Episode 408: Monday Mindset: Creating Evidence for Yourself

You can’t “think” your way into becoming a new version of yourself. You become them by collecting proof one small action at a time and that’s the Monday Mindset I’m bringing to you today. If you’ve been waiting for motivation, clarity, or the perfect moment to finally feel ready, this conversation is your reminder that readiness is often the result, not the starting line. 

I walk through the idea of creating evidence for the person you want to become, and why lasting change happens at the identity level, not just the goal or habit level. I share a personal story from my recovery after a cerebrospinal fluid leak and major spinal cord surgery, where rebuilding strength required showing up before I felt confident it would work. That daily practice turned tiny milestones into real proof and shifted what I believed was possible. 

If this message hits home, subscribe, share it with a colleague or student who needs it, and leave a quick review so more teachers can find the podcast.

Transcript

Monday Mindset And Why It Matters

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Well, happy Monday teachers, and welcome back to another episode of the Teaching Middle School ELA podcast. It is your Monday mindset. These are just short, intentional, little thought-provoking ideas, concepts, things that I share with you every other week on the podcast. And it's not just to give you something to think about for yourself, but also something that you can bring into your classroom as well. You know, some of these are very applicable to sharing with your students, having a conversation about it, doing a reflection together. Because honestly, a lot about a lot of what I talk about on Mondays, on these Monday mindsets, is really just a part of being human. It's really just a part of the human experience. And, you know, being human can be lonely sometimes and it can be difficult sometimes. And I think it's really important to realize that other people are wrestling with a lot of the same exact problems and situations that you are as well, and that you're really not alone in this. So I hope that these Monday mindsets serve you. If they do, please let me know in our Facebook group if you are an EB teacher or over on our Instagram at EB Academics if you are just a listener of the podcast and you are not a member of our membership. So this week is about something that I've been thinking a lot about lately. And it really all comes down to this idea of really creating evidence for the person that you want to become. So let's say that we have this goal, this dream, this desire for ourselves in our lives. And doesn't matter what it is, it can be a financial goal, it can be a fitness goal, it can be a health goal, it could be a family goal, it could be a relational goal, whatever it might be. And a lot of the times the person that we are right now is not necessarily the person that is going to be able to receive the thing that we want, right? We have to expand who we are and expand our capacity to receive, to stay disciplined, to believe that what we want is possible, all of those things. And yes, a lot of times it's creating new habits to start to begin to achieve that new version of ourselves, but a lot of the times it's really stepping into the belief in the integration of that new way of being. And I'll give you an example of kind of what I mean with this and what I'm talking about with this. So when I was recovering from my injury, my cerebrospinal fluid leak, and I had a major um spinal cord surgery back in July of 2025. And, you know, I was in great shape heading into that injury, but for seven months I couldn't do anything. I literally could just stay in bed and barely walk down the street to the stop sign and back. And it was, it was more of a brain injury than a back injury. And so when I came back out of surgery and into like rehab about four weeks, five weeks after my surgery, you know, I had lost about 20 pounds, which is a lot for my frame. And I was in extraordinarily weak. And I'm talking about going from a person who can do, you know, 10 pull-ups in a row to I can barely lift myself off of the bed. And I remember sitting there on that first session with my trainer, and to even be able to do a basic squat, I had to do it with a major, like a big medicine ball up against my back and slowly go into a squat and stand up. And I remember thinking in that moment, I was like, damn, I have a marathon to run in this recovery. Like this is going to be a long journey. But I knew that if my goal was to get back to or further than where I was physically before I got injured, I was gonna have to start somewhere. And I was going to have to start doing the work before I felt mentally ready, like before I even knew that this was possible. Was I really going to be able to get better? Was I really going to be able to do pull-ups again and lift heavy again and do all of the things that I love doing, minus the one move that caused the injury. I won't be ever doing that again. But so what I started doing is I just started showing up every day as the person who was already fully recovered. I would go in with my trainer every day and I would be like, okay, I'm better. Let's do this. And yes, I still took it exactly slowly, step by step, the way that I was supposed to. But I was no longer looking at it as this mountain that I had to climb. It was no longer this Everest. It was every day I'm building evidence for myself that I'm the person who shows up for myself every single day, no matter how hard it is, no matter what mental state I'm in, no matter how emotionally, you know, raw I am as I go through this process. I'm just gonna go every single day. And what slowly started to happen was is I'd hit these little milestones. Oh my gosh, for the first time I could do a squat just by myself without a ball leaned up against the wall. And then oh my gosh, for the first time, I can lift my arms above my head. And oh my gosh, for the first time, I can hold a five-pound dumbbell and do a curl, you know, when I was doing 20 pounds before I got injured. And so it was like, oh my gosh, all of these little moments of, okay, wow, I'm making progress, I'm getting better, I'm recovering. And it was because I didn't allow myself to not move forward without evidence that I was gonna get better. I moved forward and thus created evidence that I was getting better. So hopefully you start to see that, like in our actions and in our choices and in our beliefs, we create the evidence that we can become the person we want to become, as opposed to waiting for the evidence to be there first to become that person, because that's not gonna happen, right? How can you have evidence for the person that you want to be when you aren't that person yet? Right. And so I think about that when we start to stack this evidence, our belief in ourselves starts to really shift. And so I want to bring this to you in your classroom. And hopefully it's starting to make sense through my example that I shared. And when you think about like, what kind of a teacher do you want to be? What kind of a teacher do you want to be? Maybe it's the teacher who actually leaves school when the bell rings, not at 5:30. Or maybe it's the teacher who uses their prep period to actually prep or grade because their lessons are already batch planned 90 days in advance. Or maybe it's the teacher whose students are genuinely engaged, not like managed with classroom behavior, but actually engaged in their learning. And I know sometimes, especially this time of year, that that teacher feels very far away, especially on a Tuesday. It's the middle of a long week. You know, you have a million unread emails. May is typically insane in middle school as a middle school ELA teacher, which is vastly different from when I taught high school. When I taught high school, May was like the month everything starts to calm down. We've got finals coming up, everyone starts to chill. That is not the case in middle school. May is like the marathon at the end of the year. It's wild. But what I want to say is you don't become that I idealized teacher that you have in your mind like all at once. You become that person, one small piece of evidence at a time. And that starts with very small shifts, very small habits and very small promises that you keep to yourself, right? The promises that you make to yourself, you have to keep to yourself, because otherwise, you start to become a person who breaks your promises to yourself. And thus you're not building evidence that you are who you say you are or you are who you say you want to be. And so that might start with batch planning just one unit through the end of the school year and being like, okay, that's evidence. Or maybe you leave school at 315 on a Wednesday. Okay, that's evidence that I can leave school at 3.15, right? You try one new lesson that's super engaging that your students actually lean into, that's evidence that you can keep your students engaged. And so what happens is every small consistent action that you take toward the person that you want to be or the teacher that you want to be is a vote, is evidence for the new identity that you are building. And it's at that identity level, right? Not just a habit level, not just a goal level, but an identity level that real lasting change happens. So you stop asking, well, can I do this? And you just start saying, this is who I am. And so I want to give you one more personal example from my own life. I stopped drinking alcohol in December of 2022. And, you know, I identified as like a wine lover, you know, wine tasting up in Napa, and one of my favorite things to do, put on a cute dress, wedges, sit in the vineyard, you know, have the wine tasting and the cheese and all this stuff. It's a whole experience. And I loved it. And when I used to think about like what the heaven was like, I'd be like, it was that experience. But then I realized that alcohol really did not serve me and who I wanted to be in this life. And so I began the journey of no longer drinking alcohol. And I remember the first like seven days, 10 days, 14 days, 30 days were really, really hard. But one of the things that shifted it for me was I started to adopt a new identity around myself of I don't drink. I'm not a drinker, I no longer drink alcohol. Right. And even when I go to a restaurant now, three and a half years later, someone asks me if I want a drink. I'm like, oh, I don't drink. And it's just like so non-negotiable with my identity and who I am that it's not even a question anymore. But that lasting change took those pieces of evidence for myself in the very beginning when it was really hard to say, I'm someone who doesn't drink, I don't drink, I am someone who is sober, I am someone who doesn't drink wine, right? I am this person. This is just who I am. And so when we change it at the identity level, it's no longer a goal, it's just who we are.

