How to Change Your Mindset When Teaching Feels Impossible
In today's episode, I'm going to share how you can change your thoughts when teaching feels impossible. That's all coming up next right here on the teacher burnout podcast. Stay tuned. Welcome to the teacher burnout podcast, where we explore the challenges of burnout for teachers and share strategies to support teacher well-being. I'm your host, Barb Flowers.
Barb:If you're a teacher looking for ways to prevent burnout or an educational leader searching for strategies to support your team, this podcast is for you. Let's dive in. There are days or periods of time throughout the year when teaching just feels impossible. It feels like you can't make it another day. You're so excited for the weekend or maybe the next break that's going to be happening.
Barb:And you just have this feeling of restlessness and you're looking forward to whatever's next. And it's hard to be present where you're at. Maybe you even feel like you're just going through the motions of the day because you're so overwhelmed with behaviors and things going on in the classroom. Whatever the reason is, I first off wanna let you know you've got this. Whatever comes at you, you've got it.
Barb:I know teaching is very hard, but I just wanna reassure you even when you feel like you don't, you do, you have this, you can do this. So you can change your life by changing your thoughts. And when I first heard that, I thought there's no way that's possible. How can you change your life by just changing your thoughts? And the more I practice this, the more I believed it and the more I could see it working.
Barb:So today I'm going to help you change your thinking when teaching feels impossible. And I wanna start by talking about the tea cycle that I coach on with my clients. So the tea cycle is that you have your thoughts that create your emotions, which create your actions. It's really important to think of that as a cycle, because if you have a thought, emotion and an action, then that action is going to create a new thought, a new emotion and a new action. And it just kind of creates these circles that keep going until you learn to change those thoughts.
Barb:When you have a thought like teaching feels impossible, you then have an emotion such as dread or anxiety, or you feel unmotivated, which then leads to negative action. And that negative action could be doing nothing. Maybe you just are unmotivated or you don't do anything. That's the negative action. So that's why our thoughts matter so much because when we have a thought it's creating our feelings and emotions that drive our actions.
Barb:And when we have negative thoughts, it's creating negative emotions and actions, which then creates more negative thoughts. So it's really important that you become aware of that and learn how you can change your thinking. What we tell ourselves matters, and it makes a difference when we think negatively. Today, I wanna give you 5 strategies for changing your thoughts. The first strategy is acknowledge the thought and let it go.
Barb:Learning to acknowledge your negative thinking is really important. That's the first step in making a change. And so acknowledging that it is just a negative thought, it's not a fact. It's just a negative thought and then letting it go and having a way that you visualize that negative thought and watching it go is going to help you stay in a calm state of mind and just peacefully watch the thought go. For me, I like to visualize the thought on a cloud and I just watch it float away and you just watch the thought go.
Barb:If you ever do a meditation, some of the meditations talk about having a thought in your mind and you just watch it float away. So really acknowledging that thought and just letting it go, letting it move on. And you're going to have a new thought. The next strategy I wanna give you is reframing your thoughts. And when you reframe your thoughts, you start with the idea of acknowledging or identifying what those negative thoughts are.
Barb:Because once you become aware of those negative thoughts, then you can start to change them. You start to notice that your brain is super dramatic. When you notice that you have negative thoughts, you'll notice that you have them all the time and you'll notice that other people have them all the time, but our brain automatically goes to the negative because it wants to protect us from something bad happening. So it tries to give the negative scenario and have that be the thought that we're thinking. And just knowing that that's what happens and that's pretty normal for the negative thought to come first, Just acknowledging that as the first step to having more positive thoughts is important because the more you notice those negative thoughts, the more you're able to change the negative thought.
Barb:The more you notice those negative thoughts, the more willing you are to change them. It's a problem when people don't even notice how negative they are. If you've ever been around someone who's just super negative and every thought or every if you've ever been around someone who's super negative, every word that comes out of their mouth is just negative, negative, negative, and you start to notice it. And it's like, they don't have a clue that they're being so negative. It's because they haven't even learned to identify those negative thoughts.
Barb:And some negative thoughts that we have are all or nothing thinking or overgeneralizing things when we say it's always like this or it's so hard or everything takes so long. And when we start to overgeneralize things and just think all or nothing thinking that is the type of negative thinking as well. That's a cognitive distortion that we have and there's many other types of cognitive distortions. I actually have another episode about that. So I'll put the link to that episode in the show notes, but those are negative thoughts that your brain is having.
Barb:And so it's doing that to protect you. So you wanna make sure to acknowledge what those negative thoughts are so that next you can challenge those thoughts. So you wanna ask yourself, is this negative thought? Is it fact or fiction? Because a negative thought could be fact, but most times they're fiction because most times we overgeneralize or we have that all or nothing thinking.
Barb:You always wanna ask your brain for the evidence to prove a thought as fact or fiction. For example, if you have the thought I'm a terrible teacher. K. You need to ask yourself for the evidence of that. What is the evidence that you're a terrible teacher?
Barb:And more than likely, you're gonna have a really hard time finding that evidence because it's your brain making up a story it's fiction. Asking yourself if the thought is fact or fiction is going to help you challenge those thoughts. Because many times we don't have evidence to back them up. And then you wanna replace those negative thoughts with a neutral thought. This doesn't mean simply thinking positive thoughts, but it means viewing things in a more realistic light.
