Listen to the Whisper

Listen to the Whisper 

Katie Small 

As a teacher I am always looking for ways to inspire my students.  When planning an assembly, I stumbled across Steven Spielberg’s video, ‘Listen to the Whisper’. It was exactly the perfect message I wanted to share with my Year 13 students as they were about to embark on their futures after high school.  Their exams were over and I wanted to inspire them to think about the future they really wanted.  In the video Spielberg mentions that dreams always come from behind us.  Our true calling sneaks up on us.  This is our true purpose in life.  In the video Spielberg encourages us to ‘listen to the whisper’.  He acknowledges that this is the hardest thing for us to do as we navigate our way through life. As humans we have a great sense of intuition, yet we often fail to follow and trust our instincts despite our instincts intuitively guiding our path in this world.  

If you are fortunate enough to hear the whisper, don’t ignore it.  Pay attention when that little voice speaks in your ear.  Notice that the voice never goes away for long, it returns to you over and over for a reason.  This is your true calling and you need to grab it with both hands.  Consider how many people go through their whole lives without ever finding their purpose.  The majority of people succumb to a life of mediocrity, don’t you be one of them.  Always dream big and aspire to be more, to have more and to do more.   Spielberg listened to his whisper and he knew instantly that he didn’t have a choice.  Making films was what he had to do for the rest of his life.  Imagine what we would have missed out on had Spielberg failed to listen to his whisper. No West Side Story, no ET, Jaws or Jurassic Park, no Indiana Jones movies for us to devour and no Schindler’s List teaching us of the atrocities and heroes of war. Imagine the world if this man didn’t listen to his whisper.  Now, imagine the world if you don’t listen to yours. 

What is the little voice in your head telling you?  Do you have a big idea, a way to make the world a better place?  If the answer is yes, do something about it.  Find a way.  Life is short.  It will be better to get to the end of your life and say, ‘at least I tried’, rather than realising that fear got the better of you.  Today, I tell all the young people I work with to listen to the whisper.  If we all did that, imagine how much better the world would be.  People would be embarking upon great adventures and learning along the way.  People would be creating their ideas and helping people to live better lives as a result.  What’s your idea? 

"Have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary." -- Steve Jobs

Scientists have claimed the gut as our second brain.  This revolutionary breakthrough is enabling us to understand the links between digestion, mood and overall health, not to mention how we think.  Scientists have termed this the Enteric Nervous System (ENS). It lines the gastrointestinal tract from the oesophagus to the rectum and may help us to understand the term, ‘trust your gut’ a little more.  It seems that our gut communicates with the brain and vice versa.  We have to learn to pay attention to our bodies as they have a distinct way of letting us know when things are right for us or not.  Some of the most successful people in the world today are more likely to trust their gut when making big decisions.  Richard Branson would rely more on his gut instinct than huge amounts of statistics and Oprah Winfrey stated that throughout her whole life she has listened to the small voice that guides her path and the only time she made mistakes was when she failed to listen.  

Listen to your whisper and dream big.  Life is not for mediocracy, as Marianne Williamson says,  

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, 'Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?' Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”

― Marianne Williamson, A Return to Love: Reflections on the Principles of "A Course in Miracles"

Habits for Happiness

 Habits for Happiness 

At this time, more than ever before in my lifetime, we need to find ways to cope through this pandemic.  We are heading into the winter months and it appears life is going to get more difficult for all of us with further lockdowns and isolations looming across the globe.  I feel like the general consensus was that the first lockdown was a bit of a novelty for many.  We got to stay at home with our families and for many, despite working from home, enjoyed their time away from the work place.  Yet, a few months on and it doesn't feel this way now.  It feels different as we move into the second wave of the virus.  We know from history that the second wave hits way harder than the first so many are fearful for their own health and that of their loved ones.  Many are also fearful of losing their jobs, businesses and livelihoods which is causing great anxiety and stress in people's lives.  Long term we are collectively growing more and more concerned about the impact this will have on the economy.  The thought of further isolation from family and friends is not something we look forward to considering much of this year has already been lost to this virus.  So, we need to accept where we are and look forward to brighter days ahead and find little habits that we can incorporate into our lives to help us get through the winter months and find a different kind of enjoyment of life we have experienced before. 

