PODCAST TRANSCRIPTS

Have you ever felt that tightness in your chest before a tough conversation? Maybe your thoughts are running a mile a minute, your stomach’s in a twist, and avoiding it feels way safer than facing it.

Fear has a way of taking over, convincing us that discomfort means danger. But here’s the truth. Fear isn’t the enemy. It’s a signal. And when you learn how to respond to it instead of running from it, everything changes.

In this episode, we’re diving into overcoming fear and how you can use self-regulation techniques to stay calm and confident, even in high-pressure situations. I’ll walk you through ways to manage anxiety using nervous system regulation techniques that help shift your body from a state of stress to a state of safety. When you understand how to work with your fear instead of fighting against it, you build emotional resilience, allowing you to handle difficult conversations with clarity and confidence.

I’ll also share stress relief methods and practical ways of handling stress that you can use anytime, anywhere, whether you’re preparing for a challenging meeting or just trying to navigate the daily demands of teaching. Because the truth is, fear doesn’t mean stop. It means pay attention. And once you learn how to regulate your emotions, you can step into any situation feeling strong, capable, and in control.


Stay empowered,
Jen

Let’s keep the conversation going! Find me at:
empowerededucator.com/resources
Instagram: @jenrafferty_
Facebook: Empowered Educator Faculty Room

TRANSCRIPT: 

Are you feeling exhausted by the constant demands of teaching? Do you find yourself wondering if there's a way to balance both your career and your well being without burning out? Welcome, to Unlock Your Teaching Potential, your permission slip, to hit the brakes, recharge, and reignite your joy for teaching and living. I'm Dr. Jen Rafferty, former music teacher, author, TEDx speaker, and founder of Empowered Educator. And I've been where you are exhausted, overwhelmed, and just trying to get through the day, making it all work. So each week, I'll bring you short, powerful episodes with actionable tools to help you reclaim your energy, set boundaries, and step into your full potential, both in and out of your role as an educator. So take a breath and let's dive in. It's time to unlock your teaching potential, because the world needs you at your best.

Hello! It's so good to be back here on episode three of Unlock Your Teaching Potential. You know, March can sometimes feel like the longest month of the year, so what gets me through is making sure that I make time to do the things that I love. And one of the things that I love doing most, especially when it's a little chilly out, is read a really good book. So right now, I am almost done, actually, with my friend Matthew Zakreski's book, The Neuro Diversity Playbook. And if you haven't gotten your copy of this book, do yourself a favor and get one. Everyone needs to read this. Whether you are neurodiverse yourself, or you are a parent of a neurodiverse child, or you are a teacher who teaches everyone. And the truth is, the more that we understand each other, the more that we understand ourselves, the better we can connect and really make the impact that we want to make in this world, especially as teachers. Matt does a great job of making some really complicated concepts really accessible and easy to read. It's like sitting down with him, and having a cup of coffee, and learning about all of the nerdy things about your brain. So highly recommend grab yourself a copy of that book. I am enjoying it thoroughly, and he was actually on my podcast last season. I'm going to stick that link to that episode if you haven't listened to it already. It's a great episode. We had a great time talking to each other, and I'm going to be on his podcast soon also. So stay tuned for that too.

So I'm going to dive right into the question for this week, which comes from Erica in Montecito, California. And she says, ”how do I turn off my fear? I'm a first year teacher, and I need to have a difficult conversation with a parent about their child in class. I don't like confrontation, and I'm nervous about how this is going to go. How do I stop being afraid?” Ooh, Erica, love this question. So good news and bad news. The good news is you can't shut off your fear and the bad news is the same. You can't shut off your fear. Fear is biological, and we need fear to survive. That's what kept the human race alive for so long. It is fear, and that's a good thing. We needed to be afraid of the saber tooth tigers and the grizzly bears that were going to eat us so that we could stay safe and alive. But what's true is that part of our brain hasn't evolved much since those days, and what seems really scary like a conversation with a parent, it feels almost as if you're going to die. And so fearlessness is not a thing. There's no such thing as being fearless. And you know, you see a lot of things all over the internet of like, you know, be fearless. Fearless is what we need to accomplish things, and fear is the enemy. Fear is not the enemy. Fear loves you, and he wants you to sit with that for a second and really hear that, receive that. Fear loves you. Fear is doing its job and keeping you safe and alive, and the good news is you are not your fear. So there's more good news here. You are not your fear. Fear is a part of you. Fear is a biological function, not if you, as the person who has the brain can recognize, oh, this is so interesting. My fear is creeping up right now. My fear is sending me down this rabbit hole. My fear is creating all of these intrusive thoughts to keep me distracted from me not having this conversation. Well, your brain thinks that if you're going to have this conversation, you're going to die. So if it feeds you all sorts of distracting thoughts, and intrusive thoughts, and disempowering thoughts, and maybe you won't have that conversation, and you'll stay alive. But what's true is you're not going to die from having a difficult conversation, but your brain doesn't know that. So creating safety for yourself is essential.

So the first thing is, stop hating on your fear it's going to happen to you anyway, and the more you lean in and recognize it for what it is, the better off you're going to be, because you're going to establish a relationship with it. As soon as it comes knocking at your door, which it will, you're going to say, hey, that's so interesting. I'm feeling afraid right now. I know this consciously, and I'm aware of it, so now I can make a different choice. You can't change something you don't notice. So the more that you recognize when fear is coming into play, the easier it is going to be for you to navigate through it. So now that you recognize, okay, I'm feeling fearful, or my brain is trying to get me to be afraid of this conversation. And don't forget, it's drawing from all of your past experiences. It's drawing from all of the things you've seen on TV about conflict and confrontation. It's drawing from your ego about what if you're wrong in this situation, and what if this person says this thing, and it makes you feel a certain way. All of these thoughts play into your fear in an effort to stop you from doing the thing. But we know, not only do we have to do the thing, we get to do the thing because our job as educators is to create an environment for kids to do their best to thrive, and sometimes that requires having a conversation with a parent so the child knows that we're all on the same team here. We all want what's best for the child. We all want them to do their best and create the most conducive learning environment. So this conversation gets to happen because this is part of your job. How exciting is that? And if you're not there yet, that's okay too. It's not, it's not exciting, Jen, it's still, it still feels a little scary, and that's okay.

