21 Days... 2 in 1

When life takes your hands and guides you through a maze of papers, towers of jobs and a never ending list, you just have to keep working through the pile one paper at a time. And this was what has been going on the past two days. The list of jobs that I needed to tackle kept on coming my way and every time I thought I had finished and about to raise my hands up in triumph, I received another task. It reminded me of a cartoon I once saw of a man sitting behind a desk but all you see was the piles of white paper and a teeny bit of his bald head; I am not bald yet but you get the picture. 

In all honesty though, I welcomed the distraction. I had to veer away from the negative thoughts that were creeping through the little cracks in my mind of the impending meetings with parents.  

Having said that, yesterday and today have been good days. We had student involved conferences where the students come with their parents and we discuss their progress and some goals they need to work on. Being used to how it was in my previous school in Thailand, I dressed up in my professional clothes and faced the day. I received so many compliments and not because I am usually scruffy looking but because I was wearing a skirt and high heels on both days... so that was a moral boost... woohoo!

Another positive was that I connected with the parents and my students and it gave me the energy to face one helicopter parent whom I dreaded. I encourage my students to be independent learners and try desperately to teach them to move away from their learned helplessness. However, this parent still wants to keep a hold of her child... my analogy for this situation is that she is breaking his legs instead of offering him ways to improve his walking. Anyway, I decided, with the warm positive energy that I received from other parents, to compliment her on a job well done knowing that her traveling husband is not at home all the time. I thought... well I will try and make her feel good about her efforts even though she is very critical of the support her son is receiving and looks at our work and the decisions we make with a human sized microscope.

So spreading positivity, even though it is sometimes forced, made me feel better and would in turn encourage me to do it more often. it is a cycle after all... what goes around, comes around.

Furthermore, I also made it a point once my cleansing journey began, to hug and kiss my children more often than I had before. If my goal was to reflect on my day and think of a positive thought, hugging them and feeling their little bodies curl into my embrace made the task all the more easy. It gave me a good positive kick to stimulate my mind to work harder at finding the positives.

Reflection:

It was not a bad few days and I checked off all the tasks on my list. Recharging with positive energy from others sure helped me face the difficult situations and this might be a strategy that I will have to use in the future. One needs to recharge their positivity batteries before facing the events or people that suck all the energy out of their systems. I will start with my children... they are my saving grace as they say but most importantly my reason for sticking with this cleansing process.