I hope your school year is off to a good start. As promised last month, I want to continue to focus on the fine art of personal energy management. As I continue my travels throughout the country, I remain concerned that the daily stressors of an educator’s life continue to grow. Most school systems are experiencing financial strain, as is almost any business or industry. That means almost everyone is called upon to do more with less–less money, less help, and if we aren’t careful, less enthusiasm. We don’t have much control over the daily demands and stressors. Our only area of control is how we will personally respond to those demands. The phrase stress management can be misleading because it implies that we can somehow control the stressors coming at us. The fact is, we usually can’t. We can’t control the economy, or the political climate or the parents of our students. The fact is we cannot control anything but ourselves—on a good day. That is why it is preferable to think in terms of personal energy management. We must remind ourselves continually that we must take care of myself first or we will be of little use to others. Thinking about energy management keeps you focused your personal responses to the stressful situations that present themselves in your life. I have the power to make a decision about how much personal energy you are willing to expend on the most troublesome and “out of control” events in your life. There are many strategies for protecting and enhancing your personal energy supply and I want to focus on one this month. That is how to develop emotional detachment skills. The work of every educator requires a certain amount of emotional investment by the simple fact that we deal with human beings, their problems, emotions and their needs.  Emotions are energy laden. They can give us energy or leave us depleted. That is why we most protect ourselves from an overabundance of negative reactions in any given day. If we don’t we’ll be exhausted. Sometimes it does not seem like we can help how we feel. Our feelings seem automatic. This may be true but we can develop detachment skills which help us move more quickly from negative, painful or frustrating feelings to feelings of caring detachment. Here are some ideas to help you put or keep a little emotional distance between you and those emotional aches and pains that can wear us out:

 

1)      Talk to yourself:  Use positive self-talk.  Tell yourself to “let it go.”  Remind yourself that you have given this issue all the energy you chose to give for the moment; then tell yourself “That’s all the energy there is for this today.”  Purposely refuse to allow yourself to go back to the issue.  If someone else wants you to revisit the subject just tell them, “I don’t want spend any more energy on this right now, maybe later.”

2)      Picture yourself protected.  Create a mental picture of a powerful shield that surrounds you and will not allow negative energy to permeate.  When a particular person or situation you cannot avoid presents itself, imagine yourself protected by the shield.  Your shield has the power to deflect their negativity or emotional turmoil.

3)      Go to the big picture.   Ask yourself  “How important is this in the infinite order of things?”  Usually the answer is “ Not much.” Most things that get us upset, especially in the work place, are things that resolve themselves with or without your emotional energy.  Make the decision to conserve your energy.

4)      Cancel the guilt trip.  When you are successful at letting something go and not allowing yourself to burn up your precious energy reserves, do not substitute emotional energy with a guilt trip.  Whatever you let go is easily retrieved.  You can always go back to it, but if you let it go for a while, make a decision to not beat yourself up about your very wise decision.