Small habit changes impact our happiness.  Our own happiness and enjoyment in life is within our control, to some extent at least.  These small habit changes are not only going to get us through the next 6 months but they have shown to have lasting positive effects on our lives.  We spend so much of our lives working towards something that we believe will make us happy but it usually never does. When I get that job I'll be happy, when I buy that car I'll be happy, when I get married and so on.  Life is short and we need to learn to find happiness in it now.  The small habit changes I'm going to suggest to you in this blog will allow you to do just that.  

Astronauts can teach us a great deal about successful isolation.  When they go to space they set up a positive habit schedule to help them keep their spirits up throughout their mission.  This involves some simple habit changes incorporated into their day to day tasks that enable them to think positively and ultimately feel good.  Astronauts spend a great deal of time on a mission confined to a small space away from friends and family for large periods of time with limited, and sometimes no communication with them.  So, NASA trains them prior to the mission to set a schedule to enable them to make use of the time they have in their day.  This includes the usual stuff, getting washed and dressed, eating, brushing teeth etc. but NASA, along with positive psychology researchers, recognised the need to add additional elements into their mundane schedules to help the astronauts to keep their spirits up.  This includes simple habit changes such as thinking of three good things about their life that they are grateful for while shaving each day, or imagining family life at home before going to sleep at night when they return from their mission creating a positive image they can look forward to returning to.  

Here are some simple habit changes you can incorporate into your life today to help you make the next 6 months enjoyable and remind you of the control you have over your own happiness and mental wellbeing. 

1. Avoid watching the news.  A study published in the British Journal of Psychology called, 'Is the News Making Us Unhappy? The Influence on Daily Exposure on Emotional states' found that it is.  Another study found that negative news makes people catastrophise their own problems making them feel more stress and anxiety.  You may have noticed the news is rarely positive.  Notice how they tend to hold the one positive story they have until the end of the news programme dedicating the rest of the programme to report the negative things going on in the world.  If you enjoy watching the news limit your viewing to once a day and remember this is the media and they relish in sharing the 'bad stuff' with us but it is up to us to give them our time. 

2. When you brush your teeth use this time to think of three good things in your life - if you brush your teeth twice a day make sure you think of three different things each time you brush your teeth.  Making yourself do this initially takes focus but once you've developed the habit it will just become part of your norm but the impact on your wellbeing will be immeasurable. If you are a parent, get your children to do this too, they also need to learn happiness habits. 

3. When you wake in the morning before jumping out of bed or ruminating about the day that lies ahead of you develop a habit of pausing at this time.  I find this the best time to practice mindfulness.  Mindfulness is paying attention to your body, how it feels and paying attention to your surroundings, the sounds you can hear, the smell in the house and so on.  Pay attention to how the bed feels against your legs, for example, and just allow yourself to pause in the moment, allow your mind to not race away with itself as it so often does - develop the habit to train the mind to pause and be in the moment at the start of your day. I even started practicing mindful driving on my way to work as I often found I'd get to work without paying any real attention to my thought processes.  Usually my head would be filled with my endless to do list which created feelings of stress and anxiety every day by the time I pulled up outside work.  By training myself to practice mindful driving I focused instead on how the steering wheel feels in my hands, the sound of the radio, the trees outside, the taste of my coffee.  What that did for me was enabled me to feel calm and relaxed when I pulled up at work and as a result I found my whole day to be more productive.  

4. Set a new habit at the start or end of your work day where you start or end your day with a positive phone call, text or email to someone in your life.  This doesn't have to be work related, could be someone close to you like family or friends.  Setting up this habit is a great way to ramp up your social connections and it has dual benefit to you and the recipient. What's great about this one is once you have exhausted the 7 or 8 people closest to you you'll begin a scanning process where you start to scan for other people in your life that you appreciate or are thankful for something they have done that has made your life better in some way.  You start reaching out and connecting with people you are no longer in regular contact with and since we have social media today we can do this much more easily than our pre-social media days.  This enables you to start or end your day on a positive.  Try it.

5. Each day when you take a shower or boil the kettle set a habit to think of three things you are grateful for in the last 24 hours.  This habit makes you reflect on your previous day and filter out the bad from the good.  You might come across things that occurred that you didn't even realise were good aspects of your day.  

6. Have a jar in the kitchen and every time something good happens in your day make a note of it and add it to the jar.  When you are having a bad day empty the jar and remind yourself of all the good stuff in your life - sometimes we do need reminding. 

