Self-love and self-acceptance

Time for Day 3 of Luminita's Happiness Challenge and an issue which can happen for any of us - self-love and self-acceptance.

Image: self-central.com

REMINDER: Today’s happiness theme is “self-love and self-acceptance.”

 It is so easy to forget to love and accept ourselves.

So many young people today struggle with issues.  I believe this is even more the case than it was when I was a teenager. 

Social media and constant celebrity gossip doesn't help our young people to develop into the people they need to become.

It is also so easy as an adult to say something which can easily affect a young person's self-esteem.

Perhaps I unwittingly did that today.  I need to practice self-acceptance with Luminita's exercise.

I am already finding that these short focus sessions are making me think more about my own life and what I am doing each day.

It's not too late to join in!  Let me know if you do.

Release and let go

Day 2 of Luminita's Happiness Challenge is about release and let go.

We frequently hold on to things; ideas, situations and relationships which are doing us no good and we should let go of them.

REMINDER: Today’s happiness theme is “release and let go.”Are you holding onto something you need to let go of? Are you ready to let go?

Following on from my post yesterday about difficult students and being able to forgive myself, I know I also need to take the next step to release my feelings about that behaviour.

Are those students deliberately trying to provoke me to see how far they can push it?

Are they trying to do anything they can to stop them having to do work during the lesson?

Do they want to be seen as the student who has the most power in the classroom?

Are they trying to gain attention at any cost?

(The answer, in some cases, is probably 'yes'.)

And probably the biggest reason?

I teach the bottom sets and students who struggle with maths.

By the time that they are teenagers, many of them will have spent several years believing that they are useless, thick, unable to do maths and so they have learned strategies to cope with with a subject they believe is hard and even beyond them.

I love supporting students who have had difficulties learning a subject.  Most of my work has been in small groups and one to one.

I know that is where my strengths lie.  So teaching in the classroom has not always been easy for me.

Sometimes I berate myself for my inability to help the students in the lesson, or control their behaviour.

But I know I have to release those feelings and let them go. I and they need to be able to move forward, not get stuck in what has happened.

What do you need to let go from your life?

Forgiveness

Today is Day 1 of the Happiness Challenge.  See my blog post about it here - it's not too late to join!

It starts with forgiveness and is something we all have to face in different ways.

The email from Luminita tells us:

REMINDER: For today, the focus is on forgiveness. When was the
last time you truly, deeply forgave someone? It can be someone in
your past or present, or it can even be yourself.

Ouch!  That last phrase hurt!

How often do we forget to forgive ourselves?

As a teacher I struggle sometimes with forgiving some of the students who seem to delight in making a lesson difficult for you and the other students in the room.

Today, in one of my lessons, I had a student who lies regularly to my direct questions.  I asked him to get out his planner and he told me that he didn't have it.  I asked another adult in the room to check with the student that he didn't have it in his bag.  It appeared that he didn't. 

Yet when I checked later on in the lesson when he told me that he hadn't sprayed his body spray (which was chokingly obvious and he was the only student near his bag!) I found him only half opening his bag and holding his planner out of the way so that it couldn't be seen!

The fact that students lie to me is not new.

Neither is the fact that they are often rather bad at lying.

As a mum and a teacher, I have heard enough lies to know when someone is trying to pull the wool over my eyes!

What really upsets me though is the fact that this student can cause regular disruption to the lesson through his lies.  Sometimes I get drawn into a backwards and forwards conversation with him - usually when I am tired or frustrated by his behaviour.

Afterwards I am cross with myself for allowing him to cause disruption yet again.

I find it difficult to forgive myself for that.

Yet I am human too.  I want to do the very best I can for these students.  They have often struggled for a long time, both in school and in the subject.

I become frustrated sometimes that they don't see or accept the help which is offered to them.

Yet I know that if I am consistent, they may realise that they did receive some help and support and one day in the future, they may thank me for it.

I love teaching, though it can be very hard work and frustrating.

Most of all I need to love myself and forgiving myself for my humanity is part of that.

Who should you forgive on this first day of the Happiness Challenge?  Let me know what you think.

21-Day Happiness Challenge

Today I had an email from Mindvalley entitled "The Story of the Most Viral Happiness Article on Facebook".

I always open emails from Mindvalley because their content is consistently excellent, but this definitely intrigued me. 

The email told the story of the blogger and writer behind the PurposeFairy.com blog, Luminita Saviuc.

"Over the summer a few years ago, Luminita wrote a blog post on happiness. It was a casual post called "15 Things To Give Up To Be Happy". The post stayed on her blog attracting a few visitors for many months. And nothing much happened as she continued her amateur blogging career while working at Mindvalley as a course designer. 

But then something weird happened.

That post began to touch a nerve. People started sharing it and sending it to their moms, friends, lovers and co-workers. The 15 Things Luminita suggested we give up to be happy - seemed to resonate with a LOT of people.

In a few short weeks the post got shared 1.2 MILLION times on Facebook. Making it quite possibly the most shared personal growth article on social media.

And more than that - she was asked by Penguin books to turn the ideas into a book."

"Now Luminita's book is coming out soon, and she's launching another 21 day challenge. This time on happiness. And open to you. 

She calls it the 21-Day Happiness Challenge."

http://purposefairy.leadpages.co/21-day-challenge/ 

The original article she wrote was: http://www.purposefairy.com/3308/15-things-you-should-give-up-in-order-to-be-happy/ 

I have decided to sign up for this challenge.  After all we all deserve to be happy! 

It starts on 1st March (less than 48 hours from now).

Let me know if you have decided to join in too!