Understanding a personal injury lawsuit timeline can help a victim cope with the stress and emotional challenges that may arise with the processing of his case. Though the time and process may be different in some states, on the average, the process is complicated and time-consuming.

Unfortunately, a high percentage of Americans are unaware of the workings of the judicial proceedings both for civil and criminal cases. Because of this, it is extremely important that auto accident attorneys, for example, communicate the personal injury claim process to their clients before filing.

Regrettably, some lawyers fail to give clients the right information and instead promise to expedite action on the case to impress the victim to hire them. This practice is wrong and against legal ethics.

It is your right as a person who has a personal injury claim to know every step of the lawsuit. The right knowledge will help you prepare for any outcome since most personal injury cases are unpredictable.

This article will walk you through a step-by-step approach to understanding the personal injury lawsuit timeline so you’d know what to expect.

Seek Medical Attention

Immediately following an accident, it is paramount for the victim to seek medical care in order to minimize the severity of injuries. Whether it is a ‘slip and fall’ or ‘car accident,’ a hospital visit is necessary.

This single action will give you an edge if your insurance company tries to prove that there was no injury at all. Secondly, an immediate hospital visit will prove a point to the jury that you were hurt.

See Also: Personal Injury Claims After A Car Accident

Talk To A Lawyer

It is important to consult a lawyer if you suffer significant injury or other losses in an accident. If you are afraid of the cost, then take advantage of law firms who offer free consultations and discuss the situation with them.

It is necessary that you take this step because a lawyer can give you the right advice and help. He’ll guide you on how you can get a better settlement than the insurance companies initially offer.

Commencement Of Investigations

The investigation of the claims and medical records will start immediately once the lawyer agrees that your claims are worth filing in the law court. You can justify this by answering relevant questions from the solicitor and giving him access to your medical records.

Most importantly, you need to give out all pertinent information and be honest about the accident and your medical condition to avoid surprises in the courtroom.

Attorney Files An Insurance Claim

Most personal injury cases get settled out of court. However, it will still depend on the level of damage or loss suffered by the victim. Slip and fall accidents are mostly settled out of court. Auto accidents, on the other hand, are most likely resolved through the court process. An experienced attorney may get a reasonable settlement for his client from the insurance company.

In the case of a car accident, the lawyer should first submit the claims to the at-fault driver’s insurance company. After that, the claim will be investigated and compensation will be paid.

If the accident results in permanent disability, the lawyer will activate the Maximum Medical Improvement (MMI) aspect of the law. This will help the victim get a resounding victory and much higher settlement in the case.

The Attorney Files A Lawsuit

Filing a lawsuit comes into play when the insurance company does not settle claims out of court, and your attorney sees no other option than to file a lawsuit.

The preliminary timeline for filing a personal injury lawsuit is as follows:

• Serving appropriate documents to the defendant should take from 30 to 60 days.
• The stipulated time for a response from the defendant, meanwhile, is within 30 days. In some cases, they may ask for additional days.

The parties will then exchange information related to the accident and this will involve complaints and counterclaims

Discovery

This stage of the legal process is meant to dislodge surprises that may arise during the main court sessions. At this juncture, each party (the plaintiff and the defendant) investigates one another using the documents and evidence submitted.

It has two major processes: interrogations and depositions. The first one requires parties to provide documents which will be useful during the court sessions. The latter, meanwhile, involves questions and answers from any witnesses.

The Mediation Stage

Following disclosure of the interrogations and depositions, attorneys may agree on certain terms. This can potentially lead to a peaceful settlement which is why this stage is also called as the ‘alternative dispute resolution’ stage.

Trial

This is the last stage of the personal injury lawsuit timeline. All the parties must be present in court for the jury to go through the documents and interrogate the witnesses. The length of such cases can last for weeks or months.

 

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Keeping a journal is one of the most rewarding habits you can develop. In fact, even key players in history valued it for its benefits.

Despite the benefits of journaling, it still has not maintained its popularity over the years. One reason is that a lot of people associate it with uncommunicativeness or aloofness.

Mari L. McCarthy, an International Bestselling Author, believes that “the benefits of a journaling practice extend to almost every conceivable human endeavor.” With this in mind, let’s look at how starting a journal can make a difference.

Journal writing is your personal therapy

All human beings need somebody to hear and understand them. At their treatment sessions, patients tell therapists about their latest updates, feelings, and emotions. That brings relief.

Journaling is an excellent (and free) therapeutic activity. Writing about stressful and emotional events can improve your psychological health. It reduces stress and anger.

Since there is no wrong way to keep a journal, you can make it suit your personality and situation. Create a daily record of events that fill your life. Give your deepest thoughts, feelings, and worries an outlet.

Allow yourself to be who you are when writing. Be frank. Journaling means no fear of judgment or blame or even the need for justification.

See Also: Writing Therapy: How It Can Make Your Life Easier

Journaling makes you sincere and open-minded

Journaling can help you enhance your personal development. Since it’s your private place, you can write whatever is on your mind!

