How to Be a Happier Teacher: 8 Proven Habits That Actually Work in the Classroom

In This Episode: 🎧 Grace shares 8 powerful habits that can transform your teaching experience and help you become that "offensively cheerful" teacher who stays calm even when chaos strikes.

The 8 Happy Habits: 🌟

1. Set Healthy Boundaries 🚧 
   • Protect your energy like it's $24,000 a day
   • It's okay to disappoint people sometimes
2. Prioritize Relationships Over Perfection 💝 
   • Use the "2-10 Rule" (2 minutes for 10 days with struggling students)
   • Create student shoutout circles
   • Build inside jokes and laugh with your students
3. Practice Micro Moments of Calm 🧘‍♀️ 
   • Try "Starfish Breathing" (trace your hand while breathing)
   • Use hallway resets (pause at doors, one mindful breath)
   • Create calm classroom environments with soft music/lighting
4. Stay Organized with Simple Systems 📚 
   • Remember: "You don't rise to your goals, you fall to your systems"
   • Delegate routines to students (they're more capable than you think!)
   • Have daily reset routines before leaving
5. Reframe Your Challenges 🔄 
   • Apply growth mindset to yourself, not just students
   • See behavior issues as opportunities to reteach
   • Model mistakes and problem-solving
6. Celebrate the Small Wins 🎉 
   • Write down 3 best parts of your day before leaving
   • Use a "joy jar" in your classroom
   • Tune your radar to good stuff, not annoyances
7. Separate Your Worth from Your Work 👤 
   • Be a complete person beyond just "teacher"
   • Schedule non-negotiable time for YOUR interests
8. Run Your Own Race 🏃‍♀️ 
   • Stop comparing yourself to Pinterest perfection
   • Stay out of staff room drama that doesn't concern you
   • Protect your peace at all costs

Key Takeaway: 💡 Don't try all 8 habits at once! Pick one, make it routine, then add another. Happiness can be synthesized - it's a skill you can learn!

Resources Mentioned: 🔗

• Happy Classroom Habits Course

Back to school special 2025/6 Beat Teacher Burnout with Better Boundaries Course is everything you need to thrive in the upcoming school year. LIMITED TIME: Use code BBB27 at checkout for a special discount.

Want to truly thrive in teaching without sacrificing your personal life?
Check out my signature on-demand self-study course, Balance Your Teacher Life. Complete 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

 Welcome back everybody, and this week I'm gonna talk about probably what I'm most known for, which is Happy Habits. Now, if you have read my book, positive Mindset Habits for Teachers or Done the Journal or going through my course, happy Classrooms, it's like a year long curriculum with little mini habits.

Every week that build on each other in the classroom to help you have a more positive experience. You might think I already know what Grace is gonna talk about, but plot twist. This week I'm gonna talk about some habits I don't necessarily talk about. Of course there are huge. Habits that contribute to your happiness.

All science backed the practice of gratitude, you know creative having occupational self-direction, connection, all these things that I talk about setting boundaries. All the stuff, but this week some other ones that maybe you have not thought about. And for each habit, I'm gonna give you a couple of quick examples of how that would play out in your classroom.

And that's it. Let's get our happy on. It's all science backed and I will not bore you with the brain stuff. You are gonna take my word for it and I will see you. On the inside, let's do this. Welcome to the Teacher Self-Care and Life Balance podcast, where we focus all things personal development to help teachers feel empowered to thrive inside and outside of the classroom.

If you are passionate about education, but tired of it taking over your whole life, you have found your new home in the podcast universe, you'll love it here. I'm Grace Stevens, your host, and let's get going with today's show. All right, here we are. I am feeling very chipper today, so hopefully my energy isn't too all over the place.

As we are talking about being, you know, happy and just getting your happy on, I'm reminded of a time where I was just minding my own business in the staff room early one morning, you know, making my coffee and. Making my copies, doing all the things I hadn't even been aware of the fact that I was interacting with people.

I thought I was in my own lane, but a coworker said to me, you are offensively cheerful in the morning. So there you go. Hopefully I'm not offensively cheerful. It seems like a funny thing to be mad at somebody for. But anyway apologies if I miss, offensively cheerful. But I want for you, that's what I want for you.

There's, that's what I want for you. I want you to be that teacher who seems to be having more fun and seems to be more calm and seems to be a little less un a bit more unshakeable, even when the day is going chaotic. Right? You know that person on campus when you're like, huh. They must have the perfect class.

