Everyone is stressed and many are trying to figure out ways to deal with the stress. This week, Kitty talks about the way we think about stress and offers that based on research and the work of Kelly McGonigal, it is possible to feel differently about stress by reframing the way we think about stress. To hear Kelly McGonigal's TED Talk about that topic, click here:
https://youtu.be/RcGyVTAoXEU.
Kitty mentioned that some teachers are so stressed that they are thinking about a new job, and for those folks, here is a checklist of things you should know and do before you start making a change:
"10 Things You Should Know and Do if You Are Ready for a Career Change" Checklist. https://teachersintransition.com/checklist
If you need a cheat sheet on how to manage your stress more proactively, you can click on this link: https://kittyboitnott.lpages.co/free-stress-management-cheat-sheet-11042021/
And if you would like to make an appointment to talk about your stress or your desire to look for a new job, you can book an appointment by clicking here: https://teachersintransition.com/calendar.
Everyone is stressed and many are trying to figure out ways to deal with the stress. This week, Kitty talks about the way we think about stress and offers that based on research and the work of Kelly McGonigal, it is possible to feel differently about stress by reframing the way we think about stress. To hear Kelly McGonigal's TED Talk about that topic, click here:
https://youtu.be/RcGyVTAoXEU.
Kitty mentioned that some teachers are so stressed that they are thinking about a new job, and for those folks, here is a checklist of things you should know and do before you start making a change:
"10 Things You Should Know and Do if You Are Ready for a Career Change" Checklist. https://teachersintransition.com/checklist
If you need a cheat sheet on how to manage your stress more proactively, you can click on this link: https://kittyboitnott.lpages.co/free-stress-management-cheat-sheet-11042021/
And if you would like to make an appointment to talk about your stress or your desire to look for a new job, you can book an appointment by clicking here: https://teachersintransition.com/calendar.
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 burn 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 and transition.
Speaker 2:Welcome back to another episode of teachers in transition, the podcast and the YouTube channel. My name is kitty Boyd and I am the owner of[inaudible] coaching and the founder of teachers in transition. I specialize in working with burnout teachers who are ready for a career change, but I'm also a certified stress management coach. And so if you've listened to this podcast in the past, you know, that I alternate topics each week, one week talking about career transition strategies. And on alternating weeks, I talk about stress management strategies. This week, the topic is stress and it just so happens that I was recently asked to write an article for a journal about the whole notion of teacher stress. What can teachers do about their stress? It was in response to, um, an effort on the part of some superintendents in some districts around the country to recognize that teachers are already exhausted and we haven't gotten to Christmas yet. Haven't gotten to Thanksgiving yet. Uh, one superintendent was quoted as having said that her teachers were June tired. And it was just October. I know that this is true because I'm seeing an uptick in the number of people who are opting in for my checklist of 10 things you can should think about if you think you're ready for a career change. And I'm seeing an uptick in the number of people who are asking for my seven signs, teacher burnout, as well as the cheat sheet that I offer on stress management. I'll offer links to all of those resources in the show notes this week. But what I wanted to talk about today is to touch on the work of Kelly McGonigal, who has tried to get people to reframe how they think about stress. And one of the suggestions that I offer in the article that I wrote this past week was to think about stress differently and manage your thoughts around what's going on with you. So the bottom line, whether you are aware of this or not, it may be news for some people, for most people. I think it's, it's become old news, but we are the manufacturers of our own states of being, by the way, we allow our thoughts to take over our minds and our bodies and our actions, thoughts. I mean, it's, it's been said many times thoughts become things. Thoughts are the fountain of every emotion from elation to despair. Uh, I remember reading in a book that, uh, Wayne Dyer wrote years ago that he, he was devastated when he learned the news of the death of someone close to him devastating, but he realized that until he had gotten the news, he was fine. And so it, it called attention to the fact that it's his thoughts that create the devastation, not the actual event. You see where I'm going with this. It's what you think about the event, not the event itself. So one of the things that you have the power to do, if you are willing to do it is to undertake the exercise of managing your thoughts more proactively. Now, most of us just think random thoughts, 30, 40,000 thoughts a day. They go and off, off in different directions. We're not even aware of them. Most of the time, there's just this running ticker tape of thoughts going on in the back of our minds, but we can become focused on things and we can become focused in a positive way or a negative way. And we can talk about the things that are going on in a positive way or a negative way, and what Kelly McGonigal, who has done lots of research around this whole topic of the way we think about stress versus stress itself. You can check out her Ted talk, I'll offer the link to that along with other resources that might lead you to her. But the long story short of what she says is that we have the power to reframe the way we think about and therefore feel about stress. And in one of the studies that she shares, I think it's in one of her Ted talks, she offers it in a long-term study. There were two groups of people, one group that tended to see stress as a positive thing, because it kept them on their game. It kept them on edge and made them more competitive and more, more eager to tackle the challenges of their lives versus the people who had a negative opinion of stress and more, more or less where the woe is me folk, you know, the, the folks who go, oh gosh, you know, I'm just so stressed. And, um, it just makes me