instead of avoiding it.”
- The study suggests that we “might be judging normal human experiences like nervousness, stress, and discomfort too harshly. While our inclination might be to avoid them, they seem to be part of becoming better people and living a rich life.”
Live Webinar
Thursday, May 8, 11:30am-12:45 pm ET (**Note: The day and time have changed since originally posted.)
Uniting the Legal Community in Turbulent Times: Fostering Resilience, Purpose, & Well-Being
Speakers:
- Prof. Stephen I. Vladeck, Georgetown University Law Center, CNN contributor, bestselling author (Bio)
- Mary Smith, Immediate Past President of the American Bar Association (Bio)
- Neel Chatterjee, Founder of Law Firm Partners United (Bio)
- Prof. Kendall L. Kerew, Georgia State University College of Law (Bio)
- Moderator: Dr. Anne M. Brafford, JD, PhD, Behavioral psychologist and founder of Aspire (Bio)
With constant news about threats to law firms, courts, and the rule of law, many lawyers are feeling disoriented and anxious. The unprecedented turmoil seems uncontrollable, unpredictable, and likely to persist—all factors that amplify stress and heighten the risk of anxiety, depression, and hopelessness. However, cultivating resilience can help lawyers navigate this “existential crisis” and maintain their strength, vitality, and well-being. In turbulent times, four key resilience factors are especially vital:
- Comprehensibility: Making sense of events—creating order, predictability, and understanding
- Manageability: Recognizing our capacity to cope, influence outcomes, and access needed resources
- Meaningfulness: Seeing challenges as worth our time, energy, and commitment
- Community: Drawing strength from trusted relationships and collective engagement
So far, there’s been more outrage than action—partly due to threat rigidity effects, a psychological response to threat that narrows thinking and leads to clinging to the status quo. In contrast, psychological flexibility supports more adaptive responses, allowing us to notice our thoughts and emotions without being controlled by them so that we can more authentically choose actions aligned with our values and goals.
Even small, purposeful steps can begin to restore a sense of agency. Passive coping—such as disengagement or downplaying the crisis—often fails to relieve anxiety. Active coping, on the other hand, builds confidence in our ability to make a difference and a sense of control and purpose. The benefits of action go beyond reducing anxiety. When we engage, we feel valued while adding value to our community, forge meaningful connections, and reinforce our shared identity and values. (See Literature References for the Webinar Framework Here)
In this webinar, our panel will explore how lawyers can foster these four resilience factors:
Comprehensibility:
- Stephen Vladeck will help make sense of current threats to the legal profession, placing recent executive actions and attacks on the rule of law in historical context. How bad is it, really? Are we facing an “existential crisis” or not? What does that mean—and why does it matter? (See his One First weekly newsletter about the Supreme Court and bestseller The Shadow Docket).
Manageability, Meaningfulness, & Community:
- Mary Smith will highlight how the ABA is responding to threats to the rule of law and democracy. She will talk about the ABA Task Force for American Democracy, which she launched during her Presidency. She will share ways lawyers can get involved, leverage resources, and take meaningful action to defend democratic institutions.
- Kendall Kerew will focus on why it’s important for lawyers to care about threats to democracy and the rule of law. What duties and values do lawyers have relating to the rule of law and protecting the Constitution and democracy? Is this a non-partisan perspective? Aren’t lawyers’ duties only to their clients and not society generally? (See her journal article, The Rule of Law, The Lawyer’s Role as a Public Citizen, and Professional Identity.)
- Neel Chatterjee founded Law Firm Partners United (LFPU) within the last few months, and it grew quickly to over 700 members. He will talk about what LFPU is, why he founded it, and what its activities and plans are. He will explain how AmLaw 200 partners can get involved and why they might want to—including mutual support for navigating these challenging times as a law firm partner and opportunities for collective action. His proactivity illustrates the importance of creating your own way to contribute—either by joining an existing organization or building your own.
Building our collective resilience will enable us to stay healthy, connected, and psychologically flexible and choose values-aligned action in the face of ongoing threats. Together, we can meet this moment with clarity, courage, and community.
CLE credit will not be available for this session.
This year, we have general registration. When you register for Well-Being Week in Law, you’ll have access to the online event platform where all webinars will be available.