'cause they're always calm. I don't hear them complaining in the lunchroom. Okay, that's, that's what I want for you. I want you to be that teacher and plot twist is not 'cause you have better kids. It's 'cause you have a better attitude and you have a better sense of skills. So here's the thing, these are all skills that can be learned.

I can. Tell you that I'm not gonna bore you with my story. You might have heard it before, but my whole big, deep dive into how to hack happiness was, for my own sake, left to my own devices. I am anxious and, big family history of depression and other things in, so I was really interested in given the raw materials that I was dealing with what habits could I learn to hack my happiness?

And it turned out there were many. So anyway, here we go. Here are some that maybe we don't think about and we don't talk about. But the first one, I'm just gonna say it's a catchall. If you wanna be happier, you gotta set boundaries. Okay? It's so many episodes on that. Enough said, okay, it's not that happiest teachers, you know, do it all.

It's, they invest, they protect their energy, right? You know what I'm gonna say? Your energy teaches more than your lesson plans. How you show up matters, right? So this is not a, a. A selfish pursuit, like you wanna be happier and be having a better experience, it's gonna be better for your students. Your vibe, the energy that you bring is more impactful than you know what you got on your walls or what your curriculum is.

All of those things, you know that if you think back to your favorite teacher. I bet you, you can't remember what was on the walls of the classroom, right? But you remember how they showed up, that they were excited, that they believed in you, that when things went wrong, they just kind of laughed it off.

They weren't getting triggered by everything that a student said. They weren't taking things personally and getting defensive, right? So. All of that only comes if you've protected your piece. So I'm gonna say the first habit is set boundaries, and that is boundaries on your time. How much you work boundaries on protecting yourself from negative coworkers.

All the things that I talk about every week on these podcasts go through the catalog. There's at least three or four episodes on all of those. Things. Okay, so set some boundaries. All right. But habit number two, I'm gonna say connection, connection, connection. You are gonna have to prioritize relationships over affection.

You know, this r Pearson, I think was famous for saying that. People don't learn from teachers they don't like. And I'm always of the you know, I kind of live in this happy space. I think if I don't like somebody, it's 'cause I don't know them well enough. I dunno where they're coming from. And so if you prioritize relationships with your students, you know that life.

Goes smoother. When you know your students and you know their challenges, you can extend them. Grace. You do not take things personally. You know that what they're doing is a reflection of the skills they have and the situation they find themselves in. And you know, when they're having an off day and instead of being so triggered by that, you find the calm to take him aside and say, Hey dude, that seems outta character for you.

You okay? What's going on? Right. You gotta invest time in making. Connections with students and how can you do that? You know, you can have a quick, you know, feeling thermometer. How's everybody doing a quick check-in. I know that's a lot easier when you have a single classroom, right? When you are a, a general ed teacher and you have the same kids all day.

If you wanna invest five minutes at the beginning of the day. Getting a, a temperature check on everybody, you know, that's great. And then you, they're with you all day If you are seeing six different cohorts a day, of course that is very difficult. But there are other ways that you can prioritize relationships due.

Sometimes we can do. I've seen people call it a two 10 rule, which you spend two minutes a day for 10 days in a row talking to struggling students about non-academic things. Okay? You, especially if you have a lot of students, maybe. All you ever talk about is their grades or the assignment, but try and find two minutes a day for 10 days in a row.

That's as long as that would take to make a habit a couple of weeks for your students to understand it, to find time, to to check in, to just, you know, chew the fat. We would call that with students who are struggling. Okay. You could have a student shoutout circle, right? Just five minutes a week. You could dedicate it though on Fridays.

Perfect time to do it. Hey, let's have a quick student shoutout circle where peers can say what they appreciate about each other. Okay. You can find ways to laugh with your students every year. The kind of inside jokes that we end up with I could never have anticipated at the beginning of the year, but every year the class has something that we just laugh about all year.

And take the pressure off yourself that you, if you are spending time laughing with your students, gently teasing, even if they're gently teasing you, there is. That is not a waste of time. I know that there is such pressure to, you know, mandated minutes. We have only this gotta give so many minutes to this subject, so many minutes to that subject.

