I’ve written a lot about making sure to take care of yourself. But some may not know how to do that, or may forget in the moments when it’s needed most.

When it feels like everything is on the line and your head and heart are pounding, it is easy to forget what a glass of water, a warm drink, a walk, or a hug from a friend can do. And even if none of those things fixes it, they may give you just enough relief to breathe, think clearly, and formulate a game plan.

So, without further ado, here are my go-tos for when life feels like a merry-go-round going full throttle (and also on fire).

One

A cliche, but it works: When you don’t know what caring for yourself looks like, imagine you were caring for a friend.

I spent far too long not consciously knowing what I needed. Until one day last week, I was up to my bangs in stress, in the middle of moving to a new place, and completely cluttered over what to address first.

When your brain is that overwhelmed, it begins to forget. So, every time a new idea or reminder pops up, it feels like the most important thing in the world.

When it isn’t.

So, as I lay on my bed still in mismatched sheets, I thought if someone I loved was in crisis, what would I tell them? Let’s get your room in order. You deserve a nice place to rest.

As I started breaking down and unpacking my moving boxes, I was greeted by a memory of my mother, who often told me this exact thing—though, at fourteen, I never listened. Clean your room. Make your bed. You will feel better.

And, suddenly, I did.

Not entirely, of course. My room was not the source of all my problems, nor was unpacking going to solve them. But it was one less problem shouting at me every time I looked around. One less wave of anxiety when I opened my eyes.

There was also something lovely about hearing my mother’s advice again, echoed in my own voice. The love she gave me then had survived my refusal to listen. It waited somewhere in my memory until I was old enough—or desperate enough—to offer it back to myself.

Finding relief from stress is not always lattes and massages. Sometimes, it’s cleaning your room.

Two

Before interpreting your life, double-check your body.

None of you drink enough water. Trust me. Add some electrolytes a few times a week, and your being will thank you. If you cannot do it for present you, do it for future you.

I started thinking about it like fueling during a long run. You drink water at mile nine because you know there is a hill at mile eleven — and by then, you might be too tired to remember what you needed.

It will not eliminate the hill. It will not fully alleviate the aches and pains. But it may buffer them.

In law school, and in life, any buffer is better than none. So, before concluding that everything is terrible or too hard, ask yourself:

• Have I eaten something substantial?
  Going too long without a balanced meal can do a number on the body. Try to use “premium fuel” whenever possible—but a few slices of free pizza from CSO can take some of the mental load off feeding yourself. Just try not to rely on it quite as often as I did.
• Have I had water?
  I am not a doctor, but I know that dehydration does not make an already difficult day any easier. Think of water as preparing the ground for all the information you are trying to plant; or think of it as drowning your anxieties. Whatever narrative gets you to hydrate— use it.
• Have I been staring at a screen for too long?
  Yes.
  Take a walk. Touch grass. And try not to replace the law-school screen with the smaller screen in your hand. Your brain is tired enough as it is.
  These tiny details matter albeit, mostly over time—but the best day to plant a seed is still today.
• Am I trying to solve at midnight what should be reconsidered tomorrow?
  Again, probably.
  Law school is not like undergrad, where you can cram, dump, and forget. The law is kind of (if you choose), the rest of your life. You need to learn now when to keep pushing and when sleep is more important than the notes you are trying to format.

On that note: please, please, please get some sleep.

Moral of the story: You are at a top law school, but you should try to live like an athlete because, in many ways, you are performing like one. Long, hard days spent deciphering legal writing are not easy on the mind. If they were, we would be out of a job.

So, when you can, take the ounce of prevention. When you did not, return to the basics:

Hydrate. Eat. Move. Sleep.

Then reconsider the verdict. If everything still feels urgent after that, we turn to…

Three

Your mind is probably a clusterf*ck.

Excuse my language. But it’s true.

Everything feels like a tragedy because nothing feels settled. There is a reason we have sayings like “the straw that broke the camel’s back.” You are not the first person to have so much going on that one small inconvenience suddenly feels much heavier than it is.

But you can join the long list of people who realized that deciding what to carry changes the game.

Energy is a currency. And sometimes, you’re broke.

Don’t worry, we all get there at certain points in our lives. For you, 1L might be one of those points. For some, it might not be. Either way, you can’t afford to spend energy on everything simply because everything has found its way into your head.

So, dump it all onto a piece of paper or a Google Doc.

I have ninety pages of reading to do tomorrow.

I think I made a mistake.

Should I apply for jobs back home or here?

That conversation with X was really weird.

Write down the assignments, decisions, conversations, unanswered emails, vague anxieties, and embarrassingly small inconveniences. If it keeps resurfacing, it belongs on the page. Then, hopefully after completing “steps” One and Two, decide what actually deserves your energy.

Slowly sift through the list:

• What requires action?
• What requires a decision, but not today?
• What am I waiting on that I have no power over right now?
• What am I repeatedly revisiting even though there is nothing left for me to do about it?
• And what is uncomfortable, rather than urgent?

There is an important difference between addressing something and repeatedly thinking about it. Worrying about how much reading you have to do cuts into the time available to do it. But trying to ignore the anxiety that’s making it difficult to begin will not help either.

Maybe the answer is to set a timer and start the reading.

Maybe the answer is to ask someone at CSO tomorrow, and let it go for the night.

Maybe the answer is to accept that the conversation was weird, that you cannot crawl into the other person’s head for clarification, and that’s just how life is sometimes—awkward. 

The point is not to finish everything on the list. The point is to stop treating everything on it as equally deserving of your energy. As silly as it may sound, try to reprioritize your list from the perspective of someone slightly wiser than you: The version of you who is already where you want to be, even if right now you don’t know how you’ll get there.

Future you would probably tell you it’s not that deep, get some sleep, and spending another hour stressing on X is a waste of energy. So I am telling you, too. Carrying a lot unintentionally is not helpful anymore. Deciding what you carry will be. 

Let’s work on it together this year. 

“Vale más partir del cliché que llegar a él.” (It is better to start from the cliché than to arrive at it.) —  Alfred Hitchcock 

“Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional.” — Haruki Murakami

“You cannot push anyone up a ladder unless he is willing to climb himself.” – Andrew Carnegie

---

Zoe Arvanitis-Dalpe is a second-year law student at BC Law. Contact her at arvanit@bc.edu.