Description: That's it. Right where you are. In this present moment.
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Transcription: Hi, and welcome to episode eight of season three of Self-Care for Educators. I'm your host, Tina Boogren. This week's invitation is this: be where you are. Be where you are. Just pause for a second and just think about what that, what that means in your own mind when I say that. Be where you are. Here's what it means. Here's what I hope you kind of felt is like ... It's a, it's a slow down, slowing down. It's a pause. It's an attempt to stop the multitasking, which we know is actually a myth, right? We can't actually pay attention to more than one thing at the same time. That really what we're doing is we're task switching, which is exhausting. So, I want us to think about, can we, whatever it is that we're doing, let's do that. Instead of attempting to do 25 things at once, let's just do one thing at a time, and let's be where we are. So, when we are at work, let's be at work when we are in our classroom with students. Let's be all in with students.
Let's not try to, I don't know, answer emails or write assessments or grade papers to the best of our ability. Let's like be with students sitting beside students, working with students, being all in. And then, you know, when we are, when we're eating lunch, let's be where we are. Let's be at lunch, full stop. When we are at home with our family, let's be where we are. Let's fully be at home with our families. When we're at a professional development or at a workshop, let's be at that training. When we are with our grade level or PLC or department meetings, whatever the organization that you're in, let's be where we are. And it's, it's like most weeks. This is one of those concepts that it's simple, but it doesn't mean it's easy. I've been working on this a lot. As always, I can't ask you all to do something that I'm not willing to try myself. And, this is something I've been really trying to work on, and it's been something that I've been asking participants in my workshops to think about at the start of the day.
You know, I sometimes jokingly say, Let's pretend like it's 1994. I realize some of you were not even alive then, but let's go back to a time. When we couldn't be ... Someone couldn't get ahold of us at every single moment of the day where we could be, where we were more easily ... When we were at a training, we were at a training. When we were with our students, we were with our students. We didn't have as many distractions and there's, there's something really nice about that. That can feel calming. I keep mentioning this idea of rest. R.E.S.T. is something that in our ... At our Educator Wellness Institute, I do a whole breakout session on sleep and rest, and one of the most fascinating parts is the idea of rest, because we get in our head that rest is taking a nap during the day, which, hey, if we can do that, I'm all for it. But, most of us can't, so rest can be ... It's literally just a respite, if you will. It's being able to take ...
There's all sorts of different types of rest. We can take a sensory rest, right? Where we sit in silence and close our eyes. We're not looking at a screen; we're not listening to anything. We can't ... There's just all sorts of ways that we can rest. That's for a whole other episode, but what I want us to think about is that idea of what it means, how rest actually gets incorporated into the idea of be where you are. For me, when I hear that, I just kind of feel my whole body relax, feels like, gosh, what a gift. To just be in one place at one time, and I ... We're actually more productive this way. Right? When we are trying to, attempting to do that multitasking, that test switching, we know the research tells us that we're actually getting less done. We feel like we're getting, trying to do this to get more done, but we actually get less done that if we just concentrated on one thing at a time, we would actually be so much better off.
And that's the idea here. So, this week I want you to just kind of, how can you incorporate the idea of being where you are? What does that look like for you? Does it feel uncomfortable? Does it ... How do you feel? I don't know. There's a whole lot of things that might come up here. We're all kind of different in this realm, so it's the putting your phone away, closing the computer, thinking about when we feel that anxiety, because the to-do list is growing, and we feel like, Oh, I can squeeze this little thing in here, and this little thing in here, resisting that urge and instead putting ... Here's what I would say. Putting the people that are in front of us at the moment at the top of the list. So, when we're with our students, we are with our students. When we're with our colleagues, we are with our colleagues. When we're with our friends and our family and our children, we are with them.
That itself, oh my gosh, is such an incredible gift that we're not also checking our phone or answering an email or continually looking down at our watch that whoever we are with, we are with them. And, maybe it's not even with another person, it's just us on our own. Well, let's be all there . Let's go for a walk, and just go for a walk. Let's not try to check Twitter as we are walking. If we are sitting down and watching tv, let's sit down and watch TV and not try to, I don't know, look at Pinterest, or at videos at the same time. See what it feels like to do one thing to be where you are this week. That kind of slowing down is actually slowing down. Do you feel like you don't get as much done or do you feel like maybe you get more done, or do you feel more connected when you're able to do this? I don't know. We'll see what comes up. I'm gonna commit to this, too. It's something I've been thinking about a lot lately. So, that's it. That's what I want you to work on this week.
I want you to be where you are. Maybe you write that on a little sticky note and put it somewhere as a little reminder. I think oftentimes it's nice to ... I'll sometimes write messages on a sticky note and take a picture of it, so that I can put it as a screensaver on my phone. So, when I'm tempted to pick up my phone, that screensaver will say, Be where you are, and it's gonna remind me, Oh, maybe I don't need my phone right now. Or, maybe you put that little sticky note on your computer, or maybe you turn those notifications off on your watch. Try it. See what it feels like. See what it feels like. Awesome. Okay. Oh man.
As always, huge, huge thank you to Brooke for making this happen. Thank you, Marzano Resources and Solution Tree for this job I get to do. And, to you, my bad-ass Self-Care Squad. Let's see what it feels like this week to be where we are. I'm cheering so hard for you guys. Have an amazing week.
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