Teachers in Transition - Episode 145 - 10 New Year's Resolutions for Stress Management in 2022

As we begin 2022, there are still many unknowns and uncertainties and we all wish we could have behind us already. COVID variants, political unrest, and climate change are just a few of the issues that come to mind that can cause stress.

In this week's episode, Kitty offers tips from an article from verywellmind.com. You can find the article in the link below.

"10 New Year's Resolutions for Stress Relief" by Elizabeth Scott, Ph.D., Updated on March 21, 2021, and medically reviewed by Rachel Goldman, Ph.D., FTOS:  https://www.verywellmind.com/new-year-resolutions-for-stress-relief-3144722.

For more stress management tips and strategies, check out Kitty's website at https://teachersintransition.com/. To make an appointment to talk with Kitty about stress or career transitioning, go to her calendar at https://teachersintransition.com/calendar.

To email Kitty directly, you can email her at kittyboitnott@gmail.com.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:01

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 boy. Not I'm a career transition and job search coach. And I specialize in helping burnout out teachers just like you deal, not only with the stress and overwhelm of your day to a 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 trans. 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 boy, not welcome to teachers in transition.

Speaker 2: 1:26

Welcome back to episode 145 of teachers in transition the podcast and the YouTube channel. My name is kitty boy, not I am the owner of boy, not coaching and the founder of teachers in transition. I specialize in working with teachers who are burnt out and ready to make a career change, but I'm also a certified stress management coach. And so on alternating weeks, I speak to alternating topics. One week I speak to stress management strategies. And then on alternating weeks, I speak to career transition strategies. This week, the topic is stress starting the new year, and we are entering 2022 with lots of questions about how this year is going to pan out last year. We probably, at least I did had high hope that we were going to put the COVID 19, uh, virus behind us after all it's named after 2019, right. COVID 19. It started in 2019 and then spread around the world in 2020. And we were impacted<affirmative> most seriously in 2020. And we started off 2020 with some optimism that a, a, a vaccine was on the way, if not a cure that we would get a handle on it. We would, we were already trying to get back to school on something of a normal basis. It, it, we had optimisms sorry about that. And it didn't work out so well first there was the Delta to variant, and then there was the<inaudible>, which is even as I speak sweeping through community after community. Um, and today, at least this I'm recording this on the 3rd of January. You'll be hearing it later this week. Um, it's snow<affirmative>. The east coast is getting slammed with a snowstorm after this weekend having been 70 degrees. So we're worried about, I mean, all kinds of things to be concerned about climate change, which we are seeing more and more signs of every single day, this snow warm being a perfect example. Like I said, a couple days ago, it was 72 degrees here and now it's down in the thirties and started out with sleep. And now snow, it's beautiful to look at horrible to travel in. And there are lots of other things that are on our minds. We're coming up on, on the anniversary of the January 6th insurrection that created a democratic crisis in our government. We have lots of people who don't believe that the vaccine can keep them from getting ill with the VA. And so they're refusing to take it and they're refusing to have their children take it, which puts their children at risk and puts other people's children at risk. Did lots, lots of things to be stressed out about, but being stressed out about anything is not helpful. It's certainly not helpful for your body or your mind. And so as a stress management coach, instead of dwelling on all the things that we have maybe to be stressed out about, what I would like to do today is to offer 10 new year's resolutions for stress relief. And this is, um, these particular or resolutions are coming from an article that I found on, um, the very well mind website. It was actually updated and published March 21st, 2021 by Elizabeth Scott PhD. It was medically reviewed and approved by Rachel Goldman PhD. And I will offer a link to the article in the show notes. The title is 10 new year's resolutions for stress relief, and they also have a, a podcast that you might wanna listen to very well mind podcast, very well as written is one word very well mind, separate word podcast. So the first and perhaps most important in my mind, uh, offer of a tip strategy technique for managing and reducing your stress is to sleep more. So perhaps one of your 2022 intentions or resolutions or goals could be to get more sleep and to make that such an intention that an sleep routine sleep hygiene is what I refer to it as in my stress management workshops, too many of us. And I include myself in the past thinking that's not so much currently because I'm also a sleep science certified coach, but too many of us have had the idea over the years that we can defer and delay sleep, that we can catch up on the weekends, what we lost during the week. And that is simply misdirected in misinformation, you cannot defer sleep. You cannot delay sleep. Your body requires a certain amount of sleep every single night in order to function properly. And I mean, even to the extent of being able to avoid serious issues later in life, including early onset dementia or Alzheimer's, there are some studies that link lack of sleep over years over the long range with dementia and Alzheimer's. And part of the reason for that is that when you are sleeping and you are in a proper rim sleep and deep sleep state, your brain goes into a cleaning mode. It starts think of it as a vacuum cleaner coming in to clean up and to us and, and get away from your brain's cells. The toxins that those cells have eliminated throughout the day, just like any other cell. I mean, you know, we eliminate from our body, the toxins that we accumulate during the day, correct? We go to the bathroom to eliminate toxins that have accumulated in the body. The brain needs a way to eliminate that set buildup of toxin. And what happens during the hours is between two and six in the morning is that your brain goes into cleaning mode and it washes away the toxins that have built up in all of the trillions of cells in your brain. And it flushes out the toxin through the brain stem and becomes part of what you eliminate when you get up in the morning. Now here's the problem. If you haven't gone to bed early enough to be in a proper rim state, sleep by two o'clock you, your brain may not turn on the switch that helps it to do that cleanup work because it's a cycle and it's, it's set on some, think of it as a switch that you, you flip on and off. And if you aren't in the proper state of sleep, your brain can't turn on the switch. So what happens is that the toxins don't get flushed away properly, or maybe some of of them do, but not all of them. And so some are left for build up right from the get go for the next day. And then by the next night, you've got that many more toxins, that many more, that much more waste in your brain