How to Build Mental Toughness for Teachers (AND students!) with Jon Osborn [episode 30]

I am so excited to be here today on the podcast with another fabulous interview. So as you probably know and have heard of we have a teacher life coaching program inside Wife Teacher Mommy club. And that is because I believe that teachers not only need resources to be successful in teaching. Now as a resource creator, I know you need resources like they help so much especially with planning and preparation and everything. But it also know there’s so much more that goes into teaching. There are so many struggles being put on your plate day in and day out. And teachers they need some life coaching tools that they can turn to as well when all those stressful times come up. And that is why we have a life coaching program and Chrissy our certified life coach comes in and does workshops with us and open coaching each month. But a special thing I decided to do is to bring in a guest workshop. So we have another life coach coming in. His name is Jon Osborne. And he is going to be doing a special one time workshop and is only for Wife Teacher Mommy club members. It is happening on September 8, and he is a fabulous life coach. As you will learn in today’s episode we’re going to be talking all about mental toughness for teachers in today’s episode, so much content and it’s actually a different topic than he’ll be talking about at this workshop. I just wanted to make sure you knew about the workshop too. But he is fabulous. He was a presenter at Educae & Rejuvenate and people said his talk which his if you were at Educate & Rejuvenate his was about juggling practice. So juggling glass balls and all the different things in our lives and figuring out how to fit them all in. He talks all about that in our attendees at Educate & Rejuvenate, just loved it. So wanted to invite him to come back.

His special workshop is going to be high performance habits for teachers. And it is going to be September 8 at 6pm Mountain Time. I would love to see you there. And I wanted to bring him on the podcast today so you can get to know him a bit more and also to support everyone who listens here on the podcast, because I know that not everybody who listens is going to join us at the workshop or be in the club. And that’s okay, I want to support you whether or not you are in the club or not. So that is why we’re doing a full interview today on the podcast, sharing so many strategies and mindset tools right here on the podcast that you can apply to your life because we know that you all need it and every teacher needs it.

So we’ve made it super accessible today on today’s episode. First let me introduce Jon for you. So Jon graduated from the University of Utah in 2017 with a bachelor’s in sport and performance psychology. As a professional Jon works to continue to improve mental toughness through the use of mental skills. Jon teaches unforgettable lessons and techniques to help others be more resilient and control and confident. Jon helped found RJ Performance Group in 2020. And works there as a mental performance coach who works with Real Salt Lake, Utah State and Westminster Athletics Legacy Power as well as several high school athletes. Prior to working for RJ Performance Group, Jon was employed in the education sector working as an administrator at Utah Virtual University. Jon and his wife Megan live in Utah, and they have two daughters, Charlotte and Gigi, girl dad, and we are so excited to have him today we’re going to be talking about mental toughness for teachers. We will also talk about how as we as teachers learn these self coaching tools, the skills that we can use to make our lives better. And that will not only help ourselves, but they will also help us to be able to change things for the next generation. We can model these tools on how to handle tough situations and model them for the next generation and leave a legacy. So I love how at the end we kind of tied it all in together to a teacher’s legacy and how bettering ourselves betters future generations as well. So I just love this interviews. I don’t want to take any more time at the intro so let’s go.

Hey, Jon, thanks for coming on the podcast today. I’m so excited to have you.

Awesome. Thanks, Kelsey. Really excited to be here.

So before we dive in, can you tell our listeners just a little bit about yourself?

Yeah, yeah, you bet. I’m sure that I’m a little bit of a different guest actually glad to be here. So I am a mental performance coach. And I have a master’s degree in sport and performance psychology. I work at consulting practice with two of my friends from grad school. We started that about two and a half years ago, called RJ Performance Group, we just work with athletes and businesses and people dealing with stress and anxiety, all throughout the state of Utah. And we work with the athletes at the Utah State and the Beaver State, as well as the players out at Real Salt Lake and their developmental teams and things like that. And then a bunch of high school throughout the state with the athletics, but then we also work with a ton of businesses, you know, working with the Utah Jazz sales teams and legacy power and things like that. And yeah, married, Megan and I just celebrated our 10 year anniversary. Pretty awesome. Kind of crazy to think that we made it 10 years, but it has flown by got a couple of kids, Charlotte and Gigi, Gigi just turn two so got a three and a two year old and they’re ton of fun. I love being in the outdoors, hunting and fishing and hiking and playing sports and all of that. But that’s a little bit, a little bit about me.

That is awesome. And you know, how you, you mentioned that you help like these athletes with all the anxiety and pressures they’re feeling but you know, all these teachers that are feeling that too.

