The Teacher Mindset Coach

This is the Teacher Mindset Coach podcast, episode #17!

Hello there!  Welcome back to part 3 of the series on disrupting stagnant energy!  Today we’ll be talking about the energy in our relationships with others and how there could be some stagnating going on that is worth it to pay attention to and clean up.

Today we are going to start uncovering some potentially stagnant and stinking thinking we may have in relation to the people who are in our lives.

As teachers, we have sooooo many people in our lives who know us just inside the walls of our school.  Its kinda crazy when you think about it.  We know our staff and team, our students and their families.  That’s dozens of people and it changes every school year!  And if you’re a campus servant like me, you automatically have the opportunity to know hundreds of people, by name, at the very least.

One that has helped me in the last two years when I think about most other people but especially people I may see on TV doing stuff I would never dream of doing is, “I can’t control the humans” or “I can’t control others.”  

That one actually comes in handy at times when I worry about what my seven year old son and his sweet little friends are getting into at school.  I literally can’t control my son, especially when he’s away from me, and I have to accept that as a normal part of being his mom and watching him grow up or… wondering what he’s doing in my imagination and checking myself when I create a story that doesn’t serve him or me.

But before I get ahead of myself, let’s go back to the definition of stagnation and talk about its opposite: invigoration.

Stagnation is something that is without action or animation.  I like to say its when something is so old, perhaps, that its starting to rot and return to the earth.  The opposite of this is invigoration which is when something comes to life or is growing and thriving.  The energy of those two opposites is what is important to look at and observe.

Relate these definitions with the thoughts you have about other people.  In this exercise, its important to understand how to identify the difference between a stagnating thought and an invigorated thought.  

Don't be caught without a plan. Make your Mental & Emotional Health Strategy Plan with me before going back to school!  Click on the link to schedule your time.
https://calendly.com/coachwithwolfe/30-minute-session

Get a hold of my Cards Against Educators game to strengthen your community of fun-loving, supportive educators.  Start at CardsAgainstEducators.com

Go to my LinkTree for more resources:
Copy & Paste: https://linktr.ee/teacherstresssolution

Welcome to Part II of my three part series on disrupting stagnant energy!  

Today we talk about stagnant thoughts and how they can make a big stink in our lives without us even realizing it.

You see, stagnant thoughts are sneaky because they've been there for a while.  

They sit around, being all innocent, and they keep us stuck in places we have likely been for years.

The work starts when we realize we may not want to think particular thoughts anymore or believe something we've held onto all our lives.

Be brave and take a listen, twice.  

Get out your pen and paper and get ready to do this work with me.

It may be more beneficial that you might think.  

Don't be caught without a plan. Make your Mental & Emotional Health Strategy Plan with me before going back to school!  Click on the link to schedule your time.
https://calendly.com/coachwithwolfe/30-minute-session

Get a hold of my Cards Against Educators game to strengthen your community of fun-loving, supportive educators.  Start at CardsAgainstEducators.com

Go to my LinkTree for more resources:
Copy & Paste: https://linktr.ee/teacherstresssolution

Where can stagnant energy be in our lives?  This is Part I of a three part series where I discuss three important areas of the energy in life: physical, self-relational and relational with others.  We will explore the notion that energy can be free flowing and clean or stagnant and toxic. And these areas where we envision this energy as it moves or doesn’t move can be associated with a belief or thought, or absence of thought.

Today, we talk about the physical spaces around us like our home.  I refer to this article found at Reader's Digest which talks about the flow of energy in a home. 

Find the article here:  https://www.rd.com/list/feng-shui-items-throw-out/ 

As a bonus, here is a list of organizational system helpers if you're in need:
https://www.rd.com/list/products-that-get-rid-of-clutter/ 

In the last half of the episode, I mention an article about eating more foods that are alive and closer to their natural state such as fruits, veggies, nuts, etc.  The article from Acefitness.org is here: https://www.acefitness.org/education-and-resources/lifestyle/blog/5729/alive-foods-vs-dead-foods/ 

Don't be caught without a plan. Make your Mental & Emotional Health Strategy Plan with me before going back to school!  Click on the link to schedule your time.
https://calendly.com/coachwithwolfe/30-minute-session

Get a hold of my Cards Against Educators game to strengthen your community of fun-loving, supportive educators.  Start at CardsAgainstEducators.com

Go to my LinkTree for more resources:
Copy & Paste: https://linktr.ee/teacherstresssolution

Today we are going to focus on how people make meaning in their lives, and because of that, their lives are made.  We are basically living the results of what our brain is offering us in relation to the stimuli we encounter.  Our brain is the filter and the interpreter of outside information for us.  And, if we allow our brains to operate the way they always have and the way they are defaulted to work, we may never see ourselves reaching our highest potential on the peak of that mountain.

