Description: This week, the Squad cuts some of the crud that makes us mindlessly, endlessly, comfortably numb. What can we more thoughtfully fill ourselves with?
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Transcription: Hi, and welcome to episode 33 of season two of Self-Care for Educators. I'm your host, Tina Boogren. As I've been doing the last few weeks, I'm going to continue to remind you that we've got merchandise. I've linked all over the place. You can follow the Bitl.y link, the bit.ly/SelfCareMerch to go get yourself a treat. We've got magnets and stickers and journals and t-shirts and oh my goodness. Keep the pictures coming. They make me so happy. Yay. And, now this week's episode.
This week's invitation is to not turn on the TV. That's it. I want you to chat. Now, again, everyone's at a different place. For some of you. You're like, I don't even have a TV. And, for some of you, this might be a huge challenge. So, take this and again, take these invitations that work for you. Leave the ones that don't. Modify them. Tweak them. I know that I have a wide range of audience members, of listeners here. So, it's going to require us to kind of take these in and sort out what works for us. So, here's the thinking behind this.
I have been traveling quite a bit and one of the, one of the commitments that I've made to myself is to not turn on my TV at all in the hotel room. And, the reason why is because I know when I turn the TV on, I just stay up. And, I've committed to not turning the TV on in the morning. I did that a long time ago. Never kind of shared that. We don't listen to, watch the news in the morning. I used to do that in hotel rooms, but that was a terrible way to start the day. So, I start with music now. So, for me that the TV is usually in the evening. So, it's after I've done a training. When I come back to the room and what I know for myself is if I turn that TV on. My evening goes awry. I probably won't work out. I will kind of watch TV, but I will also kind of give myself permission to just scroll endlessly on my phone. I won't pick up my book to read, and here's the other part. I will stay up too late. I just personally don't have a lot of control around TV. So again, by removing the decision to help myself with that decision fatigue and made the decision to just not turn my TV on in the hotel room, and it seems to be working.
So, I thought I would pass it along. Obviously this doesn't have to just be hotel rooms, not everyone has a crazy travel schedule like I do, but maybe this week, you see if you can take one night or two nights or the whole week and see if you can go without turning the TV on and see how that makes you feel and what that brings up for you. And, that's okay. Whatever comes up, but just kind of sit with that, and figure out how could you fill that time now? Listen, I know TV is great. There's great shows on there. It's a great way to unwind. And, yet there's a real ... It's kind of one of those, one of those activities that there's a real slippery slope there between just kind of letting go and relaxing and kind of going to the total numbing. So, if we're continually just like anything else in our lives, continually using TV to numb, similar to pouring the extra glass of wine or the online shopping habit or food, whatever it is that numbing behavior is what we don't want. So, maybe you're like me and it's easier to just not turn it on. And then it's, I don't have to, Well, I'll just watch one more episode or I will just checking over here, whatever that mental chatter is.
I just find I'm mentally at such a better place when I don't even engage. And so, I offered that up to you, something to consider for this week. And for me, you know, it's a TV, whatever. Again, it could be ... It could be the scrolling on your phone. It could be, you know, watching whatever show on your computer, whatever. Whatever it is. I feel like a real old person, because they're like, I don't know ... I don't even know if people watch TV anymore. I think people watch their computers. I watch TV. Whatever your thing is, challenge yourself, or invite yourself whatever language works for you to see if you can let that go this week and see what else might come up. Maybe you pick up a book instead. Maybe you go for a walk. Maybe you pick up the phone and call a friend. Like when you get some of that numbing time back see what you might be able to do with it. There you go. I want you to just try it out. And, even me saying it out loud, I'm back in a hotel room, and I'm here for four days, and so just saying that out loud is going to help me keep my commitment. I am not turning the TV on this week. I'm going to see what happens. I think it's going to be great.
As always a huge thank you to Brooke for making this happen. Thank you to Solution Tree and Marzano Resources for the job that takes me to all these hotel rooms where I get to meet so many of you, which makes my heart so stinking happy. And to you, my bad-ass Self-Care Squad. I'm so stinking grateful for you. Have an amazing week. Maybe when you turn the TV off, you could jump over and buy yourself a new, a new little t-shirt or stickers or something. Great. And then, jump on over to the Facebook page and show us, I can't wait to see it, but you won't spend a lot of time on Facebook. Right? Cause we're not, we're not going to numb with that. Okay. Have an amazing week. So grateful.