Corridor Self-coaching

Listen here

As she walked along the corridor to the classroom she could feel her shoulders rising to meet her ears. Her whole body was tensing up. From her stomach arose a whirlwind of fear. It reached past her heart and grabbed hold of her mind. Her body began to twist into a knot. Her face screwed into a scowl.

“Why does it always have to be this way with this class? They are so…”, she lamented.

“Wait a minute. What kind of energy are you bringing with you into the classroom?” interrupted her inner coach.

“What?”

“What do you look like?”

“Well, it’s because…”

“What kind of face is that you have on?”

“What do you expect?”

“What do you expect? If you go into the room, feeling like that, looking like that? What’s the first thing they will see?”

“Well??”

“What’s the first thing they will do?”

“Hmm!”

“And what do you want them to do? Really? Deep down?”

“I want them to want to learn!”

“What can you do, to make that more possible?”

She stopped, straightened up. 

She carried out her self-calming ritual. She took a deep breath. Then two more. Fear settled down. She sent fear back down to her belly and took control of her mind.

“This is going to be a wonderful lesson,” she told herself. Then said it out loud again, for extra measure as she opened the classroom door, “Wonderful lesson…”