Episode 34: End Your Day with a Win
- Tina Boogren
- 8 hours ago
- 6 min read
Description: This week’s self-care invitation is the 10 Second Victory Log—a quick, daily habit to celebrate small wins and end your day on a positive note. Just one tiny victory, 10 seconds, and a big impact.
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Transcription: Hello, and welcome to Self-Care for Educators. I am your host, Dr. Tina Boogren, and this is episode 34. This week's invitation is what I'm calling the 10 Second Victory Log. The 10 Second Victory Log, that is what's going to carry us through this week. Here's what it's about. It is about celebrating the small wins that make a big impact over time. I love this idea.
Okay, so here's what's going to happen. Before you leave work, I want you to jot down one tiny win from your day. Ten seconds is all it's going to take. Everyone's got ten seconds. Again, what's going to happen is you are going to, before you leave work, jot down one tiny win from your day. It's going to take you ten seconds. Teeny tiny little things. A student's smile, a lesson that went well. Just making it through the day, right? And I want you to start a log. I want you to keep a list of all of these things.
Celebrating these small wins are, oh, what a great way to kind of put a bow on the day. Call it good, especially those hard days where you feel like there weren't a lot of wins. There are always victories and I want you to highlight those and end that day on a high note.
So there's lots of ways you can do this so you can literally just write it down. If you are a journaler like I am, put it right in your journal. Maybe you're going to do this on a sticky note. So keep a stack of sticky notes handy and just write one per day and stick those sticky notes on a wall or inside a drawer or somewhere on your desk, right, for a visual reminder. Maybe you want to write your win on a small slip of paper and put it in a jar and then keep all those in your jar and on tough days pull those wins out to remind yourself of your impact.
Maybe if you are not someone who likes to write things down as much, maybe you're going to do a voice memo. So at the end of the day, you can just record a quick voice note on your phone where you get to just share your win in your own words. And then you can go back and listen to those in your own voice, which can be really, really powerful.
So maybe you, on your whiteboard, you can put like a little, you've got a little space there where you can write down your victories, and you've got just a little corner, and you can write it down for each day, and then refresh it at the end of the week. Maybe you could send yourself a text with your daily win, and then that way, on your phone, it keeps kind of a running log of all of those, and you can scroll back to those. Or you could just start a new note on your phone where you keep a list of all of those.
I think any of those ideas are great. Maybe you play around with different ones and see which kind of work the best for you. If you need like a little prompt, prompts can be really good. We know for students they're really helpful. I think they're really helpful for adults as well. So I came up with a list of some prompts that might be helpful. So these are just sentence starters for you.
Okay, here's a few. I'm just going to read through them. Take the ones that work for you.
A student's small win I noticed today was…
One moment I felt proud of myself today was…
A time I made someone smile today was…
Something that felt easier today than yesterday was…
A moment I handled with more patience or grace than I expected was…
Something I did today that my past self would be proud of…
A kind word or compliment I received today was…
One thing I finished today, big or small, was…
A moment of connection I had today was..
A time I chose rest or self care today was…
Oh, I love those. I'm going to read those through again. I'm not great at being an auditory learner and remembering things, I kind of need to hear things more than once, hence why I keep these podcasts so short, so that you can go back and listen to them again. But I'm also going to read through those again pretty quickly, but let me just read through them again so that you can hear them one more time. Here's your prompts or sentence starters.
A student's small win I noticed today was…
One moment I felt proud of myself today was…
A time I made someone smile today was…
Something that felt easier today than yesterday was…
A moment I handled with more patience or grace than I expected was…
Something I did today that my past self would be proud of…
A kind word or compliment I received today was…
One thing I finished today, big or small, was…
A moment of connection I had today was..
A time I chose rest or self care today was…
And there you go. What I want you to do is I want you to do this, make it a habit, make it a ritual. Do it right before you leave work at the end of the day, right? To end that day on a positive note. So pair it with a habit that you already have. So as you have your last sip of water or check email one more time or whatever that thing is that you do right at the end of the day, get your desk cleared off or your board set up for the next day, whatever that thing is. And then boom, set up your ritual to do this.
Maybe you put your car keys by that stack of sticky notes or the jar to get yourself in that habit of doing this and then what I want you to do is create a time on Friday where you're going to review those victories and those wins. My hope is that this feels good and you actually get this going where you do this every single week. So if you do it once a day, each week, this week, try it out. Friday you get to go back and reflect on those. And that it feels pretty good and then you start doing this, this becomes a ritual and a habit that you do all the time. I think that that's a really good idea or at least do it to carry you through these last few precious weeks that we have of the school year.
I know everyone ends the year at different times. Some of you are done in May. Some of you are done in June. Some of you are done, uh, later than that. So I know everyone's kind of all over the board, but maybe this is that strategy that's going to get you through till the end of the year. Let's give it a shot. Let's give it a shot. And let's see, if that helps. That's always the goal here. That 10 second victory log shouldn't take you very long. I'm going to do it with you, of course.
As always, thank you, Adrienne. We are so grateful for you. You're the best. Solution Tree is also the best, as is Marzano Resources, as are you, my badass self care squad. Thanks for tuning in this week. And you know what? If this podcast helps you at all, please share it. That's how we get more people as part of our squad. Everyone is welcome here. You know, my audience truly right now is, is educators, but man, don't these strategies work for so many of us. I have a lot of people that are like, you know what? I forwarded the podcast to so and so. They're not a teacher, but, and I'm like, of course, of course, you know what? We love everyone. So spread the word, spread the word. As always, I'm cheering so hard for you. You're incredible. Make it a great week.