Once again, Danny Wold, Mr. De-stress, as I like to call him, has written a great article below. Much of the message is in our Stress the Musical presentation. He starts with a quote – he loves quotes from dead wise people. Danny has a great attitude and a wonder about the world and he thrives wherever he works. This year he will formally retire from his superintendent job and he will have more time for public speaking. We are hoping to play more music together as well.
Danny offers some great self-help tips that you can apply today. If you need more help telling yourself a new and better story – getting past ingrained habitual thinking induced by past traumas – I can help with EMDR and other tools so that you can get a jump start toward your new story. Contact me anytime.
If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.
A quote from Marcus Aurelius
Some amount of stress comes from believing lies; lies others tell us and lies we tell ourselves. These lies generate fear. We can disarm fear by thinking of it as an acronym: F.E.A.R. (False Evidence Appearing Real). It appears real because we make pictures of an imagined situation in our minds until, to us, it IS real.
Cheryl Strayed, who wrote of hiking the 2600-mile Pacific Crest Trail by herself, wrote “Fear, to a great extent, is born of a story we tell ourselves, and so I chose to tell myself a different story.” What stories are you telling yourself?
An example of the stress caused by believing lies is when we tell ourselves or our students that they have to go to college to be successful. The truth is that while going to college can broaden our perspectives and give us a chance to mature in a nurturing environment, a college degree pays for itself in only about 20% of jobs.
I have a nephew who is a welder, and he makes more than I do as a superintendent of schools. And, I recently signed a P.O. for some painting of our district office at $60 an hour. Yet we try to get more than twice as many of our students to go to college than should, creating stress all around.
Futurists tell us that the top three skills for 2030 (this year’s second-graders) will be:
· Read with comprehension
· Access information
· Discern what is truthful and useful (because there is SO much information)
We’ll see!
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