Podcast Episode: Why You Don’t Know What You Find Fun Transcript

[00:00:00] JoAnn Crohn: Welcome to the no guilt mom podcast. I am your host, JoAnn Crohn. And I am so excited that you are here with me today because. If you don’t know what you find fun, or if you don’t have a passion right now, No that you’re not alone because so many women, especially moms feel the exact same way. We’ve been so stuck. In. Providing for our family and making sure kids have what they need, that we haven’t thought about ourselves. And we haven’t thought about what we want. And even further than that, to like push it a little bit deeper down, we might even think it’s selfish. And in this episode, I am going to show you a quick mindset shift that you can do that is actually going to help you figure out what you like to do. 

[00:00:56] Figure out your passion. I figure out what you find fun. And, uh, it’s going to blow your mind because when I started thinking this way, I went from blaming everyone else, feeling out of control of my life to now having so much energy, having so much excitement about the day. Uh, when I wake up having a better relationship with my husband. It is world changing. When you hear this. 

[00:01:26] So let’s get into it because here at no guilt, mom, we want to take you from. Feeling like the martyr and your family to the model, the role model who showing your kids what a fulfilled adult life looks like and taking you from feeling tired and exhausted and overwhelmed. To feeling energized and really ready to conquer the world. 

[00:01:52] let’s get into it. And as I mentioned before, this is all just a mindset shift. So it’s something really, really easy that at the end, I’m going to give you a little homework assignment that I want you to do. And this homework assignment is only going to take you two minutes each night. That’s it. That’s your only commitment right now.

[00:02:13] Okay, you ready to get into it? I want to start with a little bit of a story. So I have my national board certification as a teacher and the national board certification process is strenuous, like strenuous, people go through it and. It is a harder process. At least it was, for me, it was harder than getting my master’s degree. Like that’s how difficult this process is. What it requires you to do is you have these set of standards that when you first see them, you’re like, these don’t make sense. what exactly are they referring to here? And they ask you to put together first four portfolio entries. At least this is how it was when I went through the process, which was about 10 years ago. For portfolio entries where, uh, two of them involved, you filming yourself in your classroom, teaching a specific subject, working with students. And then you had to review the video and write this long essay of reflections and how you’re teaching to these national board standards, which don’t make sense. And how you are using this experience to then figure out what to reteach to your students. So that’s two of the entries right there. 

[00:03:30] Another one of the entries is providing student work samples. And this is specifically in writing, uh, for my certificate. I have the middle childhood generalist certificate. So it’s really working with third through sixth graders. And I had to provide student writing samples and show how I analyze these writing samples and how I use them than to reteach the content. So that was another one of the four portfolio entries. And then the last portfolio entry was about parent involvement. And I had to show how I increased parent involvement in my classroom.

[00:04:02] In addition to that. Um, it’s sitting in a test center and the test is three hours long, six sections. You get 30 minutes a piece for each section, one sections on reading, teaching, reading, when sections on teaching math, teaching science. And I forget the other three. Uh, but it’s a strenuous process. 

[00:04:21] And the thing with this process is that you can do the whole thing in one year. You submit all your work in March, and then you wait until November to see if you passed. And if you didn’t pass in November, you got to pick the portfolio entries to redo. Redo one or two, submit those in March, wait until the next November and then do it again. But you only got to do this three times, three years. And at the end of the third year, if you didn’t get the necessary amount of points, you had to redo the whole thing.

[00:04:53] Okay. So. It costs some money. It’s a lot of time. I started this with one of my best friends from high school, Bridget. And props to bridge it by the way she is up for Arizona teacher of the year now. So very exciting for her. And I am super proud of her. But we went through this process and we had this. Kind of battle cry. You know, one and done, it’ll be one and done one year and done with the process. So I did all my portfolios. I took the task submitted in March. Waited until November. And I mean, I was so, so nervous. In November, like the night before my stomach was in, not. I had a hard time sleeping.

[00:05:38] I woke up really, really early. I logged in. Oh, my gosh scores were ready. I checked my score. And I had missed it by 15 points. Fifteen points. My friend Bridgette had gotten it first try. She had one and done. 

[00:05:56] I was happy for her. And I was so down on myself. Completely miserable and blaming everybody else in the process. I was like, these standards are stupid. This whole process is just ridiculous because I thought that it was going to be easy. I thought, oh my gosh. Here I am. I’m the high achiever I’m going to come in. I’m going to nail this. And then I didn’t, and it was a huge, huge blow to my ego. I cried that entire day. I did a little retail therapy and got a very cute pair of boots out of the whole process. Uh, which I loved. That’s another story. But I couldn’t get myself out of this hole. I didn’t want to talk about it. And. I felt that. I was a failure. Yes. I pushed it off on other people, but that was really just to save my own ego because it’s either pushed it off on other people or put it on myself and be like, yeah. I failed. I’m not good enough. 

[00:06:58] Luckily, I had gone through this process with a coach. They have a great center here in Arizona called the AZ K-12 center. That’s still around. And I started my process for national board certification through them and they coached me. They have workshops. And when I had my scores, one of the coaches called me, Elena. I was on the phone with her just crying. 

[00:07:20] she gave me another perspective. She said, you know what? JoAnn. You are now 92% of the way there. You’re 16 points away. You’re 92% of the way there. Look at how far you’ve come. You started out this year, 0% of the way there. And now you’re 92% of the way there. That’s huge. You only have to make up another 8%, but look at what you’ve done already. You can get there. 

