You Are Exhausted, Angry, and Overwhelmed. Here Is What 40 Years in Court and a Decade of Trump Taught Me About Staying Sane

Forty years of trial work will either break you or teach you something most people never learn.

It taught me this.

Here is the truth about stress. You feel it because you have never built a buffer between what happens to you and how you respond to it.

This is the whole game.

People ask me almost weekly how I stay balanced. They want to know how a trial lawyer who writes daily about the sitting president, politics, and civic accountability keeps his head on straight.

The question makes sense when you see what fills my day. The cases I handle in court carry high stakes, heavy emotion, and relentless pressure. The commentary I write attracts criticism, hate mail, and pushback from every direction. My inbox proves it.

Here is what I have learned.

Two Lists Changed My Life

I keep two mental lists at all times.

What I control. What I do not.

Most people blur these together and wonder why they feel exhausted. You are burning energy on things you have zero ability to influence. Other people’s opinions. Political outcomes you did not cause. The past. What somebody said about you on social media at two in the morning.

Let it go.

You have no standing in the fight. You are not the judge. You are not the jury. You are the person trying to live a life.

You can take action on these things but remember, you’re not in control of what happens next.

When I accepted this, the weight dropped off my shoulders in a way I still remember.

What Dying People Taught Me About Living

I have represented families through the worst moments of their lives.

Parents who lost children. Spouses who lost the love of their lives. People whose entire world collapsed in a single afternoon. Siblings left to bury someone gone too soon.

Sit across from enough of these families and you stop worrying about the small stuff. Spending years with them during a case and you stop caring about petty arguments. You stop losing sleep over the rude email somebody sent you.

Here is what I noticed.

In the final hours of life, nobody thinks about the social media post they saw. Nobody replays the meeting they bombed. Nobody obsesses over the business fight they lost. Nobody regrets not checking email one more time.

They think about family. Health. The people they loved. Whether they felt safe. Whether they were happy.

The list is short. The list of things most of us stress about every day is infinite. Almost none of it will matter when your time comes.

Let this sink in.

Deflect, Reflect, Select

I want to give you the framework I have used for decades. I call it deflect, reflect, select.

Picture yourself as a sheet of shiny slippery Teflon.

When somebody says something to you, it deflects. It slips right off you. Instantly. It does not sink in. It does not bruise. It does not burrow into your chest and set up camp for three days. It slides right off.

This is step one. Deflect.

Step two is reflect. You take time, seconds, hours, sometimes weeks, and you consider the full range of responses available to you. A reply. A statement. A phone call. A decision. Silence. Doing nothing at all is a legitimate option.

You weigh short term and long term consequences. You picture the ramifications. You ask yourself what the version of you six months from now would want you to do. Sometimes doing this takes just a second. Sometimes it takes longer.

Step three is select.

You choose your response on your own terms. Calmly. With full intention.

Sometimes your response is a sentence. Sometimes it is an entire legal filing. Sometimes it is walking away. Sometimes it is laughing and moving on.

The point is you pick it on your own terms.

This is the buffer most people never build. They feel something. They react. Three minutes later they are in a mess requiring three months to clean up.

Do not be this person.

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Why This Matters Right Now

You live inside one of the noisiest moments in human history.

Your phone keeps you reactive by design. Social media keeps you reactive by design. Cable news keeps you reactive by design. The political environment keeps you reactive by design. The algorithm keeps you reactive all the time.

If you do not build a buffer between the input and your response, you will spend the rest of your life angry, exhausted, and wondering where the time went.

I see it every day. Business owners who are brilliant at what they do losing sleep over a single star review. Professionals with entire careers unraveling over a comment section. Smart people letting an anonymous stranger ruin their Tuesday. Parents carrying work stress home so their kids feel it at the dinner table.

Stop.

You have too much to protect. Your family. Your health. Your work. Your peace of mind. None of it should sit at the mercy of a stranger who does not know your name.

The Practice Starts Today

Here is what I want you to do before the sun goes down.

The next time somebody sends you a message lighting you up, somebody criticizes you in public, or you see Trump calling someone a name or lying again on television, pause.

Deflect it.

Reflect on your options.

Select your response with intention.

Do it once. Notice how it feels.

Then do it again the next day. And the day after.

Perspective is a muscle. You build it by using it.

I have used this framework through trials with millions of dollars on the line. I have used it in situations where people attacked my reputation. I have used it when writing about the highest office in the country. I have used it on days when my phone would not stop buzzing with bad news.

It works.

What I Want You to Remember

You rarely have control of what happens to you.

Most of the time you don’t have control over why someone else feels the way they do.

But you do have total control over what happens next.

Most of what you worry about today will not matter in a year. Almost none of it will matter on the last day of your life. Give your energy to the things earning a place on the short list.

Your family deserves the best version of you.

Your business deserves the best version of you.

You deserve the best version of you.

Build the buffer. Deflect, reflect, select. Protect your peace like it is the only thing you have, because in the end, it is.

Mitch Jackson, Esq.

P.S.- My late father in law was a milkman. He told me something years ago that hit hard and stayed with me. I shared it on LinkedIn because it changed the way I live and work.

P.P.S.- You deal with stress every day. What actually works for you? Share it in the comments so others can use it.

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