When I was a prosecutor, praise and positive reinforcement came so very rarely. Don’t get me wrong, I was happy in my position and where I worked. But where that was just happened to not have the environmental effect of giving out to the lawyers in the room much positive reinforcement. I was able to put a finger on this with the help of my cousin, who is a licensed psychotherapist. During one of our many conversations about my job, she uttered these words “Michelle, it seems like you don’t get much positive reinforcement in what you do.” Lightbulb. She was right. I didn’t get much positive reinforcement for what I did. I don’t think this was purposeful. I think it was just a quirk of the job. When she uttered those words, I started to realize that I had a habit of saving voicemails from people that called to tell me thank you. This practice of saving the several voicemails that I had over the years was my attempt at getting that positive reinforcement; they were my cheer journal. Some of those messages that I ultimately left behind when I left the prosecutor’s office were years old…I mean years old. Whenever I would go through my voicemails, I found myself never really able to erase them or let them go. Unbeknownst to me, I was saving my cheer journal; something that I had occasion to listen to whenever I was cleaning out my voicemail messages, and perhaps something that would lighten my day and remind me of the joy of my work.

              I had occasion to think about the idea of a “cheer journal” when I got a wonderful message from a client that I had recently helped. This client’s matter was pretty straightforward, however, it was difficult for someone without legal training to navigate. It was a simple enough legal matter if you knew what you were doing and where to start. I had the pleasure of hearing from this client this past week. I had brought their simple, straightforward legal matter to a close and they were absolutely grateful for it. Sometimes, I think we forget how life-altering our work can be for our everyday folks. It’s the simple legal matters that, I think, can have the most profound effect on some of our most run-of-the-mill clients. And these opportunities of praise that we get from our clients? We must savor them and appreciate them for more than just a heartbeat. We do need to take the time to do this to drown out the other stressors of our professions. So why not record these times of positivity in a cheer journal?

                 Just like my littered voicemail box at the prosecutor’s office, a cheer journal could be a helpful tool to keep in order to remind oneself, as an attorney, of those positive aspects of what we do and how we can positively affect people’s lives. So, I think I am going to start one. I haven’t decided on whether it’s going to be an actual handwritten journal or just some word document that I just add to from time to time. But, perhaps all attorneys should have a cheer journal to remind ourselves of those times clients, judges, or even opposing counsel gives you a positive word or remark.