How do I fill my own cup?

Dear EQuipped Leaders,

Hello! How are things for you today?

What’s a current high?

What’s a current low?

Where is your energy level this morning?

Whatever you are feeling this morning, is okay. All of your feelings are okay. I’m reminding you that all of your feelings are okay because I still need constant reminding myself:

Stop judging yourself based on what you think you should feel, and instead accept what you actually feel.

It sounds so simple, and is so difficult to apply to my life. I think this is at the root of a lot of my self-sabotaging: judging my feelings, my relationships, myself instead of accepting them and making decisions based on the reality of my circumstances.

So I want to do the opposite of self-sabotaging today and instead show up for myself. I want to call up my inner Dream Team.

My colleague Kristen and I just did some trainings on stress management with the lovely elementary, secondary, and itinerant sped staff in Plano ISD, and our Dream Team conversations were some of my favorite moments with this community.

We teach about enlisting people in your life to serve these 4 key roles as part of your support network:

Sage

Hero

Caregiver

Everyman

Educators tend to serve on a lot of other peoples’ Dream Teams but often fail to have a Dream Team of their own to support them. So before they can really start inviting this kind of relationship in their life, we teach them to first start showing up for themselves in these roles.

I love teaching this in trainings because the first time I learned about the Dream Team three years ago, I got super mad (I was really sad but mad felt safer at the time) so I went home and picked a fight with my husband: “Why aren’t you serving as my Dream Team?!?”

Turns out your spouse can’t be your whole support system. That’s one of many hard lessons I’ve learned along my EQ journey. It’s my job to show up for myself and recruit other members of my Dream Team. While I can invite my spouse in to be a part of my Dream Team, I can’t expect him to play every role. I also can’t expect him to lead the charge. I’m the leader of my Dream Team. It’s my job to know what I need and communicate those needs to those who are willing to care for and love on me. One of the hardest things I had to learn, was no one was coming to save me, to set boundaries for me, to address my needs. It’s SELF-care. And I wasn’t showing up for myself. I had no internal leadership. Very little awareness of what my needs even were.

But there’s a new sheriff in town, and it’s me!!! And I’m good at meeting needs. I’ve done it for other people my whole life. All I have to do now is learn to turn that awareness inward and attune to my own needs.

So if you’re like me, let’s take all your brilliant EQ ability to meet other people’s needs and turn that awareness towards ourselves instead. We can be our own Dream Team. We can show up better for ourselves right now in this very moment. Let’s try!

Today I just want to focus on one of the most often neglected archetypes for educators: caregiver.

Here were some of my favorite shares from our trainings for how teachers want to fill their cups:

Learning Macramé
Wine Walks (I mean this one is everything!!!)
Rollerskating
Jump Shoe Dance Workouts
Creating a “Zen Den” in a home closet
Sudoku puzzles
Coloring
Dedicated friend hang outs
Concerts

I loved this part of the training because you could learn so much about a person so quickly by hearing what fills their cup. Each activity is so unique to the person because what fills one person’s cup is another person’s nightmare. That’s why showing up as our own caregiver and exploring what fills our own cup is so important. It’s going to be really different for all of us because our needs are all different.

What about you?

What are three things that fill your cup? Three things that make you smile just thinking about them?

So often teachers focus on how they can control their external environment to mitigate stress instead of focusing on how they can fill their own cups to meet the unpredictable challenges in their classrooms. I’m so guilty of this. Now I’m trying to let go of what I can’t control and stepping up as an internal leader over what I can: my own care.