A Promise To Myself

Everybody loves good days. Good days are easy. What's there to complain about when you get a promotion, your boss applauds you in front of your co-workers, your students all behave, or you <insert "element of a good day" as applicable to your career here>? After a good day of work, we come home and probably have a good night...and it's easy.

Bad days aren't always easy. What happens when you forget an assignment or your boss yells at you or you get lost going to an interview you or your students make you want to lose your mind or you <insert "element of a bad day" as applicable to your career here>? This time, you're probably going to get in the car angry, get home angry, talk about your crappy day, and go to bed bothered.

It's easy to be positive on good days. It's hard to be positive on bad days.

So I'm making a promise to myself today, on a bad day. Anytime I have another "bad day" moving forward and I ask myself "Why do I keep putting myself through this?", I'll have my promise.

I promise to never let my career negatively affect relationships. I work with kids. Kids can be kind of bratty sometimes. It's fine to talk (vent) to friends and family about it, but I will not let it negatively affect my relationships.

I promise to begin each day with positivity. Every day is a new day. Every day, regardless of the day before, has potential. I will not let the grunt of yesterday get to me and I will begin today with a blank slate.

I promise to keep my body healthy. When crummy days happen, I will not turn to a gallon of ice cream. Instead, I will turn to healthy solutions. Exercise naturally makes people feel better. Ice cream  makes us feel fat.

I promise to remember that work is work. If I've learned anything in the last few months, it's that I cannot always lose sleep over some of my students. I can't bring all the "baggage" from the school day home with me, allowing it to haunt me. There will always be struggles and frustrations, but work is work and there needs to be a separation between work and my life.

I'm the type of person who takes promises very seriously, and today I'm promising myself these four things. Here's to some better days ahead, and when a rocky one comes along, here's to promises.