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Chapter 18: The Transformative Mindset and Making One’s Thinking an Ally

From Transformative Classroom Management. By John Shindler. ©Allyn Bacon Pub.

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In this Chapter:

· Connection Between Our thinking and our Classroom Management Outcomes

· How to Have an Unsatisfying Day

· Exploring the Fundamental Factors in Our Thinking that Affect Our Experience

· Examining the Nature of Our Problems

· Sources of Negativity

· How Negativity in Thinking Manifests Itself into Classroom Management Dysfunction

· Changing Our Patterns of Thinking

· Adopting a “Yes” Mindset

· Beyond a Positive Attitude

· Promoting Energy Flow In Teaching

· Cultivating Our Sense of Purpose – and as a Result a Transformative Mindset

Reader Note: This chapter is intended to challenge you to reflect more deeply on the relationship between your thinking and how it translates into your classroom management. As we examine it more closely, we find that the thinking that we do, how we feel throughout the day, our effectiveness with students, and the source of those things that we refer to as “problems” are all connected. However, I do not ask you to take any of it on faith, or adopt any set of values. In fact, I encourage you to be skeptical and question every idea in this chapter. If the ideas are valid, you should experience their validity first hand. None of the content in this chapter is intended to be philosophical or ideological. It is intended only to be practical and explore the technical aspects of how our thoughts impact our work as teachers. Some of the ideas in this chapter may seem unfamiliar at first, so it may be helpful to allow yourself time to reflect upon them. Changing patterns of thinking takes time.

There are no new or unique thoughts in this chapter. While many of these principles and practices are rarely applied to the domain of classroom management, there is very little that could be considered original in this chapter. It has all been adapted from previous writers, most of whom are listed in the references. In fact, most of these ideas are centuries old.

“Some days just seem to drag on forever”

“Those students make me so mad sometimes and I bet they do it on purpose”

“It is odd, I am around people all day, but a lot of the time I still feel so isolated and lonely.”

“I thought teaching was going to be more satisfying, but for so much of the day I just feel dissatisfied. I am beginning to understand how people get burned out.”

“I am doing my best to teach these students but they seem to always be letting me down. I feel disappointed in them so much of the day, with the exception of a few that are my hard workers.”

Introduction

In Chapter One we characterized the natural state in the classroom as one in which we and our students worked in harmony in a functional and satisfying environment. As you have explored the previous chapters, you have likely recognized that creating a functional classroom environment is no accident. However, with an intentional investment, a sound set of tools and enough time, we can bring function to nearly any context. Likewise our natural state of mind while teaching is one in which we are at ease, in the moment, engaged in our work, and feeling a sense of connection with our students. However, just as the natural classroom condition is uncommon, so is this natural state of mind. What is more normal is a state of mind that is one some level stressed or bored, feeling some degree of threat from students, parents, and administrators, wishing it was doing something else, looking forward to later in the day, and feeling somewhat isolated and alone. This normal but ultimately dysfunctional state of mind contributes to problems with our classroom management as well as our own personal unhappiness.

While we have many challenges and real problems to face while teaching, most of the experience of things being “problematic” during the day takes place in our minds. Teaching is difficult work, but doing that work is not the reason that we feel distress in jobs. The majority of what gives us grief comes from how we think about things, rather than any of the very real challenges that we deal with in a day. In this chapter we will explore many areas of our thinking and examine how our mental processes can make all the difference related to how we experience and interpret our jobs, our students and what we find meaningful.

Chapter Reflection 18-a: Very likely there are readers who are at this point highly skeptical or are ready to skip to the next chapter. It can feel insulting to have someone imply to you that all the very real difficulties that are put on you as part of your job are in your mind. Yet the purpose of the chapter is not to condemn the way that we as teachers think, but to find ways to free us from all those thoughts that keep us from enjoying our jobs.

Chapter Reflection 18-b: At this point, it might be useful to informally construct a map of your emotions throughout your last day of teaching (or working with others). What were the most common emotions, what were the repetitive thoughts? Keep these thoughts and emotions in mind as you continue with the chapter.

How to Have a Generally Unsatisfying (Thinking) Day

Typically we judge a day of teaching as better or worse relative to how well the students behaved. Granted, students do have better days and not so good days, but as Haim Ginott (1972) observed, we are the ones that “make the weather in the classroom.” And we are the ones that interpret the events and give mental labels to what goes on in our class. So depending on how we interpret each of the thousands of events that occur in a day, it will have a great deal to do with the lessons that we take away from those events as well as the way we feel about them.

