Episode 430: Monday Mindset: Forget What You Think You Need

Another Monday Mindset, The fastest way to feel stuck as a middle school ELA teacher is to believe your peace depends on someone else doing their job differently. If admin were more supportive, if class sizes were smaller, if the district stopped changing everything, then you’d finally feel steady. I get it, and I’ve lived it, but that belief quietly gives away your power.

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Transcript

Welcome And EB Academics Mission

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hi there, ELA teachers. Caitlin here, CEO and co-founder of EB Academics. I'm so excited you're choosing to tune into the Teaching Middle School ELA podcast. Our mission here is simple, to help middle school ELA teachers take back their time outside of the classroom by providing them with engaging lessons, planning frameworks, and genuine support so that they can become the best version of themselves, both inside and outside of the classroom. And we do this every single day inside the EB Teachers ELA portal. This is a special place we've developed uniquely for ELA teachers to access every single piece of our engaging, fun, and rigorous curriculum so that they have everything they need to batch plan their lessons using our EB Teacher digital planner that's built right into the app. Over the years, we've watched as thousands of teachers from around the world have found success in and out of the classroom after using EB Academics programs. And we're determined to help thousands more. If you're interested in learning more, simply click the link in the podcast description. And in the meantime, we look forward to serving you right here on the podcast every single week.

The Trap Of “I Need X”

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Well, hello, teachers, and welcome back to another Monday Mindset episode. And I want to start today with a question, kind of as per usual. I feel like I do that a lot, and I want you to sit with it with as much honesty as you can possibly muster. How many times have you told yourself some version of the following? I just need my admin to be more supportive and then I'll feel happier at work. Or I just need a smaller class size and then I'll be able to actually teach and cover all the standards. Or I just need the district to stop changing everything all the time, and then I'll finally feel like I have my footing. Or anything along those lines. So if any of those landed for you, and I'm guessing at least one of them did, or some version of them did, then I think this episode might really help you. Because here's what we're really talking about. When we say I need X to feel Y, we are literally handing the keys to our own happiness, our own peace over to something else that is completely outside of our control. And like I know this pattern deeply. I lived it for years as a teacher, as a mom in my personal life. I was so convinced that if certain things would just change, that I would finally be able to feel the way that I wanted to feel, happy and at peace. And what I eventually had to come to terms with, and it was not an easy reckoning by any means, I did a lot of deep personal work, but what I had to come to terms with is that those things that I was waiting for were never going to be the source of what I was looking for. Because they couldn't be, right? That's not where happiness lives. And here's what I've come to believe deeply, and it is a shift that has genuinely changed the way that I move throughout the world, and it is this that life happens for us.

Life Happens For You

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Not to us, but for us. Think about that. My quote that I have on my screensaver on my phone says, All is well, everything is working out for my highest good. And out of this situation, this so-called quote-unquote problem, only good will come and I am safe. And when we look at every situation in life as actually happening for us, we're no longer like a victim to our circumstances. We're no longer outsourcing our happiness, our peace to our circumstances. We are realizing that we are going through these experiences for a reason. Whether that's to help us reach a higher version of ourselves, whether that's to protect us from something 20 years from now that we can't see, right? Whatever it might be, if we can look at that whatever is unfolding in our lives right now, even the frustrating parts, even the parts that feel deeply unfair, even when the admin who doesn't see you, and the parents who are relentless, and the kids who are making you question every single career choice you've ever made, all of it is happening for you in some way. It's working itself out into a direction that you may not be able to see at all, or that you may not be able to see for 10 years. And you look back and you go, man, I'm really so grateful that that happened the way that it did. How many times in your life have you said that to yourself? Man, I'm looking back now, I'm so glad that worked out the way that it did. And I think what's really helpful is not just like intellectually nodding at that belief, like, yeah, I get it, I get it, I get it, but truly doing your best to integrate it into how you show up on a hard day. And so for me, that meant like I stopped waiting. I stopped putting my happiness in someone else's hands and I stopped waiting for the right circumstances to finally arrive. And I have this coach, this mentor who said something I can't remember exactly what it is, but like the five levels of gratitude. And like one of the more difficult levels of gratitude is being grateful for the things that haven't happened yet. But then the highest one or the hardest one is being grateful for the things that have been really hard. The things that are seemingly are bad. Like, how do we find gratitude in those things? And I think when we do, and we start to like catch ourselves saying, I need this X in order to feel why. Just pause and like notice that. Like ask yourself, is that actually true? Or is that me outsourcing my happiness to something that I can't control?