You would not really regret any time that you spend just. Being, having fun with your kids. Okay, so relationships, relationships, relationships. Maybe you have a joy jar where people put in their happy moments, and then if the energy in the room is not going great, you're like, Hey, let's pull out a couple of happy memories, right?

Something for the kids to laugh about. I'll be like, oh yeah, that was totally fun. I know I've talked about that strategy before. A joy jar, so that's easy. All right, so one, set all your boundaries, two relationships over perfection. Don't feel bad about taking time to laugh in class. All right, habit three, you gotta practice micro moments of calm.

Okay? Teaching is a literal assault. On your nervous system, there is always multiple things going on, multiple people calling your name. You have to make so many decisions. Somebody's off task. Do you address it? Do you keep going? Do you, you know, you know this. I think it's been like proven. I said I wasn't gonna nerd out in the brain science.

I've forgotten the statistic, but I think teachers are up there with brain surgeons with the amount of decisions we make during the course of our day. It is exhausting and having to pivot so many times the fire bell goes off, you have interruptions. The phone goes. Students come in late. Students are being pulled out for specials, right?

You've just. It's just a lot. You've gotta find ways to make micro moments of calm. Listen, nobody has time to, you know, I, I get frustrated when people say, oh, teacher self-care. You should invest in your self-care. Take a yoga class. Listen, ain't nobody got time for yoga. Okay. Maybe during, I'll tell you when I had time for yoga with my kids was when we, after the first year that we were back in school after lockdown, right after COVID, we had AB cohorts.

So you had two cohorts. So the, A cohort was half the class came to school on Monday, Wednesday, and then the B cohort, the other half of the class came to school. Tuesday, Thursday, and the rest of the time they did their stuff online, remotely, Google classroom, all that stuff. Okay. With fewer students.

And we needed to go outside and get some fresh air and take our masks off for a few minutes. That was when every day we, and it was only like four or five minutes that if kids wanted to run to the fence and back to burn off some energy, they can do that. If other kids wanted to do some breathing and some simple yoga stretches with me, but they could do that.

Really, that was the only time I ever found four or five minutes, maybe five to 10 minutes max to do yoga. Other than that, you know you need a micro moment of calm. Okay, A micro moment of calm. I would always teach my kids starfish breathing. No matter what their age, we could, we've always got our hand with us.

That's where you trace your finger around your outstretched hand and your inhale on the way up, and exhale on the way down as you trace the fingers. You can go Google that I'm, it's called Give me five Breathing or Starfish Breathing. I love to see students do that for themselves when they were anxious during taking a test or whatever.

It's a great way when kids come back in from recess or just to kind of settle everybody's energy, but it literally takes a minute, okay. For yourself, maybe a hallway reset, right? I know there's this strategy that every time you walk through a door, you stop. You pause, touch the door. Just take one breath, maybe one complete mindful breath that takes 20 seconds, right?

That is 20 seconds you have not been allowing yourself. It will help you decompress your nervous system. Okay? So find ways that work for you for micro moments of calm. I know you would love to think, oh, I'm gonna walk around. In, instead of eating my lunch at my desk, I'm gonna walk, you know, do a lap around the park and you know, be mindful with every good intention in the world.

Maybe you can pull that off once every other week. Okay? You gotta find ways to have micro moments of calm, okay? You cannot wait till you're ready to explode, to suddenly count to 10 and death three. That's like you already took one step off the cliff. Right? There's nothing you can do. Staying calm really is about catching it before you get to that moment.

Okay. Even if you just, I always like to have the class really quiet when students came in. The lights on Low soft music. Maybe on the smart board I would have some YouTube video playing. You know, those ones that have like jellyfish underwater to classical music or the galaxies. Just something kind of calming wherever you can do it.

Okay, so you gotta practice micro moments of calm. That's habit number three. All right. Habit number four. Listen. James Clear. I love me some. James Clear if you have not read his book, atomic Habits, oh, it is fantastic. But here's one of my favorite quotes for that. It says, you do not rise to the level of your goals.

You fall to the level of your systems. Hmm. Again, you do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems. So the happiest teachers in the world, I gotta tell you, stay organized with simple. Systems. They have systems, they practice them. You might wanna call 'em routines, whatever.