So in previous episodes, I talked a little bit about some exercises you can do to regulate your nervous system so it no longer feels a sense of threat, so that you are actively creating a sense of safety for yourself. So that can be a variety of breathing exercises. In Episode One, we covered the box breath. I'll give you another one right now. This is a really great cleansing breath. Inhale for two and then a really long exhale. So inhale for two and then exhale for as long as you can, and when your exhale becomes longer than your inhale, that's another way for you to activate your parasympathetic nervous system, which is that place of safety, of rest, of performance, instead of stress and fear and protection. So now that you're feeling safe and you can do that as many times as you want, if that exercise doesn't work for you, there's another one you can do that I really like also, because it's, it includes some sort of kinesthetic element. You can take your one hand and make a five, as if you're going to give someone a high five. And take your index finger on your left hand, your other hand, I'm using my right and so on my left hand, I'm taking my next finger. I'm just gently moving my finger up and down my high five with my hands. And every time I go up a finger, I'm taking an inhale in, and every time I move my finger down, I'm exhaling out, and this is also really good to get into your body. So you're not only breathing, but you're doing something more physical, because the idea of getting into your safety state has to do with getting into your body and out of your head. So once you've regulated your nervous system to a place where you feel more calm, more regulated, then you can start pumping yourself up and being your own cheerleader. Really get honest with yourself about why this is important. Connect this conversation to what your role is as an educator. Connect this conversation to why you do what you do. There has to be some bigger reason as an anchor for you to feel motivated to do this thing. So we need to create a situation where we're actually able to feel empowered by the thing that we need to do. Because wouldn't it be great to be that educator that feels confident in these parent conversations? Because this is part of the job. And it's not always the most pleasant part of the job, but having that conversation is essential, and going into it feeling confident can be a game changer.

So what do you need to tell yourself? What do you need to think? How do you want to feel going into this conversation, and if you want to feel things like confidence, sure of yourself, empowered, those are all wonderful. And what we know is that our thoughts inform our feelings. So if we're thinking, oh my gosh, how is this going to go, I'm going to say the wrong thing, it's going to be so difficult. You're going to start to feel disempowered. You're going to doubt yourself, you're going to start to feel insecure, you're going to have imposter syndrome, and none of that is going to give you the results that you want of having a productive conversation. So if we want to feel a certain kind of way, empowered, and confident, and sure of yourself, what thoughts do you need to think in order to feel that? This is part of my job, and I'm really good at my job. When I have a conversation with a parent, I know that I'm able to reach out for help and support, which is exactly what this child needs.

Perhaps, I know that as a great teacher, I can also ask for help from the other teachers that are around me who have been doing this for a lot longer, and glean some insight from them. I know that, because I'm a great teacher, I can ask this child's teacher from last year and find out what their strategies were, and now all of a sudden, I'm feeling great and ready to make this phone call. Are you with me with this? So you get to lead the way through your fear. You don't have the option to turn off your fear, and you wouldn't want to turn off your fear anyway. This is how we navigate through some of those things. And then there's two other steps to this. So we recognize it. We regulated. We are feeding ourselves thoughts that we want to think in order to feel how we want to feel. And then you're going to do the thing, and then after you do the thing, you're going to regulate your nervous system again, because fear is going to kick in soon afterwards. Oh, I shouldn't have said that. Did I say the right thing for the same reasons, it's just trying to keep you safe. It's just trying to keep you alive. So you as the person who has the brain, you as the person who has fear, as a part of you get to be in the driver's seat. So you're going to regulate. You're going to remind yourself you're safe. You're going to remind yourself that you were doing a great job. You were going to remind yourself that you did something that felt scary, but you survived.

And then the last step is, celebrate. You need to celebrate every time you do something that feels scary, because that's going to give your brain lots of dopamine to get you to want to do it again. It's going to help create that safety, because your brain wants to do things that feel good, and so when you are celebrating, you do a little dance in your office. You can just smile really big for a couple seconds, which will get all of those neuro chemicals going, or call a friend, call your teacher, bestie down the hall, and celebrate with them too, because this is going to be a way for you to create a new habit, not of fear when difficult conversation might be happening, but one of confidence, one of empowerment, of okay, here's a thing, here's a challenge. I know what I need to do, and the more you practice, the more it becomes permanent. What you practice becomes permanent. You either practice the fear or you practice the new navigation to create new neural pathways in your brain to consistently make different choices. So thank you, Erica, so much for that question. Let me know how it goes. Make sure you follow up with hello@empowerededucator.com with a subject line “Podcast” and what came up for you? How did this work out? And if you have a question that you want answered on the show, also go ahead and write that email to hello@empowerededucator.com, make sure you put “Podcast” in the subject line.

So now I'm going to pick a card from the Empowered Educator card deck, which, if you're interested in getting your own deck, you can find that at empowerededucator.com/resources, and today, oh, look at this. It's so interesting. The card is always having to do with something that we talk about during the show. It's so interesting. This card says “you become what you believe”. Mm, that is juicy. You become what you believe. Your beliefs create your identity. Your beliefs create your identity. And so much of what we believe stays in the subconscious. We're not even aware of it, which is why we work to raise our level of consciousness, raise our awareness. Because when we become more aware, then we can create intentional choices about how we want to live our lives, how we want to show up in the classroom, how we want to show up at home. Because you are either living your life by design or by default. There is no gray there. So you become what you believe, and I think that really goes along with what I said earlier, with what you practice becomes permanent. It's hand in hand right there. And if you haven't already, join us on Facebook at Empowered Educator Faculty Room there, you're going to find a beautiful community of other empowered educators who are doing this work, sharing their stories and truly making transformational generational change in their school communities.

Remember, the most generous thing that you can do for your students is take care of yourself. So if you found today's episode helpful, be sure to subscribe so you never miss a moment of inspiration. And if you're loving the show, I'd love for you to leave a review. This helps more educators like you find the space to unlock their teaching potential too. Until next time, please remember that you are a gift to this world, so act accordingly. See you soon.

