Email
danielle@teachingwell.life
danielle@teachingwell.life
Because we are in the giving season, I’d like to give something back to all of you this holiday season and beyond in 2020, but I need your list first!
I am looking for your honest feedback to help me better serve you on your teacher health and wellness journey.
Click here to make your voice heard! All participants will be entered into a drawing for a prize awarded at the end of the month…just in time for the holidays!!
Your feedback is so important to me and will definitely be the driving force behind where we head in 2020. I have some ideas, but I really want your open and honest voices as we move forward.
We are now in that time between holiday breaks. If you are a classroom teacher you know that can mean a myriad of different things for your students and yourself. They may have had wonderful family experiences, associating lots of love with the holidays. Likewise, other students could be in difficult situations due to family or personal struggles, both current or previous.
We as teachers also have our own feelings around these holidays. I don’t know about you, but my level of festivity has changed throughout the years depending on where I am financially, emotionally, and mentally.
Of course I limit my sharing about these things with my students, but it’s possible that my feelings could be reflected in some of what I do or say. I am human after all 🙂
Knowing that, this year, I want to make sure that I find simple ways to take care of myself during these few weeks between holidays. When most of my energy is focused outward, I know if I want to make this an enjoyable holiday experience I need to make sure that I find those moments to keep my cup full or I will be sure to crash and burn before, during, or immediately after the holidays. And I don’t know about you, but I want to enjoy my break, not be scraping myself off the floor because I was white knuckling my self-care the whole month of December.
When we are exhausted and stressed, it’s difficult to find the momentum to participate in those things we enjoy about life. This week we’re taking the first of three ways to begin taking the smallest steps to get into action with our self-care in the hopes that our motivation will follow.
Remember “When motivation is low, motivation follows action, rather than the other way around. When you put the action first, motivation follows.” It’s actually been studied that if we don’t use these reward centers in our brain, they become desensitized. So now we need to WAKE them up. We do that by taking small, mindful actions.
So for the next three weeks, we will take those actions in different areas of our personal and professional lives.
The first week we will be focusing on doing something that is pleasurable.
Two areas that may be great places to start are:
Be specific and make a list. Keep the list in a place you can see it and do SOMETHING on the list this week. The simpler the better. Don’t put pressure on yourself that this one activity is going to solve all of your stress, but allow yourself to just enjoy something that you find pleasure in. Don’t add any other strings to the experiment.
If you feel inclined to do something else from the list on another day. But no pressure. We’re just warming up and working out those pathways that have been stagnated by our stress. We need to wake them up with small deliberate actions. These are the first ones.
This Week’s Action:
Do something that is pleasurable for YOU…
Consider doing something that is kind to your body
AND/OR
Engaging in an enjoyable activity
**Check in at We are Teaching Well, reply to this email or talk to a trusted friend or colleague. You never know, your small action could be the motivation that others need to move forward with their own self-care journey!
I can’t wait to hear about your actions toward self-care this week. And I also look forward to your holiday feedback. CLICK HERE to provide that feedback and enter to win a prize at the end of the month!