50 ways to take a break - Happy Friday!

Battery life of a teacher...

Who can relate to this? I know I sure can... it is so important to recharge - what are you doing this weekend to recharge?

Teacher wellness is so important - remember to take 'you' time.

This weekend I am going with friends to an escape room (45 minutes to try to "escape" a themed room by solving puzzles) I am also going to my daughter's field hockey game and maybe a movie... down time after a busy week. Recharging my "battery" for next week!

When something is bugging me....

Good advice for kids—and their grown-ups! 
http://bit.ly/17is8m4

The Moment I Knew... Less Stress, More Living

This is an excellent article from a teacher about stress, her breaking point, how it happened, and how she handled it... very well written and easy to connect to as a teacher.

Worklife balance and stress management are such important parts of being a teacher and I think too often educators do not have the tools, time or ability to "de stress" in healthy ways to maintain that emotional health and balance that is key.

The Moment I knew.... By Heather Hollis

My student's father is listing my faults like he's ticking off a grocery list. 

"He knows you don't like him. You don't call him 'my angel' like his teacher did last year."
 
"You humiliate him in front of the class."
 
"You blame him for everything."
 
No mention is made of the fact that this child has been noted for anger and social issues since he started school.

No mention is made of the fact that if another child looks at him sideways, he hauls off and punches them. And then screams and cries that he has been wrongly accused.
 
No mention is made of the fact that this child has disrupted the entire class over and over again to the detriment of all the other children.
 
I try to explain that I am very concerned about this child's success and happiness but it falls on deaf ears. I'm sweating and my heart is beating a mile a minute. My fight or flight impulse is on full throttle and I start to wonder if I'm having a panic attack.
 
Dad is on a roll and I'm about to be flattened.
 
Finally, he concludes his list of my offenses by saying quite matter-of-factly, "I'm afraid he's going to hurt himself or worse and, I don't like to say it, but I think it would be because of you."
 
And that's when it happened.
 
I could feel the proverbial straw breaking the camel's back. Except instead of the camel's back, it was a little something inside my head.
 
I was suddenly cold but calm.
 
I stood up and said, "I have to go now" and walked out of the room.
As I walked away, I started to cry.
 
I cried for 10 hours straight.
 
The next morning I got up and went back to work.

But it was different. I was different.
 
I took the next week off -- stress leave they called it. But it was more than that.
Something inside me died that day.
 
Logically, I knew I wasn't to blame, but emotionally? That was a different story.
My class that year was overloaded with children who had a wide variety of special needs. With resources stretched thin, it was impossible to give each one the attention they needed and deserved.
 
I dealt with unhappy, frustrated parents who (rightly) complained and demanded better services. Worse than that, I had students who often sat idle because they could not do the work without one-on-one support.
 
But it was like getting blood from stone. There was no money in the budget for extra help and the ratio of 29 students to one teacher was a recipe for disaster.
 
This is not to say it was a terrible year; quite the contrary. In fact, I loved my students and they, for the most part, loved me. We laughed and learned and had some wonderful times.
 
But there was a hole in my heart that just kept widening. I darkly joked to my fellow teachers that it didn't matter if anyone got upset with me anymore because I was "dead inside."
 
When I found myself sobbing in the bathtub the night before the last day of school, I realized it was time.
 
I had survived the battle but lost the war. My love for teaching was gone.

I spent the following year on an unpaid leave of absence. Luckily for me, I had a supportive spouse and a healthy line of credit. It was a year well spent regaining my mental and physical health.
 
Sleeping came first. I slept like the dead for months.
 
Then I started exercising -- long walks, yoga and fitness classes, jogging. Meditation and heart-felt chats with good friends and family. I focused on eating healthy. I eased up on the daily wine habit that had become a quick and easy way of blotting out the feelings of anger and frustration.
 
I read voraciously and watched television in the middle of the day.
 
Finally, I started writing again. Honestly and from the heart about issues related to teaching and women and mothering.

It didn't happen all at once but eventually I saw the changes. My heart began to open again and the bitterness started to seep away.

I stopped whispering horrible lies to myself, like, "You were a bad teacher. Those children shouldn't have had to endure a year like you gave them." And I started to listen to my true voice that said, "They knew you loved them. And look at how far they came!  

Insult yourself and you insult them."

I know now that I can't single-handedly change the education system. I can, however, change the way one teacher handles it.

Bring it on. I'm ready.

SOURCE: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/heather-hollis/the-moment-i-knew_27_b_3427778.html

Happiness - 15 Things you should give up to be Happy

1. Give up your need to always be right. There are so many of us who can’t stand the idea of being wrong – wanting to always be right – even at the risk of ending great relationships or causing a great deal of stress and pain, for us and for others. It’s just not worth it. Whenever you feel the ‘urgent’ need to jump into a fight over who is right and who is wrong, ask yourself this question:
“Would I rather be right, or would I rather be kind?” Wayne Dyer. What difference will that make? Is your ego really that big?

