Description: "Twinkle lights are the perfect metaphor for joy ..." —Brené Brown
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Transcription: Hi, and welcome to episode 35 of Self-Care for Educators. I am your host, Tina Boogren, and this week's invitation is: I want you to hang up some twinkle lights. What a weird invitation. I know, but here's the deal. Twinkle lights make me so happy. I actually am sitting here looking at the twinkle lights that are hanging around my desk where I work every day.
So, not only do I have a candle burning, so refer back to episode 33 where I talk about the joy that burning candles brings me. I also have such joy from these twinkle lights hanging around my desk. We also have just white lights that, we have on our bookshelves downstairs. So, I love, love, love ... We have a whole wall of bookshelves. Books are very, very important to me, and we have some lights hung in there. We have ... We very recently have converted our garage into a gym, and we hung lights in there, because the lighting was pretty harsh in there. If you know, garage lights are not fantastic. So, we hung up some lights in there to give it a softer feel, especially for ... I love, love, love to have just those lights on and a candle burning for my yoga sessions. When I was thinking about twinkle lights, it reminded me ... I was like, Gosh, I feel like there was a quote from Brené Brown on twinkle lights. And, I did a little bit of digging and sure enough, there's this incredible quote. Brené Brown is one of us that also loves having twinkle lights, as well.
So, let me read this quote from her. "Twinkle lights are the perfect metaphor for joy. Joy is not a constant. It comes to us in moments, often ordinary moments. Sometimes we miss out on the burst of joy, because we're too busy chasing down extraordinary moments." Again, that's from Brené Brown. In fact, I love that so much. And, I know that when we're just listening to a podcast, we sometimes want to hear something twice to let it sink in. So, I'm actually going to read that for you one more time.
"Twinkle lights are the perfect metaphor for joy. Joy is not a constant. It comes to us in moments, often ordinary moments. Sometimes we miss out on the burst of joy, because we're too busy chasing down extraordinary moments," from Brené Brown. I love that. So, I want you to think about where you might hang a string of lights this week. Maybe you first need to go buy the lights. I got my twinkle lights at Target, and I'm sure you could get them a gazillion different places. Amazon can probably drop it off on your porch. Right? But, just think about where might hanging a string of twinkle lights bring you joy? Maybe it is around your desk. Maybe it's in your classroom. Maybe it's in your bedroom. Maybe it's around your bathroom mirror. Maybe it is in a child's room, but don't just put it in your child's room. Put it in your room as well. Maybe it's in your gym, Wherever it might be a good place to just bring yourself some very specific joy. And, when you turn the lights on, really make that connection to finding joy in those teeny, tiny, little things. This goes back to ... I'm going to reference back to last week in episode 34, when we talked about, you know ... Let's change our definition of self-care. And, if we don't feel like we have time for self-care, rightfully so, what do we have time for? And, I love just having time in the morning when I turn my twinkle lights on. I literally have them on all day ... all night ... I turn them off before I go to bed. But, they bring me such joy.
And to me, that's a form of self-care. So, this week I encourage you to hang the lights, twinkle lights would be the bonus. Take a picture of your lights. Gosh, I would love to see your lights, and just share if that's bringing you joy this week.
As always, a huge thank you to Brooke for making this happen. Thank you to Marzano Resources and Solution Tree for this job I get to do. And, thank you to you, my bad-ass Self-Care Squad. I am so, so grateful for you.
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