Your Emotional Wellness Matters!

There are 6 areas of self nurturing that I have identified and build my coaching and offerings around. They are: Physical, Social, Spiritual, Environment (your surroundings), Emotional, and Professional. You’ll see these represented in The Self Nurtured Teacher Icons.

Although these areas are listed separate as a way to understand and differentiate, as everything in life, they are interconnected. Many times they work together. Many times one leads to the other and vice versa. Whatever the case may be, knowing the intention behind what you choose to say yes or no to is just as important.

I tell you this because October happens to be Emotional Wellness Month, so I’m going to put my focus there for a bit, knowing that there will be some overlap in nurturing areas.

Let me ask you…What is Emotional Wellness?

It can mean different things to different people. What I’ve learned during my 10+ years in coaching, is that defining words or ideas is an important part of moving forward in understanding each other and the situations we find ourselves in. People can use the same words and have varying definitions. It’s important to understand how YOU define your areas of well-being.

Here is the working definition(s) I am using for emotional wellness:

• The ability to handle life’s stresses; to adapt to change and difficult times.
• How you nurture your feelings, conscious inner state of being, and your intellect directly impact this ability.

Some habits to support this could be:

• Affirmations
• Therapy or coaching
• Gratitude and acknowledgements
• Breath work
• Acts of self love

When you think about your own emotional wellness, what comes to mind?

Are you stressed or at peace? Do you stop to take care of your needs or put others first? When changes happen are you confident in navigating them, or do you dig your heals in?

A shift in mindset can help shift your emotional state of being. If you go to victim mode, which could sound something as simple as…”Why me? I never catch a break? Or constant complaining… then you are letting life happen TO you and that negatively affects your emotional well-being.

Something I like to say to myself and have come to believe is that life is happening FOR me… not to me.

I’ll say it again… Life is happening FOR you, not to you.

Everyone has shit that happens in their lives. Comparing yours as easier or harder is a waste of your time and energy. My therapist best taught this to me. She said my belief that having someone’s hard thing (instead of my own) would somehow be better would never address the meaning and lesson that I was meant to go through.

This reminded me of something Oprah once said… you keep getting little stones thrown with ripples to learn what is meant for you to learn. If you don’t learn it, the lesson keeps coming back in the form of bigger rocks and bigger waves.

What does this have to do with emotional wellness?

Once I began to completely face how I treated myself…how I put others needs ahead of mine because that meant I was worthy…things began to change. By things I mean EVERYTHING… being able to let go, my marriage, my relationships, doing less at school and getting the same if not better results, and so much more.

Maybe someday I’ll talk about those really hard things I went through that sucked AND without them, I would never have gotten to the point where I am today: writing a blog post on MY website for MY business to help OTHER teachers figure out how to come through for themselves just as I did for me.

Today I want you to repeat this affirmation as a way of emotional wellness: I AM ENOUGH
When starting to make change, the smallest step done consistently is what will create
sustainable results. Go slow to go fast.
Want to dig a little deeper in creating change during the school day?

Get my FREE Teacher SEL mini-sessions course here. I’ll be here coaching and cheering you all along the way.