Big time. Yeah, that’s why I mentioned, you know, my degree being a sport and performance psychology, because a lot of times when people you know, people call us sports psychologists, which isn’t true, I’m not a psychologist, and I don’t just deal in sports, you know, but one of the things is pretty Paramount going through my program, and then just living life is how many of these things are experienced by so many. And in particularly teachers, if you think about what they’ve been dealing with, I mean, it’s really, past couple years have been something else. But if we even like just took that away, the same things are and they’ve been they’ve been dealing with for like years and years, right? It’s not the This isn’t like, a new thing because of COVID-19. So yeah, they do, they deal with quite a lot. And so it’s been it’s been awesome to be able to kind of go back into the education world and share some of these things. But now with like a different hat on someone where it’s like, hey, we can we can talk openly, I can share some of this stuff. You know, we’re no longer coworkers anymore. So it’s it received a little better.

Yeah. So what is your background in education? So you mentioned like going back to the classroom?

Yeah. So I have a kind of an extensive background in education, and probably not nearly as extensive as as people think. And so maybe I can’t use that word extensive. But then I have been in schools and so many different capacities for such a long time. While I was finishing up my bachelor’s degree, and throughout my grad degree, I was subbing all the time, and which was eye opening to what teachers deal with every day. Oh, yeah. And so that was that was really, really cool. I’ll never ever ever, for the rest of my life, I will never ever step into a seventh grade boys choir class. I’m not going to subject myself to that. And when I remember when I got that job, and I was like, oh, you know, it’s like, okay, you know, I’m a boy. I’ve been in seventh grade. I remember actually being in seventh grade boys choir. And I was like, yeah, we’re just gonna play another movie. I know. That’s the case. And that was true. I showed up. That was the lesson plan playing in the movie. And I did. And they were just like, all over the place and some of the most rambunctious, bold energy. And I’m like, never did that again. And then while I was while I was finishing up my grad degree, how interesting or was actually right after graduate, my Bachelor’s, I was looking for a job. I graduated in December. I’m one of those graduates. And so I wasn’t starting my grad degree until September. So I was like, I got nine months, something to do. And so I just took the job boards, and I’m like, I’m just gonna go work anywhere. At that point, we thought maybe we might move to California to go to Fresno State. So I was like, I don’t want to go on anything. I’m going to commit to long term. And I actually found a job as a testing coordinator at an online charter school, Utah Virtual Academy. And they had their office in Murray, and they had about, you know, about 2000 students throughout the state. And my job was to plan, organize, schedule, arrange, end of year state testing for them, which was a lot, you know, for so many people throughout the state, like, it wasn’t like we had a location, but particularly what it was, is like, I was responsible for getting a lot of equipment to all these places. So I actually went to a bunch of testing sites to see the amount of like anxiety that students were dealing with testing. And these are all students who work from home and so there’s the you know, the social aspect, but obviously, just the general you know, testing atmosphere and how anxiety riddled that can be, and then watching your teachers, you know, in those months of March, April, May and more April of May, at the end of the school year, and just listening to them, talking to them hearing their experiences, but I thought I was just gonna be done after nine months. And then school turned out we ended up being go to school, the University of Utah, so we stayed here in Salt Lake, and I thought, hey, you know what, maybe I can try and do both of these things. So I tried to be Full Time grad students and full time worker, which and I guess I said try I was successful at it, I did that. And it was hard and stretched me in lots of different ways. As I was finishing up my two year master’s degree, my boss approached me and was like, Hey, I know what you’ve been studying behavior and managing anxiety and things like that, in our leadership team is kind of a little bit of a mess. She’s like, I would love if you would, if you would stick around and be our operations managers and join our admin team. And I guess you shouldn’t say it those ways, because that would that sounds like that was the job offer. But it was like, Hey, we will you apply or you know, if you’re interested, I’d love for you to apply. So I talked about the big it was just a total departure from what I learned in sports psychology, I thought, and so I was like, Man, I don’t know if I want to do that. But that’s a big, like what I’ve just done for the past two years, then like, I feel like I’ve kind of wasted a little bit pretty naive of me to think that I would have wasted that realizing how impactful it was in education. So I applied and was offered the job. And so I joined them State of Utah Virtual Academy as an operations manager as one of their admin team. So still very involved in the in end of year testing, but also added things like state reporting, systems access and materials, equipment, just increase the amount of things I did. What it also did was it allowed me to place on our leadership team where I was involved in discussions about teachers and what they were dealing with. And that was much more integrated in the lives of our teachers. And it wasn’t just like an end of year over, there’s Jon, I was there kind of every day getting calls from exasperated parents and the frustrations that they were dealing with. And so I did that for about three years, and then made the jump full time to sport performance psychology, but I couldn’t get the experiences of our teachers out of my head. So often, that wasn’t the reason that I that I changed careers was because I was like sick or tired of education. What I realized is that my my passion in my abilities wasn’t so much on the day to day mundane that the teachers deal with, but was about teaching and coaching and trying to help teachers deal with that daily grind. And how frustrating that is. And so yeah, after a little experience with burnout and my job, I fortunate enough to be able to have some conversation. I said, have those friendships from grad school and and started RJ Performance Group, we’ve been we’ve been going for about two and a half years now. And that every turn, I’m looking for opportunities, and I’ve been surprised at the amount of opportunities there have been to come back and intersect with the lives of teachers, and I’m so happy to do every single time.