Okay? There's always some kind of daily reset routine before leaving. Kids need to straighten desk, reset supplies, clean the floor, whether you need to play a secret piece of trash, or if the kids are older, just hold them hostage. Nobody's leaving till we've cleaned up. Whatever, just have some kind of systems, color coded folders, whatever you, you know, what the hacks are to have some kind of systems and try and, you know, delegate as much as that, those routines and systems to students as you can.

Students always want to help no matter what their age, and they are generally more capable than we give them credit for. I have really learn. In the last year that I was substitute teaching, I was in 20 different schools, lots of different classrooms. It was immediately, well, not immediately, but certainly within the first period, very obvious to me which classrooms and which teachers had good systems and procedures that the kids knew and which didn't.

And let me tell you. The classrooms that had systems and that were well practiced and routines went a lot smoother, and there was actually a lot less stress on the kids. They were less reliant on me to direct the day they knew what to be doing. And I'm telling you as young as tk. Those kids had systems and routines and procedures, and they were well practiced, and I, it was very impressive to me.

Okay, so habit number four. If you wanna be less stressed and happier day-to-day in the classroom, you need to stay organized with simple systems. We know that being overwhelmed and just. Is just being overwhelmed and kind of feel like you haven't caught up all day and you don't know where the copies are and where are those pages I needed to hand out?

And the kids are like, why haven't you graded the papers yet? And all that stuff is so stressful and it does not make for a happy day and a happy teacher. All right, habit number five. Oh wow. If only it were easy, but I would say reframe your challenges. Okay. Understand that opportunity of all in the last decade, how amazing it's been.

You know, I've been teaching since the. 2000. We were not talking growth mindset then, but over the last decades, growth mindset, those posters, those sayings have become so normalized in our classrooms and I'm so pleased for that. But I hope they haven't just become this thing that is like in one ear and out the other, because it seems to me teachers dedicate lessons.

To and put up those posters and oh, you know, it's an opportunity to learning, and I don't know this yet and, you know, we train kids with this, but we seem to be, you know, really quick ourselves to miss that. Right. So we gotta, one big way I always find is reframing behavior issues, right? When I see a kid like, oh, he's being defiant.

Oh, he's doing this, or she's doing that, she's trying to wind me up, right? Try and reframe it. Oh, oh. That child's testing limits, it's an opportunity to reteach expectations. I always remind myself they're testing limits. Hey, if they're a middle school or high school, of course they are. That's their job.

That is completely developmentally normal. Okay, so the reframe there is, as annoying as this is, it is a part of human development. Okay. If you have chosen to be one of those saints who teaches middle school, you knew. They got the hormones rolling in, they're testing the limits. Some kids are more aggressive researchers than others.

You know, when I say no, do I really mean no? They're gonna keep testing and testing and testing that boundary. Okay? And so, you know, you gotta stick with the three Cs. Calm, consistent. Consequences. But don't forget to reframe challenges, right? You here's a big reframe. I can't do everything. No, you can't.

You absolutely can't. And I would be the first person to tell you repeatedly, you cannot do everything that is requested of you. And I've had many episodes on being intentional. About what you don't do, which balls to drop. But the reframe is, I can't do everything perfectly, but I can choose what's most impactful.

Okay? I'm all about empowerment. Stop playing the victim. There's too much to do. I can't do it. No, you can't do it all. But while you can't do it all, make sure that what you choose is what's most joyful and most impactful. Okay, and also along with this growth mindset piece, when I'm talking Habit five, reframe challenges and have a growth mindset.

It's okay to model mistakes. Right. If you make a mistake, you can model persevering in problem solving. Okay. We don't just give up. Oh. Oh gosh. I didn't, huh? You know what? I'm not getting the way this was explained in the book. I've said that with math. Oh my goodness. You know, I learned math back in the seventies.

We did it different. And we do it now. And one day I was really just really struggling, like I'm not even understanding how they want me to explain this to you. I know how to do it, but I'm not sure how to explain it the way they want it explained. And I remember saying straight up, huh, let's check in with our friend Sal Khan and see how he does it.

Right. Khan Academy has a math video for anything you've ever wanted to do in your life, and I would just go find the video on YouTube. Hey, let's see how Sal did it. He was like an extra tutor in our class, right? It's okay to model finding appropriate resources to not knowing all the answers. So just reframe, okay?

Keep that growth mindset in mind and it's for you as much as the kids. We didn't learn it in school. I love that we are teaching it to kids, but we didn't learn it in school, right? Okay, so habit number six. See, these aren't habits that mainly I talk about. Here's one, celebrate the small wins. You gotta celebrate the small wins.