tired. And I, as you know, you just let's give into it and let it get the best of you. So they followed these two groups that had more or less a natural disposition to see stress in these different frames. And at the end of a number of years, I don't remember now if it was 10, 20, however many years, but at the end of the research cycle, what they found was that more people who had a positive view of stress as a good thing in their lives, as a positive thing, more of that group were still living as opposed to the other group of people who saw stress as a negative thing, a bad thing, something to fret over more of that group had passed away. And the indication then is that your, the way you frame mentally, your attitude about stress can impact your own longevity. Not to mention by the way, how much you enjoy your life along the way. It's not just about longevity, who cares, how long you live. If you're miserable every single day, right? You're looking for a positive experience in life. Most of us, if we were pinned down and had to say what it is that we want most in life is just to be happy. And happiness comes from different sources for different people. For a lot of people, work is a source of happiness. And so in my work, I hold the opinion that once you no longer love your work, no, once you're no longer enjoying your work, once you no longer feel fulfilled by your work, that's when life becomes dreary. That's when you need to start questioning choices and making decisions about, do I want to continue to this and be miserable for the next 15, 20, 25 years? Or am I courageous enough to make a change? Whether it's a change in school to change in district a change of career. I talk to people every day who have reached that point in their lives, where they're considering making a change in their career, because they're no longer happy. They're tired of the stress. They're tired of the long hours and they're ready for change. Now, some are more ready than others, but the only reason I've ever contacted frankly, is when people have gotten to the point of searching for answers, to questions that they have, that they don't yet have answers to. What else can I do? How can I be happier? My mantra, every time I started a group, coaching call is work. That feels fulfilling leads to a happier life. And I believe that I absolutely know that we are happier when we are engaged in work that is filling us up as opposed to draining us. And the dilemma we've run into with the teaching profession, as it is currently being practiced and expected to be practiced is that it is draining us. That's filling us up. It's depleting us of joy, of hope of satisfaction. We are in constant conflict with sometimes with the very policies that the school is grounded in new teachers, teachers who feel in conflict with the philosophy that's currently being used to teach tool when they're ready to leave quicker than people who feel like, yeah, we're on the right track. The way we teach long story short, you're the only one who has control over your thoughts. And you may not believe that you have control over them, but you do just practice for five minutes a day, catching a negative thought. As it pops up, you have a choice as to what you do with it. You can act on it. You can believe it. You can allow it to go into the next negative thought. And then the next negative thought and the next negative thought. And before you know it, you've had a negative five minutes that leads to a negative full day, or you can start to reframe, look at the negative and think about what might you be grateful for instead, instead of complaining about all the things that are going not so well in your, in your career, what are you grateful for besides the paycheck at the end of the month? What aspects of your job do you still enjoy? I know there are some, or you would have already left and embrace the idea that if you have a different feeling about stress in general, and it's not all a bad thing, that it can keep you at the top of your game, then it might make a difference in how you experience your day to day activities. Now that's not to say that there are horrible things that are going on in some people's experiences in the classroom. When you have a student to cuss you out, when you have a student who calls you a four letter word or word, and you have a student who throws things at you, when you have a student who lies about anything that you've said or gone in the classroom to get you in trouble, when any of those things happen, it's time for you to think about making a change. That's not accept. None of that is acceptable. That's not what I'm talking about. When I'm talking about reframing, how you feel about stress, those are assaults on your, your humanity. They're not acceptable. So I guess what I'm trying to do is to challenge you to think a little bit about your day to day experience. Is it really at the point of no return where you feel like you can't do this anymore, and you've got to make a drastic change, or is it the kind of stress that warrants perhaps reframing the way you think about what's going on and looking at it through a different lens. Now, if you feel like it's the kind of thing that you want to just talk through to get a third party objective point of view, that's, that's where I come in. You can make an appointment, we can talk about it. You offer a 20 minute to 30 minute complimentary discovery session. So I'll offer my calendar in the show notes, if you'd like to chat. And if you only want to chat about your stress, I'll offer some resources that might be useful. Do you want to talk about a career change, potential career change? We can talk about that too. The main thing I want you to do is to take care of you, whatever that means for you. If you are constantly miserable, you're not having any fun and no one around you is having any fun. So you need to start taking care of yourself, manage your day to day experience to the extent that you can, and I'm offering that you can far more than you think you can by taking control of your thoughts. That's it for this week. Well, hope you have a wonderful week. Stay well, stay safe and I'll, we'll be back again next week. Bye bye for now.
Speaker 1:So there you have it. An episode of teachers in transition. I hope you enjoy 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 kitty Boitnott at boys, not coaching.com. If you are interested in finding a new career or just enjoying your life more, this is the place to start. I'm Katie Boitnott. And this is teachers in transition.