Micro-habits of journaling for practitioners
The pandemic that hit the world has helped identify various blind spots in the educational practices which we as practitioners will have to overcome not just in the immediate present but also in the impending future.
The experience is a steep learning curve for educators around the world on best practices of conducting synchronous and asynchronous teaching, learning, and assessments.
And yet, the experience itself does not guarantee that we have acquired the knowledge of how to conduct engaging classes in times of crisis. I’m reminded of something the American philosopher and educational reformer John Dewey once said,
“We don’t learn from experience. We learn from reflecting on the experience.”
It’s not so much the experience, rather it’s the act of reflecting on the said experience that allows the wealth of wisdom to flow through.
So how do we begin the act of reflection? Can anyone do it, or do we need a certain skill set before we can begin the process?
Ryan Holiday in Stillness is the Key recommends journaling as one primary way to inculcate reflectivity. Journaling can be used to sort out the chatter in the mind while promoting mindfulness.
As Holiday sums it,
“To silence the barking dogs in your head. To prepare for the day ahead. To reflect on the day that has passed. Take note of insights you’ve heard. Take the time to feel wisdom flow through your fingertips and onto the page.”
In this post, I want to share my thoughts on becoming a reflective practitioner and suggest micro habits that can help promote mindfulness and clarity for educators.
Of course, you don't need to be an educator to benefit from these habits. You may be a practitioner of a craft and want to develop a process that helps you reflect on your journey to reach excellence in your area of specialty.
Micro-habit #1 Begin with a prompt
The first micro-habit is using prompts to trigger ideas to write about. Journaling prompts help get you started especially when you are feeling overwhelmed with work or facing mental fatigue. A simple and easy prompt include finishing incomplete sentences like —
“The best part of the pandemic for me as a practitioner is …”,
“The top 5 lessons I acquired from conducting my work online during this recent pandemic are…”
“My innovation for this month is….”
“My strategy to overcome disengagement is…”
You may benefit from having a list of go-to prompts that you return to regularly to ensure you do the reflective exercise.
Here are some good sites that focus on prompts for teachers.
Micro-habit #2 Begin with a question
Being inquisitive about our current station in life and developing the habit of asking ourselves critical and creative questions can help promote personal growth.
I like this quote from Tony Robbins, the life coach, and author of numerous self-help books,
“Quality questions create a quality life. Successful people ask better questions, and as a result, they get better answers.”
As practitioners, we need to be inquisitive about our craft. Be objective in the way we evaluate ourselves in the context of our chosen profession.
Ask questions that focus both on the process and progress we make as practitioners.
Questions that focus on progress might sound like this: How much closer am I to my level of excellence? Have I achieved the goals I set for myself this year?
While questions that focus on the process for a practitioner maybe these: What are the little things that I do with consistency that I am proud of? What small changes can I do daily to help me reach a level of excellence I am proud of? Which tech tool can help me increase my efficiency?
These questions which we come up with help us develop both critical and creative perspectives about our craft. It’s about asking the ‘tough questions’ of ourselves to promote self-growth. As Holiday suggests,
“Journaling is a way to ask tough questions: Where am I standing in my own way? What’s the smallest step I can take toward a big thing today? Why am I so worked up about this? What blessings can I count right now? Why do I care so much about impressing people? What is the harder choice I’m avoiding? Do I rule my fear, or do they rule me? How will today’s difficulties reveal my character?”
Micro-habit #3 Identify your negativity bias
The third micro-habit has a lot to do with the way we view failures and missed opportunities.
You know the experiment of seeing the glass with some water in it and asking yourself, “Is the glass half empty or half full?” Our negativity bias is our brain’s tendency to focus on, look for, dwell on the negative aspect of life. i.e. seeing the glass as half empty.
According to psychologist Catherine Moore
“Even when we experience numerous good events in one day, negativity bias can cause us to focus on the sole ‘bad thing’ that occurred. It can lead us to ruminate on small things, worry over having ‘made a bad impression,’ and linger on negative comments and the like.”
These negativity biases may be viewed as “mind viruses” or “beliefs we have about ourselves that are deeply self-destructive” that if left unchecked can cripple our ability to excel in our chosen profession.
As practitioners who interact with learners from all walks of life, we know the power of limiting beliefs in holding our learners back from reaching their true potential despite their current circumstances.
And yet, how much time and effort do we spend on overcoming our own limiting beliefs? Beliefs like ‘I can’t do this, I’m not good enough, I’m a failure, I feel like giving up, This is the worst thing that ever happened to me.’
Some of the effects of negativity bias include increasing fear, anxiety, and stress. A study showed that “higher stress predicted a greater negativity bias and poorer social skills, confirming previous research identifying these links.”