I love that. And I love how you kind of mentioned, you know, you’ve gone more into coaching, that’s your passion, but you still can’t get the teachers out of your mind. And I can totally see that, like, you know, when you approached me and you’re like, hey, I would love to help your teachers. And you know, we both presented at Show Up for Teachers put on by Utah, First Lady, Abby Cox, you can just tell how much you just love helping teachers. Can you tell us a little bit more about why you’re so passionate about helping them?

Yeah, you know, I think a lot of it’s been, I just feel like I’ve been connected to them for so many years, even even the ones that I wasn’t aware of, you know, two of my sisters who my older sisters were classroom teachers, and one elementary school and one in secondary. And then Megan, my wife is, you know, a teacher and aunts, uncles. And so they always got that background. But I remember I remember being eight years old, going in helping my sister like set up her classroom. You know, the only reason I did it then was because you know, she was going to buy me pizza after that’s a great deal, you know, for sure, I’ll do that. Right. Right now I’m realizing that my sister had two out of her contract, she was like responsible for going and setting up her classroom, like her space, I shouldn’t get paid for that. But like we put a ton of work into I know she but even more work than we did all for the experience of the students entering your classroom, right. And that’s what I admire so much about teachers is their willingness to go like above and beyond for someone else’s experience, right? Their experience of education, a student walk in their classroom, they’re going to experience education, and they go above and beyond for that experience. That’s right. That’s just why I’m so passionate, because I respect that so much. Anytime I see it. You know, I respect that in a, in a high school student who goes above and beyond and stays after practice to get shots up, I admire, you know, the mom who stays up late to finishing touches on a costume that is done earlier, right. But she stays up late just to put a couple of things together, because they know that their child would appreciate that. Like I really admire that above and beyond attitude. And it’s something that I resonate with. And it kind of speaks to me. And so I just, that’s why I love and it’s so easy to give back to teachers is because I’ve seen that for so many years. And I saw that with Megan all the time as I’m texting her at 4:30 and 5:00 from her classroom. And I’m like, Why, like I met your seventh graders, they’re the worst. But like, you know, she just goes above and beyond because she genuinely cares. And I know at some point that fire and fuel helping helping kids I know at some point I’m gonna find myself in a classroom setting was was honestly probably one of more fun jobs in my life. And I had to find the right the right classroom, whatever. But my favorite classroom by far was was teaching sewing at Bingham High School, it was so much fun to be in that classroom, and I just connected so well with them. And in my work now, I connect really well with art with our high school athletes. And so I know at some point, I’m going to find my way into a classroom, you know, and so that can be doing anything to be helping change, maybe some of the teacher culture or the teacher identity to meet, you’ll make it better than went up.

So what advice do you have for teachers who feel like they’re juggling a million different roles? Like maybe, maybe, are you trying to go above and beyond maybe a little more than they have the capacity to do? And they’re juggling a million different roles and struggling to manage it all. What is your advice to them?

