I’m in therapy, and it’s one of the best things that ever happened to me. I say it’s the best thing because of what has come out of my first few sessions. I’ve learned that I am a “fixer,” and all of the work I do is catered towards making things better for other people, even at my own expense sometimes. And some of you just said, “Sheesh, that’s me too,” so hopefully what I tell you today will help you. You see, I know that this will hit home for you as an educator because that’s mostly your job- fixing things. There’s kids who come to you and don’t know the content; there are parents who are fed up with their kid’s behavior and need your help; there are things at school going awry that you have to figure out AND things going on at home that you’ve been trying to navigate. The crazy thing is we operate in our day to day lives like we can manage all of these things, when the reality is we just can’t give all of our energy to everything that’s around us. We can’t “keep that same energy” when there’s so much to balance. Something has to be deprioritized, and something has to take center stage. Period.
So a few things have come out of these sessions with one of them being that it’s okay to “Practice the Pause,” which simply means it’s okay to do something for yourself and be in the moment for yourself and not worry about anything else for some time. For me, that’s been journaling, working out, listening to all these books I have saved on my Audible playlist (and I prefer reading hard copies, but that’s another blog for another day), and it’s also been just sitting down and watching some goofy YouTube videos with my boys when I have a chance. And I’ve learned that pausing for a moment provides clarity. It gives us time to escape the chaos and see things as they are meant to be seen. There have been so many times when I’ve asked God to help me work out a situation, and simultaneously I’ve started working it out on my own without even waiting for God’s answer. The thing is, sometimes that answer is, “Don’t worry about that and let somebody else take care of it,” but when we prioritize what we want to do over what God wants us to do we find ourselves in a state of being overwhelmed, tired, anxious, etc. Because what we’ve been practicing is the process of asking God to help us, WITHOUT processing the practice of sitting and waiting for His direction. And ain’t no need of us asking for His help if we’ve decided that we were going to do it our way from the get go! It’s crazy.
But I posted this here because I also believe a lot of this “fixer” mentality has come from the work I’ve done for the past 16-17 years as an educator. It was probably magnified when I was an Assistant Principal and a Principal because that’s what I was tasked with doing- fixing things. And not to be ostentatious, but I was pretty good at doing just that. When we couple fixing things with being good at fixing things with being recognized and awarded with fixing things, then that’s all we can think about…trying to fix things until the next award or recognition comes our way. We have to be careful though because there will come a time when you try to fix something, and you fall on your face. There’s a reward in failure too, but nobody wants to talk about that. There’s always a lesson in each and every thing that happens to us; it’s just up to us to recognize and learn from it. We can’t do that though if we don’t take the time to practice the pause, reflect and be intentional about what we’re doing in our personal and professional lives and how all of those things are working together to make us better people. And I challenge all of us to do better.
So as we move to close out this school year and get promotions and make new improvement plans for our lives and our jobs, let’s also remember to include those times when we can stop for a moment and enjoy that moment. Let’s stop for a moment and think of the positives and negatives and the implications they have for us. Let’s stop for a moment just to stop and have some time to do nothing. This life is short, and those moments matter.
Chip and Dan Heath wrote a book, “The Power of Moments,” that I want to recommend for you. It changed my outlook on a lot of things, and I think it will do the same for you. It’s time to do some things differently. It’s time to work really hard to find balance in our lives. The craziest thing I’ve learned over the past couple of months is we highlight 50 as the age when we get “over the hill” when in actuality the average life span is between 75-80 years old. And knowing that I’ll be 40 this year has me realizing that there’s a good chance that I’ve already lived half of my life….and what do I need to prioritize for the remainder of it? And some of ya’ll are older than me so….I’m not trying to scare you, I’m just being real with you. Let’s make some changes together so we can be intentional on the impact we leave on those people that are looking to us and following behind us. We owe it to ourselves to do so in a way that makes sense.
As always…Be accountable and Be committed.
Dr. G.