Lots of people are stressed these days. It's more important than ever to remember to practice self-care. This week, I talk about how coloring mandalas can be a great stress reliever. Research shows this to be true. Don't believe me? Check out this link as one example of proof that coloring can be relaxing: https://www.beaumont.org/health-wellness/blogs/health-benefits-of-coloring-for-adults#:~:text=REDUCE%20STRESS%20AND%20ANXIETY,a%20long%20day%20at%20work.
In this episode, I also offer that there are other ways to relieve your stress by giving yourself a "break" from all that is going on in the world right now. It's not a bad idea to just take a break from the noise of the news and social media. If coloring doesn't sound like something you would enjoy doing, you can also do puzzles like crosswords, Sodoku, word searches, etc. And talking about puzzles made me remember when my dad used to bring the 1000-piece crossword puzzle home for the whole family to work on. It was relaxing and it was fund in addition to being a great family activity, especially while we are still either social isolating or semi-social isolating and spending more time than "usual" with our family units.
For anyone that is intrigued by the idea of coloring for relaxation, I also have a free gift. Just click on this link and you will receive 5 free mandalas. (Coloring pencils not provided.)
Free Mandala Sign-up: https://kittyboitnott.lpages.co/opt-in-for-5-mandalas-for-stress-relief/
Lots of people are stressed these days. It's more important than ever to remember to practice self-care. This week, I talk about how coloring mandalas can be a great stress reliever. Research shows this to be true. Don't believe me? Check out this link as one example of proof that coloring can be relaxing: https://www.beaumont.org/health-wellness/blogs/health-benefits-of-coloring-for-adults#:~:text=REDUCE%20STRESS%20AND%20ANXIETY,a%20long%20day%20at%20work.
In this episode, I also offer that there are other ways to relieve your stress by giving yourself a "break" from all that is going on in the world right now. It's not a bad idea to just take a break from the noise of the news and social media. If coloring doesn't sound like something you would enjoy doing, you can also do puzzles like crosswords, Sodoku, word searches, etc. And talking about puzzles made me remember when my dad used to bring the 1000-piece crossword puzzle home for the whole family to work on. It was relaxing and it was fund in addition to being a great family activity, especially while we are still either social isolating or semi-social isolating and spending more time than "usual" with our family units.
For anyone that is intrigued by the idea of coloring for relaxation, I also have a free gift. Just click on this link and you will receive 5 free mandalas. (Coloring pencils not provided.)
Free Mandala Sign-up: https://kittyboitnott.lpages.co/opt-in-for-5-mandalas-for-stress-relief/
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 back to Episode 64 of Teachers in Transition. My name is Kitty. Boitnott the owner and operator of Teachers in Transition and the owner of Boitnott Coaching. If you've listened to me before, you know that I alternate topics each week between stress management strategies, which are an extremely important part of self-care and day-to-day stress management. And on alternating weeks, I speak to career transition because at the end of the day, my primary focus in life is helping burnt-out teachers transition from the classroom into some other more rewarding, more fulfilling, more fun line of work. And so I am a trained and experienced heart-centered career transition and job search coach, but I'm also certified in stress management techniques and I'm a certified sleep science coach. So today the topic is stress, and it occurred to me this week that I don't believe that I have talked about the stress relief that one can get from coloring as an adult coloring, especially coloring mandalas. I have offered freebies online and other capacities, but I went back and looked and I don't think I've spoken to coloring and mandalas in the past. So if I have, forgive me, this will be a revisit. If I haven't, I think you'll enjoy learning a little bit about the stress relief that you can experience by doing a variety of activities, including coloring. So, part of the reason that I think coloring helps to relieve stress is that it engages your mind in something that is totally unrelated to the events that are taking place in your life. The source of the stress in your life, you can unplug disengage from those stress sources, whether it's work, health, or a relationship. Those are usually the primary causes of stress in our lives. Finances can be a stressor. So while you are coloring, you can unplug and simply focus on the task at hand, which is taking beautifully different colored pencils or crayons, if you prefer. And coloring in the little different squares and circles and, and objects on the mandala to create something that is uniquely yours, because it doesn't have to be like anybody else's and you can express yourself, but you can also while doing it, unplug, turn off, turn away from the stress that may be going on in your life. Now it occurs to me that mandalas are just one way that you can do that, but there's an entire body of research around the benefit of coloring. So if you don't believe me, I'm going to offer a link or two to the research that demonstrates the benefit, the stress relief benefit of coloring as an adult. And I'm also going to offer some freebie mandalas that you can download and then color at your leisure. Whenever you have a moment that you want to unplug from everything, the difference between unplugging and coloring and mandala, or, I mean, you could even get a coloring book if you wanted to and just color away. The difference between doing that and some other kind of stress relief is that there is something about the connection between your brain and your hand when you're engaging in the coloring. It is, uh, it forms a relationship between you and the object that you are coloring slash creating with your colors, and it can help you to block out the stuff that's stressing you out. Now, there are other things, like I said, it occurs to me that doing a crossword puzzle can have a similar relieving effect. As long as you don't stress yourself out over not knowing a particular word that you run across. And there are all kinds of puzzles, crossword puzzles are just one of a variety of puzzles that