that that needs to be flushed out. So do your brain and yourself a favor, go to bed early enough that by two o'clock you're in a proper state of friend's sleep and allow your brain, the, the luxury of cleaning itself out so that when you wake up in the morning, instead of feeling groggy and foggy, and like you didn't get enough sleep, you'll awaken, refreshed and ready for the day. Other downsides of not getting the sleep you need are irritability. The inability to make good decisions, the inability to function properly. There are studies that indicate that a lack of sleep can even impact your productivity and your creativity. So if you were to do none of the other tips that I'm gonna offer today, and, and now that I've talked so much about sleep, I may not get to all 10, but sleep is listed first. And it's perhaps the most important one. And I guarantee that for a lot of people, listening, sleep is something that you can do something about. Now, if you don't already know how many hours of sleep you need individually to feel your best, the next vacation you take, it's too late for this Christmas break. That's just gone by, but the next extended time that you have off go to bed, when you feel tired, wake up when you feel refreshed and see what time it is now, you might not wanna count the first night cause you may overs sleep the first night, but get, see the pattern for me. I know I need at least eight to eight and a half hours of sleep. I mean, I need more than average adult needs. Maybe I've always been that way. I don't know. Maybe it's that I'm getting older. I don't know, but for me somewhere between eight and nine hours of sleep is what I need to function at my best. The next day, that's more than the average. The average amount of sleep that one needs is somewhere between six and a half and eight hours. And in this article, it mentions seven hours. Healthy adults need at least seven hours of sleep. So go to bed in time to be able to get the seven to eight hours of sleep that you need so that when you get up in the morning to go to work, you feel refreshed. You won't feel irritable, you won't feel groggy. You won't feel like you just wanna go back to bed. And if it means adjusting your bedtime. So be it. If you're part of a family, you need to have family council meeting and talk about how everybody needs to go to sleep at a certain an hour. The adults need to go at a set hour and the children need to go at a set hour. Of course the children, depending on your age, depends, uh, need more, more sleep. If the adults need to agree on a, on a bedtime routine and a, and a hygiene that will allow you to go to sleep E easily. Now, what that means is turning off the TV, uh, an hour before bedtime reading, relaxing, you know, drinking caramel milk tea. If that helps warm milk can help listening to relaxing music or doing a meditation, something to help you so that you can go to sleep more easily and wake up more refreshed. So that's the first, and in my opinion, the most important of these 10 suggestions, and I'm gonna sort of speed through the other 10 more quickly since I spent so much time on sleep, but I spent that time on sleep because it is important. So their second suggestion is that you pick up a hobby because when you're engaged in something that is fun and relaxing, it can help you to feel less stressed. And if you can balance your work world with your hobby and your home life, you will start to feel less stressed. The third thing they offer is to invest in your social circle, which means this is we've had to make a special effort to do this, this, this past two or three years cause of the pandemic. We've lost touch with our social circles in some instances. So reconnect with friends and family, even if it's only through zoom and FaceTime, that's better than nothing. I promise you. So get together with your social circle, whoever that happens to be friends and family that you don't wanna lose touch with because you need those circles in order to be well-rounded. They suggest you get more music in your life, listen to the kind of music that makes you feel less stressed and happy. Whether it's upbeat, new for me, I love to listen to soft jazz so that relaxes, neat, whatever, whatever relaxes you, they offer that you can eliminate some stress by calling through your clutter and getting rid of things in your house that you no longer need. I recommend Marie condo, an extreme version of that. If you're interested in going all out, I Marie condoed my house about three years ago, and I'm thinking it's time to do another run through things, have a way of building up then getting cluttered without your paying attention. So do do some clutter, um, de decluttering to help yourself. De-stres learn some quick stress relief strategies, including breathing, staying hydrated. Those those can help choose a long term stress relief practice is one of the suggestion, which might be something like yoga. Although for some people going for a run or a walk going to the gym, whatever it is for you find a way to manage your stress, cultivate optimism. You know, it's really easy to get down on the work in on everything that's going on. Especially if you watch too much news, I've started to cultivate a habit of not watching so much news these days. And it's made a difference in my stress level. I could tell you, so do that, do whatever you need to do to reduce your job stress, whatever the, that means for you, reduce your job stress. You might wanna think about making a plan for the future, which can help to de-stres your life. If you are feeling really stuck in your current situation, and that's creating stress because you feel like you wanna make a change, but you don't know how or where to start then starting is a key to getting yourself unstuck. So making a plan, doing something that's concrete that is moving you from being stressed and stuck to feeling like you've got a plan and you know what you're going to do to move forward in your life. Those are some suggestions from very well mind to help you de-stres yourself in this 20, 22 new year. On that note. Let me just say, if you ever need to talk about your stress or if you need some help, I've got some stress management strategies and cheat sheets and a free book on stress relief on my website at teachers in transitions and check it out. They're free. I also offer career transition, help for the people who feel stuck in their career. So if you'd like to talk about that, make an appointment with me for a free complimentary discovery session. And the link for my calendar is teachers in transition.com/calendar teachers in transition.com/calendar, as always please review this podcast to help other people find it. And let me know what you think of the podcast. If it's helping you or not. I hope that it is certainly if you have ideas for future episodes, let me know that I'd love to hear from you about that. Email me at kitty boy, gmail.com. If you have any suggestions or questions at all, and that's it for this week, thank you so much for listening. And I will see you again next week.

Speaker 1: 19:29

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 spec specifically cover in a future episode, I'm more than happy to help with individual questions as well. So email me at kitty boy, not boy.coaching.com. If you are interested in finding a new career or just enjoying or life more, this is the place to start. I'm kitty boy not. And this is teachers in transition.