How to Bust the Winter Blues [episode 112]

112) How to Bust the Winter Blues

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Kelsey: [00:00:00] You are listening to episode 112 of Wife Teacher Mommy, the podcast. Bust the Winter Blues. In this episode, I’ll share why that is a super catchy title that I picked, but actually not what we want to do. So let’s talk about it.

 

Someone’s gotta take care of you. It’s the time or resources you lack. Teacher Mommy, they have got your back. It’s the Gala Teacher Mom. They’ll bridge the Gala Teacher Mommy. Between your life and class, you and your family. They’ll bridge the Gala Teacher Mommy. They’ll bridge the Gala Teacher Moms to me.[00:01:00]

 

Welcome to Wife Teacher Mommy, the podcast. I’m Kelsey Sorenson, former elementary teacher and current homeschool mom. And even though I’ve been a resource creator since 2014, I’ve realized that printables alone aren’t all you need in order to thrive as a teacher or homeschool parent. That’s why I also created this show and got started.

 

Certified as a life coach to help you finally kick burnout to the curb and feel confident with whatever challenges come your way with the right mindset strategies and new teaching inspiration. You’re going to be well on your way to your best teacher life. Now let’s go.

 

my friend. Today is a little bit different of an episode. It’s a super exciting episode because not only am I recording by myself like I usually am, I’m recording this episode with over 50 of our listeners here inside the studio.

 

Which I can already tell is so much fun. We talked for, we didn’t even start [00:02:00] recording for about 10 minutes because we were having so much fun all chatting together. So if you are listening now and you’re like, Oh, darn it, I missed it. I promise you, I’m going to find another time to do this. I’m sure this will be the first of probably at least quarterly.

 

We’ll do this. I think, I think this is needed and a lot of fun. about me though, since we are doing this live and whenever I do a webinar I like to introduce myself and I’ve realized that some of you might have been following along on the podcast for a while but maybe you don’t really know much about me because I feel like I did an intro at the very beginning and we’re over 100 episodes in so might as well do this for newer listeners or just if you’re like I don’t know who Kelsey really is.

 

So, uh, my name is Kelsey Sorenson. I am a former teacher. I taught third grade. I subbed kindergarten through six and now I’m a homeschool mom. I’ve been doing that since my fourth grader was in the kindergarten. I created wife teacher mommy in 2014 after having my oldest. Um, I was subbing and I realized that I’d [00:03:00] been a teacher, right?

 

So I’d been in the classroom. I knew that getting a sub and planning for a sub was like a huge pain, but also when I started being a sub, I was like, Oh, there are times where I could probably use a little bit more. And luckily I was a teacher, so I could totally do it. But I’m like, what about the subs who aren’t, you know?

 

So I started making the sub plans that both would be easy for teachers and. That teachers would love and then also for subs they love it too. So kind of just the perfect Combination there started making those putting them on teachers pay teachers that started growing and wife teacher. Mommy was born super exciting and Over the years we started creating more different resources.

 

I started homeschooling in 2019 I was wondering I was like, I love supporting the teachers. I don’t want to stop that But I also want to support parents too. So how do we, how do I do that? How do I support both teachers and continue doing what I’m doing with teachers, but also help the homeschool parents now that I’m a homeschool mom.

 

And then COVID happened. So that naturally happened where we were able to start making home learning packets, but then we were having teachers buy them to send home with their [00:04:00] kids and the parents, um, would buy them or to send home for their students. And the parents would buy them for their kids. And then we just kind of kept both audiences.

 

It’s been a lot of fun to support both teachers and parents here at wife, teacher, mommy. Now, the other thing that happened around that same time period in 2019, I had my youngest child. His name is Peter. He’s now four. He’s adorable. He’s got what you call, what he calls, we just went to the hair salon the other day, he calls it Luke Skywalker hair.

 

He has just this cute little, I don’t know, almost a mullet. Like we asked him if he wanted to cut short. He’s like, no, I want my Luke Skywalker hair. He’s never even seen Star Wars, but the last time he was there, the hairstylist called it that. And so he calls it that every time. It’s super cute. It’s so cute.

 

Um, what led to me five days later. Ending up in the emergency room. I had a major anxiety attack, but at the time I didn’t know that’s what it was, and I didn’t know that that’s what I actually had been having for years, and this was just the worst one [00:05:00] that I had had.

 

Now, I’d always just consider myself an anxious person. Like, I have anxiety. I’m an anxious person. This is who I am. I was labeling myself as that, which I now know is a cognitive distortion of taking a label and putting it on yourself. And we’ve talked about that in the episode about cognitive distortions.

 

So if you haven’t listened to that one, be sure to check it out. Um, but with that, I just, you know, never got the help I needed. So this was kind of the breaking point that I knew I needed to get that support. I couldn’t keep like just going on as they had. I needed to take some time to slow down, to.

 

figure out what was going on and get some help, right? So I did. I, was diagnosed with postpartum anxiety and anemia for one. I got on prescriptions for both of those things. I started working with a therapist, highly recommend therapy, love therapy. But then by January, I was feeling a lot more stable.

 

And, but there was a time where I was asked to do something that I didn’t feel like I had the capacity to do. I’ll have any of you who had this [00:06:00] before any of you in the studio or listening at home, think about it in your head. If you’ve ever been asked to do something, you’re just like, I do not have the capacity for this, but I don’t know how to say no.

 

I feel like a lot of us, so many of us, women especially, but also men, um, help those around us. And we don’t want to say no, right? It’s like, I want to help you, but I also feel like I don’t have the capacity to do this. So Facebook group and I posted in there. I was like, I don’t know what to do about this.

 

And somebody in the comments was like, Hey girl, you need to talk to this girl named Lizzie Langston. She is a life coach actually for postpartum women, which I was at the time. Right. I just spilled my whole story that I kind of just told you about how I just had my baby and all that. So. I started working with her for over a year.

 

I worked with a life coach with Lizzie. She’s incredible. I’m actually working with her again Now she’s helping me with all my mindset stuff with writing the book, which I’m going to get to um But it was the biggest game changer for me So I started working personally with the coach and then around that same time we launched our [00:07:00] membership wife teacher mommy club and At the time, it was just getting access to our resources, and we planned on doing an event, which I called Wife Teacher Mommy Live, because we didn’t have a name for it yet.

 

And I surveyed those current members, and we’re like, what is it that you need? What support do you need? And we realized that, I mean, this shouldn’t have been a shocking discovery. I mean, I knew it. But when we were asking the biggest problems, they weren’t all going to be solved by printables. They just weren’t.

 

And printables solve a lot of problems, but they don’t solve… Other problems. It’s like, okay, I’ve got this done, but now there’s this next thing I’m stressed about. Right. So like, okay, let’s make sure that this event helps with a lot of that. But I was like, you know what? This coaching has been a game changer for me.

 

I want to bring it to everybody. I was not certified as a coach yet. So it was like, I need to find a coach to come in and coach our members. So I found Chrissy Nichols, who, who hands up, if you know, Chrissy, those of you in the studio, she’s also been on the podcast like three or four times already. She’s incredible.

 

We had her come, uh, coming in to coach our members, come on the [00:08:00] podcast. And a few months later, I decided I wanted to certify as coach too. So we now offer the coaching inside by teacher mommy club, which is a lot of fun. I’m a certified life coach. We do our educate and rejuvenate events, which have been incredible.