Right now, teachers everywhere are facing layoffs, budget cuts, and overwhelming stress. It is a lot. And when you are constantly in survival mode, it is almost impossible to show up as the educator you want to be.

And let’s be honest, this stress isn’t just mental. The chronic stress effects you’re experiencing, like headaches, exhaustion, and tension, are real. Your body is trying to tell you something, but instead of listening, you’ve probably just been pushing through.

When your nervous system is stuck in fight, flight, freeze, or fawn mode, it’s nearly impossible to think clearly, make decisions, or feel in control. But you don’t have to stay in survival mode.

In this episode, we’re talking about why self-regulation for teachers is the key to breaking free from burnout, how stress rewires your brain, and what you can do to reset it. I’ll also share practical ways to shift out of stress responses, find community support, and build emotional resilience so you can navigate these challenges without losing yourself in the process.

The world of education is shifting fast, and I know it feels scary. But you have more power than you think. You don’t have to burn out, you can reclaim your energy, set boundaries, and become an empowered educator who thrives, no matter what’s happening around you.

Take a deep breath and press play.


Stay empowered,
Jen

Let’s keep the conversation going! Find me at:
empowerededucator.com/resources
Instagram: @jenrafferty_
Facebook: Empowered Educator Faculty Room

TRANSCRIPT: 
Are you feeling exhausted by the constant demands of teaching? Do you find yourself wondering if there's a way to balance both your career and your well being without burning out? Welcome to unlock your teaching potential, your permission slip, to hit the brakes, recharge and reignite your joy for teaching and living.

I'm Dr Jen Rafferty, former music teacher, author, TEDx, speaker and founder of empowered educator. And I've been where you are exhausted, overwhelmed and just trying to get through the day, making it all work. So each week, I'll bring you short, powerful episodes with actionable tools to help you reclaim your energy, set boundaries and step into your full potential, both in and out of your role as an educator. So take a breath and let's dive in. It's time to unlock your teaching potential, because the world needs you at your best.

We're starting this episode a little bit different today. So much of the world right now feels upside down. There are insane changes happening in our academic institutions, as well as in the Department of Education, and while I had planned another episode for today, I cannot just sit here and talk about unlocking your teaching potential without acknowledging all of this craziness, the uncertainty and the unknown can feel very scary, and I know that some of you are listening right now. You may have already been informed that your position will no longer be funded at your school, and we know of the massive layoffs that are happening in schools all over the country due to predicted federal cuts in our funding, and this can all feel so incredibly heavy.

There's so much at stake and regardless of your political views, we are all affected by this, and that's why I think it's important now more than ever to lean in, to share the vulnerability and to learn what to actually do about it. All of our kids are affected by this. Our most vulnerable students are affected by this, and they need you to show up now more than ever, and to get through this and to get to the other side, whatever that might look like, it's going to take way more than the tools that we've used before. So I'm going to break it down for you. You cannot unlock your teaching potential when you don't feel safe.

This is Maslow 101, your safety needs to come first. And it is no secret that things are not feeling safe right now. And if we're being honest, which I always am, this even affects your physiological safety, which is that bottom level of Maslow, your stress causes you pain? It's back pain, it's neck pain, it's headaches, it's stomach aches. These physical symptoms of chronic stress are never ending, and it has to be addressed, because these stressors are not going away. In fact, these stressors are probably going to become more and more abundant. And how are you supposed to do your job? let alone reach your potential or inspire your students to reach theirs? If your basic needs are not being met, what's happening is that your nervous system is learning that this is what normal feels like which does three things.

The first thing, the consistent overload of cortisol and adrenaline levels become so high that it causes hypertension. It causes an increased chance of heart disease. It slows down your metabolism. It causes digestive issues, it decreases your libido. It weakens your immune system and affects your kidney function. It increases inflammation all over your body, and it disturbs your sleep, and it leads to depression, anxiety and other mental health issues. That's thing number one. The second thing that it does is it creates a feeling of helplessness, because when you're feeling crappy, you think crappy thoughts. When you're feeling disempowered, you think disempowering thoughts, and you get stuck in a negative feedback loop that is fed by the constant stream of stressors coming your way, and your nervous system learns that it is completely helpless in this situation, that there is nothing it can do to help you change it so it shuts you down, and your world of possibilities becomes smaller and smaller because it is.

What it is, and you detach, and you're no longer present, and it just feels easier to stop trying. This idea of learned helplessness is happening on a massive scale, and the third thing that this chronic stress is doing is that it keeps you in a constant state of fight, flight, freeze or fawn, and this is also happening on a macro level right now, because, remember, when you're in a stress state, you don't actually have access to your prefrontal cortex, the part of your brain that is literally responsible for problem solving and decision making. When your nervous system is in fight mode, you're ready to argue and advocate and speak up, but it's not coming from a place of reason or logic. It's coming from a place of fear, and it often feels like you're screaming out into the void and it's falling on deaf ears. Those of us whose nervous systems are in flight leave. They leave the teaching profession. They leave the conversation.

Those who are in freeze feel paralyzed. You can't even speak because you feel as if you've lost your voice. And sometimes this can feel physical, as if the words can't actually come past your throat and out of your mouth,and those who are feeling in fawn agree blindly and concede, just in an effort to just try and keep the peace, because toxic peace feels safer than advocacy and potential conflict. And to be clear, there is no judgment here. We're all feeling these things, and I bet you could resonate and recognize yourself and see yourself in some of those examples. Our job, though, as educators of our children, is to spot the stuff, recognize when you are feeling this way and acting in this way, and get yourself out. Because the truth is, you are not helpless. You're dysregulated. You are activated with good reason, but your nervous system has no idea what safety feels like, and it will keep you in this activated state in an effort to keep you alive. But we cannot make any changes, any sustainable long term changes from this state of dysregulation.

You cannot control your external circumstances. Control is an illusion. You never actually had any control anyway.

