😊 Easiest Happiness Hack Ever - The Lovely List

Teachers, want to boost your daily happiness and teacher resilience?

In this mini-episode, Grace shares a simple, transformative strategy that requires no time, no money, and very little effort—but has the potential to completely change how you feel and show up each day in your classroom and your life. It's all about noticing the "lovely" moments in your day and giving them just a little extra focus to turn everyday encounters into a source of joy. Dive in to learn how a “lovely list” can help you cultivate a positive mindset!

Key Takeaways:

• 🌸 The Lovely List Unveiled: Discover Grace's latest tool that helps you notice and appreciate small acts of kindness and connection throughout the day.
• 🧠 Boost Your Mood with a Mental Game: Learn how creating a mental "lovely list" rewires your brain to focus on positive interactions, no journaling required.
• ✨ Find the Lovely in the Ordinary: Start seeing the beauty in everyday interactions—from a smile from a stranger to a helpful hand from a student.
• 💡 Be Someone's Lovely Moment: Challenge yourself to make someone else's day better by being a positive presence.

Why Listen?

If you’re feeling teacher overwhelmed during this busy time of year, this episode offers a grounding, uplifting practice that’s easy to implement. Just one change in how you notice the little things can help you feel more connected and present each day and transform the energy in your classroom.

Want to truly thrive in teaching without sacrificing your personal life?
Check out my signature on-demand course, Balance Your Teacher Life. You can go the self-study route or join a cohort with group coaching for Summer 2025.

Check out all the details here: www.gracestevens.com/balance

📘 My latest (and greatest!) book:
The Empowered Teacher Toolkit
Check out the best-selling Positive Mindset Habits for Teachers book here
Beat Teacher Burnout with Better Boundaries book here

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Transcript

  Okay, Teacher Friends, this week's super short episode, I want to keep the talking to the minimum because I have a new strategy for you, a new tool I've been using. It takes no time, it costs no money, and it really has been helping me and I want to share it with you. It's something that everybody can do.

It is so Simple, but, and, and easy. Sometimes I say simple isn't always easy. In this case it is, and it totally, totally has the power to transform how you show up, how you feel will get right to it if you are rushed for time. This is the episode for you. Welcome to the Balance Your Teacher Life podcast, where we talk all things avoiding educator burnout, setting healthy boundaries, and achieving better work life balance. 

If you're passionate about education, but tired of it consuming your whole life, you have found your home in the podcast universe. I'm your host, Grace Stephens, and let's get going with today's show. 

Had to totally Different episodes scheduled for today. It was all laid out. It was six strategies.  It's a fantastic episode, but it was going to be a longer one. And I really just feeling everybody's feeling this kind of time crunch, this crazy time of year that happens when you're a teacher, it seems like when Halloween starts, oh my gosh, the rest of the year, right.

Conferences, Thanksgiving break, winter programs, like it is. A scramble to the end. So I'm keeping it short and I'm keeping it actionable. And here's what this is. It is a strategy I have been using now. You know that I am all about the positive mindset habits.  So much of my work, my writing, my programs, my coaching revolves around helping people make more conscious choices about what they think.

neuropathways in the brain  Oh, I don't want to get into the brain science. Your eyes will glaze over, but you know, we just, we have this negativity bias. It's a whole thing. I've done many episodes on that and I have a lot of strategies. Specifically one that I love is the, the closing ritual at the end of the day.

It is a big part of my positive mindset habit. Journal for teachers where you train yourself to look for like the three best parts of your day. Okay, but this is even simpler because even I don't do that sometimes. I have that journal by my bed before I go to bed to think about the best three parts of my day and sometimes I just don't want to write anything.

Okay, so this happened by chance. I started it a few weeks ago  and it's been easy and fabulous and let me tell you I'm calling it the lovely list and here's all it is, is  Hundreds of interactions that you have a day. I have a lot less because, you know, I don't get up and go to work every day. But when I do have interactions, I'll give you an example.

I have a long, steep driveway and, the usually Amazon leaves the stuff at the top, which I'm fine with. Or if I see out the kitchen window the man come in, I'll run up the driveway cause it's really tight to turn around and come back. Well, the gentleman saw me, I was actually in the front driveway and he just waved and decided he was going to come down and hand it to me and give me a big smile.

And I said, oh, you didn't need to do that. And I said, that was so lovely of you. And he said, no, it's fine. You had such a big smile. Okay. So the two of us were having like this nice moment. So it occurred to me, Oh, a lovely thing he did, but he was also acknowledging me for having a nice smile. Okay. So then I ended up going out and I had an interaction with them.

Somebody at CVS, they were just making polite conversation with me, but I was thinking afterwards, how lovely that lady, you know, she just seemed to be enjoying what she was doing. Anyway, so I got this idea. I decided I'm going to go around. My day, just looking every time somebody is just lovely for no reason.

Don't need to be lovely to me. They could be lovely to somebody else. Could be that kid tying up the  shoelace for another kid, right?  Whatever. I'm just gonna like keep counting. Keep, keep a score. Like, keep a running score in my head, how many lovely things I see in the day. And challenge myself every day, like, Oh, yesterday I had four things on the lovely list.

What if today I could find five? Like, just a kind of game that you play with yourself, and you don't need to write it down as a list. Now, of course, we know the way the brain works, it will be awesome if you write it down. But the point is not to add anything else to your day. And so what I do with the lovely list is, to be honest, when I'm going to sleep, I think about the best parts of my day, whatever.

But sometimes, you know, it all, it's all a blur. And to mix it up, I've just been going through, huh, like if I know I had Eight on my lovely list. I try and challenge myself to remember what the eight were of these lovely eight things that I noticed. And before I get to like, it's almost like anesthesia.

You know when they say count back from 10? Like yesterday I did have eight things on my lovely list and I remember myself getting through the first four and then I was asleep. So anyway, that's it. Just make yourself this running. Mental. Lovely list. Everything that happens during the day. You don't want to make a big deal of it.

You're just like, oh, well that was lovely. That person was lovely. Maybe you've seen the school secretary laughing with the school nurse over something and you don't even know what that was. But you could think for a second, how lovely, they're enjoying their job, right? Like, just I'm calling it the lovely list.

And here, if you want to take it next level,  why don't you be on somebody else's lovely list? Right? Maybe there's something nice that you're doing that. You could think to yourself, well, maybe that person will put me on their lovely list, right? Not that they need to, but that's kind of an extra challenge for you.

But that's it. Literally, that is all I want to say this week. Keep it simple. Come on. It sounds simple, but it's just one of these tricks for, you know, hacking your brain, rewiring yourself to notice the positive, Play this little game with yourself as you go through the door the the day. Oh my gosh Isn't that lovely and just put it on the lovely list and and keep a running school, right?

So yesterday I had eight on my lovely list. So today it is a challenge for me to find more than eight Because to be honest I'm not really leaving the house today. It's just me and the kitten who you might hear purring the tiny tyrant I like to, to call her. But anyway, so I'm going to have to look for maybe something online that I see, or maybe something in my email box, or maybe somebody who texts me something.

It's gonna, you know, isn't that lovely. All right. So that's it for this week. And just, I wish you luck with your lovely list.  And as I always say, and as we know, you can create your own path. I hope you bring your own sunshine and I will talk to you next week.