7. Develop the habit of kindness and aim to carry out a set number of random acts of kindness a day.  Evidence tells us being kind to others has a huge impact on our own mental health and wellbeing. A lovely habit to include in your life and another nice one for children.  If this is a family habit this allows for a great topic of conversation at the dinner table each night. 

8. Look after yourself and make time in your day for you.  Develop a habit for this like during breakfast jotting down one thing today that will nourish you, one thing that will strengthen you and one thing that will inspire you.  Add these things into your day somewhere.  It doesn't have to be difficult.  A delicious breakfast might be the thing that nourishes you today, a walk in the park after work might be the thing that strengthens you and watching an inspiring video might be your chosen inspiration for the day.  

9. For me I would add mindfulness in the habits of your day and I would do this at every opportunity. I know I have mentioned this before but this habit suggestion is woven into every part of your day, not just first thing in the morning. Remember being mindful isn't meditation, it is paying attention to what you are doing in that very moment in time.  Pay attention when you are in the shower to the feel of the water on your skin, to the heat and warmth it brings, pay attention when you eat your breakfast connecting to the senses to really smell and taste the food you are eating, pay attention as you drive to work, when talking to someone focus fully on what they are saying and what you are saying.  This makes a huge difference to how you feel.  What this does for you is allows you to stop the rat race in your mind - it is our minds that make us feel overwhelmed remember.  If you train your mind to focus on the here and now it prevents those overwhelming feelings it has become used to. 

10. And lastly, jot down in a book before going to sleep at night the best bit of your day.  Take time to find it, there is always one, even on the darkest days.  This allows you to go to sleep on a positive thought - so often it is when we go to bed and attempt to sleep that our mind defaults to the negative thought cycle. This habit helps you prevent this. 

There is no one size fits all with this, what works for one won't necessarily work for another.  What I would suggest is that you find your own new positive habit changes that fit in with your life and the person you are.  If we do end up in full isolation over the coming months take a leaf out of an astronaut’s book and create a schedule for your day incorporating the 'good stuff' in each day rather than just the mundane elements like work, making tea and tidying up.  Incorporate the things you love too like, reading, having a bath, exercise, facetiming a relative or friend or watching an old movie.  And remember a wise man once said, " To different minds the same world is hell or heaven" (Ralph Waldo Emerson). The great thing is we get to decide how we see the world we live in.

 

Memento Mori 'Remember You Must Die'

Memento Mori is a Latin term meaning 'remember you must die'.  A Memento Mori is something that serves as a reminder of death and mortality.  Now, I am not trying to be morbid here, I promise, that's the last thing we need right now, but I do think we can use this idea as a motivator to live well.  

Historically a skull was used as a symbol of memento mori.  Many people carry a coin of memento mori like the one in the picture to remind them that death is coming to them, using their own mortality as a motivator to live a good life. 

Steve Jobs famously said, when he was close to his death, 

"Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Almost everything - all external expectations, all pride, all fear or embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important.  Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose.  You are already naked.  There is no reason not to follow your heart."

This global pandemic, I believe, is making many of us think about our own mortality more than we would like.  However, if you think about it in the wrong way then it will be depressing - yes.  Think about it in the right way and it will help you realise what is really important to you.  It helps you to prioritise and live a life that is meaningful to you.  This pause that we are all experiencing is helping many of us to stop and reflect on our lives.  Is your life going in the direction you want it to? Are you doing what you truly want to do in life or is your current job making you miserable?  So again, this pandemic might help some people out there to choose their own path in life after this ordeal we are facing has past.  It might help some of us remember that time on this earth is short and very precious.  

“Let us prepare our minds as if we’d come to the very end of life. Let us postpone nothing. Let us balance life’s books each day…The one who puts the finishing touches on their life each day is never short of time.”

Seneca

Don't waste your time on the small insignificant stuff.  Very often people don't think about their own death or, and probably moreso, that of their loved ones, but death gives us meaning and helps us make the most of the precious time we have been given.  Never take for granted the time you all have, for tomorrow is not promised to any of us. 

Coping with Isolation

We are now 4 weeks into the lock down in the UK due to the global Covid-19 pandemic.  So, how is everyone coping with the isolation? Many of us aren't coping very well at all, others are having the time of their lives.  So, what can we do to improve the situation if we are one of the ones who are struggling?