But what you do have, and the most powerful thing that's in your arsenal, is your agency in how you respond to all of these external stressors. You have a responsibility to teach your body, your nervous system, how to determine what's noise and what's news. It's not that you show up without stress. That's not a thing, but use it as fuel. When you notice that you're in a state of fight. Remember that although anger gets shit done, it can't get done without intention. And while anger can fuel action, it is your responsibility to act in alignment, and that alignment can only be accessed when you use your decision making skills, when you're regulated, when you find yourself fleeing a situation.

Find community when you notice that you're paralyzed and frozen and you can't speak to access your voice, write it down. Share your thoughts with a friend who feels safe because what you have to say matters. What you want to do matters. And when you find yourself fawning and being agreeable to things that don't feel right, I encourage you and invite you to ask yourself this very simple question.

Does this feel aligned with who I want to be in this world? It's not if you find yourself in this feeling of fight, flight, freeze or fawn. It's not if you find yourself in these feelings of helplessness. It's not if you find yourself in physical chronic pain. It's when it's your biology. So instead of fighting it, lean in, understand it, love it, even it's trying to protect you. But again, you cannot make any aligned, sustainable action forward if you are consistently in survival mode you want to play the long game. That's self regulation, that's awareness, that's intention.

This is where and when you get to show up feeling grounded and unshakable, convicted in your advocacy, for your school community, for your students, for your family and for yourself. This is how we get through this is how we start connecting to each other and building bridges. We have each other. You have an entire community around you, and here within empowered educator, whether you're actively a part of our courses and classwork or if you're listening to the podcast for the first time, here, we get to non judgmentally support each other, especially during these huge changes, because feeling stuck in the inundating doom and gloom creates a paradigm for your mind to only see the doom and gloom. And trust me, you will always find what you look for, but when you surround yourself with other people, particularly educators, who prioritize their self regulation, things start to change. This is way more than stress relief.

This is advocacy. This is activism. It's empowerment. It's a reclamation of hope, which, to me, is the most important part in all of this, your hope matters. Your students depend on your hope. Our future depends on your hope, and your aligned action, along with your hope, will make all of the difference.

So if you're listening to this and you're ready to make some change and you're ready to get off the hamster wheel of helplessness, I'm inviting you to the next cohort of the life changing, self paced class thrive, which starts on April 1st.

I am giving you the toolbox for sustainability for the months and the years ahead, because our kids need you at your best. This life is so short. You need you at your best. And there is a seat with your name on it at empowerededucator.com/thrive, and all you have to do is say yes. And although I'm not answering a question on this show today, I will end with a card from the Empowered educator card deck.

Ha, I'm laughing, because it's always something that matches what I've been talking about. The card for this episode says, listen to your body. It's talking to you. Please listen to your body. We've shut off communication from our bodies because we've been taught to, we've been told that it's not important. We've been told that other people know better than us. Your body has all of the information. And as I said before, if you are feeling chronic pain, if you're feeling headaches, if you're feeling back pain, if you're feeling that your heart is beating faster, if you're feeling increased anxiety, if you're having difficulties breathing, that is your body screaming at you that it is not okay. That is the only language that your body has to communicate with you, and instead of listening, what we often do is just ignore it and carry on. We take a couple of ibuprofen and go about our day, or we drink a bottle of wine, or we decide to numb by scrolling on Tiktok for a few hours, your body is talking to you.

Listen to what it's saying, because it's telling you something needs attention, and if you continue to refuse to give it the attention it is demanding, it's going to shut it all down for you listen to your body, that's where the answers are, and when you're living in alignment, and you listen to your body, everything starts to feel more open. All of a sudden, the pain's gone, the fatigue is gone, the chronic shoulder scrunching that you've been so used to doing is gone. You're standing up straighter, you're breathing deeper, you're smiling more. All of this is connected, and our kids are watching us. They are watching us for how to be a human in this world. So not only do we get to make these new choices for ourselves, we get to make them for the kids who are learning. We get to make these new choices to pave a new path and create a new paradigm for all of our students who are watching us navigate this time together. And yes, it is together, and yes, I do believe in a world where we are able to build those bridges and make connections and remember our shared humanity we are all in.

This together, and big macro changes do not happen until people change, and the only person that you have any agency in changing is yourself. Remember, the most generous thing that you can do for your students is take care of yourself. So if you found today's episode helpful, be sure to subscribe so you never miss a moment of inspiration. And if you're loving the show, I'd love for you to leave a review. This helps more educators like you find the space to unlock their teaching potential too. Until next time, please remember that you are a gift to this world, so act accordingly. See you soon.

Have you found yourself lying in bed at night, exhausted but scrolling endlessly on your phone?

We give all of our time and energy to our students, our families, and our endless to-do lists, leaving nothing for ourselves. So, instead of resting, we stay up late trying to reclaim just a little bit of “me time.”

In this episode, I want to flip the script on self-care for teachers. It’s not something you need to “earn” or squeeze in on the weekends with a bubble bath or a massage (though those are great, too!). True self-care is about managing teacher stress in real time, creating small moments of mindfulness throughout the day, and learning how to increase self-awareness so you can recognize stress before it takes over. Taking care of yourself isn’t selfish, it’s necessary.

I’ll also share simple mindfulness exercises and a body scan meditation to help you increase your self-awareness and recognize stress before it takes over. Plus, I’ll guide you through breathing exercises for stress and practical strategies on how to prevent teacher burnout, so you can feel calmer, more in control, and actually enjoy your time without feeling guilty.

It’s time to rethink self-care, create habits that truly restore your energy, and give yourself permission to put your well-being first. Tune in now!