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Right.

Reflection Question And End Of Year Push

Invitation To Share And Closing

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And I even think about the capacity of like being a parent, right? And how we shift if you're a parent and how we're able to shift like the magnitude of the emotional frame that we're able to hold for our children. Like the the you from your 18-year-old self, 25-year-old self probably is not the same as the 30-year-old self that can sit there and help your child co-regulate when you yourself would have become completely dysregulated and yelled or whatever 15 years ago, right? Now you're able to sit there and hold so much more because you've practiced, because you're self-reflective, because you're self-aware, because at an identity level, you are, at least for me, I am a mother who shows up with emotional calm for my son as he's going through a difficult time. Because I want to model for him how to sit with emotions in a way that is healthy, how to feel them, how to process them, how to move through them, and allow them not to take over and have you make reactive decisions, right? And so I just think like these are all pieces of evidence that we create over time that then help to start to build this identity piece. And I know it's at the end of the year, but it's a great time to practice the integration of this because this is when it's gonna be hardest, is at the end of the year of doing this. And so, my reflection for you this week, and and genuinely I want to consider, you know, sharing this with your students in some capacity, maybe it's through your own, you know, interpretation of this episode. But I want you to sit with this question. Where in your life have you been waiting to feel ready before you start creating evidence? Where in your life have you been waiting to feel ready before you start creating evidence? So it's like you're just waiting, you're waiting for the evidence, but that's not how it works. You create the evidence first before you're ready, right? That's the beauty of it. And I know that conceptually, right, on an intellectual level, you're probably like, yeah, yeah, I get it. But when we integrate it into practice, into our way of being, into who we are, that's when we really start to see these magical shifts happen. And boy, is it hard. I'm in a situation in my life right now where I am being stretched emotionally so much, and it's like deeply, deeply uncomfortable. But when I catch myself and my thoughts with it, it's like, okay, what evidence do I want to create? Or who do I want to be in this moment, or how can I appreciate how much this is stretching me to expand my vessel, to expand my capacity to hold more, to expand my nervous system to be able to hold more in a place that isn't triggered, in a place that is calm, in a place that is trusting and knowing that it's all gonna work out, that it's all gonna be okay, that no matter what happens, I'm gonna be okay. Right? And so you don't have to be there yet, but we just I invite you to just take one small step toward who it is that you wanna be, and then another, and then another, and then another. And the evidence will follow, and the belief will follow that, and the identity will follow that. So thank you so much for listening to today's episode. I hope that this resonated with you. And if it did, share it with someone else who needs it, a colleague, a friend, a student who's been telling themselves like they're just not a reader or they're just not a math person. Because this message of creating evidence for yourself, it really is a human one and it belongs to all of us. So here's too another great week of living intentionally, and I will see you guys next time on the podcast. Bye, everyone.