BeWellEDU.com

Over the past twenty years I have had the privilege of training in Tae Kwon Do. My role as a martial artist has evolved in many different ways over those two decades. First I was a student, my focus was on building my skills by strengthening my body and mind through regular training. This was a moment in my training where my focus was on me and only me. I strived to exemplify the tenets of Tae Kwon Do (Self-Control, Perseverance, Courtesy, Integrity, and Indomitable Spirit) in my personal life as well as when I trained. This level of practice, is now what I see as my “self-care” when I need to spend time working on my own techniques or skills. When finding the time to train is difficult or giving all my effort seems like a tall order I always look back at the tenets and I use them as my backbone for pushing forward. Martial arts has given me that drive to push myself and it’s a skill that transfers to all aspects of my life. As my experience with the sport grew, my role grew when I beg...

Wow!  One month until we are in Vegas running the Strip!  Training was going great until last weekend.  I switched shoes last week, as I needed to and wanted to ensure enough time to break them in before the race.  I bought the Brooks Ghost 12 from the Running Room.  They felt great in the store and have the cushioning I have been looking for.  My runs were going well until Thursday I started to really swell in the ankles and feel a lot of pain.  I found it difficult to walk. Fast forward to Sunday of the long weekend, and I was still in pain, but one ankle had subsided.  Initially, my thoughts were that it was attributed to the change in shoes, but then someone had to mention the words "stress fracture".  Well, that prompted me to play doctor with Google, and I was freaked.  All the symptoms seemed to be saying I had a stress fracture, and the result would be up to 6 weeks of no running - this meant NO RACE.  I was bumme...

I have been thinking a lot about boundaries lately.  We set boundaries in many areas of our lives, but the boundaries I have been pondering are in relation to our professional lives.  What boundaries do we set for ourselves?  Particularly, what boundaries do we set in order to maintain a certain level of wellness in the midst of this chaos we call work and life?  We hear a lot about self-care in order to achieve wellness.  It seems to be a big buzz word lately.  When I began my teaching career in 2002, I had the tremendous benefit of working with several people who were on the verge of retirement from teaching and they were more than generous with imparting their wisdom on me.  They taught me so many great lessons from classroom management, to lesson planning, to the myth of work-life balance.  What can we do to lead a better "balanced" life?  I recently finished Brene Brown's DARE TO LEAD , and am currently reading GIRL, STOP APOLOGIZ...