2. Give up your need for control. Be willing to give up your need to always control everything that happens to you and around you – situations, events, people, etc. Whether they are loved ones, coworkers, or just strangers you meet on the street – just allow them to be. Allow everything and everyone to be just as they are and you will see how much better will that make you feel.

“By letting it go it all gets done. The world is won by those who let it go. But when you try and try. The world is beyond winning.” Lao Tzu

3. Give up on blame. Give up on your need to blame others for what you have or don’t have, for what you feel or don’t feel. Stop giving your powers away and start taking responsibility for your life.

4. Give up your self-defeating self-talk. Oh my. How many people are hurting themselves because of their negative, polluted and repetitive self-defeating mindset? Don’t believe everything that your mind is telling you – especially if it’s negative and self-defeating. You are better than that.
“The mind is a superb instrument if used rightly. Used wrongly, however, it becomes very destructive.” Eckhart Tolle

5. Give up your limiting beliefs about what you can or cannot do, about what is possible or impossible. From now on, you are no longer going to allow your limiting beliefs to keep you stuck in the wrong place. Spread your wings and fly!
“A belief is not an idea held by the mind, it is an idea that holds the mind” Elly Roselle

6. Give up complaining. Give up your constant need to complain about those many, many, maaany things – people, situations, events that make you unhappy, sad and depressed. Nobody can make you unhappy, no situation can make you sad or miserable unless you allow it to. It’s not the situation that triggers those feelings in you, but how you choose to look at it. Never underestimate the power of positive thinking.

7. Give up the luxury of criticism. Give up your need to criticize things, events or people that are different than you. We are all different, yet we are all the same. We all want to be happy, we all want to love and be loved and we all want to be understood. We all want something, and something is wished by us all.

8. Give up your need to impress others. Stop trying so hard to be something that you’re not just to make others like you. It doesn’t work this way. The moment you stop trying so hard to be something that you’re not, the moment you take of all your masks, the moment you accept and embrace the real you, you will find people will be drawn to you, effortlessly.

9. Give up your resistance to change. Change is good. Change will help you move from A to B. Change will help you make improvements in your life and also the lives of those around you. Follow your bliss, embrace change – don’t resist it.
“Follow your bliss and the universe will open doors for you where there were only walls” Joseph Campbell

10. Give up labels. Stop labeling those things, people or events that you don’t understand as being weird or different and try opening your mind, little by little. Minds only work when open.
“The highest form of ignorance is when you reject something you don’t know anything about.” Wayne Dyer

11. Give up on your fears. Fear is just an illusion, it doesn’t exist – you created it. It’s all in your mind. Correct the inside and the outside will fall into place.
“The only thing we have to fear, is fear itself.” Franklin D. Roosevelt

12. Give up your excuses. Send them packing and tell them they’re fired. You no longer need them. A lot of times we limit ourselves because of the many excuses we use. Instead of growing and working on improving ourselves and our lives, we get stuck, lying to ourselves, using all kind of excuses – excuses that 99.9% of the time are not even real.

13. Give up the past. I know, I know. It’s hard. Especially when the past looks so much better than the present and the future looks so frightening, but you have to take into consideration the fact that the present moment is all you have and all you will ever have. The past you are now longing for – the past that you are now dreaming about – was ignored by you when it was present. Stop deluding yourself. Be present in everything you do and enjoy life. After all life is a journey not a destination. Have a clear vision for the future, prepare yourself, but always be present in the now.

14. Give up attachment. This is a concept that, for most of us is so hard to grasp and I have to tell you that it was for me too, (it still is) but it’s not something impossible. You get better and better at with time and practice. The moment you detach yourself from all things, (and that doesn’t mean you give up your love for them – because love and attachment have nothing to do with one another,  attachment comes from a place of fear, while love… well, real love is pure, kind, and self less, where there is love there can’t be fear, and because of that, attachment and love cannot coexist) you become so peaceful, so tolerant, so kind, and so serene. You will get to a place where you will be able to understand all things without even trying. A state beyond words.

15. Give up living your life to other people’s expectations. Way too many people are living a life that is not theirs to live. They live their lives according to what others think is best for them, they live their lives according to what their parents think is best for them, to what their friends, their enemies and their teachers, their government and the media think is best for them. They ignore their inner voice, that inner calling. They are so busy with pleasing everybody, with living up to other people’s expectations, that they lose control over their lives. They forget what makes them happy, what they want, what they need….and eventually they forget about themselves.  You have one life – this one right now – you must live it, own it, and especially don’t let other people’s opinions distract you from your path.
Read more here: http://worldobserveronline.com/2012/04/25/15-things-you-should-give-up-to-be-happy/