Moreover, to a great degree our thinking will define our experience both subjectively – how we feel about things, and objectively – the feelings we project, how we perform, and the effect we have on others. It may not be immediately obvious, but with certain kinds of thinking, we can insure that we have mostly unsatisfying and uneasy days, and with other kinds of thinking we can insure that we have a mostly enjoyable and content experience from a day in the classroom. To examine this idea more concretely, it may be helpful to consider the two descriptions below (Table 18.1) and reflect on the powerful effects each type of thinking can have on the experience of teaching (or coaching or parenting).

Table 18.1: Comparison of Thinking That Will Either Lead To a Largely Unsatisfying or Largely Enjoyable Experience From a Day of Teaching.

Thinking that Will Lead to a High Degree of Unease and Dissatisfaction	Thinking that Will Lead to a High Degree of Peace of Mind and Contentment
Begin the day by thinking about how long and predictable it will be, how much you are looking forward to it being over, and how relieved you will be when you can go home.	Begin the day grounded in the moment. Enjoy the processes and tasks in which you find yourself, and be present to and aware of your students.
Recall other classes and/or other schools where you envision the students being much better. Compare your students to these past classes or other students and look for their faults.	Accept your students for who they are. Do not judge them as better or worse, just accept where they are at this point in their learning and personal growth, and attend to what you can do to help them succeed in your class.
Begin to wonder what your “problem student(s) will do today to irritate you. Look for things that they do that confirm your expectations.	Assume all of your students are going to do the best they can given their conditioning, what they are reacting to in their lives in and outside of school, and above all, the relationship that you have previously developed with them.
Let your emotions be dictated by your reactions to external events. When a student does something that you do not like, or when the students are not meeting your expectations, assign them bad intentions, and let yourself get angry and disappointed.	Be aware of the connectedness of all events throughout the day. Keep in mind what you are projecting to the class. Try to project a positive expectation for all students. When things do not go well, assume responsibility for changing the cause, or helping improve the situation. Take on a “Yes” mindset.
Hold resentment for students that are making your life difficult “on purpose.” Pretend that everything is fine, but allow you inner dialogue to blame and judge the students that are causing you to be miserable. Tell yourself how they are to blame for how you feel.	Above all keep in mind that you choose your emotional reactions to events. What you feel has come about by the way that you have interpreted events. Especially watch for feelings of defensiveness and threat. Be aware of what you are defending in your self. It is usually something pretty small and petty. If you lose the need to defend your self-image, the students stop being the enemy.
At lunch find another teacher or TA to complain to. Tell them about how the students are acting the same inappropriate, inattentive, and disrespectful way they did the day before. Paint a vivid picture of the parents as a useless and unsupportive lot, who are ultimately the cause of all of your problems. Reflect on how if it was not for how they raised their kids, you would not have half the problems that you do.	At lunch, take the opportunity for at least a moment for yourself. Find the present moment and allow yourself to just be, eat, and enjoy the company (or the solitude if you so choose). Spend only a moment or two reflecting on what happened in the morning and what adjustments your want to make. And as you think about the rest of the day, keep your awareness of the moment and do not let your head get in the habit of being lost in thoughts of past events or future uncertainties. Plan in the moment, eat in the moment, and then when it is time to go back to class, maintain your awareness in the moment.
After lunch keep your locus of control as external as possible. Hope the students act better, and look forward to times in the day when you do not have them with you. Anticipate that things will go poorly and when they do, let yourself react with your habit of getting angry and shaming, blaming, and lecturing your class. Be sure to project your passive aggressive disappointment and sense of superiority. Phrases such as “when will you ever learn” will make you feel less responsible, and justified in caring less.	As the students come into the room after lunch, take a moment to appreciate how unique and talented they are. As your attitude of respect and appreciation grows you can see it being reflected back to you. As you begin to feel more connected and closer to the students, you feel the sense of responsibility as a little overwhelming. When you feel this way, you shift your attention away from you and your ego as the “teacher” and back to the moment, the task, and being fully present to the students. You focus on doing one thing at a time, doing a good job of each task, and letting the outcomes take care of themselves.
As the students respond to your attitude of judgment and disapproval (that you mistakenly think you have successfully disguised) with coolness and a lack of respect, be sure to assign them the traits of lazy and disrespectful when you make assessments about their character. When you assign these qualities keep the locus of causality and responsibility on the students, don’t consider what your part attitude has played in creating their response to you and the unsatisfying classroom climate. As the feelings of loneliness and isolation creep in, long for situations in your life where you are loved, or classes that gave you the love you deserved.	Focus your teaching on what is being successful. Show respect for your students by projecting high expectations for their performance and their interactions with one another. Do not keep your positive recognitions (see chapter 8) or your appreciation to yourself. Use the power of the collective sense of ownership and responsibility to the community to guide your thinking in matters of behavior. Show your pride in the group and give them concrete examples of the progress that they are making. But, no matter how successful you are being, avoid thoughts of comparison to other teachers. You recognize that once your begin to judge and compare, you poison the well.
When you go home from after a long day of teaching, run over and over in your mind all that students have done to you – the willful disrespect, the lazy unmotivated performance that reflects badly on you, the intentional misbehavior. Be sure to assign the students bad intentions for their actions. Give yourself reasons to defend yourself, but unconsciously beat yourself up for being inadequate. Alternately recall bad episodes from the day, and long for the end of the year or at least the weekend. Dread that you have to go back and teach tomorrow. Pretend that you “just leave it all behind” when you leave the classroom. Ignore the way that your negative feelings affect the way that you feel physically. Try not to notice how your unconscious mind does not want to give it up the negative thoughts and the need to defend yourself. Just ignore way your mind continuously tries to compensate for your sense of disconnection and inadequacy, and attempt to fill it with some diversion or addictive behavior. Tell yourself that everything is fine, and don’t pay any attention to how easily you body and mind react with anger when someone or something says or does something that triggers one of the many things that irritated you during the day. If you have grading or planning to do, let yourself wallow in the resentment that you feel for doing it. Put it off, but complain up to that point about how you have to do it.	When you go home, practice being in the moment. If you have planning or grading to do. Do it as soon as you can. Don’t ruin the moment with worry about what you need to do. It leads to resentment of the task and the habit of worrying instead of doing. When you are not engaged in school work, be in the moment. It may be tempting to cycle your day through your mind, but as you notice what you are thinking about, you will find that it is pretty repetitive. It is much better to be preset to who you are with and what your are doing. It will make your time away from teaching much happier and your time as a teacher more effective. When you are grading papers, be in the moment. No matter how repetitive, enjoy each paper. Avoid trying to “get through them.” As you learn to enjoy the task, and be in the moment while grading, you will find that the time does not drag as before, your enjoy the task more, and you do not carry the resentment of grading back to the class the next day. And it is a great exercise to practice staying in the present moment.