you might engage in. Uh, I think you could get the same relief from. Remember the days when you would have the thousand piece puzzles that you could spread out over the dining room table? And it was an entire family activity. My dad used to love those. You'd buy the big box, the picture of what it was supposed to look like. He liked mountains. So more often than not, he would bring home a box with puzzle pieces in it that created a vista of a mountain range. Sometimes it had snow on it. Sometimes not. He would get this puzzle started. And then the rest of us would engage in finding pieces that fit. And it became a family activity. It feels old school, but why not give it a try? It may be an activity, especially as families may still be isolated in different parts of the country. And you're not yet going out and engaging in your regular outdoor activities. It might be a good family activity. The point is to relieve your stress, at least for a moment or two short period of time to give your body your mind, your spirit, a break from the worry from the fret, from the upset from the uncertainty. And Lord knows we've been experiencing enough uncertainty in recent months, enough unrest enough dis-ease if you will, not disease, but discomfort. And it can be referred to as dis-ease, which can in fact, when gone untreated, when gone on, uh, dealt with can bring on disease. Because remember if you've, if you've heard me speak before about the danger of not checking your stress, the danger is that it's a matter of when and not if that you will come down with some sort of illness, whether it's diabetes, which is exacerbated by stress, heart, heart issues, hypertension, gastrointestinal issues, you name it, whatever. Even certain kinds of cancer can be traced back to ongoing unrelenting stress in your life. So take note that you owe it to yourself to find a way to relieve your stress as regularly as you can daily, if you can, you're not going to get rid of your stress. Stress is a normal, regular part of life. What is it normal is that overbearing of stress, fully events that have occurred in the last few months. And aren't our entire globe is under stress right now. Different countries have gone through coronavirus. We're experiencing coronavirus, even as different parts of the country start to open up the coronavirus has not gone away. We can act like it is. We can act like it's gone. It isn't. Our acting like it's gone. We'll simply put us at greater risk. I just saw a post on Facebook this morning of a 30-year-old mom in a local hospital here in my hometown. She thought because she was 30 and healthy, she couldn't get COVID. And so, guess what? She's in the hospital, not on an intubator, thank goodness. Not on a ventilator, at least not yet, but she is on oxygen. She has been in the hospital for days. And who knows when she'll get out to go home to her babies at home, 30-years-old and healthy. So whatever your age, whatever your particular station in life, don't lull yourself into believing that it's over. That you can go about your business. Now that it's summertime. And you know, we see the protest in the street, the people who are doing the protesting are there for a righteous purpose, but they're putting themselves and others at risk by being there. If they're not taking care of socially distance, if they're not wearing masks, if they're not washing their hands and sanitizing, as they go about their day, There are too many people who have decided that this coronavirus thing is just all a big joke. It's somehow a media hoax. And so they're refusing to wear masks. They're refusing to take precautions. They're going about their business, just like nothing's ever happened. They're putting themselves at risk, the coronavirus hasn't gone away. So we have the stress of not knowing when we will have a treatment and a vaccine for the coronavirus. And if you take it seriously as I do, that means you don't know when you can start going about your life normally, if there ever will be something call normal, now I have broken down and made an appointment to get my hair cut, because you can see it needs to speak. It's been since March, I've checked in with my hairdresser to make sure that she is taking precautions. I go to the dentist tomorrow. I know he'll be taking precautions, but still. You know, it's going to the dentist is a pretty, pretty invasive activity. So I may want to come home and do some coloring myself tomorrow afternoon. We have to be on guard. We have to take the coronavirus seriously. We certainly have to take the economic uncertainty that comes along with it certain, uh, for, for seriously. And we need to take the social unrest that the country's going through seriously. We have a, as I said, last week, a perfect storm of events that are causing all, all kinds of stress, all kinds of uncertainty and dis-ease that it's up to you individually. It's up to each one of us to find ways to relieve that stress so that we don't succumb to a disease and illness that can bring us down. And coloring is one activity that you can engage in that might help. The puzzles that I mentioned, either crossword puzzles. Sodoku, whatever kind of puzzles turns you on playing solitaire can even in some sort of activity that doesn't require you to think it relieves your responsibility to think for a little while. That's the purpose of these activities to give yourself a break, a mental and emotional break. While you engage in an activity that you enjoy, then that can offer you some sense of freedom in the moment from all that's going on in the world. So I'll include a link to the research about how mandalas coloring. Mandalas even if you're an adult can help to relieve your stress. I'll also include the freebie mandalas that you can try for yourself. Let me know how you enjoy it or not share them with your friends. If you'd like, and in the meantime, stay focused on keeping yourself well. In spite of these stressful times, your number one responsibility is to stay well and to take care of yourself. And that's all I have to say today about stress management. Please have a good week if you'd like to review this podcast so that you can help other people find it. If you find it useful, other people may also find it useful. Please share, please review. Please send me your thoughts or questions or comments. I'd love to hear from you at kittyboitnott@gmail.com have a wonderful week. Take care of yourself and I'll talk to you next 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."