Episode 413: Monday Mindset: The One Thing They Can Never Take From You

🎙️ In today’s Monday Mindset episode...

When teaching feels like a constant stream of new mandates, less time, and less control, it’s easy to feel powerless. But what if the one thing that matters most can never be taken from you?

We’re talking about resilience, protecting your energy, and a simple mindset shift that helps you stay grounded no matter what’s happening around you. Plus, Caitlin shares her favorite “Laughing Buddha” approach for dealing with frustrating situations without losing your peace.

Listen in and ask yourself: What’s one thing you’re done handing your power to this week? 💛

Transcript

Welcome And Summer Episode Plan

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Well, hello teachers, and welcome back to another Monday mindset. We are in the month of July, which is crazy and hard to believe that it is already July. But I am gonna keep these episodes going throughout this month. And in fact, I have tons of podcast episodes coming your way throughout the months of June, July, and potentially August. So just so you know, I'll be airing a Monday mindset every Monday for this month. And then I will also be airing two episodes a week in addition to that, focused this month largely on planning and in the month of July largely on writing. And the reason that I'm doing it this way is because we have an upcoming free workshop focused on planning engaging lessons for your students. That's happening at the end of June. If you go to ebteacher.com forward slash workshop, you can register for that. It's going to be fabulous. And then in July, I'm hosting a writing workshop, and we're gonna be focused on writing on the podcast as well. And more details for registering for that will come as we get closer to that time. So June is planning, engagement, all of that type of stuff to set you up for success for the new school year. I know it's the end of the year for a lot of you and you're not even thinking about next school year. So disregard the words that are coming out of my mouth until you are emotionally prepared for that. Um, and then July, we're gonna talk all about writing, which is gonna be fabulous.

When Teaching Feels Like Loss

SPEAKER_00 1:18

But today's episode, I think, is, excuse me, really important. And it's gonna land differently for you depending on where you are in your teaching journey right now. Because if you've been in the classroom for a longer period of time, you very likely know what it feels like to have things taken from you, quote unquote taken from you, right? Your prep period gets cut in half, or your curriculum gets mandated, so you can't do the activities that you've always done that you love, or your autonomy shrinks, you're required to do X, Y, and Z, or the budget for certain things that you've always used disappears, right? All of those things happen. And after a while, it starts to feel like things are just constantly being taken away. And I think that it is important to know that when we come at experiences like this from the mindset of something being taken, that it is a loss, that something again is getting stripped away from me. A lot of the times what we're unknowingly doing is handing our power over to something outside of ourselves. We're handing our power over to our administrators or to the superintendent or to the system at large, whatever it might be. And I don't say that to make you feel bad. Like that's a human thing that we just do. It's a human response, especially like an automated human response, if we're not actively working on our mindset. And I say that because I've done this too, right? Especially through divorce and difficulties, co-parenting and my injury that I went through, all of this stuff, it was like all of these things are being taken from me. And when I had that perspective, it really didn't serve me. It put me in a really negative spot. And so I spent a lot of time these last two years really working through that nothing's being taken from me necessarily, that I get to change the way in which I'm viewing circumstances to hold on to my power as opposed to letting it be taken away or me giving it away to someone else. So bear with me, because that's a hard concept, I think, for a lot of people to metabolize. So here's what I want you to think about as a good analogy.

The Fitness Analogy For Ownership

SPEAKER_00 3:39

A while back, and I I see this all the time actually, but I first saw it a couple years ago, there was a post on someone's Instagram post, and it had to do with the fitness world. And it was this idea that your physical fitness, the strength that you build, the endurance that you develop, the eating habits to build the body that you want to build, having to count your macros and making sure you hit your protein, right? And showing up every day and all of this stuff that we do for our bodies in the physical fitness industry, that is something that no one can ever take away from you. Right? It is yours. That lives in your body. Like your employer can't take it from you, your admin can't take it from you, a bad school year can't take it from you. It belongs to you completely. And you can't pay someone else to just give it to you, right? Like that is earned through discipline and hard work and um gosh, grit and resilience, right? All of that stuff. And I sat with this for a while, this idea, and I started to think to myself, okay, well, what else is like that? What else do I have that is completely, unshakably, inherently just mine? And what I landed on was really interesting. And that's my mindset, my character, my values, the way that I choose to show up in any scenario for my son, with my ex-husband, as a co-parent, with my parents, with my staff, for myself, for the life that I'm building, right? Those things, those are mine. And nobody can touch them. Nobody can mandate them away, or cut them from the budget, or decide that they don't fit the new curriculum map, or whatever it might be, right? My mindset is mine. And it's something I have complete control over. And that realization that there is this whole part of me that exists completely outside of the system of education's reach completely outside of the system of co-parenting and divorce and difficulties in life and whatever it might be that you're going through, that realization that is where the power lives.

