The Ultimate Educators Handbook for Being Happier - Part 3 - Being a Joy Detective

  Welcome back teacher friends, not just teachers, admins, counselors, anybody who works in education. There's something in here for all of you. So let me ask you a question. How much time do you spend at school? A lot, right? Whether you're in the classroom or in your office. or seeing students in small groups, whatever you're doing, you spend a lot of time there.

If you really want a happier life, doesn't it make sense to start practicing these happy habits that we've been talking about on campus? So that's what this week's episode is all about. Of course, we're going to have a little sprinkling of the brain science, but then I'm going to give you strategies you can use to flex your happy muscle to practice these habits.

inside the classroom with your kids on campus. It is episode three in my deep dive of my book Positive Mindset Habits for Teachers and this one is all about how to be a joy detective and how to teach the kids to do the same. You are not going to want to miss it. Easy. Strategies you can apply starting today.

See you on the inside.  Welcome to the Balance Your Teacher Life podcast where we talk all things avoiding educator burnout, setting healthy boundaries, and achieving better work life balance.  If you're passionate about education, but tired of it consuming your whole life, you have found your home in the podcast universe.

I'm your host, Grace Stevens, and let's get going with today's show.

Okay, so as I mentioned in the intro, this is part three of me doing a deep dive into the book Positive Mindset Habits for Teachers. Doesn't matter if you've read the book or not. If you've read the book, great refresher, some extra information and strategies here. Um, if you haven't read the book, you know what?

You could use these episodes. There's going to be another one. It's a four part series. You could use them to help you with a book study. Lots of people have told me that's how they were using these. episodes. Either way, you're going to find something, um, actionable to take away today, whether you've read the book or not.

So here we go. Let me give just a recap in case you have not listened to the other episodes. Doesn't matter. Um, but you can go back. So episode 26 was, um, the part one where we talked about happiness being a state of consciousness, not a set. of circumstances, right? We dive, dove into the science of how really 40 percent of your happiness quotient, like your baseline happy  kind of level  is due to intentional practices.

Right? Only 10 percent is your life circumstances. I know that sounds crazy but I talked about the data back in that episode if you're interested. 50 percent you're born with, right? You just, you were, that's genetic. You can't  move away from that. I, I was not born with the glass half full, I gotta tell ya.

Um, but 40%, that 40 percent that we can work on, that's what the habits in this book and these mindsets are and they can really move. Um, the needle forward for you. So that was episode 26. That was part one. And then part two in episode 28, we looked at presence and, um, flow. And the idea that you can only be happy in the present moment, right?

We can't keep putting it off for some future state. We can't say, you know, I'm going to be happy when I have, you know, different students or I have my dream class, right? There is no dream class. You should, you should know that by now, right? Um, when I have the grade that I wanted to teach, or when I'm in a different school, or if I had different admin, or if I had, you know, continue on.

Oh, I'll be happy when it's the weekend, or when it's spring break, or when it's summer, or when I retire. I mean, we can't delay being happy. You can only be happy in the present moment. And so in episode 28, I talked about strategies.  of how to bring flow, presence, mindfulness practices into the classroom.

Things that you can, here's where the magic happens, right? Here's the whole point of this book. I'd written another book, The Happy Habit, and it wasn't based on practicing these things in the classroom. The magic with this book is, here's all the science, here's all the things that people tell you to do to be happy.

How do we incorporate that into the classroom? This is written through the lens of of a teacher through 20 years of practicing these habits in the classroom. And so that's kind of where, what's special about this book. So anyway, so those were the two previous episodes. In this episode, we're going to look at being a joy detective.

Now, let me tell you, I I'm going to try not to nerd out if you, um, if you know me at all, you know that like kind of the, the neuroscience bit is kind of what I'm passionate about. I tend to nerd out a little bit on that, but let me just put it real simply. And I'm somebody who has studied neuro linguistic programming, positive psychology, all those things for a long time, right?

I'm not a researcher, but I read other people's research. Um, and here's what I can tell you. In a nutshell, you know, your brain developed to keep you safe, not to make you happy.  Okay, let me say that again. Your brain Over time, through evolution, I know that's a, you know, a triggering word for some people, but  back from the, you know, the dawn of time where we were, you know, cavemen, um, our brain developed from then to now.