Yeah, that’s a really, really big one, right? Because that’s part of their identity. That’s where I think I’d start and they’ve, that just seems like too much of a lift to start in. But recognize they’re more than just a teacher, like it’d become an incredible part of their identity. And it should be right, that’s a valuable and an admirable thing to have as part of your identity. But I think that some teachers really like hang their hat on the fact that they stay late. And that’s just that’s kind of a silly thing to hang your hat on. Because what you’re doing, you’re hanging your hat on burnout. Because that’s like, that’s kind of a short path, everyone’s got to stay late at their job at some point, right, we all work crazy hours at some point to get certain things done. But one of the things that I that I see a lot with teachers is that I did because they are juggling so many things. They feel like, well, I can’t if I don’t stay late today, then like, my tomorrow is going to be crazier. But the truth is, tomorrow is going to be crazier anyway. So you can you can stay late and work your tail off today. But tomorrow, there’s going to be a whole host of other things not to get too like theoretical or philosophical here. But I think that’s actually one of the things that as a driving teachers out and have run into our teachers with or issues with, like teacher pay and whatnot, is that for the longest time, the powers that be recognize that they’re getting free labor from our teachers. But my advice to teachers would be to not try to manage at all to be really intentional about the things that you want to manage. A lot of teachers that I talked with, and that I worked with, and I remember myself when I was working at Utah Virtual Academy is that my definition of success was whether I checked everything off my to do list, you know to-do lists are an awesome organizational strategy. And they’re really, really great way of producing easy goal setting and to identify and be productive. And I get that, I’m not saying don’t make it to do list. But if we judge our success, and our definition of success is whether or not we check everything off our to do list, well, then then what we’re going to do is instead of actually moving in any direction, or make any progress in our, in our classroom, or with our students, or we’re going to be doing is just trying to check things off the list. And if I think if something isn’t on the list, I’m not going to do it. I remember that a lot like I come home from work and Megan would ask hey, well, how was your day, like, it was awesome. Like I, I wrote 20 things on my to do list, and I crossed all of them off. And that was somehow like a success. So I think my advice to teachers would be to change what your definition of success is, you know, to pick one or two important things that day that are important that day. Because what’s kind of interesting and important is some of them might be in your classroom, one of those important things might be a particular student, but one of those important things might be a parent, maybe it’s a relationship with team teacher or co-teacher, you know, or someone in your pod or group or PLC. But pick one or two of those, like important things and let your focus and let those things guide your actions for that day. Focus on those. And of course, you’ll do other things, because it’s not like we’re you know, we won’t, we won’t be doing other things, but you dictate and you judge your day on your progress in those areas, not the outcome of those areas, right, not on whether I accomplished and I can cross those two things off my to do list, you know, but judge whether or not that’s you made the progress that you did in those two areas. I think sometimes teachers have a pretty skewed definition of like what success is, and I say the skewed because I think many of them end each day, thinking that today wasn’t successful. And I don’t think that’s true at all. And so if we can, if we can change each day, and you know, I can’t tell you the evidence or the impact I’ve seen on a team on a winning streak. You know, a team been involved with lots of different sports teams, you know, when they’re when they’re 4-0, they’re feeling a type of way and maybe normally under normal circumstances, they don’t win that fifth game. But because they’ve because they’re 4-0, they increase their odds of being 5-0. I know Kyle Whittingham had coaches who use this phrase of what’s the best thing about being 4-0, is the chance to be 5-0. They say that almost every year. And I think about that a lot is we have teachers who are actually 1-0, you know 2-0, 3-0, if they had a different definition of success, but because they’re so hard on themselves because they didn’t cross it and their to do list or because you know someone disagreed with them or because it didn’t turn in their work, or maybe they didn’t get, you know, they didn’t get everything graded that they wanted to. They somehow like, well, today was a failure. But today was a total failure, which is just like not even close to right. And if you if you do that day after day that just become so draining for you. That would be the one thing that I say to teachers is to change your definition of success, and allow it by doing so allow yourself to be a little bit more successful.

Yes, I am so passionate about this topic too. And I just feel like teachers, they put so much pressure on themselves. And and I mean, I find myself doing this too. I find like you know in work, it’s easy to be like, Oh, I didn’t do this. And I didn’t do that. But what if instead you like look at your wins each day. And you’re like I did this and I did that and kind of go from that momentum, kind of like you talked about with the sports, it’s like if you’re 4-0, you’re that close to 5-0. It’s about gaining that momentum of each day like at the end of the day, you’re like write things you did do like your Tada list instead of your to do list and, you know, just kind of grow. So I really love that.

One of the root causes, I think, is the negativity that exists in our in our world in our society right now. And so one of the quickest ways I think, to kind of start changing things around and changing your outlook and your outcomes by being a little bit more, I won’t say positive, a little more productive in the way you talk to yourself. And sometimes I think that productivity needs to be positive. You know, I know a lot of realists are we’re people who are skeptical about the role of positivity, you know, but I think the negative culture that we live in has led to what’s being known as a negativity bias, you know, and the one of the best ways that I’ve, I’ve heard a negativity bias described is if I and maybe the reason, I think it’s the best, because like, I felt that I’ve seen it, but I think this is so common for teachers not to project on them. But I just I’ve seen a lot is when we make a to do list of 10 items, right, and we accomplish eight of those items. And then on our drive home from work, you know, all we’re doing is thinking about the two we didn’t get done, right. And that’s that’s a negativity bias, right of of a recognition or an obsession upon the things that we didn’t do. And by its nature, there should always be things that we didn’t do, you know, because our list is infinite, but our time is finite. So there should always be things that we didn’t do. But because of negative negativity bias, we kind of flip flop and just see that as failure when I just see that as a natural consequence of time.

That’s such a good point. I hadn’t thought of like a natural consequence of time, right? It is finite. So yeah, that’s really smart. And I feel like a lot of this has to do with like, you know, teachers mentality, or just people’s mentality in general. And you know, when you are thinking negatively, and just like beating yourself up, like the circumstances are the same either way, it’s more like your outlook on them. So is there anything else related to like mentality, or resilience or grit that you think teachers deal with on a daily basis?

