Teachers in Transition - Episode 100 - Tips for Managing Teacher Stress

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 to 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.

So thank you for listening. If you have listened before you know that I alternate topics each week , uh, Oh , and I'm kitty boy , not by the way, the owner of Boitnott coaching and the founder of teachers in transition. I alternate topics each week in the podcast and on the YouTube channel one week I speak to stress management strategies.

And then on alternating weeks, I speak to career transition strategies because I am a primarily a heart-centered career transition and job search coach specializing in working with teachers who are experiencing burnout and are ready to look for alternative ways to make a living. I am also a certified stress management coach, and it is no accident that burnout and stress are coupled. They go together. Um, stress can build over time to the point where it manifests itself as burnout.

And that's what led me to become certified as a stress management coach. I had been going through a stressful period in my own life, both professionally and personally, and I decided to study stress and learn as much as I could about how to mitigate it and manage it more proactively and effectively. I ultimately became certified and started doing stress management workshops for teachers.

And I am in fact, planning a, on an ongoing webinar presentation that I'll be advertising in the upcoming weeks that you can listen to and take away tips from on how to better manage your stress as we enter this ending. FA you know, I don't even know whether it really is the ending phase of the school year, who knows what school divisions are going to decide about how to blend summer into the spring in order to try to catch kids up as we get back into some sort of in-person learning situation.

So I hesitate to say that these tips are for the end of the year, months, and weeks , uh, ordinarily they would be offered as strategies for coping with the extra stress of the spring and early summer of the school year calendar. Um, because if you're a teacher, you know, every year, right around spring break time, everything gears up into hyperdrive , as you prepare for the end of the school year, there's testing and there's pretesting and then testing.

And then post-testing , uh , there's all the paperwork, all the reports that have to be done. The report cards that have to be completed, the conferences with parents and the endless, endless meetings that you have with your administrators. And it all takes up so much of your time that you hardly have time for yourself or your family or taking care of your health.

And as that stress builds up, you can easily go directly from being simply overstressed and overwhelmed, and shouldn't have used simply from feeling stressed and overwhelmed, to feeling totally burnt out and done and ready to make a career change.

So this week I want to talk about the first of seven strategies that I have thought a lot about and have decided are appropriate tools and tips for approaching stress in , um, in your work day or work week or in, in the upcoming months that are going to be part of the ending of the school year. So the first tip, there's seven tips. I'm going to be touching on this each of the seven in the next weeks. Uh , you know , again, I'll be alternating between career transition and stress management.

So technically the next seven tips, we'll take the next 14 weeks to cover completely. But like I said, I'll be advertising shortly, a new webinar presentation that you can register for that will be free. That will cover all seven strategies in the event that you'd be interested in learning more about them and having some of the resources available to you sooner rather than later. So the first tip that I want to recommend to you is to mind your mindset. Now, we've all become aware.

I think of the movement toward mindfulness and our society. There is a push toward being aware of what's going on in our, in our thoughts and how we can manage our health by managing our thoughts and making our thoughts more positive and more productive. Um, and so managing your mindset, minding your mindset is the first critical piece that I think is important in approaching stress in your day to day life. I want you to consider challenging your negative thinking.

So what I mean by that is catch yourself. Anytime you start to think, I just can't do this. This is too much. I hate so-and-so, I'm overwhelmed with such and such stop, stop, stop yourself, catch yourself and reframe. You can do it. You may not like doing it, but you can do it. So never tell yourself that you can't. And if you truly feel like you can't then ask for help, which is another one of the tips for later on.

But if you truly feel that you can't manage tasks at work, you can't keep up with the workload. You can't do whatever. If you truly feel that way, as opposed to just sort of venting with yourself about can't is really, I don't want to then catch yourself, reframe and consider how you might be able to break down some of the tasks that you're trying to undertake and chunk them into smaller, more bite size pieces so that you're better able to do what needs to be done.

Uh, Zig Ziglar is famous for having said positive thinking. Won't let you do anything that it will let you do everything better than negative thinking will . So consider that turning things around, reframing, changing your paradigm. The way you look at something can help tremendously as you mind your mindset. So be aware of your thoughts, start paying attention.

You know, often we think thousands of thoughts a day, we give little fought to what those thoughts are telling us or what they're doing to us. Negative thoughts on a regular basis will wind up making you feel negative and cynical and sad and even depressed. And once you become aware of your thoughts and you stop them and turn them around before, you've let the negatives sink into your, your body. You'll start to feel better. This takes practice. It's not something that happens overnight.