Most of the brain functions there have developed to keep us safe, not necessarily to make us happy. So what do I mean by that?  Basically, your brain and your nervous system have evolved over time, structures, ways of functioning to keep us alive. Okay. Think about back when we were hunter gatherers, right?

We all know about fight or flight. If we heard a sound, a rustling in the bushes, we were automatically going to assume that it was something dangerous, right? Our sympathetic nervous system would ramp up. That's our adrenaline, right? Our fight or flight response, the parasympathetic nervous system, our kind of rest and digest systems, they would be shoved aside for a minute, okay, so that we could run fast and we could keep ourselves safe, right?

That, we understand that, that at that time, that helped keep us alive. The problem is now. That we are constant, constantly in this stressed state, many of us, right? What used to be a threat would be a saber toothed tiger. What's a threat now to our nervous system is that, you know, that email, that text, come see me after school.

It's the dysregulated student, right? We're living in this constant state of  fight or flight or as it manifests a lot. Um,  I find in education, well there's the, the freeze response, I find that a lot in students, some students who we just feel are disengaged, like that's really like a freeze response, it's a trauma response, but I find with educators a lot of it turns into the fawn response, right, where we're just, that's our chronic people pleasing, right, I had, I had a whole episode on that that you can go back and look at.

So basically, When I say, you know, your brain has developed, evolved to keep you alive, not necessarily to make you happy. So that's when we see these different, um, biases, right? You might remember from if you had to take, you know, psychology 101, you know that there's a negativity bias, right? So that's  basically, that's the phenomenon where Even if they are of the same intensity, emotions that are negative have a greater effect on our brain than those that are positive.

Positive, right? We're going to remember how that snake bite felt. We're going to remember that it killed or hurt someone more than we're going to remember that, you know, pleasant afternoon where we were laying in the plains and the butterflies were fluttering, right? So that's our negativity bias. And then the other thing that really comes into this is  looking at the reticular activated system.

Not sure if you've heard of that. It's, it's, it's part of the hypothalamus. It's a bundle of nerves that sit at your brainstem, right? Who cares? I mean, from a technical standpoint, it's job is to regulate kind of behavioral arousal. Motivation, but it really what it is, is like it's a screening system. Okay.

It helps you. Well, one of its functions is to kind of regulate wakefulness and sleep wake transitions. Okay. But from our perspective, the important thing that it does is help. Uh, kind of screen through stimuli. There is so much stimulation, um, through the senses. Sensory input, we call it. There's so much coming through that our brain can't handle it.

It can't process it all at once. There is literally tens of thousands of pieces of sensory input every second. So what this little bundle of nerves does is act like, um, Like a filter, a screen, to help you zone in on what your brain thinks,  based on experience, is important to you. So it would be, let's say for example, let me give you an example.

It's the, it's the reason that, let's say you're in the mall and there's lots of like, kind of noise, kind of background noise, background chatter, all kinds of things happening. If somebody says your name, you, you immediately turn your head, even if they're not calling you. Right? But your brain knows to listen out for your name.

It's, it screens for that, right? Or let's say you suddenly you're looking for a new car and you find a car and you're like, oh wow, this is great. You know, I think this car's gonna be great. And you know, it's really unusual and, um.  Then you go out in the world and suddenly you start seeing that car everywhere.

Now you're screening in for it, right? We call this, you might remember this from psychology, right? Confirmation bias, right? Its purpose is to look for information that validates your beliefs. Okay, so the brain's function is, the brain wants you to feel like, it doesn't want you to think like you're crazy, it wants to make sense of things.

So if you already have a belief about something,  Or a thought about something, or you automatically screen in for something like your name, then when, when this, uh, this bundle of nerves is screening through all the information, it's going to present you something that validates your beliefs. Okay, so that's the whole reason for confirmation bias.

So anyway, really, so what is what you're asking me? So all of this happens unconsciously. Okay, if you have about 60, 000 thoughts a day and 95 percent of them are same as the ones they were yesterday, you're just reliving the same experience, right? And if that experience is stress and things irritating you, you need to be intentional.

about wanting to notice different stuff. So this was all a preamble to say, what you need to do is set your filter, set your intention. I know intention sounds woo woo, but filter is scientific. Set your filter for looking for the good stuff. Like we teach the kids, go be a Be a, uh, be a detective, look for the text evidence.

