Episode 33: 30 Seconds to Calm

Description: This week’s invitation is simple yet powerful: take 30 seconds of silence before a transition to reset, recenter, and regulate your nervous system. Let’s embrace the power of the silent 30 this week!

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Transcription:  Hi, and welcome to Self-Care for Educators. I am your host, Dr. Tina Boogren, and this is episode 33.  Ah, this week's episode. I love this week's episode. Here's what we're going to do for this week. Our invitation for this week is going to be the Silent 30. The silent 30. Here's what this one is. This is going to be an invitation to take 30 seconds of absolute silence before a transition to reset, recenter, reset, and regulate our nervous system. Let me say that again.  Our invitation for this week is the silent 30.  What we're going to do is we are going to commit to taking just 30 seconds of absolute silence before a transition to reset, recenter, and regulate our nervous system. 

So here's why this works. When we do this, we give our brain a little micro break from noise and stimulation, and Lord knows we have a lot of noise and stimulation in our jobs as educators, right? We also know that by doing this, we are lowering our stress. We're calming our nervous system down, which is so, so, so essential. And what I love about this is it creates an intentional pause before we jump into the next thing. Our days are so busy and if we're not careful, whoo, we don't get any time to breathe between meetings, between this, between that, we're running around and hustling and it's just crazy and our nervous system gets totally out of whack. So even just 30 seconds can feel like, oh my gosh, such a nice respite in between things that we have to do. And it helps us transition, listen to this, between all of our different roles, educator, leader, partner, mom, dad, daughter, son, friend, spouse, right? If we can allow for the pause, there's power in the pause, even just 30 seconds. We're not even talking a full minute, just 30 seconds. So powerful. 

So here's how we're going to put this into practice. So what I want you to do is I want you to pick your moment.  So as you think about your week, when do you have  a crazy transition? Is it like right at the end of the school day before a staff meeting?

Is it before you enter into your classroom? Is it in between classes? Is it before you enter into your home at the end of the day? Is it before you have to have a tough conversation with a parent. or a family, a community member, or a colleague? So I want you to pick your moment. When are you going to implement this? When are you going to do this silent 30? 

And then what I want you to do is I want you to get really still.  I want you, you can do this standing, you can do this sitting. If you can, you can close your eyes, that may not feel comfortable to you. And literally all I want you to do is I want you to take a huge deep breath. Try to just inhale through your nose, take that nice slow exhale through your mouth. And I want you to embrace the quiet to the best of your ability. Do not pick up your phone. This is not the time to listen to music. We are not talking. All we're going to do is be. Just be. And I want you to see if you can do that for a full30 seconds.

And what's crazy is 30 seconds can really feel like a long time when you're just sitting. If you can get longer than 30 seconds or take longer than 30 seconds, by all means, please do so. But at the very least, just 30 seconds. And remember, everything on a dial. If you don't even have 30 seconds in between a meeting, which I suspect you probably do have 30 seconds. You know, take the 20 seconds, take the 15 seconds, but let's aim for 30 seconds. Again, turn the dial up if you've got more time, turn the dial down if you don't have that much time, but at least 30 seconds and just be.  

And this can be just so incredibly powerful for, again, calming our entire nervous system down and entering into that next thing, that next meeting. That next space with a different mindset and as a different person, quite honestly. 

So, ways that we can use this throughout our day. A few more examples. So, take that 30 seconds and use it to set an intention. Get your mind set before you go into the school building at the start of the day. Again, maybe you do it in between classes or in between meetings, depending what your role is, in order for you to clear your mental state. It's really hard to go from a really heightened parent meeting to go into a professional learning team time meeting, right? We got to get our mental state in a different place. 

Take that time if you can before you pick up your phone and start scrolling. This is one I want to work on. That has become such an automated response for so many of us, myself included, that any time there is just a beat of like a little bit of extra time, our go-to is to pick up our phone. What if we resist that and instead we just sit?  Remember, back before phones, some of you do not. I do. And we just sat. You just sit for a minute, right? Just calm your nervous system down. So before you pick up your phone, just sit. Maybe you make your screensaver on your phone a little reminder to stop scrolling, right? That, my hostile tone was for myself. 

Okay, how about right before you go home, right? Let's release the day's stress before we transition into our personal life. How about we take that 30 seconds and pause before we respond to that email or to that text to avoid those knee jerk reactions, right? So, whew, let's really think about this this week.

And if you want to take it one step further, again, maybe you do 60 seconds instead of just 30 and maybe you pair it with the invitation that I offered up a few weeks ago with like, an affirmation or a mantra. That during that pause, we say to ourselves, I am present. I am enough.  I am steady. I am safe. I am calm, right?  It doesn't take very long to reset ourselves to take these little moments during the day. It's so good for cortisol levels, right? It's a stress hormone to calm ourselves down and just implement these little micro moments throughout the day. 

Let's give it a shot this week. See what it feels like. I'm going to, of course, be doing this alongside you. Feel my hand on your back as you move through this week.  As always, we're so grateful for you, Adrienne. So, so grateful. Also so grateful for Marzano Resources and Solution Tree and this job I get to do. So grateful. And to you, my badass self care squad. Make it such an incredible week. Take 30 seconds just to reset just for you. You can do that. We can do that. Let's pinky promise we're going to make it happen this week. Make it a great week. I love you.