Chapter Reflection 18-c: As you examined each list, which one best characterized how you typically think in a day? What was your emotional reaction as you read each list?

As we compare the two lists in Figure 18.1, we should keep in mind that both columns were referring to a comparable day in a comparable school. There was nothing different about either context. The descriptions had nothing to do with either where or who we taught. But as you read the experiences described in each column, it is likely that you recognized dramatic differences between them. If one were to approach their job with the orientation on the left, it is certain to produce a sense of unease, stress, and dissatisfaction. Unfortunately, for many teachers, the experience characterized on the left most closely resembles the normal state of mind for many teachers. As a result, the longer they teach, the less they want to be doing it. In contrast, the column on the right depicts what we might characterize as thinking that will lead to the natural condition. While this condition is uncommon, it is realistically attainable by any of us. In this chapter we will examine how to take steps in this direction.

Exploring the Fundamental Factors in Our Thinking that Affect Our Experience

To make sense of why each of us can have such a dramatically difference experience from a day of teaching, we will need to examine some of the various potential thought process, patterns and reactions that take place in a day of teaching. To begin, it will be useful to explore three factors that are fundamental to determining the quality of our thinking – our approaches to 1) time, 2) causation of events, and 3) awareness.

1. Time – Where is Our Thinking in Relation to the Present?

Most of us rarely consider where our thoughts are relative to the moment. In fact, most of us assume that our attention is in the present. However, check in on yourself at various points during a typical day and observe where your thinking is in relation to time. If you are like most of us, your mind drifts between thinking about what has happened in the past and what might happen in the future. Most of us give very little attention to the present. So what is the problem with that? Simply put - everything. The only place that we can find peace, a clear sense of our intention, and be free of the mental noise that fills our head is in the moment. The past is where regret, blame, guilt, obsession, victimization and resentment live. Those feelings can only exist if we allow our minds to dwell in the past. Likewise we will not find peace of mind in the future. The future is where anxiety, boredom, fear, dread, anticipation and projection of problems all live, as well as the delusion that the future will bring relief from our problems. The future has not happened yet, but often we allow ourselves to experience negative emotions because we manufacture a future reality that is unpleasant. Or just as mistakenly, we often miss the moment because we are anticipating something in the future that we misperceive as more important. We need to make the present moment our friend. Avoiding it is the cause of most of our perceived problems and suffering.