Here, we're going to be looking for evidence that life is good, there's fun stuff happening, kids are learning, and, um, we can set our filter to notice the good stuff. And I call that being a joy detective. And I have some powerful strategies for you, all of which can be practiced inside the classroom. And it's going to be simpler than you think.

Now again,  don't confuse simple with easy.  Simple means I can give you four steps and four practices, right? And they're all simple to do and they cost no money and they take very little time. Okay, all of that is fantastic good news. Is it easy? Well, look, you're battling against years of conditioning. You know, your brain has these, these pathways that are well trodden, um, to be screening and filtering for the stuff that is making you miserable in a lot of our cases, right?

So it's gonna take repetition. It's not one and done. I call it the happy muscle for a reason. You can't go to the gym and do one, you know, bicep curl and expect to be ripped. Right? I wish I could get my, you know, six pack abs with one sit up, but that's not how it works. It's a muscle. It takes repetition.

You're gonna have to keep doing it. Okay, so don't let that put you off. Let me repeat again. These practices are deceivingly simple,  right? Don't write them off and say that's not gonna work. They have been validated. Listen, who cares about the science? They're ones I practice it.  And in my own experience,  I really did manage to hack my happiness.

So I know for a fact that they work, um, and you know, I've put my own tweak on them and I think you're going to love them. Okay. So here's the first one and I call this five things.  Okay, five things. And you basically, because you, your brain needs a goal, right, and I'm, I'm very much a kind of like checklist kind of person, so to quantify it,  Right?

Not to just say, go out and look for positive things, like what? No. Five. I'm going to set my intention, and I tell myself, I'm going to look for five things that I like, and I'm going to find them. And when do I do this? I do this every time I walk out my door.  Every time I walk out my classroom door, well actually every time I walk out my front door, but my classroom door.

There was quite a long walk from my classroom door to either the restroom, Or the office, or the multi purpose room, the lunchroom, all those things. Think about how many times a day you walk across campus. And what are you doing? You're thinking about the copies you need to make, you're ruminating on the kid that just drove you up the wall.

You're thinking about that interaction you're dreading with a parent, right? You just, you're not, you're just, ugh, you're walking and before you know it, you've arrived where you were going. Hopefully you didn't drop anything on the way, right? Your arms are full of the copies you need to make, you're balancing your coffee, your keys, your Sometimes it's like running the gauntlet, right?

You're trying to avoid kids who are running up to you, tugging on you, asking you things or, you know, in my case with the littles, oh my gosh, they were running up to give me a hug, right? How beautiful is that? But in any case.  My mind was elsewhere, so I trained myself.  Every time I left the door, I would actually touch the doorframe.

That's a pattern interrupt. That's kind of like a, um,  I get, from a neuroscience point of view, that's something you could, like, in trainment, like, like Pavlov's Dove and the Bell, right? Like, I would train myself. Touch the door on the way out. It would remind me to set my intention. I will look for five things I like and I will find them.

And sure enough, I would look around. I would see a bird in a tree. Luckily we had trees on campus. I would see a kid tying another kid's shoelace. I would see girls jumping rope, having fun. Um, I would see two yard duties laughing, right? I would notice. stuff that was good. Okay, so that  practice number one.

Now when I'm  at home, sometimes I do what I call a joy walk. If I'm like in a funk or I'm feeling stuck or whatever, I just tell myself I'm going on a quick joy walk. Sometimes it's just a walk around the yard. Um, don't always have time to go for some nice, you know, 20, 30 minute walk, but I do the same thing.

A joy walk for me is I am going to look for five things that I like. And I will find them.  Okay, a very simple practice. But it takes consistency, right? Like that repetition of, of, of your bicep. It's the repetition of that brain muscle.  I will look for five things I like and I will find them. Now, there's nothing magic about the number five.

There's no woo woo about it needs to be a prime number or like five, five, I don't know, five senses. It's something actually I do. A lot to, um, when I want to be more present, when my mind is racing, this goes back to last week's episode, my mind is racing and I want to be more present, and present in my body, I either take five breaths, or I try and feel five sensations, like I'll listen for five sounds,  or I will close my eyes and try and feel five.