It is important to remember that there is little you can do about the current situation we all find ourselves in, but there is much you can do to control how you react to it.  These are truly unprecedented times for us all.  We are so used to our freedom. To going to the pub when we feel like it, to catching up with friends over brunch, to popping into see our mums and dad for a brew and a natter, to going to the shops to buy new clothes or furniture for your home or garden, yet here we are, for the first time in most of our lifetimes, unable to do these things we have always taken so much for granted in life. Probably the hardest thing for most of us is the isolation.  We are social beings and are drawn to the people we love and care about.  We need them to boost our mental health and wellbeing yet here we are unable to make contact physically with the people who are dear to us.  

The way I see this time is our lives is I see it as a gift.  An opportunity for life to pause for a little while. A time for us to stop and reflect about life.  It has certainly made many of us notice the things that are really important to us and the things that aren't.  We realise more than ever how important our people are to us - the people who matter in our lives.  We long for the day we can see them again, give them a hug and just be together.  You hear people saying things like, 'I will never take a hug from you for granted again'. Let's hope these things remain true and the impact of isolation doesn't just wear off and we revert back to our old ways. 

We also appreciate our essential workers much more than we probably ever did before.  How often before all this were you grateful to the people working in your supermarkets for stacking the shelves so you can get all your essentials for your weekly shop?  How much have you appreciated in the past the postman continuing to deliver you mail, the bin man continuing to collect your rubbish, the delivery drivers delivering fresh fruit and veg to the shops for you?  All these people out there risking picking up this, sometimes deathly virus, for us - to allow some of the world at least to keep moving.  Hopefully after this there will be no such thing as a low skilled worker.  These are the people coming to our rescue today.

And, of course, all the amazing people working for the NHS and Care System from the doctors, nurses and carers to the porters, receptionists and cleaners.  These people put themselves at the highest risk of contracting this virus and although we know for some they only experience mild symptoms, for others this simply is not the case.  It seems the more ill the patient the higher the strain of the virus they spread, which may be why we are losing some of our front line medical staff at an alarming rate.  Yet, despite having families, hopes, dreams and goals of their own they get up every day and go out to serve the public, strangers who need help at this moment in time.  We should never forget their sacrifice and I hope we never do. 

So, if you are struggling with isolation and have the option to be in the safety of your own home, with your immediate family around you then you are one of the lucky ones.  Feeling grateful to all those people putting themselves out there for us is something we should feel immense gratitude for and if you feel this way, believe me, you will cope with isolation.  This is only taking away our freedom for a very short period of time, we must remember that.  Use the time you have wisely because you are unlikely to have the opportunity again to hit the pause button.  Read, write, watch great films, draw, colour in, clean, organise those cupboards, exercise, talk, sleep, phone old friends, FaceTime your loved ones, enjoy your garden if you are lucky enough to have one - just enjoy the time you have been given here because before you know it we will all be back in the rat race (and complaining about that).  We cannot always control what happens to us but we can control how we respond.

All you need is….hope.

It’s so important to cultivate an attitude that allows you to maintain hope.  Hope can make a great difference to how you respond to problems and difficulties.  The most fundamental aspiration of all human beings is to seek happiness, to overcome suffering.  You may go to bed at night confronted by many problems in your life, but it is hope that motivates you to get out of bed and carry on with your life next morning.

Dalai Lama

Over the past few months of my life I have been reminded of the true power hope can bring to situations of real despair in life.  A doctor looking after my mum in hospital reminded me of the importance and power of hope.  Hope is an energy that you can bring to any given situation in life.  It is a belief that anything is possible.  I truly believe that this one doctor’s attitude and hope that my mum might just defy the odds is what enabled her to recover when no one else thought it was even possible.  Other doctors in the hospital didn’t share this hope.  It really made me think.

You see, this doctor reminded me that being hopeful, not giving up, exploring all the avenues is what makes a doctor a good doctor.  I’m sure you’ve all experienced doctors who are not so good.  This made me think about my own profession, teaching, and how important I feel hope is in education.  The education sector are constantly trying to figure out the ingredients for great teaching.  What is great teaching? What does it look like and how can we teach all our teachers to be great?  Truth is, I’m not sure we can, just like I’m not sure all doctors can be great doctors.  But let’s not give up hope just yet.

