Teachers in Transition

Teachers in Transition - Episode 23 - Not All Stress is Bad!

August 28, 2019 Kitty Boitnott Season 1 Episode 23
Teachers in Transition
Teachers in Transition - Episode 23 - Not All Stress is Bad!
Show Notes Transcript

We tend to think of stress on only negative terms. It is something we think we need to eliminate or avoid. The trouble is that life is full of things that cause stress, both good and bad. We need some stress in our lives, after all, or we would be bored! We need to strive for the type of stress where we are at our peak performance level. The term for that is "eustress" as opposed to no stress or distress. Listen to Kitty Boitnott of Teachers in Transition talk about how we want to go for the "good kind of stress."

Kitty Boitnott:

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." Hi, this is Kitty Boitnott of"Teachers in Transition" and I am back this week with a message about stress and how it's not always a bad thing to be experiencing stress. We often talk about stress as a killer and stress as something that is to be avoided and uh, we need relief from the stress in our lives. And that is all true. We have way too much stress and many areas of our lives. Sometimes work is the source of extra stress. Sometimes things are going on at home that create extra stress. There are phases in our lives that bring about new stresses that we maybe never experienced before. I'm thinking in particular of empty nesters who are perhaps sending off their youngest to college or off to a job or off to the military for the very first time. And for the first time in 18 to 20 years you are either all alone if you're divorced or you are alone with your spouse. And that hasn't been the case for however long you had. You've had children. And that can create stress, stress. Change of any kind creates stress, and the accumulation of a lot of stresses over a short period of time, that's what begins to build up and cause us to feel overwhelmed and it causes us to think that we are not coping the way we think we should be coping. And then we start looking for ways to relieve our stress or at least better manage it. But what I would like to suggest to today for today is that stress is not always a bad thing. It's it should not be seen as a negative. And if you have had the idea that you can completely eliminate stress from your life and be in a Zen mode all the time, you need to get over that notion because that's never going to happen. Being alive means to a certain extent we're going to be stressed. It's just a fact of life. And I often tell people in my workshops that the only individuals who are not experiencing day to day stress from something are already dead and buried in a cemetery somewhere. Their stresses are now relieved. But if you're still living, you've got more than ample opportunities to be facing changes on a day to day basis. And some of those changes may cause you some stress. A change in your, your boss if you're a teacher changing administration. Last night I started a new class at, at the university where I am an adjunct professor and so I'm sure we were all a little stressed, making sure that we were there on time and doing, you know, doing what we needed to be doing at that particular moment, meeting new people for the first time and setting up new expectations. So there's just never going to be a time when you are completely free of stress. And what I would like to call your attention to is the opportunities for you to use stress to your benefit. You see, it's, it's also a fact that if you had no stress in your life, you'd be bored to tears. No stress would mean that you are doing nothing. That there that there's nothing going on in your life and you don't want that. You want to be meeting new people. You want to be experiencing new things. You want to be moving through your life with a sense of purpose and a sense of accomplishing something and that means that there are deadlines to be met and things to be done and goals to be attained and all of that can lead to feeling stressed. But if, if you are aiming for optimum stress so that you can do your best work or your best performance, that's the sweet spot. That's the kind of stress that you can enjoy. That's the kind of stress I'm calling it stress, but it's actually a, a feeling of euphoria. It's referred to as you stress. It is literally the sweet spot. If you think of a bell curve and those of you on the podcast can't see me making a of bell curve motion with my finger that I'm making on the YouTube video. The think of a bell curve and think of on the very beginning of the, of the curve at the, at the left end, if you're looking at it from, from your perspective that there's nothing going on and that's when you experience no stress at all. And then on the opposite side, we'll skip the middle for now. But on the opposite side, that's where you are overstressed. In fact, you're at the point of feeling distressed and nobody enjoys feeling distressed. When you are in distress, you are in trouble. That's when your heart is beating faster than normal. It's when your adrenaline is pumping into your bloodstream, preparing you for a fight or flight response and it, it doesn't have to be a literal attack. It can be hurt feelings over something that happened at work, something that a colleague said or a boss said, but it still creates a sense of distress that you have to work your way through and recover from. It can be any one of a million different things and clearly it's not a feeling you enjoy it and that's when you need to start thinking about leaving your stress or eliminating some of the stressors in your life. But at the very top of that bell curve, that's what I'm referring to as the sweet spot. Just enough stress that you are performing at your peak level. Think of a performer, someone who's about step out on stage. Almost all of the Broadway actors and actresses and people who perform in public. Concert, you know, rock stars, people who perform, you know those huge stadiums with thousands of people literally rocking the floor, you know, with their stamping feet and clapping hands. Every top performer that I'm aware of admits to some form of butterflies in their stomach just before they go out on stage. Some, some degree of stage fright, if you will. And that's a good thing. If they were totally relaxed, they would not be able to do their best performance. They would be too laid back too laissez faire, and it wouldn't work well for for you, for the, for the performer or for the audience because the audience would be able to tell that you are simply, you know, sending it in instead of being fully present, fully alive, fully involved in the task at hand. You also don't want to go out there so so full of nerves that you're sweating out of every pore and shaking. You know, your knees are shaking and your voice is shaking and they can tell that you're scared to death. That's, that's not good. They won't connect with you if you are that overly stressed. Not unless you are a newbie or a rookie or somebody that they're sympathetic with because maybe this is the first time you've ever been on a big stage like that. But if you're a a regular performer, you don't want to be showing those kinds of nerves. You need to have those under control. A top performer is able to harness the stress that they feel and not feel overly stressed, not go into the area of distress and use the stress that they are feeling to drive a peak performance. And it's the same for athletes as well as performers. It can be the same for you. Think of it as, I know you've probably experienced the occasion--maybe it's more than just occasional and I hope for your sake that it is, but think of the occasion when you lose track of time and you are completely absorbed in whatever the task is that you're doing. It's a task that challenges you just enough that you feel fully engaged. You're fully alive in that particular moment, doing whatever it is that you're doing. That is the type of"eustress" that I'm talking about. The sweet spot where you're not bored, you feel fully engaged, but you're also not distressed over what you're doing. It's not a struggle because you're not frightened or worried or upset about what you're doing. In fact you're excited about what you're doing and you've got just enough adrenaline going to keep you engaged and and ready to do what you need to do to be a pro to be successful. So sometimes I think stress gets a bad rap and that's unfortunate because when you hit that sweet spot that that level of eustress, that is where you are at your peak performance and that's what we all need to strive for, not to get rid of stress, not to eliminate it completely from our lives. What we're looking to do is to manage it in a proactive, effective way so that we don't live in that state of distress, that we are not constantly feeling overwhelmed by life. But that instead we are fully engaged and ready to take on the challenge before us. I hope that makes sense to you. If it, if it doesn't, feel free to let me know and ask me what isn't clear for you. I hope you'll give it some thought that stress is not a bad thing and sometimes gets a bad way and think about the times when you are in your sweet spot. When you are feeling just enough stress that you want to be performing at your peak level in whatever endeavor it is for you. If you have questions or comments, please do send me those comments through a direct message or email@kittyboitnottatgmail.com. I'd love to hear from you. Please subscribe to the"Teachers in Transition" podcast and or YouTube channel. I would love to have you join me as a regular subscriber to both or at least one and be sure to review. Let me know what you think of these messages next week I'll be talking about career transition, but that's it for today. Have a great week. 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."