 

We’ve had thousands of teachers come to our biggest summer events and then our. Winter events that we do. Our winter one is upcoming. It’s smaller. It’s more intimate. It’s just with our members. We love doing these events because they’re really unlike any other PD that I’ve been to because we have like sessions about all the different teaching topics, but then we also have the coaching component as well.

 

So I’m the host of the Educate and Rejuvenate conferences. I’m a certified life coach. Um I also recently got invited to present at the Teacher Heart Out Cruise, which I’m excited about, but the big thing is that they then connected me with Teacher Goals Publishing. And so I chatted with them for a while, and they’re like, hey, we’d love to publish a book with you.

 

I wasn’t so sure about it. I was like, do I have time to write a book? Ultimately decided to do it because I realized, you know what, this is going to be the thing that helps [00:09:00] me to help even more teachers and get more clear on my work and the concepts. Get it all in written format. And as I’ve been writing this book, I’m in the process right now.

 

I am just getting so many ideas. They’re now already in my head. I’m like, I know a full course module I’m going to make for my members. And it’s just like overflowing and So many ideas, so exciting. So, anyways, that is a little bit about me. For those of you who are new, or just may not have known all of that, um, I went a little longer than I thought, especially with that, like, haircut part.

 

But, that’s okay. Um, but now you know who you’re getting advice from on Wife, Teacher, Mommy, the podcast this week. So, Dusty, there’s not a book yet. I am writing the book right now. I will let you soon as pre orders are out. Um, and I love how I’m already also like now that I did that intro and popping in the comments a little bit.

 

I’m seeing a lot of people helping each other out in the chat as well. Like you’re like agreeing with what I’m saying. Um, People talking about their first year teaching, Joanne says she’s homeschooling, love it. [00:10:00] And Bethany was talking about her husband, about feeling this way, not being able to say no.

 

We’re seeing a lot of camaraderie here in the chat. And, um, helping each other out, too. So, Karen said, like, how to deal with guilt. And then, um, Jennifer says you were so right to ask it a different way. Until, like, I saw somebody answer somebody’s question. You’re all going so fast, though. So, that’s okay. We are, how do you deal with no guilt?

 

How do you deal with no guilt? I’m not sure what you mean by, how do I deal with no guilt? How do I deal with guilt? Like feeling guilt? So guilt is an emotion, right? That’s something that we create when we think certain thoughts about way, the way things should be. Right. And we’re going to talk about that.

 

We’re going to get to that. If you still have that question at the end of this episode, we’ll get into that as well. Okay, so let’s dive into this episode. Also, just like I was kind of doing in the chat here, I’d love to engage with all of you too. And what I think a lot of people who listen to this podcast don’t realize is you might listen to the podcast each week and get [00:11:00] those golden nuggets.

 

And like I was talking about, it can be a little bit of a solitary experience, which is great. Like, I mean, I love being here. in my office and recording this podcast and then you listening wherever you can. But also in our Wife Teacher Mommies Unite Facebook group, that is our free Facebook group. Every week we start a discussion thread about the podcast episode and we pick a giveaway winner every week.

 

So after this episode airs, once you’re done listening, be sure to head on over to the Facebook group and join the discussion and connect with other teachers who are listening and applying the same tools that you are listening to this podcast. And when we engage with each other, we can just. Help each other even more and also you will be entered to win a prize.

 

I can’t remember what it is each week. We do so many giveaways. I have a hard time sometimes keeping track of what is what. So I’m not going to say something here in case it’s not the right thing, but there is definitely a giveaway. Okay, so let’s get into the meat of this episode now. So, I want all of you to ponder this question, and if you’re in the [00:12:00] studio with me right now, I want you to actually answer in the chat, and I’m going to read off some of your responses.

 

How would you define the winter blues? Because that is what we’re talking about today. What does it mean to you? How does it feel to you? Does it really ring true? Like, are you like, oh yeah, I feel the winter blues. Or is it simply a concept or an idea that like, oh maybe, yeah, I understand what it is, but maybe I don’t really feel it that much.

 

Again, there’s no right or wrong here. Is it simply a concept or an idea to you? How do you feel it? How does it apply to your life? What does it mean?

 

Okay, so there’s a little bit of a delay with webinar jam, which is fine. Stephanie said, just want to sleep all the time. Zero motivation. Oh, yeah. Yeah, feeling exhausted when the day starts. Shorter days when five o’clock feels like nine o’clock. Here we go. Here are all the comments. Um, Catherine, first year teacher [00:13:00] here.

 

Fifth graders. I have a great class, but the burdens I put on myself weigh me down the most. I feel like I should have everything figured out and it should all work. Now. I need to give myself the gift of grace. Catherine. Yes. So those shoulds are cognitive distortions. I really recommend listening to the podcast episode I did about that.

 

When we tell ourselves we should do something. It’s not necessarily true. We’re just making ourselves feel all that guilt, right, when we’re telling ourselves that. Um, okay, but getting back to the winter blues, so feeling shut in, no energy to do anything, exhausted, when it’s gray and cold, I feel tired and unmotivated, feeling sad, easily emotional, stress eating, tired, feeling of heaviness.

 

Yes. It so rings true. Our days are colder with less sun, which means most kids aren’t getting outside nearly as much as they used to. So yeah, it can affect the kids behavior too, right? It doesn’t just affect us. It affects the kids. And that’s something we want to keep in mind. It feels darker. I am more tired and restless.

 

Winter blues are when I’m burned out and every day seems [00:14:00] like I don’t get anything done and everyone is ready to just start fresh or get away. Stephanie says, get up in the morning but try to figure out when I can have a nap when it feels dark and arriving home. Yes, oh my goodness, so many amazing comments here.

 

Overwhelming shorter days, wild kids, party planning, plus mommy duties. Yeah, not being able to get out in the sun, just feeling bland, stressed. Doing a lack of drive to complete tasks, missing the sunshine, so sleepy, lose like four hours a day, no energy, lack of motivation, um, sadness when Christmas is over.

 

Yeah, um, Basia, is that how you say your name? Um, I, I’ve noticed that too, that it gets worse in, like for me, it gets worse in January because in December and November, we at least kind of have the holidays to kind of get us through and we’re kind of busy with that too. But in January, it can really kind of Because, I mean, where I live, it’s still, like, it’s winter through January, February.

 

And I mean, for everyone, like, you know, just the seasons with the sun and everything, right? Um, I am [00:15:00] very today. So There are simply things we do not have control over during the winter season, right? And a lot of those are the things that you just mentioned. Um, and if you can daylight hours, like, scientifically, logistically. the calendar schedule. When there are fewer holidays, that break between, like, winter break and spring break can’t control any of that.

 

Um, I’m not sure has been mentioned yet, or I think actually one of you might have, but we don’t have any control over our serotonin levels. When there are fewer daylight hours, we actually have lower serotonin and that makes it so we even more easily go into a stress response, which is similar to like, Sometimes they’re called trauma responses.

 

Sometimes they’re, we can just call them a stress response and I like to go with stress response, but I’m just talking about it in a general sense because it doesn’t have to be. A major [00:16:00] trauma.