Chapter Reflection 18-d: If you are having a difficult time recognizing where your attention is at any moment. It may be useful to take part in an exercise. Simply sit in a chair for 15 minutes or longer and as best you can eliminate all distractions (e.g., computer, TV, others, radio, etc) and let your mind go where it wants. Simply watch your mind, and notice what it is doing. How long does it take before it wants to think about the future (i.e., what you need to be doing, what event is coming up, etc) or gets caught up thinking about a past event (i.e., what happened that morning, other times that you have tried to sit quietly, etc)? You might try to just stay in the present and see how long you are able to.

After doing this exercise, what did you find out? Were you surprised at how little time your mind wanted to spend in the present?

2. Causation – Where do We Place Responsibility and Ownership?

As discussed earlier in Chapter 4, the primary factor making up the vertical axis in the teaching style continuum, and arguably the single most predictive characteristic of the success of a teacher will be the degree to which they have an internal or external locus of control (LOC)(Shindler, Jones, Taylor & Cadenas, 2003). Effective teachers tend to be those who attribute the cause of their success and failure and that of their student to what they do. In other words, to be effective we need to have an internal LOC related to what we do. However, to be both effective and enjoy peace of mind, we need to have an internal LOC related to how we think. We need to take responsibility for our thinking and recognize the cause and effect relationship between our thinking and everything else including our success, the quality of our environment, and our level of peace of mind and job satisfaction. On the one hand, if we believe that the “real world” is unsatisfying, something external will always thwart our best efforts, and “those students” will always disappoint us, those beliefs will cause us to make it so. If, on the other hand, we recognize that most problems are caused by our own minds, and our self-limiting thinking and in a very real way we create our own “real world” with by our attitude, we can find that things not only seem better, they work out better.

What our mind in its survival mode tell us it that - “If I take responsibility for what is, it will be too overwhelming. My students’ needs are endless. This job is endless. It is so big. I can never really succeed. If I accept that I am responsible, I will feel inadequate, guilty and/or overwhelmed. I cannot be held responsible for what happens to me students. It is not my fault, I cannot control everything.” These thoughts torture us, and make us feel guilt, inadequacy, and ultimately like finding reasons to become less responsible. As a result, there is a temptation to externalize, blame, complain, become negative, tune out, and view the students as the problem. While this is understandable and normal, it is still dysfunctional.

To achieve peace of mind, instead of externalizing our responsibility to cope with our sense of unease (a strategy that will never succeed for long), it will be more effective to change our thinking. First, we need to take responsibility for our thoughts. We need to become skilled at recognizing the messages that want to come in. Practice drawing your awareness to the moment and “what’s important now” (WIN) and away from the urge to fight “what is.” We do not need to take responsibility for everything that is happening in the situation, we just need to take responsibility for ourselves and for the fact that the present is the only moment we have. Second, when we access the present, we will notice that a more clear sense of our intentions will follow. What is right, necessary, and important will ultimately come to us as we free our thinking from the habit of creating problems and making the moment something that we need to run from. Third, while we need to trust our intentions, we must give up the desire to control. When we examine the need for control, it becomes clear that it is not so much a function of necessity, as it is the ego trying to make a world consistent with the picture that it wants. Depok Chopra (1994) identifies the ability to lose attachment to the outcome as one of his Seven Spiritual Laws of Success. When we let go of the need to cling to the outcome, we free ourselves from the torture of guilt. Our mind will tell us that we need to be attached to the outcome or things will not turn out. Is will be useful to recognize this ego-based message from what it is - a mental fiction. As we examine it more closely, we find that most of our need for things to be consistent with our mental picture of how things should be is fear based. Letting our egos get attached to things working out a certain way will not do anything to improve the outcome, but will go a long way toward making us miserable.

Chapter Reflection 18-e: Reflect on the events of your day. When did you find yourself feeling attached to things turning out a certain way? How did it make you feel - stressed, nervous, guilty, helpless, inadequate, upset at others? Did your feelings of attachment make things turn out any better?

3. Awareness – Where Do We Place our Attention?

Where is our awareness throughout the day? Is it on the many negative thoughts that recycle through our minds on a continuous basis? “That student is such a problem.” “How did they score so poorly on that test, I did a good job of teaching it to them? Why is it so hard to get them to listen? We would be so much better off without this Principal? How am I supposed to teach effectively without ___”

Count the number of time in 5 minutes that you have one of these negative thoughts. You will be surprised. Furthermore, count the number of times in a day that the same handful of negative thoughts recycles themselves through your mind each day. Note that you do not have to try to bring them into your awareness, they find a way of dominating your thinking, unless you do something about it.

Chapter Reflection 18-f: Reflect on the following questions:

1. How much time am I spending with my awareness truly in the moment?

2. Am I letting my compulsive and negative thinking pull me out of the moment, into a past defined by resentment, regret and irritation, or into a future filled with dread or an illusion of relief from our current situation?