Yeah. Oh, for sure. Now, they deal with so much, you know, they themselves as the person, I think they deal with a lot of things out of their control, you know, the people, you know, the teacher teachers are so good at dealing with things on the fly, because we’ll kind of naturally have to be, you know, Bo, you know, I say all the time that, you know, two words that I used to describe mental toughness is adaptability and flexibility. And I think those are two words that are, you know, almost synonymous with teaching, you know, the ability to adapt to new students to be flexible to, you know, ever changing policies and whatnot, you know, so I think there there are a lot of things out of teachers control, which when when that’s the case, it can become a real anxiety, and really easy to focus on all these things out of your control your the decisions being made the policies, your admin, your class size, you know, sometimes what subject you’re teaching, right. And, you know, the ones making those decisions above them. And I emphasize this point, because having been on the admin side, like I get it a little bit, you know, the ones making those decisions, you know, their admin, you know, typically are working with like, millions of dollars, right, you know, they, you know, they’re given a budget of $15 million, or whatever. And so they’re making those decisions based on that amount of money, rather than on like, what would be best for teachers. Right. And, and because it’s the money, that’s what’s going to get a newspaper article written about them. You know, we used to have a joke about that at Utah Virtual Academy about, you know, executing everything we did financially, just so we wouldn’t end up in the paper, you know, and so, so I get, you know, I get that right, you know, that no, no principal, no vice principal wants to be, you know, the subject of a Chris Jones investigation, right. And so, you know, they make decisions about, you know, the use of funds and what they think is best to do with this money, and not what’s best for teachers. You know, I know that a lot of that the I know, a lot of admin cared, of course, they care, what about teachers, but I think there’s some fear on that opposite end. So I think there seem to be a lot of things out of their control. And so it requires a lot of grit and a lot of resilience and a lot of focus to, you know, keep your attention on what is in your control. I think for the teachers listening, they’re going to, they probably already feel it. But if you just you just think back to most staff lunch tables during the during the lunch, you know, half hour, which is just baffling, the short amount of time that you have for lunch, but we don’t need to come up with that.

It’s not always even a half hour.

Yeah, exactly. It’s a half hour of clock time, right. But then you got a student who stays five minutes after, and then you got to be back to your Yeah, so your lunch is like 15 minutes. Shocking, absolutely shocking. What we did to teachers, most staff, lunch rooms, you know, are really get together tends to be pretty negative. And only because only because we’re there to talk about in some of its venting, you know, that can be good. But what ends up happening is the topics of those things tend to be things out of our control. And when we focus on things out of our control, that leads to a little bit of negativity, and it leads to a lot of frustration, you know, because what we focus on expands, right. So if I focus on things out of my control, it’s going to expand, and all of a sudden, I’m going to feel like everything is out of out of my control. So I think they deal with the need for some resilience every single day. Because of the things out of their control that they also deal with, they deal with the opportunity to reshift and change, change their focus, because like I said, what you focus on expands. So if you focus on all the things in your control, even even when there, there don’t seem to be very many. But you you focus on the things in your control, those will expand and you’ll start realizing, Oh, wow, there’s I can actually influence and make an impact on a lot of different areas. Like yeah, I can’t do that. But I’m not going to focus on that. Instead, I’m going to focus on right here in front of me becomes so much more fun to do whatever you’re doing, right, it’s so much more fun in the classroom, so much more more fun at work. So much more fun and your family. Right. And so I think they do with that a lot, I think also on a daily basis now no longer them, but their students, I think that they they deal a ton with children. And I mean of all ages, even 18 year old children and their perceptions of failure. One of the things that I’ve noticed in that kind of little startling to me, and maybe not it shouldn’t be that startling, but it is to working working in high schools with high school teams athletes is what these amateur what these teenagers what their relationship is with failure. And that failure is truly the absolute worst outcome that could be experienced. And so I think they’re learning that early on, you know, these are these are things elementary schools teachers are facing as well and continues up through the middle of high school is children experience thing, things with tests, with friends, with assignments with learning in general, where they are establishing what their relationship is with failure and what they their perception of failure is. So I think I think teachers have like such a tremendous role in helping students and helping people change their definition and their perception of like, what failure is what failure means and not something that should be shied away from. But I think students in their classroom deal with some type of failure every single day. And And so teachers kind of deal with the fallback of that and how do I how do I respond? How do I how do I help them when they didn’t succeed? How do I help them learn and build like a healthy relationship with failure?

Yes, and I think this is really kind of a result of like our society in general, you know, we’re talking about like, teachers are in the like, you know, they have these negative thought patterns, but it’s not teachers, it’s people in general, it’s anyone who has a human brain, and even you and I, who like know coaching tools and stuff, we find ourselves doing this too. And it’s like, you know, bringing awareness to it and learning what to do about it. So I think that when teachers, they kind of, you know, learn how to do this themselves, then they can also help the next generation to be able to improve that as well. And then maybe over time, like more parents and educators and just adults in general can model that for children. I think that will just make a huge difference.