 

more likely to go into a stress response, which, um, you might’ve heard these same things called trauma responses before fight, flight, freeze, and fawn. Those can be related to trauma, but they can also just happen when we are stressed out and we get activated. So the last two weeks on the podcast, and whether you’ve listened to them or not, I highly recommend listening to them after this one.

 

Kelsey: Um, two weeks ago, we had Leah Davidson on the podcast. We talked all about nervous system regulation. And then we had Lindsay Pullman on the podcast and we talked about trauma, but whether it’s trauma or just distress response, we can’t go into fight, flies, freeze, or fawn. And when that happens, it’s not our choice.

 

This is not a case of our thoughts creating our feelings like we talk about. In the self coaching model, this is a stress response that is kind of above that. So like a stress response would go in the circumstance line of the self coaching model. And if you don’t know what I’m talking about, we’re going to get into that.[00:17:00]

 

We’re just starting with the nervous system piece here today. So, um, that is outside of our control. So those are the things and all the things we’ve talked about that we just don’t have control over, right? Also, thank you to those of you who are like saying, over. So first I talked, and again, I have a list of things I’m going to talk over, but then also we’re going to see some amazing ones in the chat. So Rose says our additives, yes. Um, taking elderberry, yes. I highly recommend elderberry and vitamins and probiotics.

 

Probiotics actually really help too because our gut health. It has a lot to do with our whole health, and I actually think that’s why, like, yes, I do have this, but I did not get hit, it took me a lot longer to get it, like, my whole family had it, and then I didn’t get as bad of a case as some of my other family members.

 

Well, maybe my husband, again, I think he had other factors too. I’m not blaming him or anything, but I’m just saying, I do feel like, um, we may still get sick, but it does like make it [00:18:00] less bad. Um, like I actually have felt pretty good today is just like talking for a little while, you know? Um, okay. Attitude of gratitude.

 

Yes. Like writing in a gratitude journal, creating fun activities, activities or hobbies, getting outside while it’s daylight or using a therapy lamp. Oh my goodness. See, you’re already like starting to write what I have here on the podcast. You’re bringing all the goodness here. I love it. Thank you. Okay.

 

Healthy both mentally and physically and emotionally. Yes, Melissa, we can find a mentor. Exactly. We can control our eating and healthy habits as well as our mindset movement breaks. Zinc helps good things in our minds and bodies. I love all this. Okay, so I’m going to go over the things that I have written in my podcast outline and then I’ll check back in.

 

So, um, one of the first things we can do, like I mentioned, we can’t control if we’re in a stress response cycle, right? And I’m going to talk a little bit about the stress cycle today. We talked about the nervous system in the last two episodes and, [00:19:00] um, nervous system awareness is really important on top of all the other mindset and body tools that we’ve been talking about on the podcast.

 

Now I’ve been reading this book. It’s called Burnout by Emily and Amelia Nagoski. They are twin sisters. I’ve been both reading and listening to it. I have a Kindle where you can like switch back and forth between the two. And I love it. Um, but this book and I read one of their other, or Emily’s book before, Come As You Are, where she talked about this.

 

So I kind of knew the background concept of it. But in this book, Burnout, they really dive deep into the stress cycle. And I want to just talk a little bit about what that is. That with all of you today. So in the stress cycle, we’re in a normal state with our nervous system. And it’s kind of like a regulated state that we talked about on the podcast with Leah Davidson or being inside our window of tolerance, where we can handle stressful situations.

 

But if a trigger or something happens where we get pushed out of it, and remember this happens more easily during the winter time, um. Then we, our regular thinking brain kind of goes offline and we aren’t able [00:20:00] to do the things we would normally do, such as like think about our thinking, process our feelings, basically when we are activated, we’re not going to be an observer of ourselves, whether we’re observing our thoughts or observing our feelings and being intentional.

 

We just aren’t intentional. We’re in survival mode. Our body is literally thinks it’s like the same thing as if it’s like fighting off a bear or if, you know, your house is on fire or something, your nervous system scan. It’s like danger, danger. And it thinks you’re actually in danger. So it’s doing all the things that your body is doing, like pumping up adrenaline.

 

So you can like escape the danger, right? We may not necessarily need to do that. So what happens is, even if it goes away, so imagine, so for one example, like, um, the bear, for example. Somebody takes out the bear, right? Like, so there’s a bear, the bear is coming to attack you. Um, good news, somebody else there, like, took out the bear, so the bear is no longer about to attack you.

 

Your body doesn’t all of a sudden regulate, right? the stressor is gone. There’s the [00:21:00] bear’s gone, but the stress is still there. So there are two different things. So in the stress cycle, we have like our normal state, and then we go into the activated state. But then even when the stressor goes away, we need to complete the cycle because our bodies don’t know that the stressor is gone.

 

We’re still dealing with the stress, even though the stressor isn’t there. Or there are times where maybe the stressor is there, like, right? Like, Something we can’t control like at school or whatever, but we can deal with the stress part, right? So the way that we do that, the way that we can complete the stress cycle, and we’re going to talk about this even more in our upcoming Workshop, because I’ll be able to have more visuals and stuff, um, prepared by then, but the way we can complete that cycle and deal with the stress before we can do any of the other things, there are seven ways that the Nagoski sisters and Jen said the stress is harder after the event.

 

Yeah, you know, like, when you just can’t let go of the stress, it’s like, wait, [00:22:00] why am I still stressing about this? And then maybe you’re like, getting mad at yourself or still stressing over it. Right? Um. So there are things that we physically can do, that we need to physically do one of these things to complete that stress cycle.

 

And there are seven that they named in the book. Um, and this book is called Burnout. If you want to check it out, it’s really, really good. It’s called Burnout by Emily and Amelia Nagoski. Highly recommend. They’re also really engaging on audio. They switch off reading and you really can’t tell the difference who’s reading though because they’re twins, but I love them.

 

Um. Okay, but the things we can do the highly most top recommended the one they say this is the very best But some people don’t want to do it So we have all the other ways the best way to complete the stress cycle is physical Movement now when people say that like working out or going on a walk or something helps relieve their stress This is why it is the number one way to help us complete the stress cycle.

 

Now, it doesn’t have to be a workout like, Oh, I’m going to like work out super intense. And it doesn’t have [00:23:00] to be because there’s anything wrong with your body because there’s not like, if you want to lose weight because you want to lose weight, that’s fine, but you don’t have to. Um, so physical movement.

 

is one of the key ways to complete the cycle. The next way we can do that is by, um, breathing, focusing on our breathing. And I’m reading a book by one of the top breathing experts right now. I actually, it was one of our, um, a member of our community, Sarah. If you’re here, the Sarah, you’re going to know which Sarah.

 

There are a lot of Sarahs in our community. Sarah Rowland, if you’re here. We were chatting about this. We were maybe going to do a podcast about it together too, but. Um, there’s this guy, his name is Patrick McEwen, and he wrote the book, The Breathing Cure, which I’m, which I’m reading right now. I’m reading so many books since I’m writing my own book.