You have to really be committed to paying attention to what it is that you're thinking, but I promise you, it is totally liberating. Being able to catch yourself in your negative thinking is totally liberating. Consider that thoughts become things. So why not make your thoughts, good things so that you can create good things in your life, better health, a better attitude, a better outlook, because that's what it's really all about.

Creating a better, more positive outlook so that you do feel like you can manage whatever is thrown your way. And when one of the w one of my recommendations and what I'll talk about in the webinar presentation, that's coming up shortly. Uh, I recommend that you read the book, the four agreements by Don Miguel release. You can get it from the bookstore. Even the library, buy it off of Amazon, wherever you get your books. It's well worth the price of the book. If you haven't read it, please do.

If you have read it, I recommend that you go back and reread it because it'll give you that extra boost that you need. But basically the four agreements can help you to completely reset your mindset and create a different attitude about what you're dealing with and how you're approaching your life. So the first agreement is to be impeccable in your word. Now the word impeccable means perfect.

So when, when he's talking about being impeccable and your word, he means to be careful about the words that you choose, say what you mean and mean what you say instead of being loose with your word and think in terms of not only being kind and positive in your words to other people, which we don't have that much trouble with, usually, but to also be kind and thoughtful about the words you use in talking to yourself, which we aren't always very careful about.

In fact, we tend to be, we would say more cruel, ugly things to ourselves than we would ever think to say to anyone else. It's a part of human nature, I guess, but that's why it's so important for you to start catching yourself, catch that negative thought, catch yourself in not being impeccable in your word and turn it around, become impeccable in your word . Secondly, he says, don't take anything personally. And this is hard.

Most of us tend to think that everything, every slight, every action is about us. And frankly, we are seeing examples of it all the time on social media, where people have total meltdowns, because they think that everything is about them. They take everything personally, don't do that. He says that people, other people are thinking about you far less than you think they are thinking. And so even if someone is impolite or rude to you, don't take that personally. It's not about you.

It's about them. It's about how they're having a bad day. They don't even see you. The real you, you're just in the way of their getting what they want. So it's about them. It's not about you. So don't take anything personally. He also reminds us not to make assumptions. Human beings are notorious for wanting to feel voice. So when we don't know, something tend to make stuff up. We do it all the time. If we have a friend who's acting oddly and she won't confide in us, we start making up stuff.

When she must be feeling this way, or she must be doing this, or she must be talking to so-and-so behind my back. None of that is probably true, even if it is true. So what, so don't make assumptions, ask questions so that you know what you're dealing with. Find out. Don't assume that you know, anything, ask questions, get information, be curious. Instead of thinking, you know everything about everybody. And finally, the fourth agreement is always do your best.

And frankly, if you're doing your best, nothing else really matters. Does it. If you're doing the best, you can then forget about the rest, just do the best you can, and don't expect yourself to be perfect, or to be , uh, to be able to do everything all at once. You can do everything, maybe just not all at once. So be kinder to yourself, cut yourself. Some Slack, pay attention to what you're thinking and reframe your thoughts so that you have a more positive attitude.

And then as you approach the end of the year activities, instead of allowing yourself to get sucked into the negative spiral, you can approach things with a much more positive attitude. You can remind yourself that you can get everything done. You may not be able to get it all done in one day, but that's okay. Take whatever assignment you have and chunk it down.

If you have a deadline and you can't meet the deadline, then readjust the deadline with your superior and tell them, you'll get it in as quickly as you can, period, most deadlines are more flexible than you think. Anyway. Often people will set a deadline earlier than the deadline actually is because they're preparing for the procrastinators. So the deadline may not be as final as they want you to think it is, do the best you can, but don't expect yourself to be able to do better than your best.

And that's not to say we don't work to improve ourselves, but I'm just saying, you need to give yourself a break, cut yourself. Some Slack teachers in general are harder on themselves than just about any other group of people. I know they take on their own stuff and everybody else's stuff. And it becomes a burden that eventually you cannot carry any longer. If you want to finish this school year, feeling more positive, then you need to start adjusting your mindset.

Now. So mind your mindset, check your attitude, start reframing your negative thoughts and take a look at the four agreements. I think you'll find the book and the, and the suggestions to be particularly insightful and encouraging and inspirational. And that's the message for today. Have a wonderful week. I hope you have a continue to stay safe wherever you are, be kind to one another. And most importantly of all, be kind to yourself. I'll see you next week.

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.