(by Amber Dembowski)
I have always been infatuated with the brain and how it works. My obsession truly started during my Anatomy & Physiology class during high school with Mr. Colvin. He was an amazing teacher, and probably the first person who showed me how to hold someone accountable AND provide the necessary support to be successful. He taught me how accountability can be a positive thing.
I came from a suburban area that could probably be described as a very picket-fence-like neighborhood. I’m sure I wasn’t the only student who came from a divorced family, but it certainly wasn’t very prevalent at the time. And sometimes I think the office staff at my high school babied me because of it. They used to let me call myself out of school for being sick because they felt bad about my situation. Needless to say, I missed a lot of school.
Anyway, when I returned from my absence, most of the teachers let me just continue on with my learning, not asking that I make anything up or demonstrate my understanding of the teaching I missed. Not Mr. Colvin. Everyday he’d have someone in class take notes using transfer paper so that a carbon copy was created. To one side of his classroom he had accordion style files dated for each day of class. The carbon copy of notes and any copies of handouts were filed for each day of learning. If you were absent you were responsible for copying the notes and completing the handouts that were filed away for the day that you missed.
I’m a pretty type A personality, so his organization was enough to make me love him as a teacher, but truly, the reason why I still think of him often is because of his high expectations for me. I was never allowed to opt out of learning. Even when I called in sick. And I’m so glad, because it’s his class, Anatomy & Physiology, that made me fall in love with how the brain works.
So, here’s the whole point I’m leading up to. My infatuation with the brain has helped my well-being as a school leader. In order for us to perform at peak capacity as educators we need to have a healthy mind. Without a healthy mind, things will just continue to get more difficult and stressful, and burn-out sets in.
Positive self talk and grateful practices actually change our brain chemistry. Thinking positive, happy, hopeful, optimistic, joyful thoughts produces serotonin, which creates a sense of well-being.
Our days, as school leaders, are unpredictable and we don’t always know what stressful situations will present themselves, but what we can do is manage our mind and our response to these situations.
At any given moment our brain will automatically go negative. ‘Negative’ is the path of least resistance for our brain. I’m sure you’ve heard the term fight, flight, or freeze. The structure of our brain and the chemicals released in the brain are there for the purpose of actual physical survival, not mental well-being.
Our job includes a lot of weights and lifts. If you imagine a balance beam in your brain, we usually try to keep each side balanced. But sometimes we are hit with multiple repeated stressful moments, and now the balance beam is heavier on one side. It begins breaking you down and you’re not able to respond to the stress as well. It’s at these times we need to focus on increasing serotonin through our acts of appreciation, and focus on the positives.
When we extend ourselves to others, pause to see the greatness around us, and intentionally create the time and space to be present with our students and staff in positive ways, we’re supporting our own mental health in the process. Check out these simple messages of joy. They can be sprinkled throughout the building or purposefully placed for staff to find.
Positive practices like this strengthen the frontal lobe, and as we strengthen the frontal lobe we increase our ability to purposefully direct attention and behavior, suppress inappropriate knee-jerk responses, and switch strategies flexibly. This allows us to balance the beam out again.
Honestly, mindfulness should no longer be considered a “nice-to-have”. It’s a “must-have”, a way to keep our brains healthy, to support self-regulation and effective decision-making capabilities, and to protect ourselves from toxic stress.
Usually our mind is caught up in our worries, our fears, our anger, or our regrets. All the negatives, right? This is the brain’s way of surviving. All of these negatives are warnings sent to us to supposedly protect us. But we know, through research and first hand experience, that these negative thoughts eat away at our well-being.
When you’re practicing mindfulness you stop listening to yourself. When you listen to yourself your brain is managing you based on what it knows. But, when you talk to yourself, you can tell your brain whatever you want it to believe. You can choose to ignore the negative and focus on the positive, and your brain will begin to believe it.
We generally have about 60,000 thoughts a day. 60,000! And because of our survivalist brain, most of those thoughts are negative, especially when we let our brain do the thinking. We need to overwrite these messages in our brain.
What most people aren’t aware of, is that they’re recycling yesterday’s old news. 90% of what we think, feel and do is recycled from our past. And most of the time, these thoughts are highly limiting when applied to our relationships, job, and happiness levels. If we want to focus on the present and future and how we want to approach situations, then we need to be aware of our thoughts.
Thought-stopping is a critical piece here. Whenever a negative thought enters your mind, stop that thought and replace it with a different, more productive thought.
You can do this by shifting your thoughts into a question. Instead of thinking this isn’t possible, you ask, “How is this possible?”
Or you can change your perspective on things. If plans fall through, instead of thinking about how upset you are by it, start thinking about the opportunities or time that has opened up or increased because of it.
It’s important to be aware of your thoughts and how they’re impacting the ways in which you approach your work. The brain is so fascinating, and what’s even more fascinating is that we can learn to control, or override, the thoughts that influence how we function throughout the day.
Comments