 

Um, I’m reading it right now and we will also be having him on the podcast soon. Actually, I’m in communication with him, but one of the things I learned that is [00:24:00] fascinating is that we want to breathe lightly, deeply. and slowly. So a lot of us, we breathe way too fast, which actually makes it so we don’t keep as much of the, and it’s really interesting, like we don’t get as much of the effect of the carbon dioxide, which we actually need when we breathe fast.

 

It’s like we don’t get as much of that. And. Um, so we need to breathe slower. We need to breathe deeper, as in all the way down to our diaphragm. And part of the reason that we breathe, a lot of us breathe from our chest, is partially, honestly, because of body standards, actually. As I’ve been diving into it, like, oh, we don’t want our stomach to be round, so we start breathing through our chest, like, into just our chest when we should be breathing all the way down to our diaphragm.

 

Our stomachs are supposed to move when we breathe. So I want to focus on breathing. They actually talk about in the, [00:25:00] um, book as we’re, you’re kind of doing this slower breathing and training yourself to try to get to six breaths a minute. So it’s like, um, it’s like four seconds in six seconds out, and you try to breathe deep, slow, because again, four seconds in six seconds out.

 

And then, um. You want to breathe lightly. So you actually a lot of us when we think of a deep breath we kind of go And we try to like take in so much air and that’s actually too much We want to breathe like lightly we want to feel a slight air hunger is what they called it because that is what makes it so we I’m trying to remember again.

 

I’m still like studying this but that helps us to have a tiny bit of that air hunger To like, breathe in light, so we’re not feeling like over, like we’re not over breathing. So light, but all the way in, and slower. Helps us a ton. So, deep breathing. Um, and then I’m gonna go through the others. I realized, you with completing the stress cycle as well. Um, and to kind of go along with that laughter. So if you can, if you can combine laughter with the positive social interactions, [00:26:00] affection is actually been studied that, you know, and that’s why you hear about like the eight second hug, I don’t know if you’ve heard of that or the six second kiss.

 

Um, These things really. Help us to get that connection that helps us to complete the stress cycle. Crying can help us as well. Like, you know, the release that we get through crying, good, productive, cry, not like a cry, like, Oh, I’m like, you know, like, but it’s just like, Hey, I’m getting the emotion out. Right.

 

And then the final one is creative expression. Like, you know, there are times where I felt angry or whatever, and you’re just going to get it out, write a poem and doesn’t even have to be good. Just get it down, be creative. you know, really helps to do that. And again, this is not a, you need to do all these things to complete this cycle.

 

I’m not telling you, you need to do this and that and that and that. These are different options of things that you can do to complete that stress cycle. Okay. So before I go When I’ve dealt with the stress, when I’ve completed the stress [00:27:00] cycle.

 

So what Emily and Amelia had to say about it is that you’ll know, just kind of like when, you know, you’re full after a meal. And similar to that, some people are more able, more easily able to identify that than others. And some people might take a little bit longer than others. It might not be immediate.

 

They’re like, Oh yeah, right this moment. You know, that’s why sometimes like we need to wait and see if we feel full, you know. But you can just trust yourself that you will know and what I would add to that is remembering what we learned about how we can’t really be an observer of our thoughts or our feelings if we’re in an activated state.

 

If we find that we’re able to do those things without any difficulty, then we’ll know that we have regulated ourselves. So that would be the big test is like, okay, um, am I able to do, um, a thought download right now? And actually look at my thoughts. I’m not able to do that right now. Then, you know, you probably still have not completed that cycle.

 

Okay. So I’m going to check the chat here for a minute completing the stress cycle and then within the, a lot of subcategories, right? The next thing we can [00:28:00] control is what we do With our emotions. So, um, and I’ve talked about this before. This may be a review to some of you. It’s going to be new information to some of you too.

 

So I really want to go over it. So we think we are good at feeling our feelings. But oftentimes we find ourselves doing something else with our feelings rather than actually feeling or processing them. So I’m going to go over the four, or the four things we can do with our feelings, and I want you to think about which you find yourself doing the most.

 

So, the first thing we do is we resist. our feelings. So that is when we push the emotion away. And we’re like, I don’t want to feel this. I don’t want to be anxious right now. It’s kind of like when people talk about like bottling it up. Um, it creates more tension and this is what we might be doing. So when I mentioned at the beginning of this episode, bust through the winter blues, but it’s like, no, I got to bust through it.

 

I got to like, no, I don’t want to feel it. I don’t want to feel this winter blues. Like, I mean, you’re really kind of tense with it and like, you know, trying to beat it up or whatever. Um, [00:29:00] That is when we are trying to resist our emotions. So, this is when I think we do a lot, my friends. Okay, the next one we tend to do is react to our emotions.

 

So, this is when we have a big external reaction to it. So, we’re like yelling, lashing out at someone, crying. And again, crying is like one that’s like, I mean, it can be really good release. It depends on if it’s like a dramatic, like, Like, crying is good. Crying is a release. But it’s more like if you’re having like, I’m so, everything is so terrible!

 

You know, like that. Um, that might not be as productive. That might just be a big reaction, right? Like, if you imagine, you’re like, Is this my version of a toddler tantrum? If it’s not, then, you know, that might be helping you process your emotions. But if it’s your version of a toddler tantrum, might be reacting…

 

And acting out your emotions rather than actually noticing and feeling them. The next one that we tend to do, and I think resist and avoid are the ones we do the most often, though I do think we all react in [00:30:00] certain ways. It’s bigger reactions for some of us than others. But the next one I think all of us do a lot, okay, is avoiding our emotions.

 

So this is when we try to do anything, anything in the world to try to avoid feeling the emotion. And for those of us, you who are in wife, teacher, mommy club, we a lot of times also call this buffering. This is when we try to do anything else other than feel it. So we might head to our pantry. We might be like, Oh, I need some retail therapy.

 

That is buffering. That’s when you’re trying to buy something to make yourself feel better rather than just feeling the emotion. Um, you might, it can even be something good. It could be like, I’m going to go work out and you’re doing that. Not because I’m going to complete the stress cycle, but because, um, I just want to avoid feeling the feeling or it could be, um, that you drink or that you scroll your phone or, you know, you call a friend to talk about something else to distract yourself.

 

So, you can just [00:31:00] put off feeling the feeling, but what you’ll notice is it doesn’t go away. It just extends the feeling of that feeling. Right? So. And it’s still kind of there the whole time. But we’re trying to avoid it. We’re trying our best. We believe that we really can, but it’s going, even if we’re like, for the moment it goes away, it comes back and sometimes it comes back with a vengeance.

 

So. And I see it here. Um, yeah, Katie said, try not to react in a negative way to those who push our buttons. Yes. Yeah, I see a lot of you in the chat saying that you do this and that’s fine. I do it too. We all do it. These are human things. So awareness around this is not so you can beat yourself up when you find yourself avoiding emotions or reacting to them or, um, resisting them.

 

Like, there are times, like, I’ve had, like, I actually wrote in my book about a time where I majorly reacted to my emotions. It was just earlier this year. It was a major one with my husband. Major reaction. And after the fact, it was just like, huh. [00:32:00] Why did I do that? It’s not, we don’t need to beat ourselves up about it.

 

We just need to be like, Oh, okay, this is interesting. I have this awareness now. I don’t want to use it against myself. I want to use it for myself and I want to have so much compassion and non judgment with myself. So I can be like, why am I doing this? And you know, just go from there. It kind of helps us to get to know ourselves and be an observer of ourselves.