Yeah, I totally agree. I totally agree. And modeling, modeling is so huge, right? There’s, there’s only so much, you know, a picture paints 1000 words, right? Like, there’s only so much that I can say, if I’m modeling, if I’m modeling something differently, you know, and I’m not sure how often in like a school setting, students observe a teacher’s experience a failure. But I think there definitely, it’s definitely there. But the one of the things I think is so cool and available for teachers, to be able to do is kind of like help a student like walk through and understand like, what it’s like to fail, and pick themselves up and like, here’s, here’s how to lessen this failure next time, here’s what we can learn from it. And truthfully, here’s why it’s good. You know, here’s why it’s good that that you learned this lesson now, you know, and you know, I talk all the time about failure being a good thing. But we just want to, you know, lessen or decrease the number of times we learn the same lesson is that lessons are really, really big. And so they require us to learn that time and time again. And that’s okay. You know, but if we can learn each lesson only once, you know, that we can try and fail, and then try again and fail at something different. And then we can learn and then try something else and fail at something different. And that’s what, what the greatest have always done, you know, the greatest teachers, the greatest performers, the greatest scientists, the greatest minds have just failed and then failed better the next time.

Absolutely. And a lot of it really does start, like with your mindset and your thoughts and your self talk. And so what are some of the ways that teachers can help the way a child talks to themselves?

Yeah, oh, well, like so big. And I think the biggest thing they could do is just help bring some awareness or help help them recognize it. And, you know, I think teachers in elementary school can do this in such a fun way, one of my favorite ways, and it works really, really well. It works really, really well with everybody, but like, young kids love it. And it’s just like a kind of a two claps idea. You know, anytime we hear, hear something negative, we just kind of give two claps, right. And then because it helps bring some awareness of like, what we just said is a little bit negative, you know, or can be reframed to be a little bit more positive or productive. But I think the best thing you can do is just help them become a little aware of the things that they’re saying, there’s gonna be plenty of opportunities for, you know, research says that over, over 75% of all of our thoughts each day are negative. And then the actually jumps up to over 95%, during, you know, competition or challenging times. So during, you know, during a test, during an evaluation, that our negativity jumps up that far, and so the best thing I think we’d be able to, we can do is to, to learn to help them, help them recognize that and give them give them the opportunity and the ability to state things differently. You know, and learn, learn to do that. Because that because that needs to happen, you know, recognizing my negativity isn’t always enough. But a lot of times I’d like now as an adult, I need to be able to change the way that I think, right? And so I gotta have some awareness, but then some opportunities to be like, Okay, well, you know, here’s a better way to think about that. And one of my favorite phrases is, that’s not necessarily true. And I use that all the time to change my change my self talk, but kind of a silly example of like playing playing basketball, it’s like this missing a bunch of shots. And it’s like, that I can’t seem to make anything today, you know, are just like going down the worst shooter, we catastrophize right to reuse those, those superlative superlative examples. And so I just love that phrase. What that’s not necessarily true, Jon, but you’re not the worst shooter in the world. Like, I’m sure there’s someone worse, you know, and I will I will get the comparison. But yeah, that guy’s worse.

Right? We don’t need to put someone down to feel better about ourselves.