I believe the most important thing a teacher can possess is hope.  They must bring that energy to their classrooms every single day and this carries with it a true belief that the children they teach can learn, can achieve and can succeed at school, no matter what their background or starting point.

Hope is defined as, ‘a feeling or expectation and desire for a particular thing to happen’, yet so many teachers lack this hope and expectation for their students. Surely it couldn’t be that simple, could it?  That if our teachers had a true belief and expectation that the children they teach can achieve and hold a true desire to make that happen this alone would make the difference.  As a parent I hope my children are taught by hopeful teachers.  Teachers who find ways around the many barriers in their way to learning and achievement.  A teacher who will never give up on them and will explore all the avenues to achievement possible no matter what their ability level might tell them on paper. That is what I want for my children and what I believe the parents of the children I teach would want too. 

In my class all my students are taught to A* standard.  If a student wants to achieve an A* they will have to work damn hard to get it but I will show them how, that’s my job as a teacher.  For some students the path to A* is pretty straight forward – these tend to be the students who have a lot of self-control and who are willing to work hard.  For other students the road to A* is a very rocky one that challenges them every step of the way.  The growth you witness in a student who has a target grade of a C yet defies the odds and goes on to achieve an A* is remarkable and a true privilege to be part of.  Yes, I taught them the content, showed them how to answer exam questions and showed them ways to revise and learn but the most important thing I brought to the table that made the real difference to them is hope.  I expected them to do it and shared this expectation with them every day – I showed them I believed in them and this desire and expectation lead me into finding ways to help them achieve the A*. For other students in the class who may not set their sights so high they too improve and achieve above their target grades as a result of this expectation to succeed. 

Having hope provides my students with the will they need to achieve their goal and I show them the different routes to achieving it. A teacher who has hope in her students helps the students approach problems and barriers with the right mindset to overcome the barriers in their way.  You see hope provides a motivation and drive in the brain.  Hope is where emotions follow cognition not the other way around.  Hope often leads to goals and hopeful individuals actively engaged in the process of improvement, development and learning.  They find ways to meet their goals and most importantly, they ensure they stay on track by constantly monitoring their progress.  That is a lot of energy that ultimately leads to success. There is a plethora of research evidence that links goal setting to success in life from sport to academic achievement.

In one study conducted over 6 years researchers were interested in the relationship between hope and academic achievement. They found high hope students achieved more academically than their low hope counterparts and many of these high hope students had lower entrance exam scores at the start of the study.  In my experience though teachers can make their students more hopeful.  If you can make your students believe that you believe in them and that they have what it takes to be successful you will see these young people transform before your eyes.  Yes, we know ability is important but to be successful it takes much more than just ability – it is something else deep inside an individual that drives them to succeed.  Often the hopeful student will use this motivation drive they have within themselves to improve their ability and when they see success every time they get an essay returned to them or a test score back where they have improved this just fuels their drive and sometimes makes them push themselves even more.

So maybe, just maybe, we can cultivate good teachers just by helping them realise the importance of hope and the positive energy that brings to the classroom. Don’t be afraid to be hopeful for your students and use this positive energy in your classroom daily to help your student realise their potential and even exceed it.   The real question for all of you teachers out there is what do you want to be?  A teacher or a good teacher? 

 

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Why New Year’s Resolutions are so important

I love this time of year, probably more than any other if I am honest.  I love that build up to Christmas where I spend a lot of my time reflecting on my year and appreciating all the great things that happened in my life.  I then turn my attention to the next year, to the future.  I am a big believer in personal growth.  I believe completely in always striving to improve myself and learn from the experiences I have in life.  2017 has been a good year, in fact it has been a great year. We moved into our new home in March, a home which we love and we still can’t quite believe that it is ours, I celebrated 40 years of existence and my family and I flew to New York to celebrate, nowhere better really to celebrate than the Big Apple.  My youngest had her First Holy Communion, a lovely family celebration and an opportunity for us all to get together again and my eldest started high school.  We had a lot to be thankful for.  My new year’s resolutions tend not to be about setting goals like going on a diet, going to the gym more or drinking less.  I like to set New Year resolutions more about how I choose to live my life.  Like improving how I cope with adversity and situations in my life that are out of my control by changing the way I react to them. 

