7 Days of Gratitude

7 days of gratitude, for all those educators out there.

As we approach or find ourselves at the mid-term holidays I thought we might all benefit from a week of gratitude. It will either help you to keep going or settle you into the holiday vibe. I've spoken to a lot of educators over the last week and they’ve mentioned the many things they hoped to have achieved by the October break and so are feeling the guilt and frustration of not having managed this.

Gratitude may sound like a very simple thing, too simple even but it can be incredibly powerful. Do you remember doing dot to dots when you were younger (maybe you still do, I think you can get adult versions...) you joined the dots and a picture emerged. Well we do this every day in life, we join the dots of our day, our week, our month and give them meaning.

Sometimes in life we join the wrong dots. We have a tendency to live in a lack mindset, from the moment our feet touch the floor in the morning we are plagued by it - we didn't get enough sleep, we didn't tick enough things off our 'to do' list, we didn't manage to workout and so on. Combine this with a tendency to focus on the negatives - the meeting that didn't go as well as we would have liked, the person who ignored us, the email that upset us. If we join these dots we are likely to to get a negative picture, a 'not good enough' picture.

Practising gratitude helps us to change this.

Try practising gratitude for 7 days and see how you feel at the end of the week. Each day write down three things that you are grateful for.

Think back over your day, sift through the things that happened, the interactions, the moments and pick out three things. They might be really simple things, things like a hot cup of tea, a smile from a child or colleague or getting outside and going for a walk. They might be bigger things like a new job, completing a big piece of work, doing something you were worried about or lunch with a friend.

Over in my facebook group for Head Teachers and Deputes we are also engaging in 7 days of gratitude. If you are a Depute/ Assistant or Head Teacher feel free to join our growing community.