What does wellness mean to you?
Wellness is “I think and feel well.” Whatever I do, whatever is going on, I’m able to feel good and fell well. It comes with practice.
What kind of wellness practices do you do?
The ones that are most impactful are (1) exercise because it helped me overcome bulimia and (2) entrepreneurship because it helps me overcome feeling jaded at work as a lawyer. Those are my main go-tos. Incidentally, that’s also what I teach other people because when I was trying to get there with exercise and with entrepreneurship, that’s when I felt the most lonely and I don’t want that for others.
What led you to these wellness practices?
With exercise, when I was bulimic for 7 years, I felt very weak. And when I felt weak I felt weak in everything that I did. The imposter syndrome, I felt I wasn’t good enough as a human being generally speaking. I tried exercise as a way to become stronger. I was hearing good things about it. When I got stronger in the body, I got stronger in the mind. That’s when I knew the body and mind are connected.
I started entrepreneurship because I wanted to be the support for other people who didn’t know where to start for exercise. When I started that, I knew it was not easy. It was so hard that at some point, I called the national hotline because I felt so deprived of any support or any sort of anything – and especially because I had a baby on the way – and people liked to tell me to just focus on that. People liked to tell me what to focus on. People generally want to tell people want to focus on. I didn’t want to be told what to do, what to focus on. But at the same time, there was no one I could rely on as a mentor or coach. So those are the two mental health crises that I had gone through. So I knew I had to push through because if I’m going through this same thing having that momentary suicidal ideation, I know there are other people going through the same thing either as a result of bulimia or as a result of going through entrepreneurship alone.
Do you have a favorite wellness resource(s) you can recommend?
I’m trying to think of resources that are not mine. I’ve been told that my podcast, Fit to Practice, and our community, Fit to Practice Society, has been helpful for a lot of other attorneys who are trying to find that balance between work life and home life. So I’m very grateful to be able to offer that.
With the Side Hustle Accelerator, I’m grateful to be able to help other lawyers. This is one of the things that’s most taboo across all industries is how dissatisfied we are at work. And part of it is the fact that we’re so tethered to an organization. So no matter how high your salary is and no matter how great the people around you are, there will be bad days. And on the bad days, you will want to leave. And when you don’t have a backup plan, that really challenges the mind. So that’s how I’m able to support other people.
I used Headspace for meditation and currently I use Calm because it was $5 cheaper. I really like both. I like Headspace because it doesn’t have any sounds in the background, but I like Calm because it does have sounds in the background. And so I definitely benefit from both apps in terms of meditation.
How do you incorporate wellness practices into your lifestyle?
I try to listen to myself, to my heart. I talk about self-care as exercise, and I talk about self-care as entrepreneurship. When I have an hour, I get to decide how I’m going to spend that hour. Am I going to spend this hour with the baby in front of me, or if I’m upstairs and the baby’s not in front of me, am I going to spend this hour talking to somebody for my business or emailing a bunch of people that I want to email? It's about making a decision about how to spend that hour based on what I want to do. And that has really been the biggest way that I save energy and make energy.
How do you make sure to prioritize yourself throughout the day?
I'm driven a lot by questions rather than by certain routines. The biggest struggle for me is when certain things happen. I don't know what to do with that when something negative happens. And so whatever self-care routine I do is not going to address it. The question I have to ask myself throughout the day, whenever challenges happen is, how is this the best thing that's ever happened to me? Whenever someone snaps at me, or whenever someone pisses me off, or I make a mistake, or something just doesn't turn out the way I wanted to, instead of letting it roll throughout the rest of the day, I ask myself that question. And that helps me calm down.
How does your wellness routine help you be better at your job?
I have a couple of jobs. I’m an entrepreneur, I’m a lawyer, and I’m a family member. So for me, being able to take a break from each of them helps me be better when I'm focusing on each of them.
How important is it to bring wellness into the legal industry?
I think it depends on what it looks like. I think it's important to define. I think you asked a great question about what wellness means in the beginning, because I think defining that for each company, depending on their culture, or based on our culture is very important. I see a lot of the times where companies and firms try to define wellness for themselves, and give out free calm subscriptions or gym subscriptions, thinking that that is sufficient. But I would like to see more of those companies and firms actually listening to their employees and having these kinds of conversations about what does wellness mean to you? And how can we help you achieve that? Those are the questions that companies need to ask.
How can we make a can we normalize wellness in the legal industry?
We need more conversations. Every time a conversation happens, we have an opportunity to speak. And we also have an opportunity to listen. When that mutual exchange happens, with every interaction, every conversation, something sparks, and we get more clarity about what we want as a person. And we also have more clarity on what the other person wants as well. Then we get to this kind of socializing, you learn how to be better at listening, you learn how to be better at speaking. And when you do that, you increase your capacity as an entire collective organization to be able to give grace to others and develop that culture where you're not instilling fear in your people. It's about that continuous two way street.
Is there anything else you’d like to share?
Wellness looks different for everybody. It's important for each of us to have that space to really truly recognize what works for us. I think a lot of my health journey was delayed because I was too concerned about what wellness should mean, what other people told me what I should do. For example, when there were conversations “you should be working out, you should be eating more healthy, you should be doing this and that.” I did not like that at all. I don't like being told what to do. So when I have that kind of exposure, I let that get in the way of me listening to myself. The final word I would say is to take the time and space you need to figure out what works for you. Because for me, I found out that exercising first thing in the morning is much better than what Oprah does, which is she I think she said somewhere that she meditates for half an hour first thing in the morning. And you know as much as I wish I could be Oprah. That's not something that works for me. So don't worry about what other people are doing.
Angela Han is a healthcare lawyer and health coach for lawyers' physical,
mental, and professional health. In addition to her Juris Doctor received
from Georgetown University and Master's Degree in Education from
University of Nevada, Las Vegas, she has also received certifications in
nutrition, yoga, and personal training. To fulfill her life's purpose, she
created the Fit to Practice Society, which is a community of lawyers across
the country who come together for workouts, yoga, and fireside chats on
how to live their dream lives. As the host of Fit to Practice podcast, she
interviews lawyers on what it means to be fit to practice, and discusses their
professional health journey.