The Ultimate Educators Handbook Part 1 - The Science of How to Be Happier for Educators

  Over a decade ago, I wrote a book called The Happy Habit. It wasn't geared specifically towards teaching, but it was based on scientifically validated habits that could help people hack their brain to be happier. I did a deep dive into this study to make myself happier. I had not really been born a, you know, glass half full person and I was fascinated by the science that showed us that just like with growth mindset, like your intelligence isn't fixed, neither is your Happy set point now about what I want to say about seven years ago I turned that book  into a journal and then another book specifically for teachers because the other teachers asked me Why my experience seemed to be different than theirs even though essentially we have the same kids The same admin the same resources like I seem to be having a better time And honestly, it was because of these habits.

So in the next few episodes, I'm going to do a deep dive into my book, Positive Mindset Habits for Teachers. I promise you, it's not about pseudoscience. It's not about  toxic positivity. It is proven habits.  Thousands upon thousands of teachers have told me that this book has really helped them. I am thrilled that there are at least a couple of teacher colleges that I know of that have it as required reading.

I'm really proud of that. I keep the book super cheap. It's like 12 bucks or something like that. You know how expensive textbooks are.  It is a book written for teachers.  I'm going to do a deep dive and you're not going to want to miss it at the end of the episode. Oh my gosh. I have two fantastic resources for you.

One of them is not mine. One of them is from a very prestigious university and it's free and I want you to have it. So listen along today and see what you can. Find that resonates with you. I promise there will be something that can help you hack your happiness.  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.

Alright, 

so let me start by saying it doesn't matter whether you've read the book or not. If you have the book and this is going to be a good refresher for you, awesome. If you maybe, after listening to these next few episodes, feel inspired to do a book study on your campus, hey, just email me at grace.  I can help you get discount pricing on the book if it's multiple copies and I tell you what, right now, if you order more than 75 copies, I will even do a free Zoom PD for you, Q& A, ask the author, all of that, and honestly, that's something I usually charge a lot of money for, but I am motivated to get this book into as many hands as possible.

I have been working on the follow up  for this book, more positive mindset habits for teachers, which I feel is going to be An even greater book. I've been working on it for two years. I got to get it finished, but anyway, let's start here. So what led me to want to make these episodes is  I was recently interviewed on a podcast.

I get asked about my book a lot on when I'm interviewed on other podcasts, but somebody was the empowered up podcast with a great guy, Ken Furman. And he asked me a question. No one has ever asked me before. He said.  So where would you start?  If you were a teacher, where would you start? Well, you know, I didn't want to say start at the beginning because I put a lot of thought like I had so it was it's You know It's kind of hard to take all these ideas that you have and all this knowledge you have and put it into this kind of proven step by step I made the book ten steps right with actionable items at the end of every chapter now since then I have I've broken my work down into a four part framework that seems to be easier for people.

But I didn't want to tell him, hey, start at the beginning. So I really thought about it. And I thought, you know, what's the first step? The first step is really decide. Honest to goodness, it's as easy as that. You got to decide. You got to decide that you being happier.  And I could give you all the reasons, right?

One of the things I say all the time, your energy teaches more than your lesson plans, right? Kids want to be with a teacher who's passionate, excited about being there, who believes in them, right? Not this worn out, Burnt out, frustrated, resentful teacher. That's a miserable day in the classroom. Kids don't learn from them.

Kids play out. And it's just this vicious circle of like kind of misery, to be honest. Right? So of course you decide, Hey, I want to have a more positive experience because.  That will lead to better student outcomes and that will lead to a better day in the classroom. Okay? Yeah. But you know what? Forget the student outcomes.

Forget a happier campus culture. What about you? Decide for you. You only got one life to live.  That's what I'd say. You gotta decide to be happier for you. And you've got to decide not to delay that happiness.  You, we get into this whole kind of idea of like, well, I'll be happy when. I'll be happy when, you know, this grading period is over.

