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Life Admin Hacks to Reduce Stress

November 28, 2024

Life Admin Hacks to Reduce Stress Often our lives are very hectic. Setting up systems for Life Admin activities like paying bills, managing appointments, organising paperwork and maintaining household tasks can reduce the stress and save time. This helps us to reclaim precious time and mental bandwidth for more meaningful pursuits. By streamlining and automating life admin tasks, people can reclaim significant time and reduce cognitive strain. It’s about making life easier and creating space for the things that truly matter, like health, creativity and personal relationships. Do it once, then set and forget. Life Admin Hacks by Mia Northrop and Dinah Rowe-Roberts is a practical guide focused on simplifying the often overlooked but essential tasks of everyday life—commonly known…

Finish Strong

November 14, 2024

The final term of the school year is a crazy busy time in schools. End of year assessment and reporting, class allocations, timetabling, budgets and planning for next year, swamp us at a time when our energies are low and many of us feel we are running on empty. At the end of the year we are likely to be more sensitive than usual, perhaps a little ‘thin skinned’ and emotional because we are run down and in need of that well-earned break. We shouldn’t be surprised. The same thing happens at this time every year. The important thing is HOW we respond to this challenge. Monitoring our self-talk and our sensitivity are particularly important at this time of the…

Emotional Baggage is Toxic

October 17, 2024

Emotional baggage is heavy – How much are you carrying around? It’s the end of the year, and what better time to clear out the old to make room for the new. One of the heaviest bags we carry around is our emotional baggage, our past frustrations, resentments, guilt, anger or regrets. They are heavy, weigh us down, prevent us from moving forward and damage our health and happiness. The source of emotional baggage often comes from conversations we have had; what has been said and what hasn’t been said; the meanings we attribute to the conversations; the clashes with our sense of right and wrong, blame, shame and polar beliefs and values. Communication sits at the base of this,…

Struggling to Disconnect – Try Box Breathing

In today’s fast-paced world, the concept of “busy” has taken on new dimensions. With the constant influx of emails, notifications and social media updates, many people find themselves perpetually engaged, unable to switch off even when they need to. The line between work and personal life has blurred and many people find it difficult to switch off. As a result, the modern mind is in a near-constant state of activity, under load and struggling to find moments of peace. The Challenge of Disconnecting The digital age, while offering unparalleled connectivity and convenience, has also brought about a significant challenge: the inability to disconnect. Whether it’s the pressure to respond to work emails after hours or the allure of endless scrolling…

60 000 Thoughts per Day

September 26, 2024

Scientists say that we have over 60 000 thoughts each day. That is a scary, huge number! However, what is even scarier is thinking about which thoughts we listen to without even realising it and which ones we let fade off, out of our minds just as quickly as they arrived. I like using the analogy of our minds being like a busy train station. Our brain is the station and our thoughts are the trains coming in and out. Thousands of trains pass through the station on a daily basis and most of the time we jump on board the first train that goes past without even being aware of where it is going. We don’t think too much…

Feeling Overwhelmed – Simplify Things

September 5, 2024

At times we can try to be all things, to all people. However, this can be to the detriment of our own well-being. The following strategies, inspired by author Kelly Exeter, are intended to help you slow down and bring some calmness to your life whenever you are feeling at risk of becoming over-whelmed. Reduce the Number of Decisions You Need to Make Decision making is incredibly tiring. Staff in schools make hundreds, if not thousands of decisions each day. The pure volume of decisions that we make leads to cognitive fatigue. Establishing routines and pre-planning are great strategies for reducing the number of decisions we have to make each day (or at least reducing the number of decisions that…

Why Would You Want to Work in Schools?

During my career, the status of the teaching profession has declined. A generation or two ago parents generally were more supportive of teachers. In times gone by, when issues arose parents were more likely to back and support teachers than immediately jump to the defense of their children and ‘attack’ or question the teacher’s judgement. The cartoon depicting an angry parent questioning a teacher about a student’s grades, that is found in many staffrooms, is an illustration of this shift. There are many factors contributing to this change in status. These include increased stress levels of parents, the competitive nature of an aspirational society and how busy and time poor most people feel. People under stress are quick to blame…

Worry Less – Smile More

August 15, 2024

In the fast-paced school environment, we can often find ourselves overwhelmed with concerns. From staff and resource shortages; curriculum changes; unrealistic expectations of some parents; leadership issues; struggling students; to poor behaviour, it’s easy to fall into a cycle of worry. Will Billy have a meltdown today? Will that cranky parent complain about me? Will this lesson work? Will my students engage and behave? Will my hours get cut? Will the wifi crash? Our days can be filled with worrying. However, most of the things we worry about, never actually happen. Worrying is a natural human response to uncertainty and potential threats. However, research shows that a significant portion of our worries are unfounded. A study by the University of…

7 Ways to End Your Day Feeling Happy and Satisfied

August 8, 2024

1.Reflect on what you achieved One of the challenges of working in schools is we can’t necessarily see what we have achieved each day. Take a few moments to review how you used your time today. Clean up for a fresh start tomorrow Clutter, physical and virtual, takes a surprising toll on your energy. Tidy your desk at the end of each day — after saving your open work — close all of your computer’s unneeded windows and browser tabs. Cleaning up today, gives you a fresh start tomorrow. Prepare tomorrow’s to-do list in order of priority Doing this has two benefits. First of all, it gives you a sense of completion when you hand off tasks to another day.…

Serotonin Seeker

August 1, 2024

What you eat and when you eat it, the amount of exercise you take and the amount of sleep you get are among the key factors that affect the production of neurotransmitters. This means that by controlling these factors you can control your internal ecology to maintain abundant supplies of your feel- good chemical, serotonin. Humans appear to have a survival instinct to eat fat. Fat is OK – you need some fat on your body to function. But if you’re carrying excess weight you’ll feel low because you’re placing extra load on all your physical systems. Losing unwanted fat is a crucial step in achieving and maintaining a natural high but the worst message you can send an overweight…

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