Stay empowered,
Jen

Links mentioned: https://empowerededucator.com/meditations

Let’s keep the conversation going! Find me at:
empowerededucator.com/resources
Instagram: @jenrafferty_
Facebook: Empowered Educator Faculty Room

TRANSCRIPTS: 
Are you feeling exhausted by the constant demands of teaching? Do you find yourself wondering if there's a way to balance both your career and your well being without burning out? Welcome to Unlock Your Teaching Potential, your permission slip to hit the brakes, recharge, and reignite your joy for teaching and living. I'm Dr. Jen Rafferty, former music teacher, author, TEDx speaker, and founder of Empowered Educator. And I've been where you are, exhausted, overwhelmed and just trying to get through the day, making it all work. So each week, I'll bring you short, powerful episodes with actionable tools to help you reclaim your energy, set boundaries and step into your full potential, both in and out of your role as an educator. So take a breath and let's dive in. It's time to unlock your teaching potential, because the world needs you at your best.

Hello and welcome back. It is so good to be here with you. I am joining you today drinking my delicious cup of cinnamon spiced tea as it's warming up my fingers on this cold, cold winter day. And I wanted to actually start today's episode with a comment that somebody shared on one of the feedback forms from our class, “Thrive”. And she mentioned that she realized that self care isn't completing a to do list or earning a mental health day or a fun activity. And I thought this was such a great takeaway and I wanted to take a moment to really dive into that and expand that thought a little bit before we dive into the question for today's episode. Because I think we've been given this story that self care is truly something that you have to earn. It becomes something that you need to sacrifice something else for in order to get your me time, which leads us to having these special self care day activities like going for a massage or getting a bubble bath or getting your nails done, or having a girls day. And don't get me wrong, all of those things are super fun. I love all of those things. However, you don't have to earn it in a way that we carve out the special time for self care, because what starts to happen is if you're going through your day without paying any attention to yourself, you end up spending some of those minutes before bed, almost like revenge time where you need to get your me time back.

So instead of taking care of yourself and going to sleep when you know that you're feeling tired, you're spending hours, sometimes scrolling on Tiktok or Instagram because you need to get that me time back. But when you're doing that, you're not actually engaging in something that's filling your cup. In fact, you're activating more of your stress response, which is then going to continue the cycle of you not having a good night's sleep, and then you wake up the next day you're not feeling rested, and on and on and on and on, we go. And look, I've been there, you know, especially when my kids were younger, having that me time at the end of the night felt sacred, no matter how tired I was, because I felt like I couldn't get it all day, it was teaching all day, and then it was picking up the kids from school, doing whatever after school activities needed To get done, figuring out how to make dinner, because I did not plan ahead that day or many of the dates that I would need to make dinner in the end of the day, and then it would be bath time, bedtime stories. And by the time everyone was asleep, I was exhausted, but I felt so empty, like I needed something for me.
So I would totally zone out and binge some reality TV on Netflix and scroll on my phone while I was in bed before I went to sleep, just to kind of have some control over my own time. But what that was doing was making it worse. And so what I love about this comment from the person who shared this on their feedback form from Thrive, it's true. Self care isn't a to do list. You don't have to earn it. There isn't like the special fun activity that is about self care. What self care is, is taking care of your basic human needs. That's really what the definition of self care is. Our society is turn it into something completely different that costs money and lots of time and is treated like some sort of treats. It's something. That you have access to all the time, and it is essential for you as a human being in our world, when we talk about taking care of your well being, we are talking about being self aware. We are talking about establishing a dialog, a relationship with your body, so you recognize when you're not feeling well. We're talking about setting boundaries, self care and caring for your own well being is about using your voice, creating safety and speaking up for yourself, being authentic, and visible, and honoring the time that you do have.

Because I'm going to challenge you to notice all of the time that you actually have throughout the day, that you spend in ways that aren't aligned with actually who you want to be and what you say you want to do. So for example, you are in the car and you are heading to work, and the train comes by, and by me in central New York, the train can take anywhere from one to seven minutes. So here's an opportunity to either use that time to feel frustrated and choose to feel annoyed that now you're sitting in this traffic and you have to wait until this train passes by for you to get to where you want to go, or you can choose that this one to seven minutes is a gift that you get to have as a moment of reflection. What a perfect time to do a breathing exercise, or some tapping that you can do to regulate your nervous system, a little bit some gratitude of something that you're feeling particularly thankful for in that moment. We take these moments for granted that are given to us throughout the day. You know you're sitting waiting for your child to come out of school. You know, instead of scrolling on Instagram or checking your email, have that time to have your favorite book in the car and read a couple pages. These are choices that we get to make all of the time.

And look, I know sometimes in our lives, it gets busy and we can feel really distracted by everything that's going on around us, that those minutes or moments of time that we could offer ourselves seemed to just slip through our fingers. But if you're really paying attention, there are so many of these moments throughout the day, so I appreciate this person sharing that on their feedback form from the class that they took with Thrive with Empowered Educator, because that is something that is essential for showing up as your best self, knowing that you're worthy of all of the time that you choose to invest in yourself.

So thank you. I wanted to start with that before we dive into this week's question, which is from Jesse in Trenton, New Jersey. And Jesse asks, “I want to be more self aware, but I'm afraid of being too self aware. Is that a thing?” Oh, such a good question. So I want to make a difference right here between being self aware and self conscious, because I think sometimes there's a little bit of confusion here. Being self conscious is about placing your focus and attention on what other people might be thinking. So when you're speaking to somebody, you are worried or concerned what that other person might think about what you're saying, how it might be received, what are they going to do? How are they going to react? If you're wearing something that might be a little bit out of your comfort zone, but like, you really liked the hot pink jacket, and you really want to wear the hot pink jacket, so you're walking around in this gorgeous hot pink jacket, and you are feeling very self conscious. This is about other people, and being self aware is about knowing yourself.

And one of the best ways to start your self awareness journey is, and this is something I will always come back to, is becoming aware of your body. Because your brain thinks 60,000 to 85,000 thoughts every single day. And most of these thoughts come from free places. It comes from fear. It comes from past experiences and ego. That's really it. We tend to think of the same things every single day, the same thoughts every single day. And unless you're learning something new and well, we can go into that another time. But in general, that's where the majority of our thoughts come from. And when we start the self awareness journey, we need to start with our body, because not every one of those 60,000 to 85,000 thoughts going through your mind every day is true, your thoughts are options. They are not facts. What's true is the sensations that your body is feeling, your nervous system is telling you something. And the self awareness journey needs to start there, and a really great exercise to do often as you're starting this is a body scan.

