Episode 387: Monday Mindset: Trust Your Decisions (Even When Everyone Else Has Opinions)

Today's Monday Mindset episode, we explore how to quiet outside noise and trust our professional judgment, especially when admin directives and social media trends collide with what we know works. We share a simple pause-and-align framework, a real classroom example, and a weekly challenge to build self-trust.

• why trusting our own decisions matters
• how social media erodes confidence
• recognizing advice as context-bound opinion
• the pause, align, decide framework
• integrating mandates without losing your method
• using evidence from your own classroom
• the weekly challenge to notice second guessing
• living and teaching with alignment

Let us know over on our Instagram at @ebacademics

Transcript

Welcome And Purpose Of Monday Mindset

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Well, hello, teachers, and welcome to your Monday Mindset podcast episode. These are short little snippets of thoughts, reflections that are focused around mindset, things that we can do to live our best lives, to live an intentional life. And I invite you to not just listen to these for yourself and how they apply to you in your life, but consider sharing them with other people too. Consider sharing them with your students every Monday and having a conversation about it and doing a reflection together. Because I think a lot of these thoughts, these topics, these questions are just a part of being human. And sometimes being human can feel lonely. And to know that other people are struggling through some of the same challenges that you are and are benefiting from having these types of conversations is hugely powerful in allowing us to get to be the best version of ourselves, to take who we are and who we be and who we show up in the world as to that next level. So I really hope that you enjoy these Monday mindsets. And if you do, let us know over on our Instagram at Eeveacademics. Thanks so much for listening, and let's dive into our Monday mindset. Well, hello, teachers, and welcome to a Monday mindset episode. And we are starting the week off with a mindset shift. And today's shift is one that I think a lot of you need to hear. It's one that I need to hear. And I think it's a good one. So hopefully it helps you because a lot of life can be whittled down to trusting yourself. And I think of gosh, it must have been Emerson, maybe it was Thoreau, who said, trust thyself. And I think that's really important as a teacher. Especially because here's what I see happening often in education. Admin tells you you got to do something different. Admin tells you you got to try a new platform. Teacher friend says, Oh, you're approaching this wrong. You're doing this the wrong way. Or social media, more than anything else, tells you that there's a better strategy that you're missing. And I want you to be super, super aware of that and very aware of what you are consuming because what you consume is going to start to create beliefs that you have. And if you are constantly sitting there on social media scrolling and seeing people tell you to do things this way or do things that way, or you've done it this wrong, I want you to remember that the goal of social media for a lot of people is to get engagement, is to get clicks, is to get followers, whatever it might be. It's not necessarily always what's in your best interest. It's always, I wouldn't say always, I'm gonna take that back. It's sometimes with a different intent. Not to say that it's a nefarious intent, but it's not the intent to necessarily help you be the best teacher possible. And so when you see that all the time and you see that there's this better way of doing it, or this activity is that, or this activity is this, or whatever information you are consuming, we start to suddenly second guess ourselves. Even when things are working. And so today what I want to do is I want to talk about something that really doesn't get discussed enough, just in general, let alone in education, especially as a teacher, but that is trusting your own decisions, even when everyone else has opinions. And yes, this is applicable to teaching, but it's also applicable to your life. And sure, sometimes there are times when other people's opinions are helpful and help us see our blind spots. Um, but a lot of the times it's about living in alignment with yourself and your needs. And so the belief that I really want to challenge today is this need to look outside of oneself for advice, for strategies, for solutions, for the right answer for whatever it might be. And I get where this comes from, right? Like life is life is hard. Life is hard sometimes. Teaching is hard, and we want to do it well. And so when someone offers us advice, we feel like we should take it, right? Especially if that person is an administrator or a veteran teacher or someone we respect. But I think what most teachers don't realize is that listening to everyone else's opinions often creates more confusion than clarity for yourself. Because when you're constantly taking on new ideas or new strategies or new platforms or new approaches or new this or new that, you're never really giving yourself a chance to trust what you already know works. What you already know works. Trust yourself, you know. So I want to paint a picture of what this looks like in real life. You're teaching a unit, maybe it's on argumentative writing, and you've done this before. You know what works with your students, you have a rhythm, you've got a structure, you've got a way of scaffolding things, whatever it might be. And then admins send you an email and they're like, okay, we're piloting this new digital platform for writing. Make sure you integrate it into your next unit. And so now what happens is you're trying to fit your teaching into somebody else's tool or into somebody else's box. Or you're scrolling on Instagram and you see a teacher post, well, if you're not doing it this way, then you're doing it wrong, or if you're not doing it this way, you're missing out, or three things, whatever it might be. And so