I think this is where a lot of people go wrong.  I know lots of people who hate making resolutions and avoid it at all costs but I think it gives us a wonderful opportunity to reflect, refocus and improve.  Ask yourself what do you want from your life this year?  How could your life be better and what could you do to make it better?  This might just be something as simple as stopping complaining about your job.  If you hate your job that much that all you do is complain about it, maybe it is time to go and get a new job.  Constant complaining can be dangerous to our mental health and that of others and your complaining impacts other people more than you realise.  According to a research study from Stanford University exposure to negativity peels back neurons in your hippocampus which is the part of the brain responsible for problem solving and cognitive functioning.  What tends to happen is that complaining becomes a habit.  People vent their frustrations onto others to make themselves feel better but instead they should be looking for solutions if there is something you are not happy with.  We have to stop and consider the effect complaining has on our health.  Venting floods our bloodstream with the stress hormone cortisol and each time we tell someone about our frustrations we end up 10-12 times more aggravated. 

So, if you reflect on last year and find that complaining became a habit for you then just make that one change in your life and notice the positive impact it has on so many aspects of your life.  Pay attention to the difference and how it makes you feel.  Write it down even to remind yourself in case you slip back into your old habits. 

One of the best changes I made to my life was in 2011 when I started keeping a gratitude journal.  I remember the day I bought it.  I was in Bristol attending the Positive Psychology Masterclass with Bridget Greenville Cleave and Miriam Akhtar, two positive psychology experts.  They introduced me to the idea of keeping a gratitude journal and I went and bought myself one that day.  I sat at my hotel window and wrote in it for the very first time about the three things I was grateful for that day. I loved it and I am now on gratitude journal number 2 and would not be without it.  If you are struggling to find a New Year’s resolution for you then maybe this is the one.  I cannot begin to explain to you the benefits it has made to my life, to my thinking, my happiness and my health.  Living a life of gratitude enables you to really focus on and see the good things in life rather than the bad.  It helps me to stop and savour things and really appreciate moments that too often would just pass me by.  I worry less and enjoy everything more.  So, if you don’t have a resolution I recommended a gratitude journal.

Another resolution that will make your life better is mindfulness.  Not necessarily meditation but just learning how to be mindful will enable you to savour the simple things in life and it somehow enables time to move slower because you pay attention to things.  Things like having a shower, driving to work, eating your dinner, reading your book.  If you pay attention in the moment you enjoy things so much more.  I learned this in 2014 when I was studying my MSc in Applied Positive Psychology at the University of East London.  As part of the course I needed to try out 3 different positive psychology interventions and document my experience of them.  One I tried was the Headspace App.  You can download it on your phone and it offers ten free take ten sessions of mindfulness meditation which you are guided through.  If I am honest this scared me.  I have never been a big fan of meditation and this intervention pushed me right out my comfort zone.   If you don’t know anything about mindfulness meditation, put simply, it is when you sit up straight on a chair and pay attention to your body, how it feels, smells around you, noises you may be able to hear, you might count your breath or do a body scan.  By day 6 I was starting to feel the benefit.  I started to pay more attention to little things in my day that I would normally just do.  On my drive to work I used to spend too much of it thinking about the day ahead (and how much work I had to do usually) and before I knew it that ball of stress had built up in my stomach by the time I arrived at work.  Instead I started mindful driving and paid attention to the drive, my hands on the steering wheel, the noise of the indicator, what I could see out the window etc. and I found this made for a much nicer drive to work and me feeling much better by the time I got there.  As a result I found myself to be more productive. 

I only did the take ten once (ten minutes of mindfulness meditation over ten consecutive days) but this was enough to have an impact on my life since then.  It has helped me particularly in my job as an Assistant Head teacher when I deliver whole year group assemblies.  So often I used to get distracted when I gave assemblies, I was too busy focusing on the kid at the back who had fallen asleep or the one who looked like they were whispering to their mate.  I spent too much of my time during assemblies focusing on what they (the audience) were thinking about me rather than focusing on the content and the message I was actually trying to get across to them.  Mindfulness changed that and now I love giving assemblies and having the opportunity to give key messages to my students that I know will help them flourish in life.  Assemblies are now a much more enjoyable experience and the delivery is much better when I focus on the topic. 

New Year resolutions are linked to Hope Theory which can be divided into 4 subcategories:

1.       Goals provide people with direction and hopeful thinking and a belief that you can actually reach your desired endpoint. 