 

It gives us something to observe. It’s what makes life interesting, right? When we can look at ourselves, like if it were just perfect and we never did any of these things, then it wouldn’t be really interesting to observe ourselves, right? We learn so much about ourselves by observing as we do these things that we’re going to continue to do, but we’ll just get better at noticing them and redirecting and then feeling good about ourselves when we redirect.

 

Like, it’s amazing. Okay, but the final thing we can do, and this is what maybe you notice, oh, I’m resisting, I’m reacting, I’m avoiding. Okay, let’s move on to actually processing our emotions. So this is when we are simply being aware and present of our feelings. A lot of [00:33:00] times we are trying so hard to avoid our negative emotions, but we realize like what is the worst part of a negative emotion, right?

 

It’s just a feeling in our body. Can we handle that? Can we handle the feeling of this negative emotion? Can I handle the tightness in my chest or the, you know, feeling running through my veins or the, um, feeling in my jaw and like all that, just sitting with it for a bit. We can do it. We can totally do it.

 

Like if I had to inject you with anxiety or the worst feeling in the world, you could do it. You could feel that emotion. And that is the worst thing that would happen. Feelings themselves don’t actually hurt us. We think they do, like it feels dangerous, but they don’t, our feelings don’t hurt us. So what we can do is we can process them instead.

 

It’s simply being aware of them, bringing awareness to our emotions, help us realize, oh yeah, I’m feeling anxious right now, or I’m feeling overwhelmed right now, or I’m feeling angry right now, or I’m feeling sad right now. I’m feeling really down right now. Whatever it is, be like, okay, yeah, I’m feeling [00:34:00] this.

 

What is it? And just kind of doing a body scan through your body. Like, what’s it feel like in my head? What does it feel like in my jaw? What does it feel like in my eyes? What does it feel like in my shoulders? What does it feel like, you know, going all the way down, doing a body scan all the way down to your pinky toe?

 

What does it feel like in your pinky toe? Really get familiar with your body. We tend to be so much in our heads when we get into our bodies and really feel what’s going on. We really, as we do that, as we do that body scan, you’ll notice the feeling actually simmers down when the other things tend to just make the emotion worse.

 

So the ironic thing is that by feeling the emotions, we actually naming it, feeling it, we tame the emotions. Yes. Like Sarah said, name it to tame it. Right? So. It’s magical. And you can even start asking yourself questions like, what is this feeling? Naming it? Where do I feel in my body? Does it have a color, a shape, a texture?

 

I know it sounds weird, but trust me, it really does help. You can do that body scan again, all the way down. And just like the stress cycle, you can [00:35:00] breathe here too. Breathing also helps with processing those strong emotions. You can take that deep breath, like all the way into your diaphragm. Take in just the right amount of air, not too much, just the right amount of air, and breathe it out slowly, and, yeah, it’s really powerful.

 

So we just take that time to feel our emotions. It can actually help us, help them to simmer down. It’s pretty amazing. Okay, so that is what we can do with our emotions, and then the final thing we can do. Is then once we like we talked about this in motion work and processing our emotions and how our emotions like we don’t have to be afraid of them like our lives.

 

We’re going to have like, my mentor Brooke Castillo really says it’s like 5050. we’re going to have 50 percent positive 50 percent negative emotions. So there’s nothing wrong with feeling it. Um, but the next thing we can do, we become an observer of our bodies and our feelings. And the next thing you can do is observe your thoughts, [00:36:00] how we think about situations, how we treat ourselves, whether or not we accommodate the season for ourselves, rather than just trying to bust it or push through it, allowing that season to be a little softer if it needs to be, rather than having these shoulds that you’re telling yourself, I should do this, I should do that.

 

Like maybe, maybe that was great a few months ago and maybe now it’s not, right? So, I’m going to go over the self coaching model again for a minute. So, our self coaching model that we talked about is how our unconscious thoughts control so much of what is going on in our lives. And from a Google search, it said we have about 70, 000 thoughts a day.

 

The exact number doesn’t really matter. We just know it’s a whole ton of thoughts. But… We can’t possibly keep track of all of them, but the interesting thing is that so many of those thoughts are repetitive and so many of those thoughts are negative. So, if we can take some time to just notice what those thoughts are, we can see how those are helping to create those feelings, actions, and results.

 

So, if we want to feel better, [00:37:00] we can start paying attention to what we think. So, I’m going to give a quick example here. I have, and I’m going to put this in the chat really quick actually, this like story that. I wrote. So we have, um, this is a story from a fictional person that I just wrote and it says, I hate the winter because it is so dark all the time.

 

The sun doesn’t come up until 7. 30 and I get up at six and it’s already down before my husband gets home from work. It’s so cold that we can’t go outside or do anything fun with the kids. I feel so helpless. I just lay on the couch and watch my kids play iPads because there is nothing I can do about it.

 

I just can’t wait until it is spring. Now there are some things that are true in there, right? There are things she can’t control. She can’t control that it is winter. She can’t control that she wakes up at 6. Well, I mean, I guess she actually could. But that was the circumstance in this situation, right?

 

That she was up at 6 that day. But we can’t control that the sun comes up at 7. 30. Uh, we can’t control when the sun goes down. And she can’t control when her husband gets [00:38:00] home, right? But the thing she’s telling herself, like, I hate winter. It is so dark all the time. It is so cold. We can’t go outside or do anything fun with the kids.

 

I feel so helpless. There’s nothing I can do about it. I just can’t wait until it is spring. So when she just keeps telling herself, like, but yeah, we can’t control it’s winter. But if we just keep telling ourselves, like, I hate that it’s winter. Um, there’s nothing we can do. We can’t go outside. Can we not go outside or could we bundle up and go sledding or do something fun and then have some hot chocolate, you know, just ways we can think about it differently.

 

Um, I just can’t wait until it is spring. What about, what is something I can enjoy about the winter? Right? So, but I want to, like, take this and put it in a model, right? So I’m going to put this in the chat as well. So the way we talk about, for those of you who are here live, for those of you who are on the podcast, do not worry.

 

I am going to, um, talk through this entire thing with all of you. So, our circumstance is, it is winter. sun comes up at 6 and it [00:39:00] goes down before dinner. Her thought that we’re going to look at, because when we do a model, we just look at one thought at a time. And I realized that came out horribly in the chat, I apologize. Um, but the thought, it is so dark all the time. And again, that is a thought, right?

 

That is not a circumstance. Let me tell you why. Because all the time, is it so dark all the time? Is there no light during the day? There is some light, right? And she, where she lives, might have more light than maybe somebody in Alaska has at other times of year. So it’s subjective, right? And even if it is true, like even if I weren’t to fight with you, like it’s so dark all the time, does it serve us to continue thinking that?

 

Like, you don’t even have to, like, keep thinking something, even if it is true. I mean, that, that kind of blew my mind when I, like, re like, heard that on a podcast the other day, even though I knew it. But it’s like, oh, even if it is true, does it serve me to keep thinking it? So you can either question if it’s true, like, again, we could look at it subjectively, like, no, it’s not dark all the time.