So if you're listening right now and you're in the car, you can even do this in the car, although I recommend that you try this again when you're not in the car, so you can really pay attention to what's going on here in your body. But if you're sitting somewhere, even if you're on a walk, start to notice where are your feet, how do they feel in your socks, or if you're bare foot, how is it feeling on the floor? Know, where is your torso or your legs touching the chair? Or if you're walking, how do your legs feel moving? Or if you're walking, how do your legs feel as they move? How do your shoulders feel in your shirt, when you feel the fabric on your shoulders, where are your arms? You feel the weight of your arms at your sides or in your lap. Notice your neck. Is it loose? Is it tight? You don't need to shift anything. We're just noticing. Bring your attention to your forehead. Is it tight? Is your brow furrowed? Was there ease in your forehead? Now, bring your attention to the top of your head and see if you can notice how your hair feels, if you have hair, or if you don't have hair, how does the air feel on your head? And something as simple as doing this body scan gets your focus and attention to where the information is. And so when you harness this skill, when you start to become more appointed with the sensations of your body, your self awareness starts to increase. Because when something is off, or if something doesn't feel right, your body will tell you before your brain does. And that's really where self awareness gets to start, and that's where, when you harness this ability more and more, and it is a journey.

You don't wake up one day with the, you know, full capacity of being self aware all of the time. This is a practice. The more that you practice this, the easier it's going to be to notice when you need to make a shift, when something doesn't feel aligned, and you need to make another choice, when things are feeling great, because your body is going to feel expansive and at ease, and calm, and relaxed, or fuzzy with energy and excitement. This all happens in the body, and I'm going to put a link here in the comment section, because this is really great tool. We have beginner guided meditations. And one of those meditations that I made is actually a body scan that you can listen to on the same podcast app that you're listening to this podcast on. And the more you practice that body scan, or other body scan meditations like that, the easier this is going to be. And just like everything else, it gets to be a priority for you, because self awareness unlocks the key to everything we're talking about, unlocking your teaching potential. This unlocks all of your potential. If you're not aware, you can't change it. You can't change something you don't notice. And so becoming aware, noticing the sensations that are happening in your body, will give you more information than anything coming from your brain. So being too self aware for our purposes, I don't think this is a thing, and I think when you continue on this journey, you will discover more doors you get to unlock, because, you know, we're like onions, like ogres, like Shrek, we have layers.

So every time you kind of peel off a layer of self awareness, there's more stuff underneath. And this journey of discovery is, I think, one of the best parts of the human experience. And as teachers, as educators, when we show up with this level of self awareness, we become the best versions of ourselves for our students, and that's really what they need. Now, right now, our kids are living in a generation where everyone is stressed and activated, their nervous systems are just so jacked up, they're through the roof. And we know that our best, learning, our best, growing, our best evolving, can't happen with that kind of environment, and because the only person you have any agency in changing is yourself. This gets to start with you. So thank you, Jesse, so much for this question. It was fantastic.

And if you're listening right now and you have a question that you want answered on the show, send it to hello@empowerededucator.com with a subject line “Podcast”. And just like last time and every episode in Season Four, I'm going to end the show by picking a card from the Empowered Educator card deck that has some of our most awesome catch phrases that serve as reminders throughout the week. So today's card is, ooh, “the most generous thing you can do for other people is take care of yourself”. And I know that this is a reminder that we all need all of the time, especially as teachers. We have this idea that selflessness and martyrdom is what's needed to get the job done, and the truth is that's not serving us anymore. It's not serving anybody anymore. It's not serving our kids. It's not serving our families at home. It's not serving our own kids. The most generous thing you can do for them is take care of yourself, because when you show up as your best self, it creates possibility for not just you, but everyone around you.

And an Empowered Educator, we are looking for teachers who are feeling frustrated and overwhelmed. Teachers who are finding themselves counting down the days until Friday, the weeks until summer vacation, and the years until retirement. Because our self paced class Thrive starts up again on April 1st, and it is exactly the place to find the reset that you're looking for join the 1000s of teachers who have already taken this life changing course and have avoided burnout, reduced their stress, created a healthy work life, blend, and rediscovered their passion for teaching. Thrive will give you the tools for sustainable well being, so you can show up as your best self, both at work and at home.

Doors are open for registration at empowerededucator.com/thrive. Remember, the most generous thing that you can do for your students is take care of yourself. So if you found today's episode helpful, be sure to subscribe so you never miss a moment of inspiration. And if you're loving the show, I'd love for you to leave a review. This helps more educators like you find the space to unlock their teaching potential too. Until next time, please remember that you are a gift to this world, so act accordingly. See you soon.

Teaching is one of the most fulfilling careers, but let’s be real, it’s also incredibly demanding. If you’ve ever felt exhausted, overwhelmed, or just plain burnt out, you’re not alone. The good news? You don’t have to stay stuck in that cycle.

I’m so excited to welcome you to Season 4 of Unlock Your Teaching Potential! This podcast has always been about giving educators like you the tools to reclaim your energy, set boundaries, and show up as your best self. And this season, we’re diving even deeper into practical strategies that will help you thrive, not just survive.

In this episode, I’m sharing simple yet powerful self-regulation techniques to help you break free from stress and burnout. If you’ve been wondering how to start managing stress as a teacher, I’ll walk you through daily mindfulness exercises and my favorite box breathing technique to help you learn how to calm your nervous system, create a sense of safety, and take back your energy. Because the truth is, you can’t pour from an empty cup. Self-care for educators isn’t a luxury, it’s a necessity.

I’ll walk you through practical teacher stress management strategies that will help you feel lighter, more in control, and ready to step into your full potential both in and out of the classroom.

Take a deep breath, you’ve got this!

Hit play now and let’s start building a calmer, more balanced teaching life together.


