Resilience

Like eating, drinking and breathing, we need to sleep to survive. Sleep is just as important to our health, as diet and exercise. It is just as important in supporting life as food, water and oxygen. You can’t be at your best if you aren’t sleeping well. Unfortunately, many aspects of modern life work against us achieving quality sleep. Improving our sleep can lead to improvements in many other aspects of our life, including how we feel, what we eat, how we learn and how we react to others. Most of us realise the importance of getting a good night’s sleep however, the anxiety that we experience in trying to get to sleep makes the situation worse. In Dr Aric…

Many of us have done it. After losing patience, we’ve become a bit snappy with a room full of students or raised our voices a level or two higher than we should have. It happens. The longer you teach, the more probable an incidence (or two) becomes. Responsive, Not Reactive Once a teacher loses it with a class or student, it takes some time to rebuild that feeling of safety and trust within those four walls, so it’s wise to avoid heading in that direction. If you are a new teacher, it’s important to develop good habits around routinely using a calm and appropriate voice level with your students. (We’ve all heard the explosive teacher down the hall in another…

Modern life is exhausting, stressful and the pursuit of happiness plagues our thoughts, making us exhausted and unhappy.  How can we rise above all the obstacles and create a pathway to happiness? Make them Laugh!! Be an inspiration to others to feel good in the present moment. I have found the answer to my pursuit of happiness. Laughter Yoga. Don’t dismiss  it until you have tried it. You’ve heard laughter is the best medicine, right? Yes! How can we sustain laughter in our lives to get the benefit when humour is subjective or not the same for everyone? Laughter Yoga makes a sensational difference in the world by turning laughter into therapy with positivity. There are three simple aspects to…

Resetting Your Brain’s Default Neural Network from Retreat to IGNITE! In part 1 we examined how neuroplasticity rewires your brain to survival mode. Since a repeated pattern of effort-failure set up the brain’s survival response to withhold effort, you’ll need to strengthen the pattern of effort toward goals can result in success. Your reconstruction comes from your brain’s very powerful drive for its own neurochemistry – dopamine and the pleasure it brings. The fuel that motivates the brain to persevere through increasing challenge, even through failed attempts, is dopamine. This neurochemical produces the pleasure of intrinsic satisfaction and increases motivation, curiosity, perseverance and memory. Dopamine is released when the brain makes a prediction or achieves a challenge and gets the…

The end of the school year provides an opportunity to implement strategies to prevent or reduce burnout. It is not until we are away from a high-stress situation for a while that the brain can move out of reactive survival mode and into a relaxed state where it can ponder the big picture. The intervention suggestions are likely to be ones that you already know. The problem is, when it comes to adding another activity to your schedule, past experiences may have left you with the expectation that there is not enough time – or you’ve tried things like this before and didn’t notice any change. So you stopped. My belief is that when you understand what happened in your…