Okay? You can, at the end of the day, before you go home, write down those three things, the happiest things that happened that day. The funniest thing a kid said, that wonderful moment when a kid says, oh. I got it right. Those moments that bring you joy. I've talked about that a lot, that if it's important to have a closing ritual, that's a very healthy habit to have, especially for separating school and home and closing out your day.

And one good way to do that is simply write down the three best parts of your day. It does. A couple of things for you. One, it makes you be positively focused all through the day. 'cause you're gonna set your radar for like, oh, I wonder what's gonna make my top three list, right? Huh? I wonder what's gonna make my top three list.

You start looking for things that you like, not things that are annoying you. Okay. You tune your radar to the good stuff. That is pretty. If I, if you just stopped there, if you could find a way to tune your radar to the good stuff and not the stuff that isn't great, you, you would have a happier experience right there.

But one day to do, way to do it is to trick yourself. Hey, by the end of the day, I need to come up with three great things. And so as you go through your day, huh? Is that gonna make it? Is that gonna make it So that's one thing you're more positively focused. Two, it helps you like a pattern interrupt.

You're starting to tell your brain, once I do this activity, I'm done for the day, I'm going home. I. And also when you get home and someone says to you, how was your day? Instead of like, whoa, regurgitating all the things that annoyed you, top of mind are gonna be the three things that were great. Okay? So that's one part of a very easy kind of.

It's, it's, we're gonna call it a, not even a two for not a two for one. It does a lot of things, but celebrating small wins. And an easy way to do that is in your class, you can, again, have that joy jar. Hey, that was great. Let's put that in the joy jar. But for yourself, write down three things at the end of the day that you were.

Most happy with, you know, again, going back to their connection with a kid or laughing or whatever. All right. Habit number seven. Oh, and this is a doozy, but it's really important. You gotta separate your worth from your work. And what does that mean? It means you gotta be a complete person. Not just a teacher, or not just a teacher and a parent.

Okay. I used to do an activity at the beginning of the year with kids and we'd, I'd get a cut out of a t-shirt, like a, you know, a template and every kid could decorate the T-shirt however they wanted, but it needed to be about things that interested them or they liked or taught us something about them.

And then we would, you know, pin their t-shirt on the wall. And so I would encourage you to do the same thing. Maybe take, you know, a, a, a cutout just to draw a quick outline, like a gingerbread person of yourself, and write down all your roles or all your hobbies. And I hope there's more in there than just teacher or parent.

You are a sibling. Maybe you are somebody's child, not just somebody's parent. You have friends, you have other interests in life, not just. Teaching. Right. Hopefully you have other things that you enjoy. You don't just lesson plan and then collapse in front of the tv. Okay? So, you know, what else is it that you like to do or that you used to like to do that you've let go of, whether it's, you know, coloring in a book or playing on the softball league, or maybe doing that yoga or having coffee with your friends or gardening.

I don't care what it is. Have other things that you like to do and other roles. Okay. Do you have other areas of responsibility that don't have to do with children that, so you're not purely defined by being a teacher? Because teaching shouldn't be all consuming it. For me, it was always one of the most rewarding parts of my life.

It was a very enriching part of my life, but it wasn't my whole life. I have many other things that I enjoyed my did, and I think that was one of the things that made me a happier teacher. And so how do you do that? Well, maybe you do this little exercise where you write down all your roles. And you ask yourself how many of these are just to do with what other people want or need from me, and how many of these are just for myself?

And you can't lose yourself. When you are scheduling and you are making your, you know, plan for the week. Put some things in there that some of the non-negotiables should be things that you like to do. Book club, choir, practice, whatever it is. I don't care. Sitting quietly if that's what it is, put it on the calendar.

You would not break a commitment or a meeting that you had with a parent or coworker and treat yourself with the same level of kind of commitment, respect. Don't, you wouldn't not show up to the dentist. If you schedule that you are going to work out or do whatever you're gonna do at a certain time, don't just blow it off 'cause you're too busy.

Keep that appointment to yourself. Okay. That's just a kind of a habit for that. And then another thing is, you know, if you're trying to, like this exercise with the T-shirt that I've said is an excellent way to build connections with your students too. So if you've never done that and you need a activity that just takes about, you know, 20 minutes longer if you wanna share out or, you know, maybe people can.

