3 Things you need to start doing TODAY to Conquer Teacher Tired and Burnout

Last week we spent time going over five things you needed to stop doing to start healing yourself from teacher tired and burnout (check it out here if you haven’t yet!) and this week I want to look at three action steps you can take to truly regain your time, your life, and your wellness.

We spend a lot of time talking about all the things we would do if we had more time, don’t we? If I had more time I would go to the gym, take better care of myself, read that book, and make more homemade meals. Here’s the problem when we say these things: essentially we’re saying there are more important things we put before taking care of ourselves. It’s a hard reality that many of us don’t want to face and I’m not an exception, either.

I have a 22-month-old and a 5-month-old and I’ve found myself complaining about how I don’t have time to work out in this season. Since my oldest, Cooper, was born, I’ve been waking up between 4 and 4:30 am so I can shower and have 45 minutes of “me time” before one of the kids wakes up. This is my sacred time. After this time passes my mom duties start with bottles, breakfast, morning activities, laundry, cleaning, and doing some work for Tools to Teach. This normally takes us up to nap time around 11:30. During this nap I hunker down and do as much as I can for Tools to Teach. Once the kids wake up it’s back to mom duties, an afternoon activity, and the next thing I know I’m giving baths, making dinner, reading stories, and snuggling them to sleep. I have asked myself over and over again where am I possibly fitting in a workout? After they all go to sleep and I’m completely exhausted? No thanks–literally no time. That’s the story I’ve been telling myself. But here’s what I recently realized–I have 45 minutes every single morning to workout. I’ve been waking up early so I can shower and have quiet time but I can also choose to workout then. It’s just that until this moment, it’s been more important to me that I have the opportunity for quiet than I do for exercise. I made the choice. And here’s the cool and empowering thing: I can choose something different for myself this week. This week I can choose to use that time to workout and then take a shower some other time in my day.

We need to take back control over our lives. Teachers may not be able to control what administration is requiring, how parents act, or what society’s opinions are which is why it’s vital we start controlling what we can. So here are three things you can start doing today to help put your wellness first.

1. Determine what your non-negotiables of the day are and then never miss them. You need to start putting yourself first. You’re only going to be able to show up to life, your students, your family, and your friends the way you want to if you’re taking care of yourself. So identify a few things that you MUST do for yourself each day. These need to become your non-negotiables for the day. So for example, my non-negotiables currently are waking up before my kids to shower, doing my makeup, listening to a podcast by myself, making the beds in the morning, and drinking at least 150 ounces of water throughout the day. I can control these things almost always. Now granted, there may be a random morning where one of my kids wakes up super early and I’m not completely alone, but I don’t abandon the practice entirely, in that instance, I will put on a show, tuck them into the couch and go back to my routine. And no, I don’t feel bad about using the TV as a babysitter to accomplish a non-negotiable (you shouldn’t either if you’re a mom reading this). So pick 3-5 small things you want to do for yourself each day and then DO THEM, NO MATTER WHAT.

2. Take an inventory of your day. This is such a simple but necessary one that few people do. So often at the end of each day, we think of all the things we didn’t get to do. What a waste of time. What we need to start doing is taking an inventory of all the things we did do that day. I lay with my son each night while he goes to sleep, and as we’re snuggling I will mentally go through my day and identify all the things I did. Teachers naturally multi-task so much and I don’t think many of us realize just how much we accomplish in a day. When you do this, you’re building your self-esteem, you’re celebrating all the things you did instead of living in this lack mindset of all you didn’t accomplish. And the thing here is, the more positive your mindset is, the easier it’s going to be to do even more, so celebrate everything you do, I promise you’ll be amazed when you actually start paying attention to this!

3. Start treating yourself the way you want your friends to treat themselves. I know by now this sounds cliche but the saying is around because of how many people don’t do it. We all have that one friend we get so frustrated with because they don’t take care of themselves, or because they don’t see how great they are or what they deserve. We spend so much time telling them they’re worth it and amazing and all these things which is great–every person needs a cheerleader. But when are you going to wake up and realize you need to be your number one cheerleader? You deserve to treat yourself with kindness, respect, and compassion as well. Today’s the day you start looking at yourself as you do your friends–talk to yourself the way you talk to them, treat yourself the way you treat them, and take care of yourself the way you want them to take care of themselves.

The key takeaway is this: you are the only person who can heal yourself from burnout. Your administration, your students, and your classroom may change a little but ultimately no one is going to be able to miraculously heal you. This is an inside job, and yes, it requires work which requires time. But YOU HAVE ALL THE TIME YOU NEED to take care of yourself. Because if you don’t take care of yourself, eventually you won’t be able to do any of the things you’re doing now. So start today. Because you deserve a life beyond your wildest dreams.