Or I'll be happy when it's the weekend. Or I'll be happy when it's spring break. Or it's summer. Or woe betide, I'll be happy when it's retirement. Right, we keep delaying it. I'll be happy when this. Crazy student who is like outrageous is gonna be gone for the day, right? You know that feeling when you do roll call and you realize they're not there for the day and you have that moment of elation?

Yeah, I know nobody wants to fess up to that. That's the truth, right? Like, whew!  Okay, you gotta, you can't put off being happy. Not like, oh, I'll be happier when like I lose the 20 pounds or, you know, my financial situation is better. Like, you gotta decide. Being happy is important.  Being happy is something you can work on. 

We're going to talk about the science of that. And being happy is worthwhile. Look, if you really think about it, anything you want in life, no matter what it is, a circumstance a situation, like, no matter what it is that you want, if you go back to the basis of, well, why do I want that?  Really, the foundation of it all is you think you'll be happier.

You know, why do you want a better mate?  If you're, if you're lonely and you're single or you're married and you're miserable, why do you want a better relationship, right? Because you think it'll make you happier. Why do you want to lose weight? Well, because then you'll feel healthier, you feel more active, you feel more attractive and vibrant and You'll feel happier, right?

Why do you want more money? Well, you feel like, you know, you could have more vocation. You could have less stress. Being broke is stressful, right? Struggling to make ends meet. Not being able to provide for people you love in the way you want to. All those things are stressful and they make you unhappy. So basically the foundation of it all is Being happy.

It sounds so trite, but it is really the foundational piece. And so that's why I say the first step is just decide. Decide that you being happy is worthwhile,  is possible. I'm going to tell you the science, it is possible, despite your circumstances, right, it is possible to be happy. You might say, there's no way I can be happy, I'm broke.

You know what? There's a lot of happy broke people and a lot of miserable rich people. Okay? So that's not the answer. Okay? Again, being broke is stressful. You'll never, I'll never be able to talk anybody out of that, but you know, once you have.  A certain amount of money in the bank, right, once your basic needs are met, you having an extra 5, 000 in the bank or another 50, 000 in the bank does very little for your happiness set point.

That is scientifically validated. Okay, so just decide that being happy is worthwhile and that being happy is possible. Okay, and that is something that you can work on. If you are familiar with my ECHO framework for educators, the E C H O framework, that H stands for Happiness Can Be Synthesized.  What that means is you can create it.

It's not something you're waiting for, you're looking for, it's something you can work on. And that's what we're going to talk about in this episode. So step one is decide. Okay, now I want to remind you, stay until the end of the episode. I have two really great resources for you that can help you out. And one of them is mine that I usually charge for, but I'm giving away for free right now.

for this series and the other comes from a major university. It is their most taken class and you can get it for free and I'm going to tell you all about that at the end. Okay, but let's start first off just with a tiny bit of history. How did this book come about? You know,  Wake up one day and decide, Oh, I want to write on positive psychologies for teachers.

Like no.  So if you know, my story, you know, that I was a second career teacher. I imploded my life. And that was very successful from the outside. Very successful in the corporate area.  I  was crushing it, had met all my financial goals, had all the beautiful entrapments of that very comfortable life, and was miserable, was stressed, overwhelmed, felt like no area of my life got enough, right, couldn't give enough at work, when I was at home, I was totally guilty, I wasn't at home all the time, and I had two young children, I was traveling a lot, and when I was home, I was preoccupied with work, just stressed, I felt like, You know, I just didn't even participate in my life.

My life revolved around when can I be alone for a minute so I can, you know, just lose it. It was not sustainable. And I kind of blew the whole thing up  and decided that what I really wanted was a job with purpose and meaning that would be fun. And it had been a childhood dream of mine to be a public school teacher.

I had really had a very positive. experience. I credit some wonderful teachers in my life from helping me get out of and not so great circumstances in my childhood. And I wanted to pay that forward. And I became a school teacher in my, I think very late thirties. I think I got my first classroom when I was 40. 

Just a little bit below that. So anyway, and at first it was fantastic. I couldn't believe it. What a wonderful way to spend your day. It was so much fun. It came easy to me. There was joy in the classroom. And again, I felt connection, purpose. These are all like building blocks for happiness. I knew that I started studying positive psychology.