Physical sensations in my body, like the weight of my back pushing against the chair. Um, maybe, um, I can feel the air conditioning on my skin. You get what I'm saying. So, for me, I kind of fixate on the number five. Um, but there's nothing magical about the number five. If you decide you want to find six things.

Or you decide you want to find  four things, nothing magical about five. The magic comes in setting the intention. Okay. And so that is something you can do with your kids too. You can say, let's go on a joy walk around campus. Obviously for little kids, it's going to work better. And in your mind, keep track or give them a little notebook.

Draw five things that you like. Shh. Can I do it quietly? Right.  Kind of a fun thing to do. All right. That's strategy number one. Set your intention.  The Joy Walk.  Number two. Now this is where your journal comes in. If you have not downloaded yet the free version of the Positive Mindset Habits for Teachers journal.

The PDF, it will last you six weeks. Now you can go buy a physical copy that lasts you all year. Beautiful thing. At the end of the year you have this wonderful memento. But if, just to get started, if you want the free version, just go to gracestevens.com/journal forward slash journal and you will notice that one of the prompts for every day is the best three parts of my day.

Okay, now the magic here comes in writing it down. We know. From a brain science perspective that when you physically write things down not type them Yeah, you can take a photo of them, whatever but writing it down imprints it in the brain more and this is Two fold this is if you're only gonna do one practice one practice This is the one to do because it's twofold One it sets your radar to look for the good stuff  as you're going through the day And you make this a consistent practice, you're going to see that you get to ask yourself, Huh, well that was nice.

Ooh, I wonder if it's going to be in my top three. Huh, is that going to be in my top three? Right? You kind of set your radar. It's like a little game you play with yourself. So that's already the first thing, is that you're setting your radar. For looking for the good stuff, right? Being a joy detective. But the second powerful thing is this acts as a closing ritual.

When you do it consistently, you're going to do it the last few minutes of the day before you go home. The kids are gone, you've cleaned up, you, you know, you're about to grab your keys and leave. You are going to do this before you leave. This also acts as a huge pattern interrupt.  Over time, when you do it consistently, it starts to tell your brain,  the day is done. 

Okay, it's being a, you're ending on a positive note. So this is actually, uh, not even just a two fer, it's a three fer. I don't know if that's a word I just made up. But because what's going to happen is, when you go home,  Someone in your household says to you, Hey, how was your day? Instead of spewing the stuff that annoyed you and reliving it, top of mind for you is going to be these three great things that happened, right?

Like, Hey, you know what, this kid, oh my gosh, this kid who's been struggling so much during math suddenly was like, ah, I don't want to Get it in another day. All the kids started to cheer and they were so excited because we have Classroom community and we're invested in everybody learning Okay, it's probably not all the words that you wrote in the journal what you wrote was, you know, joe finally got it or whatever  But can you see the power of this?

It's simple It's easy to do. I give you the tools. Print the thing up and put it on your desk. I already made it for you and all you need to do is to remember to do it. Put it under your keys. I always have mine under my keys so I couldn't pick up my keys to to go home until I did it. Okay, so the best three parts of your day.

It's going to set your radar to look for the good stuff.  Kind of like have a little game with yourself all day. Like I wonder if that's going to make my top three. Now listen, if 10 terrific things happen in the day, you don't have to stop at three. Again, no magic in the number three. The magic is in the practice, but. 

It is fun to only come up with three.  Two, it is a pattern interrupt. It's going to tell your brain my day is done.  I'm on my way home now. And third, when you go home, you're going to relive the good stuff, not the trauma of the day. Okay. All right. So that's a really powerful practice. Okay. So let's review.

Number one was either the joy walk or setting your intention to look for five things you like every time you leave the room. when you go that little transition to the office.  Number two is using the journal that I've made for you and given to you for free. No excuse not to do it. So the best three parts of the day.

All right. Strategy number three, and this is more for the students, right? Let's teach. We didn't learn these, these, um, skills in school. Right? In, listen, even my practice when I first started teaching, do you know when kids were grateful? At Thanksgiving.  When we made our turkey. When we made our turkey and on our feathers, we wrote things we were thankful for.

My family, my toys, my this on a really good day, my teacher, right? Once a year we taught the kids to be grateful, thankful, think of joy, right? Come on. What is that? Let's do better.  So a very simple thing to do, and for kids, students, excuse me, of any age, is a joy jar. A joy jar. Now you don't need a, me it was an empty canister that we'd had, um,  Oh gosh, one time as prizes I was giving out those cocoa bombs, you know?

