This episode of "Teachers in Transition" offers that one can manage stress by employing a day-to-day practice of meditation, intentional mindfulness, and prayer. These practices help to slow one's mind and allows one to step back from the noise and chaos of our day-to-day world so that we can become more like third-party observers. We need to establish some distance from the chaos to deal with it more effectively.
Kitty Boitnott is a Stress Management Coach and expert on teacher burnout. She offers a free eBook entitled, *Stressed, Stretched, and Just Plain Overwhelmed; A Guide to Managing Your Stress and Developing a Greater Sense of Work-Life Balance.* It is available for free download at http://teachersintransition.com/ebook. For more resources, feel free to contact Kitty at Kitty Boitnott at Gmail.
A transcript is available here: http://bit.ly/2lMaBDl.
This episode of "Teachers in Transition" offers that one can manage stress by employing a day-to-day practice of meditation, intentional mindfulness, and prayer. These practices help to slow one's mind and allows one to step back from the noise and chaos of our day-to-day world so that we can become more like third-party observers. We need to establish some distance from the chaos to deal with it more effectively.
Kitty Boitnott is a Stress Management Coach and expert on teacher burnout. She offers a free eBook entitled, *Stressed, Stretched, and Just Plain Overwhelmed; A Guide to Managing Your Stress and Developing a Greater Sense of Work-Life Balance.* It is available for free download at http://teachersintransition.com/ebook. For more resources, feel free to contact Kitty at Kitty Boitnott at Gmail.
A transcript is available here: http://bit.ly/2lMaBDl.
Are you a teacher who's feeling stressed out and overwhelmed? Do you worry that you're feeling symptoms of burnout or are you sure you've already gotten there? Have you started to dream of doing some other kind of job or perhaps pursuing a whole different career, but you don't know what else you're even qualified to do? You don't know how to start a job search. You just feel stuck. If that sounds like you, I promise you're not alone. My name is Kitty Boitnott. I'm a career transition and job search coach and I specialize in helping burnt out teachers just like you deal not only with the stress and overwhelm of your day-to-day job, but to consider what other careers might be out there waiting for you. Join me for"Teachers in Transition." In some episodes I'll be speaking to stress management techniques and how you can manage your stress on a day to day basis. In other episodes I'll be talking about career transition. What tools do you need to be successful in a job search when you're moving from one career into a totally different track? These are questions that you need answers to and I can help you find those answers. My name is Kitty Boitnott. Welcome to"Teachers in Transition." Welcome. This is Kitty Boitnott of"Teachers in Transition" and Boitnott Coaching, and this is episode 17 of"Teachers in Transition," the Podcast and the Youtube channel. I need to apologize up front for my voice. I am not quite sure what's going on with it. Started with a little sore throat yesterday and um, it, it sounds off to me. If it sounds off to you then that's the explanation. So, I may keep today's episode short to try to save what I've got left of my voice, and then I'll continue to nurse it throughout the rest of today. I want to cover today a stress management technique that is part of the seven specific strategies that I recommend on a routine basis when I do my workshops and I offered in my free eBook on stress management,*Stressed, Stretched and Just Plain Overwhelmed.* If you haven't had a chance to grab that yet as a free gift from me, I will offer the link to it in the notes today. Um, and that little eBook I offer that there are seven specific strategies and I've talked about several of them so far in this series that alternates one week talking about stress management strategies and the next week about career transition. This week obviously we're talking about stress management. In the book, I offer that you need to pay attention to what you eat, and how much water you drink, and how much exercise you get. And last week I talked about breathing and how extremely important breathing is to helping you manage anxiety and stress and is often overlooked because we do it so automatically something that we don't do automatically, and so we have to set an intention for is this particular strategy which is around meditation and mindfulness. Now, I am an absolute believer in the benefits of meditation and mindfulness. I have to admit that I am better at being mindful and intentionally aware in the moment. than I am a great meditator. Uh, meditation requires that you be able to still yourself and your mind for longer than just a few minutes. And so I have had my own struggles with that. With that said, I have a practiced meditation. I can't honestly say that it's a day-to-day practice, but it is a periodic