 

But also, is it serving me to continue thinking, it’s so dark all the time, it’s so [00:40:00] dark all the time, it’s so dark all the time? No, right? That makes her feel sad when she thinks that. And what she does, so again, our thought it’s so dark all the time, drives the feeling of sadness. The thing she does, she stays inside.

 

She tells herself she’s helpless. She lounge lounges around while the kids play iPads. She ruminates on her sadness. She resists the feeling of sadness. She doesn’t think of creative ideas to make the season more exciting. She’s not grateful for the daylight that she does have. And she’s just wishing the time away.

 

She’s just wishing it’s spring. And the result is she’s preventing herself from understanding how to make the most of the winter season. Right? So those of you who are in wife, teacher, mommy club, I know that some of you are here in the studio with me. Um, this is where our coaching can help you to like really understand this more.

 

We can like help you with models. You can come get coached when you’re struggling with this. Um, and even listening on the Members Only Private Podcast and hearing other people get coached. We’re doing a private podcast challenge this month in November for those of you who are [00:41:00] members. If you listen to the coaching, even that can just help you rewire your brain and learn how to use the tools as you hear them being applied to other people.

 

So just like this example today, and you’re like, Oh, that’s how the model works, right? Okay, so we can control our thinking, right? And then the last thing we can control is we can control some of our circumstances, right? And actually, I want to read, read Chris. She says, honestly, love this system. I do this with my seven year old now.

 

When she told me her classmate that sits next to her, he does annoying things and it bothers her. So I tell her we can’t control what she does. What can you control? What can you do? And she probably solved things herself. I love it. Yes, I love it. And I love that you’re teaching it. to her as well. And that’s actually something I’m working on in my book, too.

 

In the book, there’s going to be a you try it section, which is like you applying it to yourself like we’re doing today. And then there’s going to be a you teach it section in every chapter. So we’re not only like learning this work ourselves, but we’re going to teach it to the next generation as well.

 

Um, [00:42:00] okay. So the final thing we’re going to look at what we can control is, um, parts of our environment we can control, right? So we can control. some circumstances. There are times where maybe we want to change the circumstance. Like in coaching, we talk a lot of times about like, Oh, like, it’s not the circumstance.

 

It’s your thought about it. But what about maybe I do want to change a certain circumstance. Right? So maybe like, like I mentioned before, maybe our schedule as we had it set up before, maybe it doesn’t serve us right now. Maybe it’s still trying to think our way around like, Oh, I just need to bust through it.

 

I just need to still get this whole to do list done that I made back when it was sunny and I have more sunlight. I just need to think my way around it. You can, or you can even change it. You could adjust your schedule a little bit. for the season. You could also, like, do some light therapy. And I know somebody in the chat mentioned that.

 

That made me happy when I saw that. But red light, um, really helps exposure to the light, especially in the morning, can help regulate our internal [00:43:00] clock and improve our mood. So you could be like, okay, I’m struggling with this. I’m going to get a red light. I’m going to get some light therapy so I can get that light to kind of help with those levels, right?

 

Those, um, serotonin levels through the light. So while the circumstance of the light outside you can’t control, you can bring some in, right? So that’s another circumstance, um, you could change. Or you could do things to make teaching more exciting right now. Um, or even like parenting with your kids. So for example, like in the model I did, Which was definitely more of a parenting model for that one.

 

Um, but instead of like just sitting around playing iPads on the weekend because it’s too cold, there’s nothing we can do. You can bundle up and make a snowman or make snow angels or have a snowball fight and just make memories, right? And that’s something you couldn’t do during the warmer season. So just finding ways to enjoy it.

 

Um, And then in teaching, maybe mix things up a little bit. Have some more fun. A lot of you here are members of the club, of Wife’s Teacher Mommy Club. We have so many resources that you can download to mix things up. You could do a secret [00:44:00] Santa in your classroom. I highly recommend that one. It is so much fun.

 

It builds classroom community. The kids love to secretly run into each other. They start being nice to each other. Like, So many great activities and things you can do, um, you can study holidays around the world, which helps us to learn about different cultures, brings in history, brings in research, like so much fun.

 

Um, you can learn about the water cycle and what it has to do with snow. Like there are things we can do to make teaching a little more exciting and bring the winter into it so we can enjoy it a bit more and our students. And another thing we can do is find different ways to offer ourselves support, right?

 

Um, so you are, you being here right now, investing your time to be here on this podcast today, whether you’re here live or you’re listening later, you made the time for this for yourself. You invested time to help you to be able to become your best self, to be able to recenter, to be able to get new ideas, to help you [00:45:00] survive this winter.

 

You were already doing it. So high five to all of you. I’m so proud of you for being here. Finding support for yourself. You’re not just getting stuck in the hustle and bustle of I have to always be doing things, but you’re like, how do I then refill my cup? How do I, um, invest in myself? And that is not only with money, but it’s also with time, right?

 

Um, but sometimes it may involve investing money in yourself too. Um, and I feel like some of us, like we have such an easy time investing money in like something our spouse needs, or especially something our kids need. Like, Oh yeah, I’ll throw all the money at like my kids activities and stuff for my children, or they want this toy or, Oh, I want to get them this for Christmas or whatever.

 

And then we struggle with investing in ourselves. And I think that’s just something to be aware of. Like, you know, if you need something for yourself, I want all of you who are here live, what is something you do to invest in yourself, time and or money? Um, those of you who are here live, if you’re not here live, just think about it in your head.

 

Time or money that you are doing to invest in [00:46:00] yourself right now. Um, like maybe you sign up for a meditation app. I did that recently. I love it. I love that it gives me that time to just re center. Um, and you know, focus on myself. Maybe you go do a mani pedi with some friends. That is like, you know, the, um, Where you get the connection, right?

 

That we talked about earlier in this and, you know, self care, um, maybe a weekend with your partner or spouse. If you have one that has connection and affection, am I right? And you know, that’s an investment that you can make to help your relationship, to help you get some time away. Um, riding your bike, karate.

 

Um, wait, Chris, I found this because I need the resources for my kids, but stayed for yourself. See, that is awesome because you’re like, yeah, I. That’s the cool thing about WIFE Teacher Model Club is you do get things for the kids, but also for yourself. Alyssa said calm is a great meditation app. I love that one, too.

 

Calm is a great one. I’ve done calm headspace, but what I’m using right now is [00:47:00] Gabby because I love Gabby Bernstein. It’s a great app. Um, Melissa said she’s going on the teacher hot app cruise. Yeah, I cannot wait to see you there. That’s gonna be so much fun. Join a prayer group. I love that prayer group with co workers.

 

That is amazing. I love that. Um, occasionally long drive for silence. That is so good. I’m working on losing weight weighing in and chooses the date night Oh, I love that. don’t have control over certain things with the winter blues, like the weather, or serotonin levels, the amount of daylight, school schedule, all the things we talked about. But, there are also the things we do have control over. So let’s recap all of those super quick. Misty, yes, there’s a cruise. I’m presenting at the Teach Your Heart Out that I recommend that you do. So the first is, um, be aware of if you are in a stress response cycle if needed.

 

Deal with the stress, not just the stressors. So when you’re feeling stressed, we need to deal with that stress itself. Not just the thing that’s making you stressed, but the actual stress. And that is how you complete. The stress cycle, you can’t really do anything [00:48:00] else. You can’t become observer of your emotions and thoughts.