Stay empowered,
Jen


Empowered Educator Card Deck

empowerededucator.com/thrive

https://empowerededucator.com/meditations


Let’s keep the conversation going! Find me at:

empowerededucator.com/resources

Instagram: @jenrafferty_

Facebook: Empowered Educator Faculty Room

TRANSCRIPT:  
Are you feeling exhausted by the constant demands of teaching? Do you find yourself wondering if there's a way to balance both your career and your well being without burning out? Welcome, to Unlock Your Teaching Potential, your permission slip to hit the brakes, recharge, and reignite your joy for teaching and living. I'm Dr. Jen Rafferty, former music teacher, author, TEDx speaker, and founder of Empowered Educator. And I've been where you are. Exhausted, overwhelmed and just trying to get through the day, making it all work. So each week, I'll bring you short, powerful episodes with actionable tools to help you reclaim your energy, set boundaries and step into your full potential, both in and out of your role as an educator. So take a breath and let's dive in. It's time to unlock your teaching potential, because the world needs you at your best.

Hello and welcome to episode one of season four of this podcast. I'm so glad you're here, I'm so glad to be here. It's March, a time of new beginnings. Spring is so close, it's just around the corner. Although, as I'm recording this, my yard is covered in snow and it's freezing outside, but the hope of spring is so close, I can taste it. And as a former music teacher, I need to share this too. Every spring, I always think of the song New Day by The King Singers. And if you haven't heard it, do yourself a favor and listen to it, it brings me to tears every single time it's so beautiful. So despite all of the snow, there is hope for this new day and beautiful new potential of the things to come. And with this, of course, it's season four of this podcast, which used to be called Take Notes, but now we've decided to call it Unlock Your Teaching Potential, because, truthfully, that's what we do here at Empowered Educator. We give educators a flashlight, pretty much as they create a new map to reach their own potential, and in doing so, you end up paving the way for your students. And because I am such a neuroscience nerd, everything we do is based in brain science, because it's super easy to say all of the affirmations and continually talk about good vibes. But truly, at the end of the day, you change yourself by changing your brain. And because of neuroplasticity, that's completely possible, which is the coolest thing to me.

So yes, there's so much that is broken about education, but what's true is that organizations don't change until people change. And the only person that you have any agency in changing is yourself, that's it. So each week I'm going to drop some delicious nuggets for you which are inspired by your questions, for those people who have gone through the work of Empowered Educator, all of the classes that we have taken, or perhaps I've given a keynote at your school, or maybe you're listening and you have a question and you're able to send it our way, we're going to be answering those as well.

So we're going to kick it off with our first question from Sue in Philadelphia, and Sue says, “In this climate, I want to know more about how to be more positive and optimistic and less of a warrior. There always seems to be so much to worry about, and I don't want to feel paralyzed by it, but I don't know how to navigate through it, especially when I'm at school. How can I feel more positive when I'm so anxious about the future?” This is such a great question and such an important question. The paralysis and overwhelm that you feel is a biological response to your stress. So I want to just normalize this for you and really level the playing field that the things that we are feeling from the stressors on the outside that create the stress on the inside is your biology working and doing its job. Your brain's sole function means that lots of functions, but the main thing that it's doing is keeping you alive, and the little part that's in your brain that's called the Amygdala, that is responsible for your stress response has not evolved much since the days that we were hunting and gathering and being chased by bears. So even if it's something as simple as receiving a text message you didn't want to see or an email from an angry parent, or, oh, the email for at the beginning of the day from your principal being like, “hey, come see me by the end of the day in my office”, and you're you're worried about it all day, your brain thinks that you're going to die. It seems ridiculous, but that's actually what's going on biologically. It is a natural response to something that is unfamiliar. Now, in our current situation and what's going on with the world, especially, there is so much uncertainty, there is so much change, there is so much verbal vomit being thrown at each other, there's so much hate that we see everywhere and in social media that we can’t seem to escape from, and it infiltrates into our cultures at school, our kids are watching this too. It's hard to know how to navigate, especially when you have a curriculum that you need to teach, and yet there are all of these distractions, and everyone's feeling so paralyzed by what's going on. Here's some good news. You are not your stress. You are also not your brain. You are a person who has a brain that is experiencing symptoms of stress, and because of your objectivity to it, you have the opportunity to navigate through it differently if you choose. And like I said, these responses are biological, so making a different choice isn't always going to be easy, but it is possible.

So one of the first really tangible things that you can do is in a quiet moment, because we can't do this when we're in the middle of all of the things that we have to do. You know, we're making dinner, or we're picking up the kids, we're having our faculty meetings, we're managing behaviors in our classroom. This, what I'm talking about right now, because we can get to some of those strategies in another time. I know that there are questions about that that we'll get to in later episodes. But for right now in this exercise, find yourself a quiet moment, or you go to bed or after dinner. You know when kids are watching TV and notice what is happening with your body. Where is the stress manifesting in your body? Are your shoulders wanting to become your earrings? Is your stomach tight? Do you have a headache? Are you sweating? Is your heart beating really fast? These are all messages that your body is sending you that, hey, listen, we're stressed, we're not okay, we think we're going to die. And having that awareness first is key, that unlocks everything else. Because without that awareness, we bypass our relationship to our body, we bypass any sort of connection or communication that we might have with our body, which is what's giving us the information. We've become detached from our bodies for all sorts of reasons, and we stopped listening to it at some point. We grow up learning that our minds are the thing that needs to be paid most attention to, but your mind is where the stress is, your mind is where the intrusive thoughts are, your mind is what's going to consistently keep you in anxiety and worry and stress and overwhelm, it is your body that is giving you the messages. And when we connect more to our body, well, now we have some place to work with. Your body is always going to be where that truth is.