What could I do to be happier? Had a family background of very poor mental health. Suffered from anxiety and depression myself and wanted to improve that situation for myself. So anyway, teaching seemed like that was going to tick so many boxes for me, right? I was going to have time off with my kids over summer and spring break, which was magical, all those things.

And at first it was fantastic. And then it wasn't. And a few years in, I noticed that. I was starting to be stressed again, overwhelmed. All the habits that had led me to be unhappy in the corporate world over committing, lack of boundaries perfectionism, all those things  started creeping into my teaching and I was starting to burn out again.

And listen, I did not have another career change in me. I decided that what I needed to change was me. And so when I started to study all these things I did a deep dive  Into NLP neuro linguistic programming. And that was just for myself to help me kind of hack my own happiness and study all the things, take the classes, do the courses, get the coaches.

Like I did it all for me and. But, as I mentioned, a few years into that when I really turned things around for myself,  people started mentioning it to me. Now I had written a book called The Happy Habit, and it wasn't about teaching, it was just about these habits in your general life, but when other teachers started approaching me saying, what are you doing differently?

And I would tell them, they said, well, you should write that book for teachers. So I turned it into a journal which was little easy prompts to help people practice these habits. And that was pretty successful. And then after that, I turned it into a book, Positive Mindset Habits for Teachers. I actually wanted to call it Happy Habits for Teachers, but in the meantime, a gentleman called Michael Linsen, you might know him from Smart Classroom Management, he has a phenomenal following around his classroom management strategies and his classroom management philosophy.

And he had written a book he usually writes about classroom management, but he'd written this book called Happy Teacher Habits. So I'm like, well, I don't know, this sounds too much like his book. So I called it Positive Mindset Habits for Teachers. Anyway,  there's that history.  really breaks down the 10 steps.

So there's 10 habits, but the first one is really, I would say, yeah, to decide. So I'm going to talk real quick just about the science of happy, because when I tell people happiness can be synthesized, they start to think I'm a little woo woo, like, oh my gosh, is this girl like, you know,  take crystals to bed under her pillow or what?

So, first off, hey. Huge props to Carol Dweck because in the years since I'd written that book, it has become very popular, accepted her research on growth mindset, that intelligence isn't fixed, right? You're not stuck with what you're born with. There are things you can do, right, to have a growth mindset attitude. 

It turns out it's the same with your happiness set point. Okay, you are born with a borderline. Like some people, you know, it's just their personality, right? It's what they were given at birth. They're a glass half full person. They're a glass half empty person. You know, I like to think of myself as a glass is refillable  person.

But that has taken years of training myself. It doesn't matter what the situation is. Like, we can refill this glass. It's temporary. We can  We can move beyond. Okay, so you do have a natural happiness set point. But there are intentional activities, these habits, that you can do to move that set point. So let's have a quick little look at the science.

I look at the science that's come out of Harvard. There are some key researchers in the last couple of decades that, whose work I looked at. And I'm going to give you a couple of quotes and a little crash course here. So I'm going to put some. References in the show notes, you can do a deeper dive, but basically I started off looking at the the work of, of Sean Aker, who's the professor of positive psychology at Harvard, and he wrote the book, The Happiness Advantage, and he had an amazing TED talk, actually, that is helpful.

I also looked at Dan Gilbert,  who wrote  Wrote a fantastic book called Stumbling on Happiness. He really goes into these ideas of, you might remember them from if you did Psychology 101, depending how long ago you did that. But this idea of hedonic adaptation which is that we overestimate how happy we think things will make us, basically.

And  So I'm just going to start off with a quote because it really just sums it up. You may remember my episodes on Don't Sweat the Small Stuff by Dr. Richard Carson. Well, I have had a quote of his wife, Kristen Carson, on my desk forever, which reminds me, and it really just sums it up.  Happiness is not a pursuit.

