In this blog post I will be sharing a realization I’ve had about my work that has assisted me tremendously and might be assisting for others as well, whether in relation to work or something else entirely.
So – lately I’ve been feeling very stressed about my job where I’ve felt like I’m constantly chasing after time and no matter what I do I can never catch up. This is due to the nature of my job and the fact that I’m still very new at it. So there is nothing odd about that. But I haven’t exactly set a limit for myself of how much work I’m supposed to do when I come home. So what this means is that I have given myself a constantly infinite workload. Because where I am as a teacher I still have a lot to learn and so there is always more to do, but instead of for example giving myself a specific goal or amount of time to work every day, I’ve simply accepted this unlimited and infinite. So I work full time and then as many teachers, I’ve got ten hours for planning, communicating with parents and other stuff that I have to do on ‘my own time’ but I haven’t scheduled this into my plans, so instead I’ve been doing it quite randomly.
All of this has caused me to be so stressed constantly and continuously, waking up every morning and going to sleep every night thinking about all the stuff that I have to do and all the stuff I never get to.
So I started to look at this and how I’m completely new to teaching. I mean, I’ve only been at it for less than a year. So it is actually completely unrealistic of me to expect myself to be perfect as a teacher and to know everything in advance, when I can’t possibly know something that I’ve never done before. So this is the first point that I realized. Secondly there are many things in life that are somewhat infinite and incessant in how they can always be better. And with such points it doesn’t make any sense to expect oneself to be able to get ‘behind’ them in one day or even one week or year, because it is simply not possible. So what I see is that I’ve got to start setting some realistic goals for myself but also within this, that this is a point that isn’t just about my teaching and how I expect myself to be ‘complete’ or ‘perfect’ within that, but actually how this pertains to other areas of my life as well.
I’ve seen once again how important one’s starting-point is and how we often tend to blame reality for something that we’re actually creating within our minds. Because for example – it is not necessary to be stressed. It doesn’t help anything or anyone that we’re stressed. It doesn’t change the situation. And often we simply keep being stressed instead of actually look at the context of what we’re facing as a practical problem with a practical solution.
So this is what I’ve found: points are either practical points with practical solutions OR they are mind-problems that aren’t real in fact that then require a change in our starting-point where we simply require stopping and letting the point go because it isn’t an actual problem.
Now – obviously there will be practical problems that we can’t necessarily solve practically, at least not immediately, but then a solution may involve accepting the situation for what it is and enabling oneself to make it as best as possible within the giving conditions that one cannot immediately change.
But the mind problems are actually what we most often preoccupy ourselves with and this is completely unnecessary and counter-productive because there aren’t any solutions involved.
So for me these points have been very cool to realize because through them I’ve been able to change my approach to myself within my work. So simply by changing how I look at my work, how I approach it – my entire experience has changed. Because this was a mind-problem and because I was preoccupying myself within that, I actually diverted my focus and attention from looking at the actual practical problems that I do have the ability to solve and change. So since this realization, I’ve actually been able to do something about my work situation and I will investigate and look at how I can implement this realization into other areas of my life.
I recommend reading the following blogs:
Natural Learning Abilities blog series – a MUST READ!
Education is a Human Right Deconstructing the Root of All Evil World’s best Education is based on Equality The Fall of our Education System Application of Knowledge, is it being Fostered in ourEducational Systems? – Education Research Part 1 You are also welcome to view the videos on my YouTube channel here
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