3. If my conscious mind is filled with this compulsive thinking on a continuous basis, what am I programming into my unconscious? And what will it look like when it surfaces in my behavior?

Reflect on how often you shift your awareness from what is important now (i.e., your students, investment in your teaching, appreciating what is good about the moment, etc) to an “imaginary audience.” It is common when teaching for our minds to leave the present moment and allow our egos to become our audience. One of the manifestations of this is when we become self-conscious. Instead of being attentive to our students and the task at hand, we shift our attention to how we think we appear in the eyes of others. The practical result is that our actions become stilted and tentative. Another manifestation is what we might call the “commiserating ego.” If we examine them closely, we find that our egos are a highly attentive and appreciating audience. They always commiserate with us when we have disparaging thoughts about students (e.g., “they are just not that smart,” or “they are not as good as other students” or “how are they not getting this?”). They are amused at the backhanded comments that we make to students who are not aware that they have just been put down. They are always there to complain to about how our job is not as good as it should be, how things are unfair, and how since it is not our fault, we are justified in daydreaming and entertaining ourselves in whatever way will allow us to cope with this unsatisfying moment. When we find ourselves playing to our “imaginary audience,” it will be a clear sign that we are not in the moment and are acting unconsciously.

Chapter Reflection 18-g: Reflect on the last time that you played to your imaginary audience. What form did it take?

As much as possible, it will help to have our awareness in the moment, and what you are doing now. That may be planning for the future or analyzing the past, but if we do it in the moment, the ego is less likely to take charge of the process. When you awareness is in the moment, you will feel it in your body. Your breath will become deeper and slower and you will feel an ease and clarity.

Chapter Reflection 18-h: Take a moment and intentionally move your attention into the moment. Focus on being completely present to the task in front of you or the people that you are with. Notice how you feel when the mental noise slows down and your attention is in the now. What else do you find in this state? Keep it in mind for later.

Exploring Dissatisfaction

On the one hand, feelings of dissatisfaction are useful. They serve the purpose of helping us recognize what could be better about our practice and in ourselves. Our job is to help students get better, if we are satisfied with them staying the same, we are not doing our jobs. Our sense of dissatisfaction helps us set goals and clarify our sense of purpose. Moreover, there is a great deal of support for the idea that the best teachers are those that are least satisfied with the status quo (Fullan 1993; Glickman, 1998). Research suggests that good teachers want to make a difference.

One the other hand, a perpetual feeling of dissatisfaction is going to contribute to our unease and speed up the process of burn out. If we feel like we are not doing our job well enough, or that our students are not learning fast enough, or that the job of teaching is a thankless profession, we will be unhappy and/or begin to deteriorate both physically and emotionally. Teachers who leave the profession typically leave because they cannot live with the perpetual sense of inadequacy (Hargeaves, 1994).

So how do we work with that voice inside that says “I want to make a difference” in a way that will not lead to our own downfall. First, we need to resist the temptation to become resigned. That is a lose-lose proposition. When we say, “I tried my best, but nothing is ever good enough, so I will just give up,” we become both unfulfilled and ineffective. Second, we need to distinguish the types of change oriented thinking that is helping us move forward from that which is making us unhappy. Our goals are probably not making us unhappy. They are likely giving us a sense of direction and focus. Intention is a word that we have used throughout the book. Intention implies a clear sense of purpose, a deliberate movement toward a goal, but with a firm grounding in the moment. If we act intentionally, we move with confidence. The problem is that when we become attached to the outcome. It is easy to assume that the two ideas go together – 1) setting an intention and 2) wanting things to work out the way that we envisioned. But they are not related. Initially, the idea of letting go of the end result can appear foolish. It seems like things are going fall apart if we do not make sure that they turn out the right way. But as you explore your thinking, you will notice a distinction between the ego – the part of you that wants to control and needs things to turn out, and the actor – the one that is working for a quality outcome. The reason that the thought of an unsatisfying outcome makes us stressed and fearful is because our ego has told us that we will be less of a person if we fail. When you look at this more deeply, you see that it is an unhelpful delusion.

Chapter Reflection 18-i: You might test out the idea that fear of the bad outcome is a mental fiction. Recall 5 things at different points in your life that you were very concerned about (including the most recent). 1. Did your anxiety make the outcome any better? 2. Did things work out eventually? And if they did not, was the outcome something that in the end was survivable, if not acceptable? Was your attachment to things working out the way that you wanted useful? Or was it just a source of needless stress?