What I want to offer you today are ways to observe and become fascinated with your brain rather than going on auto-pilot and judging your reactions and emotions.

I’d also like to give you an idea of what I’ve learned about emotions and how we often use feelings as the playbook for making meaning out of our past, present and future without much of a closer look.  In other words, we’re so used to acting and making decisions based on how we feel that we may not ever stop to question it.  We make our feelings and emotions into the head coach calling the plays on the sidelines for the next thing to do instead of the spectators in the stands who have no substantial power over the game.  

Don't be caught without a plan. Make your Mental & Emotional Health Strategy Plan with me before going back to school!  Click on the link to schedule your time.
https://calendly.com/coachwithwolfe/30-minute-session

Get a hold of my Cards Against Educators game to strengthen your community of fun-loving, supportive educators.  Start at CardsAgainstEducators.com

Go to my LinkTree for more resources:
Copy & Paste: https://linktr.ee/teacherstresssolution

Ever experience a bit of frustration or jealousy that you don’t have that end result that they have or you don’t have as much of something that you assume they have such as happiness, patience, freedom, time or wealth?

Today we’re going to talk about this intriguing phenomenon I have witnessed myself go through and now I’m witnessing and coaching my clients through.  One of my most influential coaches, Brooke Castillo, calls this How Greed.  Its the idea that most adult humans want to figure out all of the details of how something will be achieved before they start working on it.  They want to hammer out all the fine details, solve all the problems before they happen and sail smoothly to their destination where the goal is completed quickly and we’re all stress-free, skinny and rich. 

The how is not our business to hammer out and sacrifice taking action to achieve our dreams!

Take a listen and see my process for continuing to go after my goals.

Join my Teacher Mindset Coach FB group at www.facebook.com/groups/teachermindsetcoach

Don't be caught without a plan. Make your Mental & Emotional Health Strategy Plan with me before going back to school!  Click on the link to schedule your time.
https://calendly.com/coachwithwolfe/30-minute-session

Get a hold of my Cards Against Educators game to strengthen your community of fun-loving, supportive educators.  Start at CardsAgainstEducators.com

Go to my LinkTree for more resources:
Copy & Paste: https://linktr.ee/teacherstresssolution

Today we are going to talk about how dreaming for a bigger, more full life is great and all but we have to accept and allow for the discomfort of that growth.  

So many awesome metaphors come to mind when I think of the discomfort of growth.  A caterpillar creating a chrysalis, transforming into an unrecognizable goo then miraculously emerging as an entirely different creature.  A baby falling down countless times, bumping their knees, elbows, backs, noggins and chins all in the name of strengthening their bodies to learn how to walk upright.  A veteran teacher walking away from a classroom she’s taught at for years in order to up-level her career in a new position.  A kindergarten student feeling the fear of uncertainty as they walk into a new school building and a new classroom all in the same hour as having to leave their loved ones for an entire day.  Think of the emotions that those students feel during this life-changing event of going to school for the first time.  No wonder there are tears and running away, staying frozen in place and arguing with reality!  And no wonder they think that kindergarten is over for the year when they get back home after Day 1.  Its emotionally exhausting having to process all of that!  

But what I’ve noticed and learned about myself and about humans in general is that we usually want to avoid negative emotions at all costs.  And, the cost to denying ourselves feeling negative emotions is denying ourselves half of the human experience.  The dichotomy of being a human is feeling both good and bad.  The point is to have one to define the other.  Without the positive, we wouldn’t know the negative.  Without the definition of hate, we wouldn’t have the definition of love.  Without work, we wouldn’t have rest.  Without the possibility of death, we really wouldn’t have the possibility of life.  Essentially, the positive stuff that we might say we want all the time, like happiness, would potentially turn poisonous if that was the only component to our emotional vocabulary.  And I think society is slowly coming to the realization that expectations of happy all the time is actually abnormal and can be toxic.  

