How are you?
Before I begin this conversation with you, I want you to close your eyes, take a few deep breaths, drop your shoulders, relax your jaw, and do a quick self check in.
How are you?
How are you feeling mentally?
How are feeling physically?
When is the last time you smiled and laughed?
When was the last moment you felt a bit of peace?
What do you need to do today to feel okay, feel a bit of peace, enjoy a smile and a laugh?
I challenge you to take a step today to make one of these things happen, even if it is less than 10 seconds out of your day — take a moment for yourself.
As we return back to school from break, your emotions and physical health may be feeling a spectrum of different things — and so are your students and colleagues.
This is about you though.
So let’s check in — what about education is bringing you joy currently? What used to bring you joy in education? How has it changed? What made that change? Has that change been positive, negative, or indifferent? What can we do to add more joy into what we do? If you are soaring high right now; your joy bucket filled or overflowing, that’s amazing! If yours is running low or empty, bone dry even — I see you. No matter where your joy meter lands at this moment in time, it is okay. What’s important is that you are checking in with yourself, knowing where you are and doing what you need in response. That looks and feels different from person to person, just like our joy meter readings themselves.
My joy meter can change daily, multiple times even based on the events of the day, and stressors. What I try to be intentional about though is making authentic readings — is what I am feeling a temporary response to something that happened today or is it a true reading of what is going on with me overall?
I can tell you that while my joy meter is reading “high” currently, an event occurred in a neighboring city yesterday that has consumed my mental space. A six year old student shot his teacher at school. This has me rattled as a teacher, parent, resident in the local community, and human being. While it hasn’t created an impact on my joy meter, it is indeed impacting my mental space, my worry meter is on alert, and my heart is experiencing a void.
My ‘check in’ today is not okay; I am not okay — I acknowledge that, and I have adjusted my day to add elements that will allow me to release tension, relax, and allow for some thought-space to ask rhetorical questions about the event, how I am feeling about it, and my anxiety to return to educational spaces this coming week. I am providing myself space to process.
As I close out this entry, I invite you once again to check in with yourself — what are your meter readings — and how are you adjusting accordingly?