So, as the voice of dissatisfaction comes in, we can use it purposefully. It can clarify our intention and motivate us to work toward change. But when the voice of the ego come in and wants us to wrap our self-concept up with the many outcomes in our day, we need to become skilled at recognizing it, but not to let it tell us what to do or how to feel.

Examining the Nature of Our “Problems”

Teaching is an involving profession. There is always something to do, a challenge to meet, and an ever present need to plan and prepare. Students bring a great deal of unpredictability and even dysfunction into our classes. But as we observed in Chapter Two, these are really not problems as much as they are challenges, and simply part of the job. However, we can make them into “problems” as a result of how we interpret and perceive them. It is possible to interpret our day as a series of “one problem after another.” It is also possible to view our day as simply work that needs to be done. When we make our challenges into problems, and we interpret the events of the day as problems we become our own enemy. Making the job of teaching into a series of problems is a very effective way to have mostly miserable days. However, if we learn to notice the tendency in our minds to want to turn our work into problems, just by the act of noticing, we can reduce some of that sense of struggle, and as a result, move through our days without the mental stress and strain caused by a mind filled with perpetual problems.

In most cases, the difference between a functional and healthy vs. dysfunctional and unhealthy approach to our work, will involve how we interpret various events as either problems or challenges that simply require action. The size of the event is rather insignificant, but our interpretation of the event will be. For example, we may be teaching and notice that our students are doing more talking than we want them to during an activity. The problem-based interpretation is to get upset, and get negative, and label the event as a problem. A more functional interpretation is to simply recognize that something needs to change and then to take the action required to change it (See Chapter 12, related to gaining attention). Moreover, even if the challenge is considerable, such as a student that is having substantial issues and/or has even become uncontrollable in our class, viewing it as a problem will not help. We simply need to take action (See Chapter 16 related to dealing with difficult students). That action may require a long-term intention including a complex plan of action, in addition to something that we need to do immediately, but we do not need to label it as “bad,” take it personally, or feel victimized. We simply need to act.

In fact, if we turn an event or student into something that is “bad” it will make things worse, for our sense of peace as well as for the quality of our classroom management. Part of the problem is that when we label, conceptualize and personalize the event, we shift toward an external causality, we get out of the moment, and we shift into a fear-based mode of thinking. The result is a pattern of negativity, and a sense of isolation and separateness.

Chapter Reflection 18-j: It is normal to look at all the problems in our lives and at work as a finite quantity. We did not do anything to create them, they just are. But ask yourself the question; “if my problems were all magically solved and removed from my life, how long would it take before I created a whole new set about the same size and the same type as those I have now?

What is the Problem with Negativity?

Most of us spend a great deal of our days engaged in some form of negativity. Sometimes it is subtle, and other times it is rather debilitating. This negativity can take many forms such as complaining, passive aggressiveness, perpetual disappointment, blame, a sense of unfavorable comparison, cynicism and fatalism. Moreover, spending time in schools themselves can actually help fuel these negative states of mind. Many of us work within climates that are rather toxic and draw us into a sphere of negative energy. Spending prolonged time in many faculty lounges can have the effect of “acclimatizing” us to these subtle forms of negativity until they all seem rather normal and even necessary. While it is common and normal to become accustomed to negativity, it will be useful to recognize that it has little if any value (aside from bonding us to others who have also become trapped in a pattern of negativity). We may perceive it as valuable because our minds tell us it is useful and necessary. But upon closer examination we will see that it is entirely a mental game and destructive to both our peace of mind as well as our effectiveness.

Chapter Reflection 18-k: Consider the last thing that you complained about. Recall how it felt to complain. As you examine it more closely, can you identify what it was that your ego was feeling the need to protect? Was it your sense of self? Did you need to excuse yourself for a lack of action (that you feel you should have taken earlier) to alleviate some guilt? At the root of all negativity is an effort to run from taking responsibility. Can you identify what it was in this case?

Most forms of negativity have two primary causes. First, they can result from a lack of acceptance and the desire to avoid “what is.” Instead of taking responsibility for the moment, and saying “yes” to our reality, we promote negativity when we rationalize the need to say “no” to the present in the form of denial, defensiveness, unease, displeasure, etc,. Second, negativity results from a lack of courage to take positive action (that the ego disguises as superiority). Instead of taking advantage of the opportunity to take constructive action, we choose to be passive. As a result of that choice, we feel dissonance, so we use some form of negativity to cope with the feelings of guilt or failure. As discussed in Chapter 12 (see Figure 18.2/12.2), this manifests itself in the classroom when we choose negativity (i.e., a “no’) over action (i.e., a “yes). For instance, many times a day, we recognize a state of affairs that is inadequate and could be improved. We can typically then proceeds in either one of two directions. On the one hand, we can initiate action, change the situation, and then as a result we are able to recognize that a change has been made – which leads to an emotional state where negativity is unnecessary (Sequence A). On the other hand, we can see the need for action, find a rationalization for why that action is not necessary, and then as a result later recognize that the problem still persists – the result is the need for negativity to cope with the sense of guilt and the need to defend one’s self image (Sequence B).