 

If you are in the middle of a stress cycle, if your nervous system is activated. So if you feel like it’s activated or if you try to do a model or process your feelings, then it’s just not working. You might need to complete that cycle first. So the way we do that are through seven things. Those are physical activity.

 

Breathing lightly, deeply, and slowly, positive social interactions, laughter, affection, crying, and creative expression. Again, you don’t have to do all of them. I’m not adding seven things to your to do list. Those are just the seven things that can help with completing that cycle. The next thing you can do is become an observer of your emotions and your thoughts.

 

Realize what you’re doing with your emotions. Are you resisting them? Are you reacting to them? Are you avoiding them? Or are you fully processing them and sitting with those feelings, which will help them to actually simmer down. Naming it, to tame it. All those things and your thoughts. Are you paying attention to what you’re thinking?

 

Because you’re what you’re thinking is impacting how you feel, what you do, and what you do is [00:49:00] literally the results, right? The results that you get from your actions. So we want to pay attention to this. And then step three, when we are feeling and thinking those things, we can take those deliberate actions.

 

Support yourself this winter so you can get clear what I would ask you to do now kind of that. We’re done Almost done recording this episode is try to get clear on what are your needs during this winter season. What are they? Do you need to lighten your schedule? Do you need to make some time more time for completing the cycle?

 

Do you need to get some more support for yourself and then support those and remember that you are worth investing your time and money in especially when you are hit with the winter blues you might Need and want some extra support. I would love for you to take all these things you learned today and really apply it And I believe in you and your power to take this information and even if you never Come in and see me again I believe you can take this information and do so much with it And i’ve seen the power in getting support and coming together in [00:50:00] this white teacher mommy community So I do have an invitation For you, if you would like to take some deliberate action this winter to have your best winter yet, by making an investment in yourself.

 

Some of you are already in the club, so you’re already getting all this. Um, um, but it’s not just a one time podcast, but continually working with you, not to just survive, but thrive this winter. So, um, let me know if you’d like to hear a little bit more about this, and those of you who are already a member, it’s some extra things that you’re all going to get access to inside YFTeacherMommyClub, so you’ll definitely want to hear about it.

 

Um… But for those who aren’t, we have a special offer that we’ve never done before that will give you the opportunity to try it out with us. It’s going to be a lot of fun. And it looks like Megan put it up for you all to check out. So, um, I am teaching a master class, um, Next month. It is on December 7th, and we are going to take what we learned today to the absolute next level.

 

It’s not just a repeat of what we’ve done today. [00:51:00] We’re going to like review lightly what we talked about today to make sure everybody’s on the same page, but then we’re going to dive in deeper. Today we learned about being an observer and our minds and emotions and how that can help us, but we are going to take get an even deeper understanding of how and we’re going to help you to use this winter as an opportunity because it is an opportunity.

 

The winter solstice is literally like a time for rebirth and renewal and that’s what winter can be for you and I want to help it be that for you. Rather than trying to push through this is a rebirth a renewal for you We’re gonna help you get super clear on your needs your wants and desires and let go of the things that maybe aren’t serving you anymore, we’re going to process the emotions as these things come up and Whatever comes to the surface you can raise your hand.

 

There’s gonna be live coaching I can coach you through it anybody who wants it during that workshop You’ll be able to raise your hand if you want to be coached. So Um, all of you who are members are already invited to that and then a few weeks later on [00:52:00] December 28th We have our winter educate and rejuvenate event that is happening where we will continue to support you and you’ll have continued coaching support All season so both of these things are included in my teacher mommy club membership But we also for those of you who aren’t a member yet we have a special bundle that is going to get you some fun stuff access to the two workshops and three months of wife teacher mommy club.

 

So, um, you wouldn’t get to attend this masterclass and then as a bonus and get a bunch of resources and as a bonus, you’ll get the coaching and winter educate and rejuvenate. For free as a bonus with the bundle. So let me share, um, this, about this bundle with you. And I’m screen sharing right now for those who are either here live or watching on YouTube, but for those who are listening on the podcast later, I will be sure to narrate everything here.

 

So for those of you who are already members I know some of you here, you can access, again, These resources are in the member shop and the masterclasses are already on your calendar. So [00:53:00] this is stuff you have access to in your membership already. This offer is for people who are not yet a member of White Teacher Mommy Club.

 

So with this offer, you’ll get access to tons of our resources. This is a one time purchase for you that you can check out. And then you have the option of claiming three free months to Life Teacher Mommy Club. Whether or not you decide to claim those right away, you’ll get to attend the Surviving and Thriving Winter Masterclass, and there’s an additional masterclass too.

 

So I’m going to scroll through this, okay? So you don’t have to dread winter. You’re going to get admission to two live masterclasses and replays if you miss it. So the first one is the one Well, actually, they’re kind of in a different order. I wanted to do, I, we ended up doing the resources one first, because we realized, oh, you’re probably going to want to start using them.

 

Right? So on November 30th, that is only 15 days from, I guess, when we’re recording. By the time this goes live, even less. We’re going to have a masterclass called the Top Teaching Activities for Winter, and basically we’re going to go through all the whole bundle that you’re getting [00:54:00] access to, which is a ton of resources, which I’m going to share with you in just a minute, and talk about the best ways to teach them and utilize the resources.

 

So this bundle isn’t one that just collects dust on your shelf. I know you probably bought a lot of teacher bundles before, and you’re like, am I actually going to use all this stuff? I’m going to help you to know how to actually use all this stuff. And Miranda, yes, all of these are in the club. So you would be able to access all these resources and the coaching calls are already in your membership for those who are members.

 

And then on the 7th, we have this from surviving to thriving during the winter months, live masterclass. So that is where we’re going to take everything, um, that we did today. We’re going to really dive in deep. We’re going to get clear on what it is that you. Need this winter how you’re going to have that rebirth and renewal this winter.

 

So you’re not only going to need to survive, but you’re going to thrive this winter. I’m really excited for this workshop. I was still planning the content and honestly, like it is going to be one of my favorite workshops I’ve ever done probably. Okay, here’s summer views. And then there’s all the resources.

 

So I’m going to, [00:55:00] okay, and then here is winter educate and rejuvenate. So, um, remember if you purchase this bundle, so again, these are for the people who are not in the club yet who will want to purchase the bundle. You can claim three free months of wife, teacher, mommy club. Now you need to claim that in order to join us at educate and rejuvenate winter 2023, because this event is for members only.

 

Um, but we have an incredible lineup of speakers. We have Kayla jewels for miss education. She is so funny. If you check her out on Instagram, she is doing a comedy for us. We have Lizzie Langston who did the yoga meditation at the summer educate and rejuvenate. If you, um, If you didn’t attend or if you attended that and everybody loved her yoga meditation, she’s coming back.

 

So we’re going to do yoga and meditation together. Um, I’m going to be doing a presentation that we’re going to have a panel with all of our coaches and Brittany Blackwell is going to be doing a session all about artificial intelligence and how you can use it to simplify things in the new year. Like who wants to simplify [00:56:00] things and have AI be their assistant, right?

