Description: In this episode, Tina challenges educators to take a break from TV for the week, offering a chance to reclaim time for wellness, creativity, and connection.
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Transcription: Hi, and welcome to Self-Care for Educators. I am your host, Tina Boogren, and this is episode 20 of season 5. And this week's invitation is per usual, something that I'm working on myself that I'm going to offer up to you. And it's one that might be really easy for you. And one that might be really hard for you. My invitation for you is to not turn on the TV this week.
Oh, I bet I got a reaction from some of you. As I said, for some of you, this might be like, oh, easy peasy. And for some of you, you might've just said, Tina, come on. And I get it. And again, remember, remember, this is the beauty of- it's an invitation. You can ignore this or you can dial this up or dial this down. Um, I'm just trying this myself. I don't typically watch a whole lot of TV anyway, and I don't say this in a self righteous way. Um, I just don't, and again, I do watch some TV, don't get me wrong, but I kind of go in stages and I found for myself that my TV consumption was kind of creeping up for no other reason than because I was just kind of getting back into, what I would say just kind of some lazy habits of just turning the TV on and getting sucked back into it.
Again, not necessarily a bad thing, it just wasn't serving me well. And so I'm challenging myself for this week to just not turn the TV on because I want to get back to the things that make me personally feel good. I've been doing a whole lot more writing and reading and movement and just other things that serve me better than watching TV.
Again, I am not slamming TV. I am not judging at all. It's just for me, a personal choice. And what I have found is I sleep better. I go to bed earlier. I'm doing so much better, kind of just tuning the news out, not getting sucked into really great TV shows. What happens is I'm kind of all or nothing on TV and when I find a good TV show or start a new series, oh my gosh, I just can't stop. And I find myself staying up far too late and I like binge-watch the whole thing. And so I'm just kind of doing a little reset and not even turning the TV on.
For me, I'm kind of, in the words of Gretchen Rubin, I'm an abstainer rather than a moderator. Gretchen Rubin has this whole thing about knowing yourself and some people are really good at moderating, meaning they can have just a little. And some people are better at abstaining and I am definitely an abstainer. It's much easier for me to not. Have any than to have a little. This is very true, I always think of this in terms of like potato chips or chips and salsa or any sort of treat. It's easier for me to not have any than to just have a few where my husband is a total moderator. He can have- it just blows my mind- he can have like just a few and easily walk away. He can have just a couple potato chips and walk away. He can have like a bite of a mini Snickers bar and then leave the other bite on the kitchen counter and walk away from it for hours and hours. And I just don't understand. So, anywho, for me, it is easier to just not turn the TV on than to like watch one episode of something. And so, I don't know, I thought I'd throw this out there to you, the pod squad here, and see if this resonates.
What's so fascinating, always, is how I will get a message, an email, a text, a direct message, a something from someone from some of these episodes that I do that I think, gosh, I don't even know if this is going to resonate. And it will be the episode that I get the most messages from that people are like, ah, I needed to hear that. And so maybe this is the one that you hear it and you're like, oh yeah, same, my TV consumption has gone up and I would like to bring that down.
And so maybe this invitation feels really right to you that you are going to see if turning off the TV feels good. Maybe you do this as a family. Maybe you don't do it for the whole week but maybe you take one night that you say no TV and we're gonna get back- we're gonna do game night or we're going to do- we're going to do something together as a family that we haven't done for a while that's going to feel really good. Or we're going to commit to, we're going to turn the TV off during dinner, or we're going to remind ourselves of bedtime and we're going to turn that TV off an hour before we go to sleep and not watch TV as we're falling asleep. We're going to pick up our books and we're going to start reading again. Maybe we've gotten away from that habit and we want to pull that back. Or maybe we started watching the news in the morning again and we've discovered, yeah, it's all terrible, awful news and that's not how we want to start the day. And so we're going to commit to keeping the news off in the morning and we're going to go back to listening to podcasts or turning music on so we can have a dance party as the way to start the day instead of listening to the news.
So see what that feels like for you. I'm going to commit to see if I can go a whole week without turning the TV on. I don't know. That feels kind of aggressive. We'll see what happens. I don't know if you want to go the whole week or if you want to choose a day or what feels right for you when you think about, again, that dial. What does it feel like to turn that dial up or turn that dial down? Or if the invitation appeals to you at all, if you want to do something else. But that's what I'm offering up to you this week for consideration. See what it feels like.
I'm cheering so hard for you as always. Thank you, thank you, Adrienne. Thank you. Thank you Solution Tree and Marzano Resources. And thank you, thank you, you my badass self care squad. Make it a great week. As you move through this week feel my hand on your back cheering so hard for you. I love you. You're amazing. Make it an incredible week.
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