practice. I have far more luck with a daily prayer intention and an intentional mindfulness. But I do want to share with you in case you are interested in the benefits of meditation and mindfulness, that science is increasingly pointing to the absolute physical, mental and emotional benefits of practicing on a regular basis meditation and mindfulness. And I, you know, I have a chapter in my book about meditation and prayer in particular. Depending on your religious proclivity, you may feel more comfortable with the daily prayer as opposed to daily meditation. I prefer to think that you can employ both; and that using both prayer and meditation, you can arm yourself with the mental strength and emotional fortitude and resilience that we all need in order to not only survive but thrive in this crazy world that we are happening to live in right now with all the and all the chaos and all the confusion and strife that is brewing in the ether around us. And I don't think I need to say anything more than that then it's just, it's, we're living in a little bit of a chaotic time. And so in order to separate yourself from the chaos, instead of getting caught up in the chaos and confusion, it's a, it's good for your health, it's good for your mental and emotional health for sure. To step back, to step away from do become an observer instead of allowing yourself to get caught up in it and to become a participant. And certainly as an alternative to adding your voice to the chaos, it's far healthier for, for better for us. If we can step back and become an observer perhaps to the point that we can a neutral third-party observer and that can protect you from getting caught up in feeling emotionally invested in some of the stuff that's going on in the world right now. Not to say that you should disengage from the world altogether. I'm not saying that. I am saying that sometimes we need to step back and take a look at what's going on and make a decision instead of getting emotionally charged and drawn into a situation where we may say or do things that we're later sorry for that. It's healthier and better for us in the long run to be able to be mindful and aware enough to be able to step back from a situation and, and not escalate it. According to an article that I, um, pulled out just this morning, there are 10, at least 10 specific benefits to practicing mindfulness and meditation and I'd like to share what those are with you briefly without going into a whole lot of detail. Certainly there are tons of resources available. You can Google mindfulness meditation, uh, the benefits of prayer yourself and see for yourself, but just in, in general, studies have demonstrated and I mean scientific studies where they hook up electro-- electrodes to one's brain during the time that they go into a deep meditation and they then track the folks who are doing the day-to-day meditation and get information about the benefits that those participants are experiencing. So better sleep is one of the benefits, you know, being able to relax more and it might even help if you did a short meditation right before bedtime to help you to relax. To, to enhance your breathing technique just before drifting off to sleep. And it will benefit you by giving you longer, less interrupted, more restful sleep so that you wake up feeling refreshed in the morning. Another potential benefit is helping you if you, if you're trying to lose a few pounds. Um, meditating could help you to become mindful about your meditation, about your weight loss goals, and about your day-to-day eating habits. Um, I haven't talked a whole lot about this, but since February I've managed to lose 19 and a half pounds. I've been using Nutrisystem because I just felt like I was at the point where I didn't know what else to try. I know there are plenty of other programs and frankly in the past I, I tried Jenny Craig and I lost a few pounds, but in the last few years I have bounced up and down a few pounds, up a few pounds down and I wanted to get to a healthier weight. It wasn't so much about vanity, frankly, as just wanting to feel like I was at a healthier weight for, for my age and for my height. And so I went on Nutrisystem in February. I've been on a maintenance program for the last couple of months and I've managed to lose 19 and a half pounds. I would be dishonest if I said it's the system, the Nutrisystem program alone. Although that's been a huge help. Having the prepared portions and having a regimen that I can follow that I didn't have to think about. And frankly I don't like to cook, so having prepackaged meals is perfect for me. And then having a set schedule as to when I prepare those. So prepared meals was very helpful. Um, but what I've become aware of over the course of these several months now, February to the middle of July, is being aware of when I feel hungry and allowing myself to measure portions of food that isn't necessarily Nutrisystem food. Food that I've bought at the grocery store, but paying attention to the recommended portion and not exceeding