2.       Pathway thoughts refers to the thinking we choose that leads to us achieving the desired goals and our belief in our ability to do so (Snyder, 2000).

3.       Agency thoughts refers to our motivation to actually get up and act. 

4.       Barriers refers to the inevitable things that may block our way in the pursuit of a goal – we have a choice.  Either we give up (which too many of us do) or we utilise our pathway thoughts to create new routes to our desired goal.

Accept there will be barriers but aim to see these barriers as challenges and find another way to reach your goal.  It doesn’t have to be a big thing, it could be something small but maybe a new year’s resolution that will help you be a better you is the right place to start.  Perhaps a New Year resolution that will make you feel happier and more present in the moment is perfect for you.  I was sceptical when I tried some of them but I can honestly say I am so glad I did.  So that is three suggestions for your New Year’s Resolutions:  stop complaining (change a bad habit), start a gratitude journal and be more mindful.  Hope this helps some of you set some great goals for 2018 and make life better for you and those around you.

Katie Small

Inside Out - The reason we need all our emotions.

I took my two children to see Inside Out on Friday night, the latest Pixar movie. Pete Docter's film tells the story of 11 year old Riley who is an only child living with a mum and dad who love her more than anything else in the whole world.  Riley's 11 years on the planet has mainly happy, precious memories of fun times spent with family and friends.  Riley loves Ice Hockey and plays in a team and spends lots of time skating on the ice with her mum and dad.  The amazing thing about this film is that it shows us the inside workings of Riley's mind and shows how all the emotions work to help her make the right decisions.  I love Joy voiced by Amy Poehler -she is the happy emotion, the optimistic one who always, no matter what tries to look on the bright side of life.  She constantly battles with the other emotions to ensure happiness always wins through and most of the time, until Riley moved that is, she succeeds.  The other emotions, fear, anger, disgust and sadness were always in Joy's shadow, she worked hard daily to ensure all the memories Riley banked each day had a bright yellow glow. 

What I loved about this film is that it embraces our emotions and teaches children (not to mention adults) how important our emotions are in our lives.  It also helps us see how we can change the emotional content of our mind by being more mindful about how we feel, simply by paying more attention.  When Riley moved to San Francisco her world turned upside down.   Her home was no longer warm and welcoming, her father was stressed at work leaving less time to spend with her and school just wasn't the same.  She had no friends and even lost her temper when she tried out for the ice hockey team.  Riley was going through a bad stage in her life and like most children struggled (emotionally) to deal with it.  Inside her mind we witnessed her core memories starting to fall apart.  Riley had five core memories, goofy island (where she played and was silly with her mum and dad), family island, friendship island, hockey island and honesty island.  These were the 5 most important things in Riley's life and the things she held dear to her at all times.  However, when life didn't go the way she wanted it to go her core islands were destroyed one by one.

As a teacher this film is an exciting educational tool to help children understand how important it is to build core beliefs and find out what is important to them and encourage them to ensure they keep them safe and secure.  We all have core memories - the things in life that are more important to you than anything else.  We have to work hard to treasure and protect them.  What I loved most about the film is that Joy didn't save the day, sadness did.  It showed us, as well as Joy, that although happiness is a vital ingredient for a good life we also need our other emotions.  They need to work together as a team to help us get the balance right.  Sometimes the anger we feel reminds us what is really important to us and helps us make positive changes in our lives which will, over time, make us much happier.  Sometimes fear is needed to keep us safe.  Sometimes fear can motivate us and can give us a great sense of achievement because even though we were scared we carried on regardless.  Sometimes periods of sadness brings us closer to the people we love, as it did in Riley's case.  Sadness can help us and lead us down a much happier path if we can just learn to embrace it. 

I like to call it riding the wave.  At 11 I saw my dad take a stroke in front of me, something I will never forget.  My teenage years were the hardest years of my life so far nursing my dad through 10 years of illness so you see I understand the importance of riding the waves and accepting that life isn't always great and that is ok.  You have to take the highs with the lows but you can learn how to cope with the lows better.  You can remind yourself that it is not always going to be this way, that things will get better and the good times will always far outweigh the bad so you always have lots to look forward to.  I don't believe in helplessness.  We all have the responsibility to make our lives better every day and making sure your little ball of optimism in your head can be heard will make all the difference.