Exactly. Exactly. Right. You know, think back to my time in school and some of the things that were like, most you know, were hardest for me is I remember being in seventh grade algebra and feel like I didn’t belong there, which I think is partially true. And I think I my good graces of a sixth grade teacher who was like, Jon, you need to be with these people. You know, she put me in she put me in a class with with the people that I needed to be in and not so much because my math was not there. I remember Mr. Davies. Opie Jensen middle school teaching us I don’t remember what it’s teaching us. But I remember it was like a pretty elementary like, Algebra idea. And I remember he explained it to me like three or four times, and I probably had just looked at blankest look on my face. And I remember I remember like thinking to myself, like, I’m never gonna get this. I’m never gonna get this, you know, he kept believing in me, right? What a good opportunity for a teacher to be like, Yes, I know, I said that out loud. Like I, you know, it wasn’t like I was keeping those thoughts to myself, for a teacher to be able to be like, Well, hey, Jon, that’s not necessarily true. You know, what might be true is that you’re having a hard time with this. But it’s not true that you’re never going to get this, you know, because what what Mr. Davies did encourage me to do was to was to come in, during lunch, and work on it in a quiet place, I love that he didn’t even invite me into, like, eat lunch or like to work during lunch, where he would help me, he invited me into his classroom, so I’d have a quiet place to do it. And I respect him so much for that, because it wasn’t like, he guided me, you know, led me by the hand, he made me struggle. I remember multiple times. And this was like, multiple days in a row, that I would like, you know, come in there, do my Algebra homework. And I’d like take it over to him to see if I got it, right. And he’s like, Nope, that’s not right. You point a point out the mistakes. And he’s like, remembering, you know, these are the rules or whatever. And just like, they need to send me back to the desk or back to the table and like, make make me work on it. So ever, there was just like, a lot of negativity for me about my belief, in my own abilities, right, lots of things that I can’t do, I can’t get this concept, I can’t understand that I don’t belong in this class, things like that. And that phrase, you know, that’s not necessarily true, you know, become so meaningful. I think a lot of students are really quick to do that, as well have just jumped to the superlatives jump to the catastrophes of It’s always this way, I’m never going to do this. And none of those things are very true. You know, my, my bachelor’s degree was in economics. I don’t remember much about economics. But a lot of what I do remember is, you know, the things are rarely, always and never, I’m certain that I passed some some of my intro to economics classes, because, you know, it’d be a true or false question. And the question would say something, something is always this way. And I didn’t know what that something something, something was. But I do remember that things were rarely always and never. And so I can make that as false because it’s not always, you know, and not never, and that’s been so important for me, and our self talk, because we are so quick to make final judgment on everything. And even in the positive, right, that I make one shot to do like a more fire, I’m never gonna miss. That’s not necessarily true, like, you gotta, you got to work hard, you still got to get open, you still got to take good shots, like all of that, right? You know, I’m never I’m never gonna get this concept. Well, that’s not necessarily true. But maybe, maybe what is true is that you need a little extra work in, you know, or that may not be true, but with a little bit effort, you could you could get it down. And so I think they, the teachers shape, and help a child learn to talk to themselves, by helping them understand what’s true, and what’s not. One of the things that’s so, so hard for me is when I see our class sizes, and I know it’s not true at every school, you know, some schools are different and limit and they emphasize, you know, class sizes or whatever. But, you know, in some of these public schools, like it’s such such high numbers in their classes, you know, 30-35 students. And what the reason why that that is hard for me, because it leaves such a little time for one on one work between the teacher and a student, which I know teachers agree with. But I think that’s such a good time. But it’s hard to, you know, challenge or question a student, you know, student or tell them, Hey, that’s not necessarily true. In front of the whole group, right? Sometimes that can be done and shouldn’t be. But I think sometimes it’s, you know, quite a quiet question of recognizing the body language on your one of your students, and be like, Hey, Johnny, tell me what you’re thinking right now. You know, and allowing Johnny to express like, I teach, I just don’t think I’m ever gonna get this. And then for a teacher to be like, well, that’s not necessarily true, Johnny. But tell me what is true. And getting them and allowing them to express that, like, I just don’t understand that right now. And that is true. I know, you don’t understand it right now. But I’ll just stand there right now will not be always in through your hard work through your effort. Like you can get this though it just might be a little bit harder for you. But that’s not a reason to not try. Anyway. So I just I think just some of those those things, those conversations are so much better had one on one. So, so impactful, that isn’t a little bummed when I see the number of students just decreases the allowance for one on one time.

Absolutely. And yeah, it’s such a challenge for teachers some of these class sizes. I agree. But yeah, as we talked about, we may not be able to change that, right. So it’s like, it’s like what do we do about it? We can still like, you know, like you mentioned, try to do the best we can given the situation. So I love that and I love how you talked about how Mr. Davies how he helped you and how he empowered you and you still remember that to this day. And I think that’s just such a powerful thing. And I agree. Small world, Jon and I went to the same schools. I had Mr. Davies as a teacher too. He was fabulous. So I mean, your students, once they’re grown adults, they remember these little things, these little conversations like, you know, you tell them, that’s not necessarily true. And they’re like, oh, that’s like a tool, I can use it. Maybe they continue using that throughout their lives. So I think when teachers empower themselves by learning these things themselves, and then pass it on to their students, because you can’t teach them what you don’t know, right. So when you do that, you’re empowering yourself, and then you’re empowering the next generation of children. So I think it’s just so important that our teachers learn these like high performance habits that you’ve been talking about. And then they’re able to model those for their students. I think that’s just so powerful.

Yeah, so powerful. And you know, that phrase, that’s not necessarily true. We just spent a few minutes talking about its impact on students. But you’re absolutely right, Kelsey, like, there are so many things that teachers say to themselves aren’t necessarily true, right? It’s not like children are the only ones that play this, this finality know that teachers are so so props to do similarly. And yeah, if we can if we can learn and make that a habit ourselves, and learn my question is not necessarily true. You know, or you have not yet. You know, one of the things I think is so, so eye opening, we go at least when I when I talk about it with people, they seem like oh my gosh, like, yeah, is understanding like where we’re at in our in our own personal story. That finality mindset makes it so we always feel like or that finality mindset is prevalent when we feel like we are in the final chapter, right? Because if I’m reading a book, and I’m in the final chapter, and they’re like, just starting the the final battle, or you know, the climax, they will, they almost have to be setting it up for sequel, right? Like, that’s where I go in my head, right? It’s like, there’s not enough time to tell this. And I think a lot of teachers do that. And people people do that. But teachers do that as well, when something goes wrong. We think we’re the final chapter. And it’s like, well, there’s not time to fix that. So this must just be and that’s not true. I tell people all the time, understand where you’re at in your story. And that we’re you know, we’re not, this isn’t the final chapter like this is actually just like chapter two or three. You know, this is that part where the hero transcends or goes down and experiences some setback loses their and uncle, Harry, Harry lost his parents, right. You know, they experienced that down so that they can they can climb back up again.