 

Yes, Tara said joining my teacher mommy club was one of the best decisions I made in the last year. It’s putting my needs first while not feeling guilty about it because it has also so many amazing resources. I promise you won’t regret joining. Thank you, Tara. And I love working with you in the club. And again, I recognize the names of those of you who come here regularly.

 

I just love how we get to know each other in the club. Um, So here’s the list of all the resources that are in the bundle. And again, if you’re in the club, you can go through and find these in the shop. If you need help, we’re happy to help you. Or like, if you just want a code for this bundle, email customer support, they’ll be happy to get it to you.

 

If you have an active membership, no problem. Um, so you get the December, January writing prompts, 24 value, December, our activities. Um, these are art projects, perfect for Christmas and the whole month of December. There’s a 4 value. December bath I spy resources. Um, and that’s for the full, like there’s, um, like a full grade span, um, 35 [00:57:00] value holidays around the world.

 

Resource resources. This helps you really study about those holidays around the world. This 1 is super popular. There’s a printable 1. There’s a digital 1. There’s like info pages that already have information about each of the holidays. It’s full color. It’s gorgeous. Um, that’s the 19. 99 value. The Secret Student writing activities for the Secret Santa.

 

That really helps build community. It’s so much fun. Basically, each kid um, is assigned another kid to secretly write to. And we have writing prompts already written for you. And you get to like, they get to Um, write to each other, and they’re also supposed to be doing nice things for that person, um, and then they report to you and write what they did, but then they also end up being nice to other people, so they don’t throw their person on the scent, you know, it’s like, oh, I don’t want them to know that it’s them, so I’m going to do something nice for this kid who isn’t my secret person, you know, so they can’t tell, so they just end up being so nice to each other.

 

It’s amazing. Um, we have the Christmas gumdrop at Candy Math, um, 15 value. These are so much [00:58:00] fun. They’re just like, who doesn’t love doing math with candy? It’s kind of like the ones that you see a lot of times for like candy hearts and lucky charms But with gumdrops and we have the candy hearts and lucky charms for those of you in the club Like be sure to download those later on in the year Uh, we have the holiday punny cards for like just fun little gifts You have the math and language arts either sub plans or homeschool lesson plans depending on if you’re a teacher or homeschool parent um And same thing.

 

Oh, we just have that there twice Oh, sub lesson plans and then homeschool lesson plans. Yeah, so we have the teacher version or the homeschool version, depending on So, all the resources, the two master classes, and three months of wife teacher mommy club. Which is a 95 value. Um, that’s what the quarterly membership is. Um, so it’s, um, now, that’s where it is right now.

 

Um, so it’s 482. 99 value for 79 next week for Black Friday. We’re really excited about this bust the winter blues bundle and how we’re going to be able to help [00:59:00] everybody out with their Winter season and the reason we combine the resources and the coaching is the resources are going to make that winter season So much more fun and engaging for you.

 

Like we mentioned we can make teaching more fun they’re also going to help save you time so you can make time for the coaching which is really going to Help you out in your life, just like everything we talked about on the podcast today. Okay, so I think I’m done sharing that. Oh, except for what I want to share.

 

So if you do decide if you’re not a member and you’re like, I want to join. You’ll click on the button. It’ll take you to this checkout page. It’ll look like this. I mean, if you want to add on, there’s the winter reading passages too. And again, if you’re a member, remember you already have access to all this.

 

Please don’t check it out again. You don’t need to. I mean, if you happen to accidentally do it, just reach out to us, though. We’ll take care of you. Um, but the coupon will auto apply. So you’ll be able to check out for that and then if you want to come to the winter edge gate and rejuvenate and to get Coaching other than just those two master classes you want to come to our weekly coaching calls you want in on the coaching you need To redeem your quarterly membership [01:00:00] here to get the free three months because we don’t auto enroll you in that you have to choose to Enroll in that you can buy the bundle without enrolling in the club Yeah, so this is where you’ll get the three free months of the club.

 

We’ll email you a code as those getting into teaching. The coaching, even if you only observe, is amazing. Teaching has changed since I started 13 years ago. Wife Teacher Mommy helped me to find myself and my joy again while saving me so much time finding resources.

 

Ooh! Tara! I should have read that one on the recording. We might have to edit that one in. I agree with you. And yeah, we tried to add on the page because my teacher mommy, I named it literally about myself, like way back when I just had a baby. So that was like fresh on my mind, right? But it really is like you only need one of them, right?

 

You need to be just a teacher, really. Or like, If, if you’re a homeschool parent and for whatever reason teacher doesn’t resonate with you, you are a teacher, but mommy, you know, as long as you feel this work resonates with you. Yeah, it’s not women only. It’s not wives only. You don’t have to be married. You don’t have to be all the things for sure. Um, [01:01:00] and yes. Okay. I see so many of your longer of an offer than I usually share on the podcast. Usually that’s more of like a webinar. But chances are if you’re still listening, you’re maybe thinking about it. We’ve been together like this has been a longer podcast than usual, which is totally fine.

 

And, but if you’re still here, you’re likely like interested in this. You really love what you’re learning. So I really think it would be worth just a few more minutes to click on that link and check it out and you could join these masterclasses. There’ll be so much fun. Okay. Well, that is it for the podcast today.

 

We have some incredible episodes coming out for all of you though. Make sure you are subscribed to the show so you don’t miss them. I actually had an awesome guest who was going to be on next week. Her name is Sunny Smith. She’s a doctor and a life coach, and she’s participated in a bunch of research studies and has lots of data behind why coaching works and how it works and how it literally rewires your brain.

 

But unfortunately, due to just a scheduling conflict, we did have to reschedule that interview. It’s still coming, but it just won’t be next week. So instead I didn’t have time to [01:02:00] record something new to keep up with my recording schedule I want to keep up with. So what we’re going to do is we’re going to take.

 

One of our recent member model mastery calls from a while back, I’m going to record a little intro explaining it. And you’re going to get a little piece of what it’s like in the club to listen to the private podcast and hear a replay of a model mastery call. Not any of the actual coaching, because we really keep that for our members.

 

That is like sacred work here. And we don’t want to put any of your coaching out there without permission. It’ll be me teaching. Um, but, um, you’ll kind of get a little taste of what that’s like for those Okay, so it’s gonna end the official recording, but I’m still here with all of you. We have so many amazing people in here. I love you all.

 

Okay, so that should be up. How do we get the winter download? It’s not opening

 

Thank you for [01:03:00] listening to Wife Teacher Mommy, the podcast. If you enjoyed our time together, be sure to hit subscribe so you don’t miss an episode. And if you’re ready to take the next step, I’d love for you to join me face to face of my next free virtual mindset masterclass. In this masterclass, I’ll share my full story of how I transformed my teacher overwhelm and anxiety into balance, authenticity, and a true understanding of myself.

 

And the best news, it’ll work for you too. I’ll break down my five step framework, share inspiring stories that will help shift your mindset, and you’ll even get to see life coaching in action. You’ll get a free resource and a special opportunity just for joining us, and you won’t be able to get this anywhere else.

 

Did I mention this Masterclass is free? You’ve got nothing to lose. All you need to do is sign up, add it to your calendar, and commit to showing up live. Go to wifeteachmommy. com slash masterclass to sign up, or head to the link in the show notes. I will see you at the Masterclass.[01:04:00]