If you want to read more of the article I cited in the show, click below:  https://positivepsychology.com/positive-negative-emotions/

Don't be caught without a plan. Make your Mental & Emotional Health Strategy Plan with me before going back to school!  Click on the link to schedule your time.
https://calendly.com/coachwithwolfe/30-minute-session

Get a hold of my Cards Against Educators game to strengthen your community of fun-loving, supportive educators.  Start at CardsAgainstEducators.com

Go to my LinkTree for more resources:
Copy & Paste: https://linktr.ee/teacherstresssolution

"Now is your time to dream bigger than you’ve ever allowed yourself to dream.  Experience the joy of having that be your life now.  Examine your thoughts that come up when your brain goes to work on up-leveling yourself and your life.  And also notice how the simple things in your life can bring you the most pure love and joy."

This episode focuses on what we've learned in the previous two shows and we list out 25 things that we want in our lives, most of which we are already so joyous to have!

What we do is we guide the brain and the body into this state, this emotional place of having something we deeply desire by reminding ourselves of what we already have.  We remind ourselves of how rich our lives truly are.  We satisfy the desire with recognition and gratitude.  Then we sprinkle in some wants that are currently just out of our reach, maybe even a little bit intimidating but exciting at the same time.  We are creating a written list of 25 things that we want.  Most of them, we will already have, which will help bring about the feelings of abundance and joy.  The fun part is when we strategically place an item on our list that we don’t have yet as we are generating this feeling of already having it.  We say it in such a way to where it sounds like we have it right now.  

I love doing this list, especially at a time when the children around me, especially my son, is unknowingly practicing this SAME technique in his (multiple) letters to Santa.  In my son’s mind, he has zero doubt that he will get what he’s asking for.  No doubt in his mind at all as he’s writing his letter to Santa, asking for lots of goodies, sealing it up, placing it in the mailbox then denying my husband and I any explanation or even a hint of what could be in the letter!  Its magical.  And this is only one of the reasons I love Christmas.  I get to live in this magic with my family.

Link to article mentioned in the episode about the region of the brain responsible for remembering the past and imagining the future.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/back-to-the-future-how-th/

Don't be caught without a plan. Make your Mental & Emotional Health Strategy Plan with me before going back to school!  Click on the link to schedule your time.
https://calendly.com/coachwithwolfe/30-minute-session

Get a hold of my Cards Against Educators game to strengthen your community of fun-loving, supportive educators.  Start at CardsAgainstEducators.com

Go to my LinkTree for more resources:
Copy & Paste: https://linktr.ee/teacherstresssolution

Its Week 2 of The Joy Jumpstart here in the Teacher Mindset Coach world!  This means, our episode today will focus on bringing joy into the present moment.

I'd like to offer you one powerful way of doing this.

Its the simple act of brining the desire for the things or people that we have in our lives into the present moment.

Remember when you wanted someone or something so badly when you didn't have it?

Maybe it was all you could think about. 

And you spent a lot of brain energy figuring out HOW you could get it?

For me, I share my deep desire to have a baby of my own.

It was all I could think about.  My desire was spent on this thought of having a baby.

Once I got pregnant and had my son, Miles, the desire to have a baby wasn't near as strong.  The volume had been turned down.

So when times were tough with an infant, I wasn't in the habit of reminding myself how deeply I desired to have Miles, my brain went to focusing on how hard it was, at times.

But this is what our brain does if we leave it to its own devices.

In this episode I teach you how to bring that positive and feel-good desire from your past back into the present regarding the people or things you now have.

Its a great reminder to how grateful we are to have our lives rich with the manifestations of those people and things that we once desired and now have.

This week's WorthSheet is called Wanting What We Have and its available to you here:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1DRyIjGlyPN0vWWbXxzWExm7ifWO9keUXaFONCi8DNCc/copy

If you're new to the world of Google Docs, you'll click on the above link (or copy/paste it into a new tab) and it'll ask you if you want to make a copy.  Click on the "Make a Copy" button and you'll have this document saved to your Google Drive so you can type on it, print it out, etc.

Enjoy the work this week of bringing that sparkly, magical miracle of wanting what we already have into your experience today.

Don't forget to leave a rating and review for my podcast so it can reach farther than ever before.  Email me a screenshot of your review before Dec 15, 2021 for a chance to win a $50 Amazon Gift Card.