Figure 18.2/12.2 – Roots of Negativity: Sequence of Events Related to Why We Feel Either Negativity or a Sense of Resolution

Sequence A.

Problem – action taken – change – ability to positively recognize behavior

Sequence B.

Problem – inaction – problem remains - distress – negativity

Chapter Reflection 18-l: Recall the last time that you felt negative e.g., defensive, complaining, disappointed in the students, touchy about your performance as a teacher, etc. Reflect on what you were defending. It is likely that there was a point in time that you could have acted, but did not. Is it possible that your negativity was a form of beating yourself up or displacing that anger onto your students?

When we allow our negativity to take over, we spiral into a pain cycle that is capable of doing major damage to ourselves everyone around us. Therefore, we need to begin by accepting that there is no value in being negative. We must accept that we are not perfect and will get into negative moods, but to keep in mind that the thinking that we are temped to do in that mood is probably unhealthy. Our mind may be telling us to be angry or assign bad intentions to someone, complain, blame, feel sorry for ourselves, or take revenge on a student or even the whole class. But the better we get at noticing these messages, the less likely we will be a slave to our unconscious conditioning. And we will simply want to use a more intentional voice inside of us to guide our actions.

So what do we do when we recognize the voice of negativity emerging?

1. Do not fight it. Just accept the emotions. Do not feel like you need to blame yourself or someone else for feeling negative. Just bring the thoughts into your awareness. When you are in the act of noticing the negative message, you see them for what they are –simply thought forms and nothing that you “need” to listen to. As a result of just noticing the feeling, it will lose its power and control over you. Moreover, avoid being in denial of what you feel. Denial is the most counterproductive state available.

2. Listen to what the negativity is telling you. When you feel the negative thoughts coming in, it will be educational to ask yourself, “What button just got pushed? “What am I defending?” “Is there some inadequacy I feel the need to project?” “Is there some hurt or vulnerability at the root of the emotions?” Let the emotions tell you what is really at the root of your negative reactions. Emotions are valuable information. They are the most accurate window into the mind that we have. But it will be useful to refrain from labeling the emotions as “good” or “bad.” just accept that they are there at this time. They are real, but keep in mind that they are not who you are. So, what can you learn from them?

3. Choose to take positive action. In any situation we have only three functional/healthy choices (in contrast to the thousands of dysfunctional/unhealthy choices; e.g., going negative, becoming reactive and unconscious, etc) :

§ Accept the situation. Stop fighting the idea that it needs to be different. Say “yes” to what is.

§ Take action. Tap into your inner sense of intention and do something to improve the situation. Taking aware, deliberate action will feel very positive, as well as potentially leading to solutions to the problem.

§ Remove yourself from the situation. Take a time out. Find another place to be. Wait until you have found some inner peace, and the negativity is not doing the talking.

Stress, Anger, and the Need to Be Right – Dysfunction Disguised as Normal Patterns of Thinking

Most of us accept a regular amount of stress, anger, and the need to be right as normal and inevitable. While they define much of our daily experience, and for most of us are very familiar companions, they do not need to define our efforts throughout the day.
While they will always creep in, in some form, if we approach them intentionally and raise our level of consciousness, we can spend much less time in those states than we do at present.

Exploring the Nature of Stress

For some of us stress is a constant companion. For others it comes in episodes. We feel it in the body as a sense of unease and tension. Our breathing becomes more shallow, and if we were to measure it, we would find that the level of cortisol in our blood is elevated. Stress at its essence comes from wanting things to be different than they are. This includes wanting them to work out in a certain way in the future, and fearing that they will not. Like other forms of negativity, stress has no useful purpose. In fact, it will be counter-productive. When we are stressed it rubs off on others. Our level of stress is inevitably projected out onto our class and makes them uneasy. When we are stressed our minds are more scattered and less grounded in the moment. When the climate of a class has a chaotic quality, it is often the result of the teachers stress level.

If we find ourselves in a stressed state quite often, we might want to practice a mindset in which we ground ourselves in the moment and focus on doing one thing at a time. In reality we can only do one thing at a time, so we are not missing something if that is what we do. It is impossible in this moment to be doing something in the future. But the stressed mind will do its best to try to, and will tell us that it is important to become obsessed with the potential problems that the future may bring.