Kids can just share at their table and you can come round and, and listen and whatever. Doesn't need to take up a whole period, but it's a, it's a fun thing. Okay? We are humans first, okay? We're not just work machines, you know, we're not gonna all, you know, otherwise, why not replace us? We, the ai, if we're just gonna be machines we are.

People, and we need to model that for students too, that we have varied interests, okay? That's very healthy to model to students. All right, so there are seven habits. I'm gonna give you one more, one more. This is a two for one, and I'm gonna tell you this. This habit is run your own stinking race. What does that mean?

Okay? Run your own race. First off, that means check yourself out of the comparison game. Nobody's happy when they compare themselves to, oh, the things I see on Pinterest, oh, you know, on Facebook, this, this teacher sharing, oh, they're making a TikTok about their care corner and their care closet and their their mantras that everybody's yet, stop comparing yourself.

Social media is very harmful in that way. Okay. Stop comparing yourself to people you think are better teachers, especially if you're starting out. Don't compare your beginning to somebody else's middle or somebody else's end. Okay. The lesson plans that you see on Pinterest you know, the best lesson anybody ever taught that week.

You know, it wasn't the lesson where things went wrong, so just. Check out the comparison game, whether it's about other, how other kids, you know, line up, stay in your own lane, figure out how to get your class to line up properly. It shouldn't be a question of what anybody else is doing. Okay, just. Opt out of the comparison game.

Okay. With test scores, with lesson plans, with especially on social media, outfit of the week, teacher outfit of the week. Listen, the outfit is what's comfortable, what's clean. Okay. And what looks, you know, presentable enough. It doesn't need to have matching earrings or matching converse. Okay? Stop comparing yourself.

So that's part of, you know, running your own race. But here's the other crucial part. If you've ever run track. Or stay in your lane. You are not going to win. If you are looking over your shoulder constantly to see where everybody else is. Stay in your lane, run your own race, okay? Protect your peace at all costs.

What does it look like to stay in your lane? It means if everybody in the staff room is complaining about X person or X student, and it has nothing to do with you. Don't get involved. You don't need to go to every party you're invited to, especially if it's a pity party or a complaining party. You don't need to go.

I always say if somebody throws a ball at you, you don't need to catch it. You don't need to catch it. So somebody's trying to get you involved in something just to get you riled up, and it really doesn't. Now, if it concerns you, yeah, set a boundary, but if it doesn't concern you don't get all up in other people's business and what they're upset about.

Some people are just always upset, okay? There are people in life who look for solutions. And there are people in life who look for problems and the people in life who look for problems like to have, you know, this cheerleading squad to validate them. Yeah, you're right. This is awful. This is terrible. You know, there are, yes, there is plenty of negative things happen around, but unless they directly.

Really affect you. Don't go getting involved in them. Stay in your lane because otherwise it is just a waste of your energy. Energy and time are finite resources, and you'll be really picky about how you spend them. Okay. I like to think of, you know, 24 hours a day for me, sometimes I used to look at it like, you know, ooh, it's not 24 hours a day.

It's $24,000. So I had a whole new relationship to time when if somebody stole 30 minutes of my time because they were complaining, or I. Whatever. I just got involved in some drama I didn't need to get involved in. I'd look at that like 30 minutes, oh my God, I just wasted 500 bucks. Right? If you had that new kind of mentality that your time and your energy is not just a finite resource, but it is very expensive in, you don't wanna go squandering it.

Okay, so those are eight habits that maybe you haven't thought about. So let me recap them for you. Number one, and you know, number one is a lifetime to work on this, but set healthy boundaries. Don't think you're gonna be able to do it by to have a happy life until you get okay with the idea. I'm gonna say it a different way.

You need to get okay with the idea that sometimes you're gonna disappoint people. Okay? Is this really in 60 years? That's the best wisdom I got. You gotta get okay with the idea that sometimes you're gonna disappoint people and it'll be okay, and you'll be okay. You know, you've gotta invest in not disappointing the people that matter the most and not disappointing yourself.

And the only way you're gonna do that. Is to learn how to set boundaries. Okay? Number two, prioritize relationships over perfection. Okay? Maybe you didn't finish the lesson. Maybe you missed, you know, two minutes off the end, but those two minutes was spent. Just laughing with students or learning more about a student having an inside class drug, something that was important.