And that was the very beginning of the story.

Yeah, exactly. Right, the very beginning. So just understanding that, you know, understanding where you’re at in your story, and that it’s not, it’s not final, you know, this is necessary for your story to be really, really good.

Yes, I absolutely agree. 100% With all of that, and I think just empowering the teachers to know these tools, so they can see that themselves. Yeah. So what do you think high performance habits that teachers need to learn themselves before they can model this for their students?

Yeah, so that’s one of the reasons I’m doing this workshop for you guys on September 8, and kind of the purpose of it is, you know, I remember being in education, and experiencing some of those really hard things, or even from afar, watching them with teachers. And then I left and started spending a bunch of time with these really, really high performing athletes, or businessmen and women, doctors, nurses who were like doing impressive things, then you start recognizing and noticing some habits a lot of people have. And so I just started melding those two worlds, you know, that’s where this workshop comes from, is thinking about sort of struggles that teachers teachers have in the classroom and that they’re asked to do for our society. And then looking at some of those high performance habits of these high performing individuals and just sharing some of those, you know, those ideas about ways to stay present, focusing things in your control, learning to manage and change your your self talk and whatnot. So that’s really what the workshop on the eighth is all about is learning some very specific and easy ways that you can change and help yourself. Become a high performer. That high performer, you’re sometimes we think of our high performance, like professional athletes, and what they’ll get right, high performing athletes, professional athletes, yeah, they make a ton of money. That’s not like the greatest benefit that they receive. It’s a great benefit. Don’t get me wrong, but the ability to be a high performer bleeds into every area of your life and makes things more enjoyable. You know, there are a bunch of people who make a ton of money that don’t have high performance habits. They got high performance, you know, athleticism, or ability or skill, but they don’t have those high performance habits and they don’t really enjoy what they do. They have a hard time there. And I think this is all about enjoying more what we do feeling more in control, and learn learning how to talk to myself, and how to how to change the way I talk to myself when things get done.

Jon, I cannot wait for this workshop. It’s going to be so good.

Yeah, it’s gonna be awesome. And I offer a little bit of like a unique perspective that I hope people appreciate, you know, I’m not going to talk too much you know about about school. Instead, I’m gonna talk a lot about the the environment that I’m in now. And the ways the ways that I think we can take this into classroom and take this into teachers lives, just like, you know, they’re the high performer. They actually are, you know, and so hopefully, you know, those those attendants will appreciate, appreciate that format, and really feel that they’re getting coached well.

Yes. And I’m absolutely sure that well, because at Educate & Rejuvenate everyone was like I loved Jon’s session. Oh, that’s so nice. That was our summer conference a few months ago. But now you have the opportunity to hear from Jon again, he is doing this workshop, if you are a member of Wife Teacher Mommy club, make sure you come if you’re not come and join us, it’s going to be such a great time. And you can just go to wifeteachermommyclub.com and sign up. And we have lots of great workshops. We’re having this one with Jon, we have our coach Chrissy who does coaching quite often. So make sure to check it out and learn a little bit more, and DM me on Instagram. If you have any questions, I’m happy to answer any of them. And also, if you would like to connect with Jon, Jon, can you tell us a little bit about more about where listeners can find you or learn more about what you do?

Yeah, yeah, please do? Yeah, come check out, check out our website www.rjpg.net. And then you follow us follow us on Instagram is at @rjperformancegroup. If you’re looking to feel more personal with me, my instagram handle is at @jozzypsych. Ozzy, a nickname of mine, when people call me for years and years. Yeah I’d love to I’d love to connect with with some of your listeners and connect and hear their you know, their issues and what I can help with are some of the challenges they face I tell all the time but I’m not a lawyer. I don’t I don’t charge by the hour. You know, the clock doesn’t start you know as soon as the phone phone picks up. So yeah, shoot me a DM if there’s anything I can help with, like I’m happy to. I’m happy to get to you when I can and and and help however I can.

Awesome. Thank you so much, Jon, for coming on the podcast today. For those of you who are members, make sure to attend the workshop on September 8. And right now you don’t even have to wait hop over to the members only podcast for some additional fun questions and just a little, a little bit of a deeper dive over there. So we’ll see you over there. And if not, we will talk to you next time.