It's a perspective. Okay. So that's from Christine Carlson and the science really backs that up. So where I would start I'm going to put some references at the bottom here. If you're really, you know, getting into this stuff and you want to really read some more about it, but I will tell you that a great place that I started was on the work Aker, who is professor of.

positive psychology at Harvard, he wrote a book called the happiness advantage. He had this amazing Ted talk where he talked about like Harvard's wellness week. And really what it was, was not about wellness at all. It was about all these terrible illnesses and things. So  I really enjoyed his work. The work that really some of you may have come across, depending how long ago it was that you got your  That you got your degree, maybe you did psychology 101, maybe you ran into some of these names, but another great name is professor Dr.

Dan Gilbert. He wrote a book, Stumbling on Happiness, and he really did a deep dive into these ideas that you may have heard of before, which are hedonic adaptation and the hedonic treadmill, and Obviously hedonic comes from the word hedonism, happiness. And what those phenomenons really talk about is how we overestimate how happy we think things will make us, things that are circumstances or physical things. 

That's the hedonic adaptation. We get so used to something. We think that oh my gosh, that new car or that new pair of shoes or that new grade span, this kind of, oh, now you got moved to the grade that you wanted. Like you kind of tend to overestimate how happy. You think those things will make you, because three months into having that new car or having that new grade or having those new shoes, you've just got used to them and now you're on to the next thing, right?

We're on a treadmill. We're always looking for the next thing. And the hedonic adaptation part is yes, that really looking at the research that shows that with very few circumstances, things that he looked at some research of  cohorts of people who had won the lottery and then on the other end of the spectrum had had really terrible accidents and some paralysis and at the very beginning feeling like oh my gosh the elation that the lottery winners would feel and the Devastation that the accident victims would feel like after a certain period of three to six months like it kind of leveled out and  So anyway I dived into some of that research into the book so you know I didn't make that up but here's the crux of it all right here really is the crux of it and if you're a person who really likes you know math and formulas then you would love the  the work of Jonathan Haidt.

Haidt, Haidt, I don't know how he says it. It's H A I D T. Anyway he wrote a great book The Happiness Advantage and he came up with this formula H, happiness equals S plus C plus V. So the S is the set point, right? That's our natural predisposition to be positively or negatively focused. Okay, that's what we inherit. 

Like I said, I don't have, you know, a natural as he says it, I didn't win the quadricle lottery. Right? I didn't like, oh yeah, genetically we were a line of really optimistic, happy people. No, we're not. Genetically, my family is really stressed, anxious and has a lot of depression. So, so happiness is your set points, what you naturally got, which accounts for  Scientists say 50%, 50 percent  of what kind of your, your set point is what you inherited naturally.

Okay, so happiness is set point plus C, the C stands for conditioning. So our work, our engagement, our flow state, our connections, right? Okay, so those are kind of a little bit our circumstances where we put ourselves in.  And that only counts for 10%.  Wait, what? So only 10 percent of our happiness quotient is really based on our circumstances.

So now we're up to 60%, right? So what's the other 40%? So the other 40 percent is the  V. And that is voluntary activities. Okay, so that's what my book, The Happy Habits, was about, is these voluntary habits, the activities and mindsets we could consciously engage in to boost our happiness level, right? They can be learned, they can be practiced, they can dramatically increase our happiness quotient, right?

Well, I call it flexing our happy muscle, you know, changing actually our brain chemistry, our outlook, our experiences. Right? The voluntary activities, the happy habits, those account for 40 percent of our happiness quotient. That's a lot. So that's the basis of the science. H equals S plus C plus V.

Happiness is your set point plus your circumstances, which is only 10 percent plus your voluntary activities, your happy habits. And so in the book, I really dove into how do we practice those habits in a classroom. Okay, so habit number one was really like decide, right? Just decide to be happy.  Decide that you are capable of that.

Decide that happiness can be synthesized and decide that you are worthy of that inside and outside of the classroom. Again, student outcomes will soar. The day will be happier, right? It, when you are more positively focused, you have better results, you're more creative, you're more engaged, all of those things.

