Resilience

Working in schools just seems to get busier! Quiet times in schools no longer exist (I’m not sure they ever really did!) There are always a lot of things to be done, new initiatives and procedures to implement and demands on limited time and resources. It therefore isn’t surprising that staff in schools commonly experience ‘stress’. Whilst we usually use the term with negative connotations, Hans Selye (one of the founding fathers of stress research) observed “stress is not necessarily something bad – it all depends on how you take it. The stress of exhilarating, creative, successful work is beneficial, while that of failure, humiliation or infection is detrimental”. Today a more commonly held definition of stress is “a condition…

FoMO and the Hurry Bug are by-products of technology, connectivity and a fast-paced life. FoMO or the Fear Of Missing Out is the pervasive apprehension that others might be having rewarding experiences from which one is absent. It is driven by our most basic desire to feel connected and have a sense of belonging. FoMO is often evident in a desire to stay continually connected through social media with what others are doing. We are flooded with digital stimuli. The prevalence of social media allows us to instantly connect with others and ‘share’ in their experience. However the tendency to selectively post the best aspects of our lives can contribute to a competitive environment and ‘one upmanship’. This contributes to…

Covey in, “The Speed of Trust” says that we judge ourselves according to our intentions but we judge other people according to their behaviour and make assumptions about their intentions. The assumptions that we make impact on whether we trust them. Assuming positive intent means consciously choosing to assume that our colleagues are operating to the best of their ability and are acting with the best interest of the school and their colleagues in mind. The principle of positive intention is that at some level all behaviour is (or at one time was) “positively intended”. Another way to view it is that all behaviour serves (or at one time served) a “positive purpose”. We should therefore look for the positive…

Things rarely go according to plan. Nearly everything you do is vulnerable to interruptions, unforeseeable changes or problems that can disrupt time frames, budgets or resources. However, these ‘speed bumps’ can actually assist in getting through your day more efficiently and effectively if embraced the right way. I am an optimistic person by nature but at times a series of events on a particular day can seem to be too well punctuated with disasters. At one point I asked myself if ‘anything else could go wrong’? Well, you know what they say…’be careful what you wish for’, sure enough more things went wrong. I began to wonder if there was someone out there secretly testing if I could apply the…

Schools become less productive when staff stew over problems that they can’t change and dwell on the hardships and difficulties in the problems that they can change. Worry, self pity and pessimism create a septic tank of negative energy that drains energy, enthusiasm and initiative. The solution requires people to flip their worry into positive expectations. Pronoia (defined as “the opposite state of mind to paranoia”), is the philosophy where you have the sense that there is a conspiracy that the world is set up to secretly help you. In other words, that others are conspiring behind your back to help you. The principle was coined by Fred H. Goldner in 1982 and has since been published in Psychology Today…