Stop Letting Stress Become Identity

SPEAKER_00 5:52

Because here's the thing that I see happen to really good teachers, and I want to relate this to teaching, but this is applicable to your entire life. But here's the thing that I see happen to really good teachers, and maybe you felt this yourself. The job starts to define you. You allow the stress to impact you. The overwhelm starts to become your identity, right? I'm just a tired teacher, right? Like it's such an identity piece. It's something that's all over social media, right? Just constantly re-what's the word I'm looking for? Like reinstilling that like victim mindset that we're victims to the system. And yes, that's true. There's nothing you can do about the system, but you can decide how you choose to show up for it and to it. Because when we allow ourselves to be sucked into that negative mentality, you are no longer making a place, making decisions from a place of strength, from a place of clarity and security. You are just reacting. You're playing defense. You're playing defense in your life as a teacher. However, when you start to invest in the things that no one can take from you, your mindset, your belief in what's possible, your sense of who you are as a person, your nervous system, how you choose to react to situations, something shifts in you. Because now, no matter what gets thrown your way during a school year, and things will get thrown your way. That's just teaching, that's just life, that's how it goes. You have a foundation that doesn't move. And that's what it means to become unstoppable. That's what it means to become resilient. It's not about being immune to hard things, hard or like being protected from hard things. Hard things happen, period. Like, bro, that's life. Instead, it is about building something so solid within yourself that the hard things are not gonna knock you down all the way, that you're gonna be okay. And I'll just say this that this is the exact kind of work that I care about so much, right? Curriculum stuff, lesson planning stuff, writing, all like so important. And like your mindset and your ability to move through difficult situations in life, that is the work that is the deeper work that will allow you to walk back into the classroom in the fall feeling like you have created a bubble almost around yourself that no one can take anything away from you.

Building Resilience Through Mindset Work

SPEAKER_00 8:36

And that's what I talk about in our summer workshops. That's what I talk about at our batch planning live event. So if it's something that you want to spend more time with me this summer, please sign up for my workshop. The one that's coming up in June is all about engaging lessons, but it deeply ties into mindset. Go to ebteacher.com forward slash workshop. But I want to share something else with you before I end today's episode.

The Laughing Buddha Way To Cope

SPEAKER_00 8:58

I went on a walk with a girlfriend uh a couple days ago, and she's struggling at work, and she's feeling very frustrated with her employer and a couple of other things that are going on. And I was like, okay, do you want me to just listen? Do you want my advice? Do you want me to challenge you? Do you want to continue to be upset? Like, is being upset serving you in some way or giving you something that you need? And she's like, no. She's like, challenge my beliefs. Please help me. I'm sick of being angry. I'm sick of being upset, etc. And so I just told her this con, shared with her this concept that my one of my therapists shared with me a couple of years ago as I was began the divorce process. And she's like, you just have to be a laughing Buddha. Meaning there are going to be circumstances that to you are so outrageous that you are just like in disbelief that that is someone else's experience and reality. Like you can't even comprehend how many of you have gone through that experience with an admin or a colleague or a parent. And you're like, what is wrong? Like, how is that how you move throughout the world? But what you have to realize is that not everybody is like you. Everybody is different. Everyone has their own different experiences of reality. And so if we want to protect our sanity, our emotional experience in this world, our nervous system, our stress levels, and we want to live a happy life, it is a great skill to develop, to be in a conversation or in a situation or in a circumstance that to you is insane. And instead of trying to make somebody else see your point of view, which nine times out of 10, if not more, they will not, you just have to laugh about it and be like, okay, that's fine. And walk away. Because the only reason that you would need to stay there and argue is for your ego to be right. And when we're operating from our ego self, we are not operating from our higher self. And the higher self is the self that serves us. The ego self is the one that wants to keep us safe, the one that wants to be right, the one that wants to fight or whatever it might be. But if you can just take a step back and be a laughing Buddha about certain things, life is a whole lot less stressful. And I have to say, like, I have changed so much in the last few years looking at things through this lens because there are so many things that I have had to deal with that I'm sure you have all your problems too, right? Everybody's got their stuff. That when I take a step back and I'm like, okay, laughing Buddha, I'm like, doesn't matter. It's all fine. You can, you can think you're right. That's okay. Or if it gets to a point where I feel the need to actually stand up and be like, you know what, this is not okay with me, which there are certain instances, then that's a different story. But if this is like harmless well like relative to the larger life, right? Just laughing boot at it. Because it doesn't matter. And like I think about it from this perspective. If no one is in danger, no one's gonna die, no one's in psychological danger. Like I know those are extremes, but like really, if that's not the case, then is it really worth getting upset about? Is it really worth going to battle for? Is it really worth having stress and anxiety and anger and overwhelm and bringing those conversations home to your spouse? And like it's just not worth talking about. Like, why are we giving it any energy? Who cares? Let it go. Let them be right, whatever. Life is so much better when you're able to just be the laughing Buddha about it.

Final Reminder And Week Ahead

SPEAKER_00 12:58

So I hope that this episode serves you. One thing that they can never take from you is your mindset, is how you choose to approach difficult situations. And we all have the power to change how we choose to approach anything that gets thrown our way in our lives. So here's to a week of investing in things that are always, always, always going to be yours, aka your mindset. And I will see you guys tomorrow on the podcast. Then I'll see you again on Thursday on the podcast, and then I'll see you back here next Monday for another Mind Day mindset. All right, you guys. Hope everyone is having a great week, and I will see you tomorrow. Bye, everyone.