Weekend Warriors: March Stress LESS

My Weekend Warrior friends and I are coming at you with tips and tricks to help life be "stress free."

If I could plop you down on a beautiful beach on your own private island well, that may just do the trick to get rid of that stress...

BUT I guess we will come back to reality.

Before I embark on my sharing what works for me let me tell your this:

I have been teaching for 16 years. When I started I was at school until 6pm every single night...maybe later. Despite the long hours, I still brought work home with me.

I took myself a bit too seriously. I was stressed every day. I worried about each and every lesson.

I was 22 years old when I landed my own class and I wanted it all to be perfect. I doubt it was, but I do think it was good and I was worrying too much.  I was too critical of myself.

And now flash forward to today.

I still get stressed.... I still spend more money than I should on my little ones. I still request the help of my family to prep with me {especially cut out lamination} and I still stay late, but only two days a week.

I have found BALANCE.

I am not a pro at it by any means. But I try... I try to remember to think about ME. I think that if I look after myself that in the end that makes me a better teacher than worrying, stressing, color coding, over planning and freaking everyone else out around me.

I try to prioritize all the things that can potentially cause stress. I *try* to make a list and stick with it. I'm still really good at procrastinating especially when super stressful things are on the horizon {for example: report cards}

I also try to make a SCHEDULE and stick with it. So my plan is that I will stay late two days per week. But on the other days I aim to leave by 4:30 so that I can go to the gym or do the things I like to do. This is hard for me because I am queen of last minute and I still like to operate that way in certain areas of life.

I think another important piece is FRIENDS! The older we get the less we have time to catch up with an old friend or to just hang out. We're too busy- demands of your family, work and just life. But I think finding that time to talk with friends allows you to relax and maybe vent and just helps! If we just eat, sleep, work.... well, that just allows the stress to keep growing.

I also just put it all in PERSPECTIVE.

I remember when we found a few years ago we were going to have 29 kids in each kindergarten class. Talk about the stress-o-meter going up. People were complaining. People were scared. People were mad.

But I just thought- at least I have a job....believe me, I wasn't thrilled, but A. I can't change it and B. it's better than having no job........  When my school district went from 20 kids in all K-3 classes to 24..... many teachers lost their jobs. And again, when we went from 24 to 29 another big group of talented people were let go. So I had to find the POSITIVE side.

I'm going to skip the exercise tip. We all know that exercise combats stress and we should do it- I go in spurts with exercise and have no business sharing that as a tip that works for me.

I think I will also skip the get sleep tip... it's one I don't follow. I am up late stalking blogs and rewriting my lesson plans for the next day because I just read the best new idea....and I am okay with keeping those habits for now. Because that is what keeps me fresh and having fun in my classroom. Others would find last minute lesson plan changes stressful- then don't go that. And that leads me my very last tip: Do WHAT WORKS FOR YOU. And if you aren't sure what works for you then invest in you and take the time to dabble with different things to see what helps you regulate stress and keep you calm.

You are awesome! Don't forget that....having a good feeling about yourself also curbs that stress.

So ENJOY your weekend. Do at least one thing that isn't work related no matter how much is on your to-do list.

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