Oh my gosh, they loved those. That you put in hot chocolate, right? In milk and it turns into hot chocolate. Regardless, it was a big tub. You could have a big tub. You could have any kind of jar. Doesn't matter. Write a stick note on it that says joy jar. Does not need to be fancy, but the idea is you provide slips of paper for the students  or I just left a stack of stick notes next to it.

And when something good happened,  a kid would go and write it down and fold it up and throw it in the joy jar. And before we knew it, we had, you know, a jar full of happy things. And when the energy in the room needed to be changed or we just had a couple of seconds extra. Transitional, right? We don't have dead time in the classroom.

We know that that's when all the behaviors happen, right, in unscheduled time. So you find yourself with an extra minute. Hey, let me spin the wheel, let me pull a popsicle stick. Whatever your system was for randomly choosing students. Hey, let's go get, let's dip into the joy jar. Let's have a happy memory.

Okay? Really nice practice. Again, costs nothing, it's easy, the kids love it. You know, at the beginning there'll be some jokers who put that, you know, what they were happy about was it was hot dogs for lunch or whatever. Who cares? That's as valid as anything else. Okay? You don't get to judge what other people are happy about.

Unless, of course, it is mean spirited or it is directed towards another student. But, um, somebody getting a C on a test and then being happy about it, because maybe that was a really great goal for them, you know, is no less valid than, you know, somebody doing their personal best on something else. Right, so that's one thing to watch out for.

Okay, is just be aware that, you know, different things make different kids happy. So as long as it's appropriate, it's in there. So, okay, so strategy number three, joy jar. Everybody can do that, no problem. All right, so here's  the last strategy. Again,  don't write this off as just something that is, um, silly. 

It's simple and there's a reason that it's simple. The simpler it is,  the more likely you are to keep practicing it. And this is  There's a couple of strategies to do with the alphabet and the reason I say the alphabet is, come on, even in kinder we know our alphabet. Okay, so the first one is to get the kids involved in this.

Now this takes a little bit longer, but it is a fantastic activity to promote, um,  Collaboration, um, talking to each other, right? One of the biggest things that I, one of the biggest issues I found in my fourth grade classroom when we returned, we had hybrid teaching, right, for a while. After, um, after lockdown, we were on an A B schedule.

You only had so many kids in the room and they were six feet apart, right? Oh my gosh, wearing masks. How are they supposed to talk to each other? They had lost this social interaction piece, okay, unless they were on a device. And so Any activities after that where I could get students talking once it was safe to each other, uh, was really important.

And so here's what it is. I call it, um, well, it's kind of like Mary Poppins, right? Sometimes I would play the music, you know, that song, here are a few of my favorite things, right? So it would just be to get your brain looking at things positively focused, depending on how many kids you have. I would put them in.

Groups, U3, U3, U3, or U2,  or U1, if you only have a few kids, give them two letters each, okay? So, for example, let's say you have 26 kids, there's 26 letters in the alphabet. I wouldn't say give every kid a letter in the alphabet. I would say put them in twos and give them two letters of the alphabet. And here's what they're going to do with them.

OK, Charlie, Jim, you have A and B. OK, when I set the timer for a minute, everybody's going to go at the same time. They're going to write down all of their favorite things, all the things that they love that begin with A and B. Right. And then the next group of kids is going to get C and D. Now, some of the letters are harder, right?

X. You know, when I'm doing this exercise for myself, X is hard. For the kids it isn't, they're all going to say X box. But once we get past that, so don't give somebody, you know,  X and Z. Maybe mix up some of the, the alphabet letters, okay? So here's the idea, then you put the kids in groups, you give them a couple of letters to work on each, or if you have a large class, three kids are going to work on A.

If you have a large class, it's because you have older kids, you know, they can come up with lots of things that begin with A or B, right? And then you set the timer for a minute, 90 seconds, whatever you think they can handle. And they scramble and they write down as many things as they can that begin with that letter.

And then afterwards, you don't have time to go pick on every kid. You can have them think per share. You can spin a wheel to find out which letters get shared. You will see kids will laugh. They will come up with ridiculous things sometimes. Um, you know, I. Iguana. Okay, that's a kid loves an iguana. Good for them knowing it began with an I.