But you just deserve to be happy, right? That's your birthright. So you should work on it for yourself, not just for this, you know, altruistic or it will make me a better teacher.  So step number one, decide. Step number two, commit. Commit to working on it. every single day, right? Look at your schedule. I mean, if you work with me, with my coaching and other things, one of the things I encourage is doing a time audit.

You know, like most people, even I complain too, if I, you know, have a coach, like I don't have time to do that. And then I really audit my time and I see how much time I, I kind of spend on things that are not productive, that aren't getting me closer to the goal that I want that are really distractions.

That I think are making me happy but are really just, you know, helping me zone out, right, and cope in different ways. But, you know, look, none of the habits that I go over in the book cost any money. Zero. None of them take very much time, okay? Just commit. Look, where can I find 10, 20 minutes a day that I'm going to work on this because this will really help, okay?

Now, to those two resources that I said. The first one, oh my gosh, you need to go get this. There's probably some post roll talking about it, but just in case the post roll on the podcast changes, you know, depending on what I'm promoting at the time. So if you're listening to this, you know, after the fact, if you're going back and binging some episodes, yay you I don't want you to miss this.

So.  What you need is the Positive Mindset Habit Journal. Okay, it's a journal and it helps you practice the habits that we're going to talk about in the next few episodes. And I made available for you, like you can go buy it on Amazon. I've made different colors. Some people have told me they've had different ones for five or six years.

It makes a fantastic keepsake of your whole year. It has doodle pages, pages for photos. I mean, it's a really cute. Fiddle journal makes a great gift for a new teacher or whatever. But what I'm making available to you now is a six week downloadable version. It's a PDF version. I want you to go to gracestephens.

com forward slash journal. Okay,  I will send it to you. You will print it out and you will put it on your desk. And in another episode, we will talk about closing rituals and the power of closing rituals, how they make a pattern interrupt in your brain, which is a strong practice in neurolinguistic programming.

But you don't need to worry about that now. All you need to do is go print it out because Bye. It has prompts such as what is my intention for this week? Who am I going to champion this week? What were the three best things that happened to me today? Like just really easy prompts that, like I said, are rooted in these these habits, scientifically validated happy habits that will help you flex your  Happy muscles.

So go get that version of the journal right now. That will help keep you committed. You're going to commit to spending five minutes a day on that before you leave for home. That's it. Okay, here's another practice that you can do. So step one, we said you were going to decide. Step two is you are going to commit and download the journal.

Step three is try and get to school five minutes early. Just five minutes early, you time. Close the door if you have to turn off the lights and pretend you're not there. I know how that goes. Just spend a few minutes each day, instead of rushing in with the keys and spilling the coffee and, and running around trying to make copies and all those things, five minutes of quiet before school starts and set your intention for the day.

Visualize yourself having a successful day. What does that look like for you?  Visualize. You do not get triggered. When student behavior isn't great, you remain calm, consistent,  right? You  are noticing the positive, you're praising the students, you're looking around, you're seeing beautiful things, students helping each other kids getting it, listening for those aha moments when that kid says, huh, now I get it.

I mean, that's music to our ears, right? What does that look like for you? If you're in an elementary classroom, you still use those behavior management clip charts, oh, but lots of teachers still do. I use them for many years. You know, I used to visualize every clip being on purple. Right on the top like everybody having an outstanding day and don't dismiss this as woo woo.

Listen there is so much science that when you visualize in as much detail as you can actually doing something the same neurons in your brain fire as if you're actually Doing the thing. This is,  there are athletes who train this way, that they spend hours and hours visualizing every single movement to dunk that ball or excel at that sport, right?

So just spend a few minutes of quiet and calm visualizing how you want your day to go, okay? To set an intention.  That you're going to remain calm and positive, positively focused and be what I call a joy detective. We're going to talk about that more in other episodes, looking for little moments of happiness.

Cause that's what really being happy is, right? Being happy isn't like, you know, Oh, I'm going to, you know, lay on a beach and Ibiza with a fizzy drink. You know, that's like.  A week of your life at best, right? And it isn't like, oh, I'm going to be screaming and so excited like I'm on a roller coaster. That's thrilling.

