Description: This week is a fresh start. Consider where you are, where you want to be and get started right now.
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Transcription: Hi, and welcome to Self Care for Educators. I'm your host, Tina Boogren. This is episode 21 of our fourth season, and when this comes out, it's going to be the beginning of February. And, at this point, the year most people have completely and totally gone far away from their New Year's resolutions. In fact, what we know is that most people actually give up on their New Year's resolutions the second Friday of the year. So, the second Friday in January. And so, the invitation for this week is Happy New New Year. I want you to consider February a fresh start. If you set some intentions and some goals or resolutions in January, and they're already ... They have crashed and burned, if you will, what I want you to do is pick yourself back up. Dust yourself off, remind yourself that you are not alone, and that there are a whole lot of months left in 2024.
That if we give up on ourselves now, woo, that's just a terrible idea. Instead, I want you to kind of regroup. I want you to take that deep breath that we talked about last week, and I want you to determine, okay, starting right now, how do you want to feel for the rest of 2024? And, what are some realistic, small, teeny, tiny, little nudges that you can put into place to help make that happen? Maybe you have the same intention, the same word or phrase that you did when we started in January. One of my invitations is we came back to kick off the new year, or maybe it's something different. You know, we feel different. We're at kind of a very different season at the end of December when we start thinking about making our resolutions. We're at home, we've relaxed, we're on break, and we make these big decisions, big proclamations, because I don't know, in our brain, we feel like it will always be like this.
We will have this time where we are at home and relaxing with our family, and we're going to do this, this, and this. And then, we go back to work and things are crazy. And, the weather has been just absolutely ridiculous in most parts of the country. Oh my goodness, just unbelievable. And, all of a sudden, we're like, What was I thinking? Why did I decide that that was going to be my resolution or my promise to myself or my intention? And, we just kind of throw it all away and fall back into our old patterns. And, maybe you did that for the last few weeks here. And, now what I want you to do is pause and make a different choice. When I talk about the idea of living our very best lives, how I define that is thinking about the choices that we make in any given moment and recognizing that we can make a different choice. Our brains get in these patterns, these thought patterns, these behavior patterns that we have built up these neural pathways for years and years and years and years.
And, we sometimes forget that we actually can make a different choice, and that's what living our best life is about, and that's what I want you to do this week. I want you to kind of have a reset, and I want you to think about Happy New New Year. Maybe January was a wash for you, and that's fine. Let it go You were getting your feet back on the ground again. You were coming back from vacation. You know, our students are still pretty feral in January. It's like they forgot everything. So, it takes a bit to kind of re enter, right? Re-entry can be challenging. So, give yourself so much grace for the re-entry that you had in January. And now, now let's think about as we move into February, getting our feet back on the ground and deciding what are those choices that we can make to nudge us towards how we want to feel in 2024. There's a whole lot of 2024 left.
Maybe you want to start thinking about monthly kind of goals or challenges or intentions, whatever word appeals to you, and your personality. You know, something that you want to tackle in February. Think about how you typically feel in February. I've mentioned this before, February is a hard month for me, so I know how I typically feel and it is not good. And so, what are some things, some boundaries, some bumpers that I need to put into place and set some. A February resolution, if you will, or a promise or an intention, whatever, again, language works for you for February, and then do it again in March and then in April, remembering that we move in and out of these various seasons and gosh, again, that dial on our own wellness and self care. Sometimes we can turn it up, and sometimes we have to turn it down, not off, but we have to turn it down.
So that's what I want you to think about this week. Fresh start. Happy New New Year. What are your intentions? What are your resolutions? Do you want to think about just February? Do you want to think about all of 2024? Maybe you don't want to change anything. You just want to recommit to what it was that you decided you wanted a few weeks ago that maybe you kind of lost your way. And, now you're just recommitting to get your feet back underneath you and do those things or that thing again. Maybe you want to ask an accountability partner to help you.
Maybe you want to dial things down a little bit. Maybe you like what you thought you wanted to do, but it's just proven to be a little bit too much, and so you're going to dial it down a little. Any, anything you need to do, forward motion, right? Our aim is always progress over perfection. Progress over perfection. And, as you do this this week, I want you to feel my hand on your back cheering so hard for you. You've got this.
As always, a huge, huge thank you, Brooke. You do this, and you do this so well. Thank you to Marzano Resources and Solution Tree for this job that I get to do. It doesn't really feel like a job.
Every time I say job, it feels like the wrong word. And, to you, my bad-ass Self-Care Squad. Happy New New Year. Make it a great week.
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