[email protected]

Don't be caught without a plan. Make your Mental & Emotional Health Strategy Plan with me before going back to school!  Click on the link to schedule your time.
https://calendly.com/coachwithwolfe/30-minute-session

Get a hold of my Cards Against Educators game to strengthen your community of fun-loving, supportive educators.  Start at CardsAgainstEducators.com

Go to my LinkTree for more resources:
Copy & Paste: https://linktr.ee/teacherstresssolution

I’m so excited to be starting this three-part series of my free Joy Jumpstart program.  This is Part I and its called The Ghost of Christmas Past.  

The Joy Jumpstart is a free program for teachers for those pesky three weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas break that seem so unfair!  Its unfair that we have to show up for three weeks between the two breaks!  Couldn’t they just give us all of December off?  Does this sound like you?  

This used to be me before I started doing work that went deeper than listing what I was grateful for. This used to be my attitude for those three weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas break and I know it reflected off my students, as a teacher’s attitude generally does.

But I recognized who was really being punished here.  It was me.  I was bringing myself down in the name of thinking I was owed more than what I was getting.  AND!  Believing that outside factors were to blame for my shitty attitude.

In The Joy Jumpstart program, I will guide you through some simple, daily tasks that will help open the door to what we all desire over the holidays, pure JOY.  Real JOY.  Unending JOY.

Inside the episode, I mention this webpage which gives us a beginner's interpretation of Neural Pathways.  Here it is for your further research and learning:  https://thebrain.mcgill.ca/flash/d/d_07/d_07_cl/d_07_cl_tra/d_07_cl_tra.html

 Also, to join in on the mindset nerdery, find my Teacher Mindset Coach Facebook Group at www.facebook.com/groups/teachermindsetcoach

We'd love to see you there!

Don't be caught without a plan. Make your Mental & Emotional Health Strategy Plan with me before going back to school!  Click on the link to schedule your time.
https://calendly.com/coachwithwolfe/30-minute-session

Get a hold of my Cards Against Educators game to strengthen your community of fun-loving, supportive educators.  Start at CardsAgainstEducators.com

Go to my LinkTree for more resources:
Copy & Paste: https://linktr.ee/teacherstresssolution

This episode is jam packed with ways to create emotions for your future.  Specifically, I uncover some of my personal experiences with the Sunday blues and how depressing my thoughts used to be about returning to school after a long break.

Do you ever experience this? 

The longing for just one more day, one more weekend or one more week off before we have to go back?

You're not alone.

And I will guide you through an exercise in this episode to uncover some of these thoughts and beliefs that are creating the negative side of being a teacher with more time off than the average Jane!

Mentioned in this episode is an insightful article from NPR, written by Michaeleen Doucleff, as she spoke with Michelle Shiota, a psychologist at Arizona State University and an expert on emotions.

Find the full article here:
https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2021/06/29/1010319240/stuck-in-a-rut-sometimes-joy-takes-a-little-practice

The write-up includes a scenario where someone encounters a bear in the forest, which automatically reminded me of the comedy bit by Jim Gaffigan.  But we use this scenario for our purposes of illustrating the link between our brains and our emotions, particularly in the fight or flight response.  

As a teacher, I like to point out that this is where our background knowledge and schema play a part in the formation of our thoughts, which leads to feelings.

And from there, we enter into the awareness that, if our thoughts create our feelings, then WE are the creators of not only the Sunday Blues, but our attitudes and feelings when we are walking back up to our school buildings and classrooms on the Monday after a nice long break.

If you're wanting more of this kind of work because you have uncovered some stinkin' thinkin' in regards to being a teacher (which we all have, by the way), join us inside The Teacher Mindset Coach Facebook Group at www.facebook.com/groups/teachermindsetcoach

Inside this free group, we will have fun working through The Joy Jumpstart Program which gives WAY more detail and WAY more practice in taking care of the person who is most important to take care of this holiday season... YOU!

See you there!

Don't be caught without a plan. Make your Mental & Emotional Health Strategy Plan with me before going back to school!  Click on the link to schedule your time.
https://calendly.com/coachwithwolfe/30-minute-session

Get a hold of my Cards Against Educators game to strengthen your community of fun-loving, supportive educators.  Start at CardsAgainstEducators.com

Go to my LinkTree for more resources:
Copy & Paste: https://linktr.ee/teacherstresssolution