You don't need a thirty day program
I was at a neighborhood party listening to someone whose voice was a little louder than the others. He was standing in the kitchen complaining about his foot. He needed surgery. It hurt.
He was overweight, maybe pre-diabetic. The foot was making him immobile now, and he'd be immobile for a while after. So he'd shifted to talking about his cooking, his pork green chile, a real thing in the southwest. But the foot hurt, so he couldn't stand at the stove as long, either.
One of the neighborhood dads at the party offered to do a 30 day program with him. No alcohol, no processed food, no flour, no sugar. Shed some weight, maybe change the trajectory toward diabetes.
"No alcohol and no green chile?" That was his question.
No. Not for 30 days.
He thought about it. Then: "Thanks, but I'll have to pass. I just don't want to live like that."
He wasn't choosing chile over health. He was choosing the version of himself he already recognizes over one he'd have to meet for the first time.
I know lawyers who make that trade every day.
I spoke with one last month. Three depositions that week, a filing due Friday, a client who calls at 9 pm on Sundays. He told me he hadn't slept more than five hours a night in two years. I asked what he'd give up to fix it.
The answer came fast: “Nothing.” Which was how I knew that he had thought of it before. Not the cases. Not the phone. Not the 9 pm calls, because those clients need him.
Same response. Thirty days of something different, and the answer is always no. Because the emails, the caseload, the marriage, the mirror, the pain is loud and constant and somehow still more bearable than thirty days of not knowing who he'd be without it.
The wellness pitch aimed at lawyers is the neighborhood dad. We get offered a 30 day reset, a sobriety challenge, a sleep protocol, a meditation app. And we politely decline because we know that none of it will survive contact with the version of us that bills 2,200 hours and answers email at midnight.
So no, you don't need the thirty day program. The program was never the problem. It was never the solution, either.
Somewhere in your practice is the thing you've decided is load bearing. Something you've built an identity around so securely that giving it up for 30 days would feel like dying a small death.
You already know what it is. You felt it when you read the part about the chile.
What's the thing you won't give up, even though it's the thing that's killing you?