Instead of allowing our minds to fixate on the imagined future, it will be more effective to tell ourselves to stay in the moment and do what we can right now to prepare. Have we done the planning and preparation that is necessary? If we have, then it will be useful to stay in the moment and let go of attachment to things turning out a certain way. If our stress is related to having to complete a large project, or from not being fully prepared for the future event, instead of conceiving the task as vast and expansive, take one piece at a time. The larger we make the job, the more likely we will be to experience stress and/or let ourselves translate that stress into procrastination. Doing one thing at a time grounds us in the moment and helps take practical steps toward reaching our goal or improving the chances that a good outcome will happen.

When our stress takes the form of worry, it can be paralyzing. Brian Tracy suggests that to counteract worry, we should go through a series of mental steps. First, imagine the worst case scenario for what we are worried about. Second, resolve to accept that we could live with it if it were to happen. Third, take action to help bring about the best possible outcome.

Chapter Reflection 18-m: Reflect on the last time you felt stress. What was it about? Did the stress improve your outcome? As you examine it now, do you recognize the appearance of the voice that was telling you that you needed to want the future to be a certain way? What was that voice saying?

Exploring the Nature of Anger and Resentment

Most of us experience some subtle forms of anger throughout the day. It may feel like defensiveness, disappointment, resentment, or regret. While, it is normal, it will take its toll. There is a misperception that we just need to “just let it out.” This theory is called catharsis. Yet, consistently research has shown that catharsis is not effective at reducing angry feelings and actually tends to increases the tendency to get angry. In one such study, Bushman (2002) found that venting anger by hitting a punching bag actually increased the subjects’ long term levels of anger. Moreover, the study found that when subjects ruminating over their anger, the level of anger increased as well. Therefore, we could conclude that “holding it in” is as unhealthy as “letting it out.”

It is useful to recognize that the feeling of anger is simply the body’s response to one of our thoughts. Therefore, if we change the thoughts we reduce the anger. But much of our motivation for staying angry comes from our misperception that it is useful. For many of us, we view anger as a motivational emotion. It energizes us to take action, be assertive, get “pumped up.” But the reality is that we can be assertive or energized without the anger. In fact, the anger will simply make us less conscious in whatever we are doing.

But What if They Deserve It?

There is an old saying that “Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned.” When we externalize our anger the effect is that essentially more pain was just introduced into the equation of the class. Using the hot coal analogy, what we have done by doing this is that we have first burned ourselves when we let our thinking become anger. Then, if we throw that hot coal into the class, we burn our students. Yet we can be assured that at some point, in some form, that coal will come back at us again. So when we externalize our anger in the form of giving pain (e.g., lectures, guilt, shame, put downs, threats, punishments, etc.), we get burned at least twice. When our students make us mad, our minds tell to get back at them, because “they deserve it.” However, if we examine the reality more closely, it becomes clear that this reasoning is dysfunctional. If they have done something that calls for a consequence, they deserve a logical and related consequence (and not pain). Any disciplinary action done in anger (and using a pain-based logic) will create less function in the room and drag us down the continuum closer to a 4-Style management environment.

When we get angry it feels rather inevitable and as if it was determined by our situation. But as we examine it more closely, we find that we have a great deal more control over it than we assume. Moreover, we see that the mechanism in our mind that makes it happen is rather predicable. We see that in actuality, the external context is not what making us angry, but how we are thinking about it. Understanding its three parts can be helpful in raising our level of awareness of this anger producing mechanism. First, to create anger we need to take an event out of the larger context of the world, and narrow our focus to just that event. Second, we need to assign intentions to the object of our anger. As we examine anger as well as all other forms of negativity, we can recognize a strong relationship between the intentions we assign to others and the degree of harmful thinking that we experience. Third, we need to assume that the “anger just is,” rather than seeing it as the result of something that we have chosen - one of a thousand thoughts we could have attended to and only one of the many feelings that we could be feeling right now. Figure 18-3 outlines how our perceptions related these three variables will translate into dramatically different results in situations that confront us with the opportunity to get angry.

Figure 18.3: Comparing a Healthy vs. Unhealthy Response to a Situation in Which We Might Become Angry at a Student

	Dysfunctional/Unhealthy	Healthy/Functional
Setting the Context	Examine the event within a narrow context. Look at the event and the student in isolation. Let your ego do the talking (or more likely ordering), and let it bring your attention into a narrow, personalized event.	Acknowledge that the student is acting in a larger context. They may be reacting to something we or someone else has done. Open up your awareness and see that this is only one of the hundreds of events going on right now.
Assigning Intentions	Assign the student bad intentions. Tell yourself that the student did what they did for a malicious reason. They did or said what they did as an attack on you.