Description: This week, we’re pairing an everyday habit—checking email or our phones—with a quick posture check. It’s a simple but powerful way to reset, feel more confident, and bring awareness to how we hold stress in our bodies.
Resources: More information on habit stacking by James Clear.
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Transcription: Hi, and welcome to Self-Care for Educators. I am your host, Tina Boogren, and this is episode 24. Okay, this week's invitation, again, as always, something I'm working on myself. I came across this tip, I don't know, I think I read it online, something, I'm not even sure where to give credit to it, but it's simply this. Let's commit to doing the Inbox Posture Check. This week. That's right. The inbox posture check.
Here's what this means. Every time you check your email or your phone, I want you to pair that with doing a quick posture scan. Woo. I know that I have pretty terrible posture. And so this is something that, this is one of those pairing strategies, right? When we want to change a habit, if we pair the new thing that we want to do with something that we do already, there's a higher chance of making that habit stick. So that's what we're going to do here. So every time that we check our email or check our phone or one or the other, remember, everything's on a dial, make this work for you. Let's pause and do a quick posture check.
Even as I'm saying this out loud, I'm finding myself sitting up straight. So here are the things I want to check. So first, let's check our shoulders, right? Are our shoulders hunched? Oh, and then I want us to check our jaw. Man, do I carry tension in my jaw. So is our jaw clenched? Can we relax our jaw? Then I want us to think about uncrossing our legs, sitting up straight. I always like to say picture a balloon attached to the tag of your shirt, just helping you to sit up nice and tall. Take a deep breath and allow ourselves to just kind of make an adjustment where we are getting back in tune with our bodies.
So many of us, myself very much included here, spend most of our day just in our head. We forget we even have a body. This is why I forget to drink water, forget to use the restroom, right? We forget we even have a body, we are just living in our heads. And so when we pause and kind of do a body scan and readjust our posture, it feels good.
There's something about just that pause and that shifting that brings this sense of confidence, right? Posture is so deeply ingrained with confidence. I know that however I'm feeling can show up in my posture. So if it's a rough day, if I am tired, if I'm overwhelmed and I check in with myself, I'm like, oh, my body is definitely putting all of those feelings on display, right? My shoulders are hunched. I'm leaned over. My jaw is so tight. Maybe my shoulders are actually kind of attached to my ears, right? Acting as earrings. They're all hunched up and everything's just kind of confined and tight.
Where when I shift that and I allow myself to take a moment and just kind of wiggle it all out, drop those shoulders, unclench that jaw. What happens is that sense of, kind of calmness, confidence, competence, right? Efficacy is mirrored. Just based on how I'm changing my body. Gretchen Rubin has that incredible quote that I love so much that is, you know, act the way we want to feel instead of acting the way we actually feel. If we think of acting the way we want to feel that shows up here in this invitation.
So if I want to feel confident. and competent, which is the exact definition of efficacy. And I want to feel relaxed and I want to feel in control. I can do that by changing my posture, right? It starts with that simple little adjustment and what's so fascinating is if we really embrace this act the way we want to feel, we start to actually feel the way we're acting.
It sounds so simple. And it is actually, and we can do this via our posture. You know, ever since we were little kids, we've been told to sit up straight. And I think our posture has gotten so much worse as we're all hunched over computers and devices and phones. And I just know, Oh man, everything feels better when I can get my posture aligned.
So the Inbox Posture Check, that's going to be what I work on this week, and I invite you to do the same. Again, the pairing here is let's just make a mental note. And, quite honestly, maybe we do more than a mental note. So these invitations always sound good right when we're listening to them. And then it's easy to forget because we have our set patterns and ways. So maybe you put a little sticky note on your computer or a note on your phone or you set a couple alarms or you write it on your wrist. You know me, that's what I like to do. Put a little note in your pocket, just something to remind you. So that it becomes a habit.
Hopefully then you can get this pairing really strong and it becomes automatic the more you do it, but sometimes it takes some reminders to get it done. And so when we check that email or our phone or both, either one, do that quick posture scan, allow yourself to sit up straight and see what that does for your energy, for your mood, for your confidence, as you move throughout your day. Maybe you even keep a tally of how many times you do this fascinating little check in to see, hmm, number one, how many times you're checking your, your email or your phone. Um, but we switch to not feeling guilty about that. We use that, oh, look at all the opportunities that I had to readjust my posture.
So, that's what I'm working on this week and I offer that up to you as well. Thank you so much to Adrienne for making all of this happen behind the scenes. Thank you to Marzano Resources and Solution Tree. I love this job so much. And to you, my badass self care squad. Right now, before we sign off, do a posture check. I want you to check in. Is your jaw clenched? Are your shoulders hunched? Uncross those legs. Sit up tall. Take a deep breath. Whew! And move into this next moment with confidence, because you are a badass. I'm cheering so stinkin hard for you. Make it a great week.
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