And so what I'm going to encourage you, Sue, and anyone who's resonating with us to start to do is in that moment of recognizing a physical symptom of stress, you are going to do one of the many exercises that we have here in Empowered Educator. I'm going to share this particular one with you right now because it is my favorite and my go-to and one that I use all the time. Simply put your hand to your heart. And if you can, not while you're driving. But if you can, close your eyes, don't close your eyes when you're driving. And I want you to do three rounds of a box breath. This is inhale for a count of four, pause for a count of four, exhale for a count of four and pause for a count of four. And when you do that three times, I want you to notice what your body feels like afterwards, because what we're doing is we're moving our body from a state of stress and protection to a state of safety. And we need to be in that safety state in order to do our work, in order to be creative, in order to show up as our best selves, in order to get home and not snap at our partner and yell at our kids because we've had such a stressful day. It's actively moving from that state of stress and overwhelm into a state of safety for your nervous system, that is step one. And while we cannot go from feeling that safety state all the way into being positive and more optimistic about things. We can't get to that place of feeling more positive and optimistic until we start with the building blocks of connection to body and self regulation. Regulating your nervous system to a state of safety. And when you're in that state of safety, it might feel very uncomfortable. We live in a world where we don't know what it feels like to have sustainable moments of safety. Everywhere we look, there are reminders of the stressors. You don't have to look very far at all for your nervous system to get activated again. So in those moments, you are going to remind your nervous system of what it feels like to feel safe, and the more often you do it, I do this four times a day, some people do it more, don't do it any less than four times a day. I recommend in your car, in the parking lot before you get out to go to work in the morning, sometime during lunch, and if you don't take lunch, well, then we're gonna have another conversation, but in the bathroom, and if you don't take a bathroom break, then we need to have another conversation. We can talk about that in another podcast episode, please go to the bathroom. Do a breathing break there, do a breathing break in the parking lot again before you leave work, and then one other time before bed, sometime between dinner and bedtime, and what you're going to start to realize is that your body is going to become familiar with that state of safety. And in order to get to a place of feeling positive and optimistic, we need to feel safe first. Because being in your home, being at work, being in your car, being in your bed, these are places where you don't need to feel as if you are being chased by a bear. You get to create your own sense of safety without waiting for external circumstances to do so. And here's what's really important about this and I can't stress this enough. We cannot create from a state of heightened stress. We can't think clearly from a state of heightened stress, the part of your brain that's responsible for higher order thinking, for executive functioning, for prioritizing, for organizing that part of your brain, your prefrontal cortex, is not available when you are in a fight, flight, freeze, or fawn response. And to show up as our best selves, to advocate for what we want, to be an activist in any sort of way, to have a conversation with confidence and clarity, you need that part of your brain. And so in order to get there, you get to create this sense of safety for yourself. And you can do this like I said, as many times as you need to. And the positive and optimistic? Well, that comes later. And so while that was your question, what really needs to be answered is what I just said.

The other piece of this is something that is really important to me, and something I keep on my desk all of the time. And it's this simple statement, “I refuse to become distracted from my important work.” And you know, it makes me teary eyed, even just saying that out loud, I refuse to become distracted from my important work, because the distractions are everywhere, and I can't do what I want to do in this world, being distracted. Now, this doesn't mean that I put my head in the sand and I ignore what's going on, but I am really aware of how my body is feeling. And when my body starts to give me signals of, “Hey, Jen, we're not okay. We feel like we're in threat. It feels like we're going to die. It feels like we're being chased by a bear.” I get to redirect myself. I get to create safety for myself using an exercise like I just shared and plenty others that you can find at the resources page, at Empowered Educator, or plenty of others. And I refocus. I refocus on how I want to show up and who I want to be, in this moment, because I have one life here. This is so temporary. This life is so temporary, and I refuse to abdicate my power to all of the things that are out of my control.

So with that being said, practice those breathing exercises, practice those breaks in between the day and you know, as I said earlier, is breathing going to change all of the brokenness that's in education? No, but we need to be able to think clearly enough to make those changes. If organizations don't change until people change, this is how we start. This is how we leverage the neuroplasticity of our brain to make sustainable change. So thank you, Sue, so much for your question. And if you're listening and you have a question, send it to hello@empowerededucator.com with a subject line “Podcast”, and you might get your question answered right here on the show too. And at the end of each episode this season, I will pull a card from the Empowered Educator card deck, which was actually inspired by teachers we were working with who asked us, “Hey, we really want something that we could keep on our desk that's tangible as reminders of some of the things that you've said in our classes and in our coursework.” So we gave the people what they want, and we have this gorgeous card deck that is so nice to have and so easy to refer to throughout your day. So I'm going to pick a card from this deck, and this one says, oh, oh, my goodness, “Every day is an opportunity to begin again.” How perfect for this new season, episode one of season four every day is an opportunity to begin again. And we don't have to wait until New Years, we don't have to wait until a new school year, we don't have to wait until Monday, you can start now. You don't have to wait. You can start now. You know, so often we hear stories of some sort of crisis or catastrophe, or, to be honest, I've lost track of the number of educators who have told me that they or someone they know, a teacher they know, have had a cardiac event, and it's, you know, shifted the bedrock of their life. Of course, it has, but you don't have to wait for some life changing events to make changes for yourself. Every day is an opportunity to begin again. What a beautiful card and so fitting for this episode. And if you want your own empowered educator card deck, you can head over to empowerededucator.com/resources, and all of these links will be in the show notes too. That's a great space for you to go to find more cool stuff, breathing exercises, meditations, more episodes of this podcast, some of my favorite books, and all of these other great things. And one last thing, we are always looking for teachers who aren't feeling great and who haven't felt connected to their work in a long time and really want to start living their lives with a healthier work-life balance. Our next self paced class Thrive starts on April 1st, and it is exactly the place for you to find the answers that you're looking for. Join the thousands of educators who have already taken this life changing course. They've avoided burnout, they've reduced the stress in their life, and they've really rediscovered their passion for teaching, because I want you to want more for yourself, and counting down the days until Friday, the weeks until summer vacation and the years until retirement. Thrive is the reset button that will change everything. Doors are now open for registration at empowerededucator.com/thrive. Thank you so much for the work that you do in this world. You have the most important job in the world.

Remember, the most generous thing that you can do for your students is take care of yourself. So if you found today's episode helpful, be sure to subscribe so you never miss a moment of inspiration. And if you're loving the show, I'd love for you to leave a review. This helps more educators like you find the space to unlock their teaching potential, too. Until next time, please remember that you are a gift to this world, so act accordingly. See you soon.