You can develop ideas, challenge assumptions and spend time reflecting. Ask yourself thought-provoking questions. This will help you develop a deeper understanding of yourself, other people and your relationships. It will make your interaction with the world more meaningful.

Write down the bits and pieces you never bothered to put into words. Journaling brings clarity that will amaze you.

You take pleasure from writing and develop more vivid language

What is the best way to hone your skills in any craft? That’s right. You should practice!

This is also true for writing. Even the most gifted authors work long hours to get mastery. Ernest Hemingway put it this way: “It’s none of their business that you have to learn how to write. Let them think you were born that way.”

Exercise your writing on a regular basis to enrich your vocabulary. Seek out new words and incorporate them into your own essay or story. With time, you will have enough word-stock to express ideas with.

To work on expanding your vocabulary, you can rewrite scenes from your favorite literary works or capture scraps of conversations you hear by chance. These exercises can stimulate creativity and polish writing skills.

Journaling is one of the most helpful ways to sharpen your skills in storytelling. It might open up your potential and help make your writing skills better., too.

Keeping a diary sharpens your senses and develops imagination

Journaling gives an opportunity for you to capture all your ideas without any pressure to work on it. It will help you keep a record of your thoughts, desires, and experiences. Keeping a journal helps you expand your ideas, too.

When you develop a habit of describing your daily life, it will heighten your senses and you will learn to notice the details nobody else ever sees.

Journal is a great place to brainstorm ideas or free-write for future use. Virginia Woolf found writing for no audience a great practice because “It loosens the ligaments”.

And you can also use a journal to overcome a writer’s block. It can be a source of seeds for essay topics, so go back to it when you need it and get your creative juices flowing again.

Journaling makes you more self-satisfied

Journaling is one of the best ways to know your inner self. It requires a high level of introspection and self-awareness. It can help you develop a greater self-understanding, discover how your actions affect other people and clarify your emotions and thoughts.

Regular journaling provides one more benefit. It’s keeping a permanent record of your life which will give you more opportunities to reflect and learn from yourself. Keeping a journal can help you know what makes you happy and find any patterns in your behavior.

See Also: 3 Writing Techniques to Increase your Self-Esteem

Anaïs Nin was a passionate diarist who began writing at the age of 11 and continued to write until her death at the age 74. Her diaries exposed the vibrant and uncensored richness of her life. Keeping a diary was more than an instrument for mastering the craft of writing. It was her means of understanding herself.

“In the diary, I only wrote of what interested me genuinely, what I felt most strongly at the moment”, – she confessed. It helped her feel “a love of the living moment” and “moments of wholeness and totality of the personality”.

Ernest Hemingway was sure that solitude is indispensable for creative work. “Writing, at its best, is a lonely life”, he said. Try to stay alone with your thoughts for some time. It can give you more chances to come up with something novel.

Conclusion

You’ll never know how journaling might work out until you try. To start with, it can be difficult to choose the right form as journaling isn’t a one-size-fits-all kind of thing. Look up different kinds of journals on Instagram and Tumblr and choose one from the loads of inspiring examples there. This way, you’ll get to make journaling work for you!

The post 5 Benefits of Journaling To Inspire and Motivate You appeared first on Dumb Little Man.

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When you’ve got too much to do and you’re under pressure, it can be quite tempting to just look back and remember how life used to be. With so many things to do and things happening, you just can’t help but wonder how good it will be if you can just forget being stressed.

Whilst you can’t be completely free of stress, you can control your relationship with it. Here are twelve things you should let go of if you want to live a calmer life.

Aiming For Perfection

There’s absolutely nothing wrong with being a perfectionist and wanting things done to a high standard, but you have to draw the line. When being a perfectionist is preventing you from making meaningful progress and frustrating you in the process, just stop. Good enough is usually good enough. Get the job done and move on. Aiming for perfection is a breeding ground fo self-defeating.

Comparing Yourself To Others

It’s only natural to look at somebody on the street and think ‘Hey, how come he’s got [this] or [that]. He must be so happier than me. His life must be way more fulfilling than my crappy life.’

Well, I have to tell you. You aren’t that somebody. You’re you. You most likely have a different chemical makeup, genes, attitude and a unique set of personal challenges that set you miles apart from the people you compare yourself to.

It’s not advisable to compare your life to someone else, especially those whom you perceive is doing better than you. It’s not an accurate or healthy way to gauge your own achievements.

Instead, try to compare your current self to the previous version of yourself. That’s a much more positive way to measure your own personal growth and progress.

Believing You’re a Failure

Failure doesn’t really exist. At least, it’s not how you’re perceiving it.

Failure is a chance to learn. It helps you do better the next time you have the opportunity to do the same thing. It’s a chance to make things right.

Believing you’re a failure is sometimes a result of you comparing yourself to others. It happens when you start beating yourself up over things other people have achieved that you haven’t.

Instead of focusing on those things, be mindful of your accomplishments. When you start tracking your own achievements, you’ll realize that you’re making massive strides forward and you aren’t a failure.

