This session is all about getting to know yourself and each other and the programme. We want you to really look forward to each session, so this is an opportunity to 

• get to know one another
• get clear on how the programme works – the content and the process
• decide your personal focus for the next 10 weeks
• clarify group guidelines and boundaries
• understand how to keep connected in between sessions.

Losing the joy in your work and your life usually means losing sight of yourself. Here’s an important opportunity to make friends with yourself again and find ways to enjoy your life more.

Explore

• what really matters to you
• what gives you energy and depletes your energy 
• how perceptions (your own and others) impact on your self-belief.

Overwhelm is hands down the number one joyblocker we see when we work with teachers and leaders. It brings a heavy mental and emotional strain. We all need strategies for lightening the load and building confidence to assert our needs.

Together you can clarify and practise

• asserting the boundaries you need to do your job well
• negotiating and saying no
• having pre-prepared requests and responses.

To prevent you getting to the point of feeling ‘I just can’t do this anymore’, you need to establish habits and routines that put your own wellbeing first. But how do you find a place for them within all your other work and personal commitments?

This session explores how to

• identify practical boundaries that respect your wellbeing
• be more body aware so that you function well each day in your role
• top up and maintain energy reserves so you keep well and keep motivated.

Never feel good enough? Are you living according to someone else’s version of what it is to be successful? It’s time to re-evaluate how you measure success by

• taking a different perspective on the erosive nature of perfectionism
• creating your own criteria for what is enough and negotiating those criteria with colleagues
• giving yourself permission to be enough.

Stress and anxiety are endemic in the teaching profession. Managing anxiety and stress involves understanding what they are, how they function and what they do to you. You also need to know how to recover from the impact of stress hormones.

Now you can learn simple strategies for

• creating your own oxytocin (the love hormone)
• finding self-compassion practices that work for you
• becoming your own inner coach.

Leadership courses often endorse being your authentic self at work, yet don’t factor in the extent to which vulnerability is part of being true to yourself. What if the culture you work in views vulnerability as weakness? When people feel awkward showing their vulnerability, how can you create conditions where it’s safe to be vulnerable?

Here you have a rare opportunity to 

• build your self-worth and confidence to feel valued and respected
• accept that your needs are OK
• contribute to creating a culture of safety and support that will encourage change.

If putting your own needs first leaves you feeling selfish then you’re caught in the ‘virtue trap’ and the consequences can be dire. 

In this session we’ll dig deep

• considering what is in your control that really stops you keeping your wellbeing as a priority
• facing the reality of prioritising your wellbeing and the consequences
• facing the moral dilemmas of self-preservation.

When you are worn down, you are more likely to comply with the demands of the system, not least because you don’t have the energy to resist those demands. When you live a joyful life, you do have that energy but the system you are part of may not look favourably on your resistance.

The politics of joy means

• reclaiming joy in your life
• using joy to navigate your work and keep your life purposeful
• actively changing the system from within.

Time to look back on how far you’ve come. Change needs momentum so we’ll take this opportunity create a plan for your next steps including

• how you’ll maintain the momentum
• practices that will ensure you keep well and motivated
• ways to keep feeling joyful about who you are and validated in what you do.