“Enjoy the little things. For one day you may look back and realize they were the big things.” – Robert Brault
At a recent conference, I had the opportunity to hear from Mark Mathews, a professional, big-wave surfer turned resilience speaker. Mark shared how a serious injury left him unable to return to the sport he loved, and how his recovery was shaped by a single mindset – gratitude.
That shift helped him reclaim purpose and build resilience not just physically, but emotionally. The lessons he shared were very relevant to the pressures of legal life and so this month I decided to look into it a little bit more.
Why gratitude matters in law?
We are trained to identify problems, balance risk to our clients, and come up with solutions. This means that often we are on guard and necessarily focus on dangers. This can be a bit counter-intuitive to a mindset of gratitude. However, gratitude is something which can be trained.
The benefit of gratitude is that it can help rebalance your mental load, and research has shown that it can:
- Reduce stress and anxiety
- Improves immune function and sleep
- Boosts resilience and emotional regulation
- Strengthens professional and personal relationships
How does gratitude affect the brain?
For our logical and practice lawyer brain, this may all seem a bit airy-fairy. However, gratitude also has real physical effects on the brain. Repeated practice can strengthen neural pathways associated with positive emotion, helping you shift away from stress or threat-based thinking.
It activates regions of the brain involved in emotional regulation, empathy, and reward, such as the prefrontal cortex and anterior cingulate cortex.1
When gratitude is practised regularly, it can have effects similar to medication, producing long-lasting feelings of happiness and contentment. Gratitude activates the brain’s dopamine and serotonin systems, which are responsible for regulating mood. These ‘feel-good’ chemicals help us feel more positive almost immediately.2
Over time, this rewiring supports a more resilient and optimistic baseline, even in high-pressure environments like legal practice.
Simple gratitude practices for busy lawyers
Here are some lawyer-friendly ways to bring gratitude into your day:
- The Gratitude Text
Send a quick message to someone you appreciate in the office or personally. It may be to a colleague for help on a file, a great conversation, or whether you just appreciate their positive presence. You could also send a text to a loved one or friend for something you appreciate about them.
Why it works: It shifts your nervous system into a calmer, more regulated state and builds goodwill.
- End-of-day ‘Three Things’
At the close of your workday, write down three things that went well.
Why it works: It helps the brain consolidate positives, offsets stress and builds emotional resilience.
- Express your appreciation
Take 10 seconds to thank a colleague at the start of a team meeting. You do not need to be over-the-top nor deliver a speech. A quiet, sincere comment is enough.
If expressing gratitude does not come naturally to you yet, like any habit, it gets easier with practice. Start small and you will likely notice not only how it changes the tone of the meeting, but how it subtly strengthens your working relationships over time.
Or easier yet – notice something positive on social media? An article a colleague shared, a milestone, or a moment of vulnerability? Take five seconds to like it, leave a quick comment, or share it with a kind word. These small gestures of support do not go unnoticed and will be appreciated.
Why it works: It builds trust, normalises kindness in professional settings, and sets a positive tone for collaboration.
- Slow down and enjoy the moment!
Make an effort to fully appreciate positive moments as they occur. It might be the first sip of your morning coffee, the calm of your walk to work, getting your favourite seat on the bus, finishing a task ahead of schedule, or simply noticing the colour of the sky at sunset. These little pauses of awareness can act as subtle resets, reminding you that, even on the busiest days, there is something worth noticing.
Why it works: These small experiences, when noticed and acknowledged, become anchors in the day. They offer a quiet reset amidst the pace and pressure of legal work.
- Reliving good times
Think about or share past positive experiences with others to reinforce feelings of gratitude. It might be a funny story, a great result on a matter, or simply a time when someone showed up for you in a small but meaningful way. Go tell someone!
Revisiting these moments helps reignite the feelings of gratitude associated with them, often more vividly than we expect.
Why it works: When we recall positive memories, especially those involving connection, humour, or appreciation, we activate the same neural pathways that were engaged during the original experience. This can boost mood, improve resilience, and increase feelings of social support. Sharing these moments with others amplifies the effect, creating a feedback loop of positivity that strengthens both our internal mindset and our relationships.
- Keep a record of gratitude
Lawyers love file-noting everything. Why not gratitude? This might be a little bit next level but consider keeping a ‘gratitude jar’. Each time you notice something you are grateful for, jot it down on a small slip of paper and drop it into the jar. Over time, it becomes a collection of small, meaningful moments you can revisit when you need a lift.
If you are more visually inclined, you might try capturing these moments with a quick photo. These snapshots can serve as simple, visual reminders of what is going well.
Why it works: Writing down or visually capturing moments of gratitude helps solidify them in your memory.
In practice – why gratitude helps lawyers
Gratitude is not about blind positivity. It is about training your mind to notice what is working, even in the middle of a demanding day. Over time, this rewiring of your brain improves:
- Client communication
- Team morale
- Decision-making under pressure
- Your ability to bounce back from setbacks
It shifts your internal focus from threat to resource, and for lawyers, that can mean the difference between surviving and thriving in practice.
Final thoughts
Gratitude is a skill, not just a feeling. Like any skill, it strengthens with consistent practice, and its benefits compound over time.
It can be integrated into the workday through small, intentional action such as a thank-you email, a quiet moment of appreciation, or a kind word in passing. These moments may seem minor, but their psychological and physiological impact is real and measurable.
One of the most powerful aspects of gratitude is that it is entirely free and instantly accessible. You do not need special tools, training, or perfect circumstances, just the willingness to pause and acknowledge something good even in the middle of a busy day.
What makes gratitude especially meaningful is that it benefits not just the person expressing it, but also the person receiving it. A single genuine expression of thanks can lift someone’s mood, strengthen working relationships, and shift the tone of a conversation or a team dynamic.
In this way, gratitude creates a ripple effect, spreading wellbeing beyond the individual and into the broader workplace culture.
Final quote I would love to share:
“It is not happiness that brings us gratitude. It is gratitude that brings us happiness.” – Brother David Steindl-Rast
Footnotes
1 https://positivepsychology.com/neuroscience-of-gratitude/#how-gratitude-works
2 https://positivepsychology.com/neuroscience-of-gratitude/#how-gratitude-works
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