Gratitude And Boundaries With Parents

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Because it's like, what if we what if we had a very, very difficult conversation with a parent? And instead of being like, oh, I hate them, they're so horrible, and you go and complain and blah, blah, blah, and you just feed the negative energy. You just feed into that and you just repeat it, and it brings your whole day down and it makes you upset and your colleagues feed into it, or whatever it might be. What if instead your perspective of that circumstance was twofold? One, the way that this parent treated me has no bearing on my happiness and my peace, because their unhappiness with me has nothing to do with me and everything to do with them, right? That's one thing. But also, what if you looked at, okay, that really challenging conversation with that parent, I'm actually grateful for? Like, I know that's a radical concept. But what if it's like, okay, I'm grateful for that because it's teaching me what new boundaries I need to hold so that this doesn't happen again? Or I'm grateful that this happened because now I know that if a parent does choose to talk to me like that, that I can keep my composure. They just gave me practice on keeping my nervous system calm in a stressful situation, right? Like if you can see it that way, it's very hard. I'm not saying it's easy. But if you can see it that way, it totally changes your perspective of literally every interaction of your life. Because here's what is true is that the school year is going to have hard things in it, right? There are going to be challenges. Like that's not a pessimistic statement. That's just reality. Things come up. There'll be challenging students, there'll be frustrating meetings, there'll be moments when it feels like the system is actively working against you, which I know sometimes it actually is. None of that stuff is gonna go away. But you can walk into the school year with a different perspective of all of those things. You can walk into the school year grounded, rooted in something that doesn't shift based on what your principal decides to do or not do, rooted in like the deep belief that you are the source of your own peace, that you are the source of your own happiness. And that peace is available to you right now, not once the circumstances change, but right now, exactly as things are.

Finding Joy During Injury And Divorce

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And I think about when I was injured last year, and I was basically stuck in bed and had like no quality of life. And I just remember like sitting with my thoughts and being like, man, when am I gonna be happy again? Like, when am I gonna find joy again and not feel like this depressed feeling of like I'm I'm stuck here, right? And I kind of had this moment one day I wish I could remember and like pinpoint what happened, but it was like, well, I don't know when I'm gonna get better. I don't know how how this ends. You know, at that time I didn't know I was gonna have a surgery that would completely heal me thanks to an incredible doctor at Cedar Sinai. And I remember talking to myself and being like, look, I can choose to wait until I'm fully healed to find joy. Or I can choose to find joy right now, even in these circumstances. And so I would look around for things that I was grateful for. A sunrise, a friend who would make me food, doing a Lego, you know, that I loved. Like, think um, I just remember thinking, God, like, thank God I have Legos to enjoy. Because I couldn't watch TV or read books or listen to podcasts or anything because it hurt my head so much from my injury. And like, what a silly thing to be so, so grateful for, but it's not because it totally changes the experience of what you're going through when it's like, okay, I'm grateful for this. And like, look, I know that's so hard. I went through a very difficult divorce. There was a lot of stuff that came up, and it was very hard to stay grateful in moments that I just wanted to lose my mind, and I didn't, right? I didn't do a good job, right? We're we're only human, we make mistakes, but like that is the work. That is the work, and it is some of the most important work that you will ever do, not just as a teacher, but like as a human being in your life.

Weekly Reset And Share Request

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And so I really hope that this makes you think about things differently. I want to wish you a week of releasing what you think you need in order to be happy, and just choosing happiness right now. So I hope that this serves you. And if it does, share it with another friend, another teacher, another anyone in your life who you think might benefit from this message. All right, you guys, I will see you tomorrow on the podcast and back here next Monday for another Monday mindset episode. Bye, everyone.