Maybe just because it was on the sound spelling card on the wall. Who knows, right? But it is a very fun activity. Um, it does take a little bit more time, but  it is a fun activity and every child can participate because everybody kind of knows their alphabet. The younger the kid, they get some of the beginning letters wrong.

That's even funnier, right? So it's just a good thing all the way through. It's just a feel good activity. Now for myself.  Now, I am somebody who struggles. I'm not embarrassed to say, um, I have struggled a lot in my life with anxiety and, um,  A kind of intrusive thoughts and other things. And sometimes, you know, it's impossible not to think of something you don't want to think about.

Right? Like the old adage says, don't think about an elephant. Now what are you thinking about? An elephant. Okay? So you can't think about something you don't want to think about. The best strategy is think about something else. So  if I find myself kind of stressing about something, ruminating, perseverating on something, and I have a little time and a piece of paper, I will literally go through the alphabet and find things, words that I like that are positive.

So I will start A.  Appreciation. B.  Beauty, bliss, c,  calm, clarity,  d,  dreams, desire, delicious, right? You see what I'm saying? Just kind of positive, focused words. It doesn't take very long, um, you can do it in your mind if you don't have a piece of paper. I'm telling you, I have been in staff meetings. Well I have begun to get super stressed out and I'm sitting there quietly.

People think I'm taking my notes and what I'm doing kind of it's a self soothing exercise but at the same time it is pulling your brain into something more positive. I'm going through the alphabet and finding my words. Right, and when I get to X I am stuck because for me Xbox, you know, who cares? I'm gonna say extreme joy, right?

I'm just gonna play on it a little bit. Okay, but it is something to keep your brain occupied in a positive area.  Okay, so there are  four strategies. There is no reason you cannot do these and there is no reason you cannot start today. Okay, again, they cost no money.  Very little time. You can involve the students.

That's when things become really more of a routine and a habit. Cause if the kids enjoy it, they're going to say, Oh, Mrs. Can I go to the joy jar? Or like, Oh, let's go, let's go pull a happy memory. Right. You know, kids will get invested in it. So I'm going to remind you of what the four were. Okay. The first one  is set your intention.

Either go for the joy walk, where you're looking for five things, that.  You love, or especially when you're in school, every time you leave the door, just set your intention.  I'm gonna look around campus. I'll be aware of my surroundings. I'm gonna find five positive interactions that people are having,  or five things that I like, okay?

Instead of just worrying about everything you need to do, take like a little little brain break for yourself of looking for positive things.  Strategy number two is the three best parts of your day, right? Use the journal. Where are you going to get the journal?  GraceStevens. com forward slash journal. If you only do one thing, do that.

Remember, it had three wonderful things about it. One, setting your radar to look for the good stuff.  Two, as a pattern interrupter, closing ritual before you go home to get you, tell your brain that you are done with your day and you've finished with something positive.  And three, when you get home and you spew your day onto somebody, it's something a little bit more upbeat. 

All right. Strategy number three was get a joy jar in the classroom, train the kids to be responsible for changing their own energy, right? And knowing when it needs to be changed. And then number four are alphabet strategies,  either doing a practice with. Students, when you have some extra time, it's kind of, it's a very fun exercise.

Um, I had posted this on social media one time and a teacher said that they did likes and loathes. Which isn't so positively focused, but she said  They laughed, and laughed, and laughed. Or, if you're British, laughed, and laughed, and laughed. Right? Like, looking for things that they loathed is probably, comes easier.

I think she had older kids, so maybe the teenagers were gonna go with things they found cringe. So  A very good exercise, but for yourself, if you find yourself being stressed or perseverating on something negative, pull out the piece of paper. Think of the happy words. It's an easy strategy. Don't dismiss it just because it's so simple. 

Okay, I hope you have all found something from this episode that you can start implementing today. I look forward to next week is going to be the last part in this series and we're going to look about, oh my gosh, it is really the foundation of it all, um, which is focusing on what you want. Not on what you don't want.

So, we will talk about more of that next week. In the meantime, I am proud of you. Go find some joy somewhere, somewhere in your day to day and remember to create your own path and bring your own sunshine.