that portion. Eating slowly enough with a mindful mindset so that I actually feel the say she goes in with the food instead of eating so fast that I've consumed more calories than necessary in order to fuel my body and, and get myself, uh, nourished. So, mindfulness, if weight happens to be an area of struggle for you, becoming mindful about what you're eating when you're eating, how much you are eating can be extremely useful in your efforts to manage your weight or to even lose a few pounds. Um, meditation also helps to improve your attention span. And in today's world, I think a lot of us are dealing with struggles with focus and staying focused on any one thing for longer than a few minutes. We're bombarded by the Internet with, you know, dings of email and dings of Twitter messages and didgs of Facebook messages and ding, ding, ding all day long. If you don't take control of that by being mindful, turning off some of the distractions so that you can concentrate on a task at hand and forget about multitasking. Multitasking doesn't work if you think you're a great multitasker, disabuse yourself of that notion. Nobody has the brain capacity to handle more than one thing at a time if that one thing is at all complex or requires attention, you wind up trying to do two or three things at once and then what happens is you have to go back and eedo. And that's not time-saving at all. So meditation can help you to steel yourself so that your brain actually functions better and is able to improve your attention span. Meditation and mindfulness can help you manage chronic pain if that is an issue for you. If you're perhaps suffering from arthritis or some other form of chronic pain. It can help you with depression. It can help reduce anxiety. And those are just a few of the benefits of meditation and mindfulness and prayer. Now, um, in the beginning when I was first trying to learn how to do meditation on a regular basis, I looked up resources that are all online. Many of them are free and you can simply listen to a meditation using one of the Youtube channels or finding some other resource where you can listen to meditation music or a guided meditation that someone has recorded online. I have enjoyed the series of meditations that Deepak Chopra and Oprah Winfrey periodically put together and I've purchased a couple of those over time so that whenever I feel, um, like I'm in the need of a guided meditation, I can go to one of those downloads and listen and learn. There are apps on your phone that you can download. Many of them are also free. Um, some are for a low fee. Therefore, while I was using something called Focus, it was a monthly fee for that. But I enjoyed listening to the music in the background while I did my work at the computer. It actually did help me to focus. It was s a preselected music and tones designed to help you concentrate better. So there are certainly no lack of resources online and through books that you can read about benefits of meditation and mindfulness and day-to- day prayer. What I am suggesting is that in an effort to manage your stress more proactively and ultimately more effectively incorporating a daily practice of meditation, mindfulness and prayer, if that is your preferred method of communing with your higher self and your higher power--whatever works for you. But the bottom line is to go with then for a few minutes each day. Get in touch with your core self. Reflect on the goals that you have for the day, for the week, for the month, for the year, for your life. Stay focused on those goals so that in the end you feel like you are working toward a specific something that is meaningful and important to you instead of just existing and going through the day to day motions. Getting caught up in that chaos that I referred to earlier. If you, um, need resources, email me, I'll be happy to share resources that I'm aware of and know about. A Kittyboitnott@gmail.com. If you have found this at all useful, please leave a comment either at the Youtube channel or on the Podcast. Subscribe so that you will know when the next episode drops next week. Next week I'll be talking about another aspect of career transition and that's it for now. I think you've had to listen to my voice long enough. It sounds pretty raspy to me and my apologies for that, but I hope that you got something from today's episode. This is Kitty Boitnott of"Teachers in Transition." Have a great day. So there you have it, an episode of"Teachers in Transition." I hope you enjoyed the information and I hope you'll plan to come back. Please subscribe to"Teachers in Transition" so that you can be alerted of future episodes. And let me know if you have any questions or topics that you would like me to specifically cover in a future episode. I'm more than happy to help with individual questions as well. So email me at KittyBoitnott@BoitnottCoaching.com. If you are interested in finding a new career or just enjoying your life more, this is the place to start. Hi, I'm Kitty Boitnott and this is"Teachers in Transition."