To help identify your negativity bias begin with these simple questions:
What worries you about your identity as an educator?
What do you ruminate over?
What negative thoughts lingers in your mind constantly?
Don't censor yourself when you are listing these negativity biases or mind viruses. List them, update them, know your own inner thoughts, before you can begin to work on them.
Micro-habit #4 reframe the negative experience with self-empathetic reasoning
One strategy to mitigate negativity bias, which I feel many of us are familiar with, is to imagine someone close to us expressing similar negativity biases about themselves. How would you react to your students, close friends, or family members telling you that they feel like a failure, that they are not good enough, that they feel like giving up? You’d most probably say something that might help them reverse these limiting beliefs.
A good habit to inculcate in the art of self-empathetic reasoning requires one to “step outside of the situation … think of people I care about in the same dilemma.”
Have a look at any of your negativity biases, chose one, and reframe them by imagining that someone you care about had these disparaging thoughts. What would you tell them? Journal on that.
For more ways to reframe these negativity biases check out the templates on this site:
Micro-habit #5 Count your blessings
Make a habit of identifying aspects of your life that you are grateful for is a good way to mitigate negativity biases.
Think about the small things and the big ones. What are some things that you take for granted in your life, but on reflection can see their significance in your life? Like your health and mobility. Imagine being sick or having mobility issues. Would life be the same? Imagine not have any challenges in your profession, would you be able to sustain your passion?
Studies also show that expressing gratitude daily can help reduce impatience, depression, blood pressure, improve sleep, develop mindfulness and empathy, among other things. Let’s start counting our blessings!
Micro-habit # 6 Develop emotional literacy
A good micro habit to practice is to develop emotional literacy by periodically check in with your state of emotion.
The word emotion comes from the Latin emotere which means ‘energy in motion.’
Feelings, on the other hand, “are the awareness in our mind of the energy.”
And emotional literacy is the ability to identify and articulate the different emotions we feel at any given moment.
So being mindful of the energy that we carry in our body which translates into the emotion that we can articulate as a feeling can help develop our emotional literacy.
As educators, we need to develop a high level of emotional literacy in order to be able to engage with the different types of learners that we come across on a daily basis. And yet, if your own ability to articulate our emotional state is not fully developed, how can we empathize with those that our learners are exhibiting in our classes?
One way to help develop our emotional literacy is through journaling. Learn to be curious about your emotions. Get to know yourself by probing into your emotional state and writing about it.
You may find Gloria Wilcox’s ‘The feeling wheel’ a helpful tool to help identify your particular feeling. Have fun!
Micro-habit #7 Journal on your goals
One of the many well-known public figures in history who kept a journal was Leonardo Da Vinci. Da Vinci was known to have kept over 7000 pages of notes in which he captured his thoughts, questions, observations, illustrations, and explorations.
He also kept a “to-do” list in his notebook which illustrates the kind of things he was interested in and the people who helped him develop these interests.
Find a master of hydraulics and get him to tell you how to repair a lock, canal and mill in the Lombard manner.
Ask Benedetto Potinari (A Florentine Merchant) by what means they go on ice in Flanders.
Get the master of arithmetic to show you how to square a triangle.
[Ask about] the measurement of the sun promised me by Maestro Giovanni Francese
What would your to-do list as a practitioner look like? Make one today, and keep updating them to help grow your passion as a practitioner.
Micro-habit #8 Review what you wrote
One of the most valuable gifts of keeping a journal is the ability to mine from your own wealth of experience. We do this by periodically returning to our journal entries, and reviewing what we’ve penned down.
Deconstruct your reflective writing. Ask yourself these questions:
• What stood out?
• What surprised you?
• Is there any action you need to/can take to better your craft?
• What insights can you get from reflecting on your teaching?
• What ‘teachable moments’ did you receive from these experiences?
• What moments of mastery did you gather?
Deconstructing your writing requires you to ‘check in with yourself’ or “self-regulate.”
Through the art of self-regulation, we can review our journal entries and see both the process we have taken as well as the progress we are making towards reaching excellence in our craft.
To conclude, journaling allows us the opportunity to both observe and evaluate our performance as practitioners. Conducting self-appraisal is valuable in any context, no less so than in the field of education where our impact is felt by the learners who sit in our classroom. Journaling helps reduce blind spots in our teaching through the act of self-appraisal. Journaling also helps us develop a big-picture mindset by focusing on the small steps we take as well as the giant leaps we make in reaching our goals. And finally, journaling allows us to capture the “negativity bias” or “mind viruses” that can cripple our thinking while allowing us the ability to reframe these negative chatters through a conscious effort of objectifying our emotions while making time to count our blessings.
