Description: This week, Dr. Boogren challenges the Self-Care Squad to better tailor their activity online to something more conducive to positive mental health.
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Transcription: Hi, and welcome to Self-Care for Educators. I'm your host, Tina Boogren. This is season three, and it's episode 28. For this week's invitation, I want you to think about how you might be able to take a social media break. I'm particularly thinking about this time of year and what my feed starts to get filled with without me even being aware of it. And, it is these claims to buy things and do things around physical wellness to get us ready for summer. And, it's not good things. It's diets to go on, pills to buy, promises of losing massive amounts of weight in one week's time, and all this craziness. So, easy to get wrapped up into the clutter of that, especially in the evening when we are tired and our brain is sitting there with decision fatigue and these false promises come across our feed and we feel like, Yes, this is the thing. If I buy this thing, it's gonna change everything. And we all know there is no magic.
We can also talk a lot about , how the media wants us to be bikini, bikini ready, and all the ridiculousness of that and the pressure, and particularly thinking about how the media makes women feel at this time as we start moving into summer. And, I just want us to shut out the nonsense for a while. Shut it down, and if you're not getting filled with that kind of marketing or advertising, yay! Maybe it's just a break in general, I know we've talked about this before. I'm a big fan of Offline October, taking various points to just kind of do a reset, back to baseline. I know we've talked about reducing the amount of time we spend on social media, paying attention to how many hours we're on social media. I know we've talked about this in a lot of different ways, and I bring it up as always again and again because as many of these habits are, they tend to creep back in before we realize it and what's happening to our brain with all of this messaging that we ... It concerns me, so I want us to just shut it down.
The time that you spend scrolling at night ... What else could you do with that time? Or, at the very least, if that type of feed comes across something that's just not mentally helping you unfollow, unfollow. Get yourself out of it. Report. I don't want to see ads like this. Like do as much as you can to try to curate your feed, so that if you are on social media, it makes you feel good. Like the Facebook group, the Self-Care for Educators Facebook group, is such a happy place that I don't mind spending time on. It's the mindless scrolling, and I feel myself starting to go, Huh, I wonder if I should try that. That's maybe, maybe this is the thing that's been missing. Maybe that's what I need. And, then you step away from it. Or, you think about it the next day, and you're like, No, absolutely not. Not spending my money on this, and I'm not having the media tell me what my body should look like when I go to the beach or to the pool. I'm not falling for it. I'm not giving money over. Although I admit just like anyone else, it is tempting.
It is so tempting, and so let's not do that. Let's take a break. Let's walk away from it. Let's decide. Not this year, I'm not falling for it this year. Think about how you could use that time instead. I'm gonna loop us back to some other things we've talked about as the weather changes. Let's get outside. Go for a walk. Allow yourself to go sit on the front step, and put your face in the sunshine. I know we're kind of up and down in the weather. Denver's kind of all over the place, so that feels like when we do have sunshine, let's take advantage. Or, maybe we put down the social media, and we read a book that makes us feel really good, or we listen to a podcast. We know we've got the list of things. Remember that invitation to take 15 minutes a day? That's just for us. When we shut down the social media, when we kind of quiet that noise, that's, that's debating in our head that that magic pill is out there, walk away from that. Let's recognize it when it's happening. Let's recognizing ... Follow the trail.
It's all about money. They wanna take our money. They want us to feel bad and take our money, and it won't work. And then, we try the next thing, like, let's just stop falling for it. And, let's take a real break from social media, especially in terms of the pressure around what we need to be doing to get ourselves ready for summer. You guys, you're ready for summer. Aren't you ready for summer? You're ready for summer. You are perfect exactly the way you are. Instead, I want you to spend that mental energy thinking about how you are going to make this the best ending of the school year you've ever had. Remember primacy/recency effect tells us we remember the beginning of things and the end of things. How do you want to end the year? How do you want your students to feel at the end of the year? What do you wanna look back on and remember happened during the end, end of the year? Do you wanna be on the, some strict diet, forcing yourself to eat only green food and feeling miserable. Or, do you want to enjoy the end of the year, and take care of yourself in a way that makes you feel good?
And, I think one of the ways that we can do that is to shut out some of the noise around social media, especially around the pressure. The fitness influencers, influencers, just shut it down. That's what we're gonna do this week. You're gonna shut it down. Yes. I'm cheering so hard for you. I'm gonna do this too. As I said, I found myself kind of toying with the idea of, should I do this? Maybe that? No, no, no. And then, when I have a clear mind, I realize absolutely not. So, let's keep our minds clear. Let's shut it down. Let's remember you guys, you're perfect exactly the way you are. I'm cheering so hard for you.
As always, thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Brooke, for making this happen. Thank you Marzano Resources and Solution Tree for this job I get to do that brings me closer to all of you. And, to you, my bad-ass Self-Care Squad. Don't fall for it. You're perfect.
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