33. Compartmentalizing Our Lives

In this episode we are going to talk about how when we compartmentalize our lives are struggle more . I find it interesting when educators go to great lengths to separate their personal and family lives from their work lives. I understand the sentiment of trying to balance and maintain a professional separation to some extent but our brains really do not operate like this. Our brains do a crappy job at compartmentalizing our personal and home lives from our work lives. To the brain our life is just “our life.” We need to maintain the same organizational standards at home that we strive for at school. This level of productivity is hard but necessary for us to truly take it to the next level in our lives! We have this idea that we can start over in regards to mental and emotional energy as soon as we get to school or as soon as we get home. There are some things we can do in order to intentionally act the part when we shift roles but if we are low on mental or emotional energy then this becomes a band aid approach to a lot bigger issues. We start to short circuit the process by compartmentalizing. The fragmented mind is never a good place to be coming from in regards to working with people. The amount of energy needed to be an amazing educator or an amazing family member is just too high to split up the areas. We need our focus to be on the whole system rather than the individual parts. This borders on a more holistic approach to ourselves but it really is more effective. We really are not able to pull mental and emotional resources from one area of our lives and not have it affect other areas. Our brains have a finite amount of resources and how we choose to use them across all areas of our lives is really what is most important. This means if we want to show up as the best version of ourselves in all areas we are going to need to manage our decisions, stress, and physiological side of our lives at very high levels. All areas of our lives become important and we can implement strategies to make sure our best energy is used at the right times and for the most important things. We are very often great as educators at organizing our lives inside of school and now it is time to give that best effort to our lives outside of school as well. Remember, our brain can’t tell the difference! Come work with me if you need help get your life organized and back on track, I look forward to working with you!