Episode 433: Monday Mindset: Go to a Dark Room

Your life gets loud fast: notifications, inbox urgency, endless content, and the constant pressure to keep up. Then a real moment hits and suddenly the only questions that matter rise to the surface: What am I doing with my life? What do I actually want? Am I living the way I want to be living? Today’s Monday Mindset is a quiet, honest pause for middle school ELA teachers who feel pulled in every direction and want their time and attention back.

Here's to another week of living intentionally. If this hit home, subscribe, share it with a teacher friend, and leave a review so more educators can find the quiet, too.

Transcript

Welcome And Teacher Support 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.

Facing Life And Death Questions

SPEAKER_00 1:11

Well, hello, teachers, and welcome back to another Monday Mindset. Today's a little bit different. The title of this is a little bit ominous, but it it's not quite exactly what it sounds like. But I want to discuss something that's come up for me recently. You know, a couple years ago, I lost my grandmother, and I was with her in her passing, and we did hospice at my parents' house, and you know, I really got to experience that loss of life in a very, very real way. And her husband, my grandfather, has been sick recently. And he had to really sit with like, what is the best choice at 93 years old? Do I live for another six months? Do I go home and, you know, utilize hospice? And it just kind of made me really think about those questions that only come up when we're faced with these like very heavy moments. But they're the questions that I think we should be thinking about all the time. And they're the questions that actually matter. You know, what am I doing with my life? What do I actually want in my life? Am I living my life the way that I want to be living it? And I found myself really thinking about this recently as it came up with my grandfather, because he was just kind of deciding, you know, is it time? Am I ready to leave this world? And ultimately he has decided not to, and to, you know, try to prolong his life a little bit longer. And it was really very interesting because I was thinking about this when I was sitting in his hospital room with him. And I just remember talking to a very good friend about this years ago, and it came up for me while I was there with my grandfather.

Why We Choose Noise Over Stillness

SPEAKER_00 3:13

And my friend years ago said that, you know, thousands of years ago, people were so much more connected to their own thoughts, their own purpose, their own inner knowing, their own lives. Not because they were necessarily wiser or more evolved, though maybe they were, but simply because the world was quiet. And like I'm 40. I think back to being like a 90s kid. You know, I was born in 86, and there was no cell phone, there was no screen time. Like, there was no thing to pick up the second we felt uncomfortable about anything. There was no scrolling, there was no streaming, there was no endless content to consume. And thousands of years ago, right, there was just stillness. There weren't all these distractions to distract us from our lives and from our thoughts. And I'm sitting with my grandpa and I thought to myself, man, when was the last time like I sat in genuine stillness? Well, I will say with my injury last year, it was often, but recently in the last couple of months, it's like, have I really just been sitting with myself? Have I really just been letting the noise fall away long enough for me to like listen to me and not ask friends for answers or opinions or go on Chat GPT or scroll along something or what whatever it might be? It's like, why am I not just listening to myself? And I want you to ask yourself this question like when is the last time like you sat in genuine stillness without your phone, without a book, without something to distract you? And I think the answer is not very often. And here's what I honestly think is underneath this. I think sometimes, I think most of the time, we choose the noise, we choose the distraction. Because quiet, stillness, that can be deeply uncomfortable. Right? Because when we're with our own thoughts, we have real questions that show up. And those questions sometimes kind of demand honest answers from us. How do I really feel about this thing? And if we're not quiet, if we're not still, if we're not uncomfortable, and we're just distracted, we're not even ever facing it. And so here's what I'm telling myself as much as I'm telling you. The version of you that you most want to become, the teacher that you want to be, the person that you want to be, they are found in that stillness. Right? You know in your soul things that the noisy, distracted, constantly scrolling version of the world won't ever access. And the only way to find what you really actually want, and what really actually matters and who you really actually are is to get quiet enough to hear that part of you.

Simple Ways To Practice Quiet

SPEAKER_00 6:22

And kind of bringing this full circle and going back to my grandmother, Grandma Bernie, Bernadette, Bernie for short, she used to say all the time and she even had a little magnet on her refrigerator where she said that life is not a dress rehearsal. And it's not. Like I've been sitting with that a lot lately. There's so much that I want to do in this life. And it's like, what am I waiting for? I feel like I'm waiting for like a partner to come in so that I can travel. It's like, why? Why can't I just go do that with a friend or by myself or whatever it might be? Like, this is it. This is the one life that we get, and so much of it is spent reacting to our phones, to our inboxes, to everybody else's urgency instead of just like living in stillness. You know? So here's my invitation to you today. Go to like your dark room. Not like literally, though honestly, sometimes literally might not be a bad idea, might allow you to actually be still. But like find your version of that stillness. Maybe it's sitting outside before the rest of the house wakes up. This is actually, I do this with my my dog. I mean, I wake up at 5:30 every morning and I sit on the floor of my kitchen, and my dog sits in my lap, and I just sit there with him and drink my coffee. And like whatever your version of that stillness is, a drive without noise, no music, no podcast. I just drove up to Tahoe a couple weeks ago, and I spent the four hours in the car in silence. It was amazing. And maybe that's like a lot, right? Maybe you're like, that sounds crazy. Maybe it's just five minutes in your classroom before your students arrive. Just you and the quiet and the question of what do I actually want? What do I actually want this year to feel

Set An Intentional Year Ahead

SPEAKER_00 8:30

like? And like, think about that question, honestly, too, because summer is oh, I don't even want to say it, summer is almost over. Right? The school year is coming eventually, and you get to decide right now, in this stillness of this gift of summertime, of who you want to be when you walk through those doors. Right? Don't let the noise that is constantly inundating us make that decision for you. Go back to you, go back to yourself, go back to that inner knowing that is there and that can be accessed more fully in the stillness. So here's to a week of finding the quiet, and I will see you tomorrow on the podcast and on Thursday on the podcast, and then back here next Monday. All right, you guys, here's to a week of living intentionally.