Nobody wants to live their life on a roller coaster, right? Being happy is just that kind of feeling of contentment, of not wanting things to be different than they are. That's basically what it is, okay? So, step one, you're going to decide. Step two, you're going to commit, go download that journal, gracestephens.

com forward slash journal. Step three, get into work every day, five minutes, just five minutes, visualize. If you, if you really get harassed as soon as you're on campus, stay in your car for five minutes, right? Stay in your car quietly before you get out of it and  and just visualize for a good day what that looks like for you.

Okay, start the day feeling calm with an intention. Okay, so I promised you two resources. So the first one was my journal. The second one, now, this is amazing. This is was not available when I wrote these books. It was not available to me when I started this deep dive and I wish it was. So there is a doctor Dr.

Lori Santos. She is out of Yale. And she  She actually has a podcast. You can go find her podcast, but you can take Yale's most,  most, like most popular class. They've made it online available for free, and it is about being happy. Okay. The class is called the science of wellbeing, and it is available online for free.

Like I said, and it claims. That students who have taken that class are 17 percent happier. Now, I have no idea how you measured that, but that's what they claim. So, as well as taking that class, now it is a time investment. When I say none of these things take time, ooh, that class, man, it does take time. I started it and I'm not gonna lie, I was like, wow, this is taking a lot of time.

But you can preview the course. I'll put the links in. It's Dr. Laurie Santos and Laurie is L A U R I E. So drlorisantos. com slash science hyphen well hyphen being, but I'll, I'll put it in the notes and you can just Google it. It comes up. So very, very, very  is  very popular and real science, real results.

It's a 10 week course. Okay. And fantastic. I mean, I'm so pleased that they offer this now the The other thing, oh man, taking this thing to the next level, if you are really, really, really into it, is  unbelievable here. So happy for this. You can get free curriculum,  right? If you go to DrLoriSantos. com Forward slash teaching hyphen happiness, you can get curriculum, okay?

And it's based by grades. It has  it, well, it's really for grades nine through 12. It's not for littles. Okay. I have some other stuff, my TPT store and other things that how we will have a lot of strategies in the next couple of episodes for younger children. on how you can bring these habits into the classroom.

But if you teach upper grade kids, maybe you have a homeroom and you have some time they have one to six weeks of curriculum for grades nine through 12. And  it is all free, help your students feel better. We know that social emotional learning at this point, you know, Students are struggling. So this is fantastic.

So please check out. If you teach older kids, it says 9 through 12, but you could even if you teach some of you teach some  students older than that, certainly it would be appropriate for that. Okay. There's more than 42 materials. They're 100 percent free. It's. It's free for any high school teacher anywhere.

Tell your friends about it. Fantastic resource. So glad that I could just pass that on to you. No affiliation with me whatsoever, just want to give you all the best resources that are out there. Okay, so that's it for this week's episode. It was a little longer. It was an introduction. If you haven't read the book, hey, we do a deeper dive in there.

And again, if you want. interested in doing a book study please email me if you're buying more than like 50 copies even maybe 30 50 copies then I can try and get you a my author discount and get them sent straight to you and if you buy more than 75 from me  I will honor that I will give you a free PD or Zoom, like 40 minutes, question and answer, you know, whatever, something to get your staff excited.

So it's lots of people have done book studies on this book and said that it's been very helpful. So happy to do that for you all. All right, that's it. Number one, decide happiness is a state of consciousness.  Not a circumstance. Now, hey, work of a lifetime. There are days I struggle with that.  But the science apparently is there.

And my experience has proven it. Let me just tell you this, honestly. When I work on these habits, life goes easier. That's it. And the times when I've burnt out since then and I've been stressed and I've looked, it's like I know that there's a direct correlation because I've stopped working on these things, right?

I've just put them on the back burner thinking I haven't got time. Well, I haven't got time not to, right? So that's basically that. Alright, well I wish you all well. Remember what I'm gonna say. Listen, create your own path and bring your own sunshine, and I will see you in the next episode.