Holding Grudges

Holding grudges does more damage to you than it does to the other person. When you hold a grudge, you feel tense, bitter and resentful whenever you have an interaction with, or about, that person.

Alter your perception and understand that the other person isn’t affected in the slightest. It’s only you who’s feeling that negativity and tension, so let it go.

Allowing Yourself to Be Pulled Into Other People’s Chaos

It’s so stressful when somebody pulls you into their whirlwind of drama. I’ve got a neighbor who has a habit of calling me out of the blue for favors that usually involve his toxic relationships.

It almost always ends up with me being at the epicenter of his storm and it leaves me feeling stressed and uncomfortable. Not to mention, it also put my own plan on pause. After some time, I’ve finally learned how to say no and put up healthy boundaries about what I will and won’t accept.

Don’t allow yourself to be pulled into other people’s chaos.

See Also: The Courage To Say No

Pleasing People

The disease to please is a silent killer. That might sound a little extreme, but I believe it to be true.

Pleasing people can kill your dreams, ambitions and freedom. There’s nothing wrong with helping people, but it crosses the line when you please another person to the detriment of yourself. This is different to being ‘selfless’. You can be selfless without feeling the need to please people.

Maybe you please people because you worry about their response if you say no. Or maybe you please people because you attach your self-worth to the praise you gain from others.

Think about it. Both reasons aren’t going to serve you.

Letting Other People’s Opinions Affect You

Worrying about what other people think of you can only cause unnecessary anxiety and stress. I don’t know about you, but I used to find it triggering my anxiety, especially when I know somebody thinks of me as strange, silly and stupid.

I reached a point in my life recently where I started thinking differently about it. Now, I don’t feel anxious at all thinking about other people’s opinion of me or my life. I actually use it as a test to determine if I should let those people in my life at all.

Give it a try. Don’t try to stop people from being judgemental by altering your behaviors or activities to accommodate for them. Instead, live your life on your terms and don’t allow other people’s negative opinions control you. Never stop being you!

See Also: Top 9 Things To Give Up Immediately If You Want To Become Happy

Trying to Control Everything

Sometimes, to have a calm life, you just have to let go of trying to control outcomes. Enjoy the moment and be present.

A big source of our stress comes from wanting our lives to be in a particular way. In some instances, it’s our thinking that if we don’t reach certain outcomes, like getting that new job or landing that date, we’ve failed. But, in fact, we haven’t failed at all. We just tried to control the outcome.

Instead of spending all your energy on that, try shifting your perspective from one that is outcome-based to one that is mindful-based. Enjoy the process and be present.

Find enjoyment in the experiences and whilst outcomes are generally important for certain goals, try not to get caught up in them. They aren’t the be all and end all. You can always shift your goals if necessary.

Rushing Around

It’s ok to take your foot off of the gas.

Society gives us the impression that we need to be ‘on the go’ constantly and that we can’t be ‘lazy’. Because of this, we feel the need to perform to other people’s expectations which lead to frustration and burnout.

Allow yourself to take a break every now and then. Stop what you’re doing and find appreciation in each moment. Rushing around is really not an effective way to get things done.

People Who Drain You

Have you ever felt tired and drained after being in somebody’s company? How do you feel when you spend an hour with someone negative?

You go away feeling heavy and drained. These people don’t really mean to have these effects on you, but they just can’t stop moaning and complaining about their lives. In reality, however, if they were to actually analyze their lives, they most probably have very little to complain about.

Jim Rohn said it best when he said ‘You’re the average of the five people you spend the most time with’. So, upgrade your social circle and let go of the people who drain your positive energy.

Situations That Don’t Serve You

Have you ever found yourself in a situation where just didn’t feel right? You probably went ahead and stayed in it anyway though, right? I know I have in the past.

Listen to your gut as it is almost always right. By ignoring it, you’re allowing yourself to come into contact with some pretty stressful and, in more serious situations, regressive circumstances. Said another way, you’re at risk of letting yourself be part of situations that take your life a few steps back.

Learn to listen to your gut and follow your instincts. Only allow yourself to get involved with things that move your life forward. Try asking yourself if you want to get involved in something, if it’s not a ‘hell yeah!’ then it’s a ‘no’.

Your Desire to ‘Fit In’

People spend their whole lives trying, and failing, to fit in. It rarely works and even if you do fit in, you’ll feel downright miserable because you won’t feel like you’re living your authentic self.

Instead of trying to fit in, find the courage to be yourself and realize that you’re fine as you are. There’s only one you, so find the excitement in that and exercise your right to be uniquely you. Let go of trying to fit in and the anxiety and low self-esteem that come with it.

How many of these twelve points cause stress in your life?

One? All of them?

I want you to start letting go. You owe it to yourself.

Although you can’t control the big wide world out there, you can control what happens in and around you. If you’re letting these things add to your stress levels, you aren’t doing yourself any favors.

And guess what?

Letting go makes room, too. You’ll have room for more happiness, warmth and contentment.

I’m not encouraging you to take action, but I’m challenging you to. I want you to do this, not for me (how would I ever know?), but for yourself.

So, what one thing can you let go of today?

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