now you're wondering, oh my gosh, is my approach outdated? Is you know, and suddenly you don't even know what you think anymore because you're listening to everybody except yourself. And sometimes the answer is that listening to yourself means that you follow the advice of someone that you respect, right? That is listening to yourself. But I also want you to play with this concept, this belief, that perhaps you know way more than you think you do. You've probably been teaching for years. If you're a listener of this podcast, maybe you're a brand new teacher, maybe you've just been teaching for a few months. But either way, like you know your students, you know your classroom, you know the energy in your classroom. And that knowledge matters. And I want you to consume other people's opinions as just that, that they are opinions, that they're not facts, they're not universal truths, they're perspectives that are based on that person's experiences, that person's students, that person's context. And yes, like I said, some of those perspectives might actually be helpful, but that doesn't mean that you have to adopt all of them all the time. Because trusting in yourself is a skill. And like with any skill, you build it by practicing it. And so I want you to start doing it is I want you to just pause when someone gives you advice and ask yourself the question: Does this align with what I believe? Does this align with what I do with my students? Does this align with my life? And that pause is everything because it gives you the moment to kind of separate yourself and your thoughts from those opinions of others. Because when we don't filter, we get stuck trying everything and it ends up feeling like nothing works, and we just end up being taken by the tide as opposed to standing in the river unmoved because we believe so much in what we're doing, because we are so aligned with what we believe that nothing's going to move us, that we are unwavering, right? And I want to give you just a personal example from my own life of this when it comes to teaching. I really, really wholeheartedly believe in teaching the EBW approach. Like with every ounce of my writing teacher soul, I just feel like that is time and again the best way to teach this type of critical thinking to our students and how to help help them write it in essays. And I remember when I came to my most recent school, I was told that I had to do it a different way. I had to do it this way. We're using this program, we have to do it this way. And I just know that I am going to do what I'm going to do because that's my personality, but also because I believed deeply in teaching writing in this specific way. And so I just smiled at my principal. I said, no problem. I'll incorporate it some capacity. And then I taught it my way. I taught the EBW approach. And I used like the highlighters or whatever to make it make sense with the other program that we were using in some capacity. And it was one of those moments where it's like, okay, well, which way am I going to go? Am I going to go with what's aligned to me, with what I believe? I'm the professional. I've gone to school for this. I have results from this. I know it works for my students. Or am I going to let the opinions of others dictate what I do? And I've just decided long ago that I'm no longer living my life for other people, and I'm no longer living my life for other people's opinions. And so I think that that's where it's like super, super important as teachers, as role models, as mentors, as people who make decisions that impact students' lives, that it's extremely important that we trust ourselves in our own decision making in our classrooms. We know what's best. So when an admin does introduce a new platform, and maybe it's just like, hey, we have this thing, maybe you just evaluate it. You just pause. If you see a strategy on Instagram and you don't immediately think, oh, I'm doing it wrong, we've got to pause and we've got to say, no, no, that's interesting. Does that fit my teaching style? Does it fit my students' needs? And if it doesn't, you just keep scrolling. But you don't have to defend your decisions, you don't have to justify them. You just have to trust them and put that pause in there so that you give yourself a moment to actually take a step back and see: does this actually align with me? Does this actually align with my beliefs? And so the mindset shift that I want you to walk into this week with for life, for teaching, is that your way might be the right way. Not in terms that it's perfect, but in terms that it's informed by your experience, your students, your classroom. And that matters way more than any trend, than any platform, than any piece of advice that somebody else is offering. And so your challenge this week is I want you to notice when you start to second guess yourself because of someone else's opinion. And when that happens, I want you to pause. And I want you to ask yourself the following question: Do I actually think this advice applies to me? Or am I just feeling pressured to listen? Does this advice align with me? And then you make a decision based on what you know. Because trusting yourself is one of the most important things that we can do as a teacher. Trusting ourselves is one of the most important things that we can do as a human being in our lived experience. I think about one of the friends, one of the things one of my friends said to me a long time ago when I couldn't decide what to do about something. And he goes, pretend you knew the answer, what would it be? And immediately I knew what my answer was. And that answer was there all along. I was just afraid to admit it. And so it's like we've just got to trust ourselves. Everyone's gonna have opinions, but we don't have to listen to them. All right, you guys, have a great week. Live intentionally, don't get stuck in the drift. And if you do, just come back, listen to another Monday mindset episode. And I would love for you to share this with a teacher friend if it landed for you. Thanks so much, you guys, and I'll see you tomorrow on the podcast. Bye, everyone.