Okay. Habit number three. Practice micro moments of calm. Figure out for yourself. What is a micro moment of calm you can have? You can't say, oh, well, maybe you can like, oh, I'm just, every lunchtime I'm gonna sit and meditate for 10 minutes. Good luck if you can manage to do that. But I think you might be setting yourself up to fail that way.

Find, even if you're just doing learn one breathing technique, go Google square breathing or starfish breathing, and you can do that together as a class. It's an excellent skill to teach students too, and it takes for a minute. All right. Habit number four, stay organized with simple systems. Remember, James, clear his quote.

You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems. Okay? So get some systems and routines going, and invest time in practicing them. Habit number five, don't forget the growth mindset applies to you too. Not just the students. You need to reframe challenges. There are so many challenges every day.

Gotta reframe them and look for the opportunities, not. You know, toxic positivity, not pretending that bad things aren't happening, but not being dragged down by them. Make controlling the things we can control, okay? Or the things that I talk about my echo framework. Okay? Controlling what you can control.

The teacher's experience doesn't need to be your experience. Happiness can be synthesized, right? Your energy teaches more than your lesson plans. All these things I talk about again and again. All right, habit six, celebrate the small wins. Come on, make yourself a commitment. Eva, you can have my all positive mindset journal, beautiful keepsake, a whole year's worth of memories and all kinds of stuff in there.

You can go get that. Journal if you want or gift it to your staff. Be a hero. It's like 10 bucks, 11 bucks. This is not much positive mindset journal. Okay. Or who cares? Grab a stick note. Grab a stick note three things about your day before you leave. That will good. Okay? And make it a habit. Don't just do it once.

Get, make it a habit. It, it, it's gonna be a good thing for you. Or get a joy jar for the classroom too, right? Number seven, have a whole life outside of teaching, right? Your whole life shouldn't just be about teaching and about what you do for other people. And habit eight, run your own vase, okay? Don't be looking over your shoulder void comparison and protect your peace.

Do not get involved in other people's drama. Stay in your lane, baby. Stay in your lane. Okay, that's it. If you could pull all that off, you would have a better experience this week. So that's a lot, right? Like who can do all those things? Pick one, pick one, pick one thing and practice it. And once it becomes a routine part of your system, pick another thing.

Okay? I would be amiss if I didn't mention that. I do have a resource to help you with this. I do have my, happy. Classroom teacher course. You can buy individually as a teacher. Schools can actually buy annual licenses for it. So maybe if you wanna tell your administrator about it or if you are an administrator, oh my gosh, this is the biggest thing you could do to improve staff morale.

To reduce turnover to improve campus culture. Investing in this for your school and doing it together as a school. There's Happy Classroom Habits would be an amazing thing, so you can go tell your administrator about that. You can find that@gracestevens.com slash Happy Classroom Habits.

One word, grace stevens.com/happy Classroom habits. That would be the school version to buy school licenses. And if you are interested in doing it yourself, there's just a teacher version, you can go check it out and I'm gonna give you the secret code for this URL. If you're on my website, it's more expensive, but if you go to this particular URL you get a discount.

So that is grace stevens.com/. Happy teachers. Okay, so Grace stevens.com/happy teachers. That would be for single purchase. So that would be, and if you buy it for yourself you have lifetime access to it. That's how that works. The school license is for a year. So if the school gets it, they get it for a year, a calendar year, not a school year.

'cause some schools pick it up in the middle of the year. But if you buy it for yourself the single version single a. License. You have lifetime access to it. Okay. All right. So that was I'll, I'll put the links in the show notes if you're that interested. Don't wanna bore you again, but regardless of that, that is, would really help you with this.

But you can do it yourself. You've got enough information here. Just don't try and do all eight habits at once. That's setting yourself up for fail. But just, you know, pick one or two. Make them habits, then pick another two. All right. All backed by brain science. And you can hack your own happiness.

Happiness can be synthesized. That is a fact. Okay. All right. Until next week, I hope that your classroom is happy and that your students are cooperative and that's it, and that, you know, maybe just, maybe you get accused of being. Offensively cheerful. I could think of worse things that could happen.

Alright, so until next time, I believe in you. Thank you for all that you do for other people's children. The world needs your passion, it needs your light, and create your own path and bring your own sunshine.