Barb:For example, instead of saying, I love going to school every day. If that's not how you feel, you saying I love going to school every day is not going to help you love going to school every day. You need to say something like, I can handle going to school every day. That's a more neutral thought, or maybe it's even I can handle going to school today. So having a neutral thought is okay because having a neutral thought is going to help you build up to more positive thoughts because it's more believable for you.
Barb:It's hard to go from a really negative thinking pattern and a negative thought to just automatically thinking positive thoughts. You have to do what's called a thought ladder and have more neutral thoughts first. So making something neutral is going to help you think more positive. Another strategy is to develop positive affirmations. So you want to create affirmations that really resonate with you and counteract that negative belief.
Barb:For example, if you're having the thought, I don't want to go to school. You could have an affirmation of, I choose to make today a good day, or you could say, I'm a person who walks into school with a positive attitude. You want to choose something though. That's believable. Because as I said before, with having more of a neutral thought, that is a good place to start.
Barb:If you're in a super negative mindset for me, having that positive affirmation is what's really helpful. I like to have affirmations about who I wanna be as a person. So when I say I'm a person who walks into school with a positive mindset, that helps me remember that I get to decide who I want to be. And I create affirmations that support the person I want to be. So I love affirmations that start with, I am a person who, because I decide the character traits and the things that I wanna believe about myself.
Barb:And I state those in affirmations. So I'm a person who walks into school with a positive attitude. I'm a person who makes a difference in kids' lives every day. I'm a person who collaborates well with my colleagues. So when I do that, I really live up to what that affirmation is because I just tell myself that's the type of person I am Repeating affirmations daily really helps you start to believe them and have them become part of your subconscious.
Barb:If you start repeating affirmations in the morning or before going to bed, it's going to help you remember to do them daily. Also, you could do affirmations by saying them out loud. I like to say them in my brain. So I'll think I'm a person who does this or write them down. You can also meditate on them and just sit in that thought to really let it soak in and visualize what that looks like, which we'll get to in a minute, but really letting that soak in, take time with these affirmations and really think about them.
Barb:You don't wanna just say the affirmation once and expect that it's going to work. You need to be saying the affirmation over and over so that it makes a difference and it really gets into your subconscious. My next strategy is to practice gratitude. I always like to say it's really hard to be negative when you're in a state of gratitude. Taking time to just think of all the things you're grateful for makes a huge difference in your life.
Barb:And it makes a huge difference in having a positive attitude. Things that I like to do to practice gratitude, you could set a timer for 1 minute and just list all of the things you're grateful for. If you do journaling with your students, this is a great activity you could do with your students. You could build it into the school day so that not only are you teaching students to have gratitude, but you're having gratitude practices as well build into your school day. You could also just list 5 things you're grateful for on a piece of paper or do 5 finger gratitude where you're with each finger, just saying something you're grateful for, whatever that is, make it a routine.
Barb:So every day making sure to be grateful so that it keeps you in a more positive mindset. And my last strategy is to use visualization. So you wanna visualize yourself achieving your goal or overcoming your fear, whatever you're trying to achieve or change. You really wanna visualize that. For example, if I had the positive affirmation of I'm a person who collaborates well with their colleagues, If I sit and visualize myself collaborating well with my colleagues and we're in a positive state of mind, we're smiling and we're collaborating and talking about data.
Barb:That's, what's going to actually happen because there's research that your brain doesn't know the difference between visualizations and reality. And so when you visualize it, your body feels like it's actually doing it. When you're visualizing, you really wanna get as detailed as you can and think about how does this scenario feel? How does it look? What exactly are you doing?
Barb:Really visualize as much as you can. So you're really in it. And that helps your body feel like you've already done it. I like to do visualizations of the type of person I want to become. You know, I have the list of traits that I would like to have.
Barb:And then I visualize myself being that person because your mind doesn't know the difference. It doesn't know the difference between the visualization and reality. And so when your body feels like it's actually doing it, it's practicing doing it. So visualization is a really good technique for becoming a more positive person. So just visualize yourself talking positively to people, visualize yourself smiling and walking around with a happy attitude.
Barb:Visualize yourself doing the things you wanna do. This is really helpful. So just to recap, the 5 strategies that are going to help you be more positive are to acknowledge the thought and let it go. Reframe your thoughts, use positive affirmations, have a practice of gratitude and visualize. So hopefully you found some of these strategies helpful.
Barb:I encourage you to at least try 1 or 2. I'd love to hear if you tried them, reach out to me on Instagram. I love hearing when people actually implement things from the podcast, but reach out to me. I'd love to hear from you. Thanks so much for joining me today for another episode of the teacher burnout podcast.
Barb:If you wanna take the next step in feeling less burnout and overwhelmed, you need to grab my new course. The teacher overwhelm and boundary solution is a great course that I created to help teachers deal with overwhelm and setting boundaries. So you can click the link in the show notes to get it. It's going to help you learn practical strategies that you can use right away for dealing with your overwhelm and then how to set boundaries with parents, colleagues, and administrators. It also includes tips, positive affirmations, and worksheets that go along with the course.
Barb:If you feel any kind of burnout, overwhelm, struggle with setting boundaries, you need this course. It is going to help so much. Click the link in the show notes to get it and get that course right away. If you love this show and you're listening on Apple, scroll down in your app and leave a review. I always appreciate a review.
Barb:It helps other people find the show. And I want you to keep in mind that you have the power to shape your life. According to the mindset you choose, you don't have to be stuck in a negative mindset. So hopefully you take a strategy from today and reframe and have a more positive mindset to have a more positive life. I hope you have a great week, and I'll see you back here next time.