[00:07:50] when I first heard her, I didn’t believe her. she told me, she’s like, you know what? Sit in this. Think about this. Rest. And you’re going to come up with the will to do it again. And that’s what happened three months later, I’m like, okay. I am going to redo two of those portfolio entries. I’m going to redo the one that I videotaped, social studies and community, and I’m going to redo the student writing samples. That’s what I’m going to redo.

[00:08:19] thankfully, coming into my life at that point of time. My school. Invested in this program called Write from the beginning. And any teachers in my audience, if you use this, gosh, I love this program so much. It made teaching, writing such a concrete thing for me. And actually, I don’t think I would be a writer or an author today. If I hadn’t first had to teach this program to my fifth graders. 

[00:08:41] Like that is the impact that it made on me. it taught me all these skills that I didn’t even know I needed to learn until I failed that writing assessment. Right?

[00:08:51] I worked hard throughout the year with this, right from the beginning program. And I felt very, very confident. In my writing portfolio entry. And I also worked hard too with the social studies one community. I did what I thought I needed to do, but I’m like, eh, like I don’t really know if it’s there. But I’m going to submit this anyways. And I’m going to tell you. Right after this break. What happened from that second try. 

[00:09:17] I submitted my portfolio in March 2nd time. Wait until November here, I was looking for score release. There we go. It hit my inbox scores are up. I pull it up. I am one point away. 

[00:09:32] One point away. Like it was one of those instances where I’m like, okay, Can I call somebody to have them rescore, like maybe this is a mistake. Maybe I could get a higher score. I mean, it was one. Point. But it didn’t hit me as hard this time. ’cause now I saw. Okay. I’m 99% of the way there I’m 99%. All I need to do is hit that additional one point. I can do this. 

[00:10:01] For this time, I chose not to do a portfolio entry. But I chose to go back to the testing center. And redo the teaching reading section of the test, a 30 minute test. Because I felt completely unconfident doing that test entry for the first time. And. By going through this process, I’m like, okay, there are some skills that I haven’t learned yet, and I need to figure out what I need to learn to get me there. And thankfully this book was recommended to me. So I read this book. And I just had so many light bulb moments going off when I was reading this book. 

[00:10:34] And thinking to myself. Yes. This is it right here? This is what I’ve been missing. I went into that testing center test. I took the test in April. I felt I nailed it. I felt so confident walking out of that testing center. I’m like, I am not worried. I have this in the bag. 

[00:10:54] I am getting my national board certification this time. scores were released in November. I opened up my score email. I had beaten that minimum by 16 points, 16 points I gained on that 16 points over the minimum. In that one. Test and I made it and I got my national board certification, right. Where I was supposed to. I made it within the three years. 

[00:11:23] that entire process taught me so much about energy. And it taught me what I needed to do to go for a big goal, because. When you have these big things. You’re not expected to know the path right away. And that’s something that I got totally wrong. 

[00:11:47] I expected that going after national board certification, that it would be a measure of my intelligence, of my worthiness of getting that. Versus, Hey, I’m going to go after this big thing. I know I don’t have the skills yet to achieve it, but I trust that I’m going to learn things along the way. 

[00:12:06] the way that I got there is from that coaching conversation with my coach Alena. Where she told me to look back at what I had accomplished. Versus looking at this ideal that I wanted to achieve. Because that’s how we’re taught to view things, right. We’re taught to look. At the horizon. But if you try going to the horizon, You never get there. Because it just gets pushed farther and farther. Like just thinking in a physical aspect. Like if you walk towards the horizon, you never get there because. It’s an ideal. It’s unattainable. 

[00:12:44] Now going for that ideal. That’s great. It gives you a focus. But that’s not where your energy comes from because you’re never going to hit it. And you’re going to work hard and hard and hard, and you’re never going to hit it. And this is what we do to our kids too. And we tell them that, oh, were you really trying your best or, oh, you’re not reaching your potential is we’re measuring them against this ideal. 

[00:13:05] that is something that Dan Sullivan and Dr. Ben Hardy talk about in their book, the gap versus the gain. We are measuring things and our goals. Versus this ideal called the gap. We’re looking to see how we don’t measure up. And when we’re constantly in that mindset of we’re not measuring up, we’re not measuring up. We don’t even give our brains permission to think of those big things we want. We don’t give our brains permission to go after our passions because we always think we’re going to fail and we’re not going to do as good as we have the perception of in our own mind. 

[00:13:38] So how do we close that gap between the ideal and where we are? Well, according to Dr. Benjamin Hardy and Dan Sullivan, we look backwards to see what we accomplished and that’s what Elena did for me. She had me look to see how far I’ve come. She had me look to see my wins and my progress. And when I focused there. That gave me the energy that gave me the confidence to pursue bigger and better things. 

[00:14:11] So that is what I want you to think about. How far have you come? What are your wins? Remember how I said, there’d be a little homework assignment at the end of this. Here it is.

[00:14:23] I want you to write down three wins that you had at the end of the day. I want you to do this each night for two to three weeks. Now it’s not necessary that you write it down, but it’s really helpful because you’re going to have a record of it. 

[00:14:38] When you first start doing this. You’re not going to be able to think of anything. So just get really little, like, it could be something as little as my coffee was really good today. That’s totally an okay. When or I walked around the block with my dog. Make ’em small. If you can’t think of big wins. [00:14:57] But as you do this day after day, Your brain is going to start restructuring your day to have those wins and to notice those wins. And then you’re going to start seeing your progress. Versus measuring yourself up against some ideal. So I want to hear how you do with this. Come see me on Instagram. I’m at no guilt. Mom. Tell me how you’re doing. You can DM me. You can comment on one of the reels I have for you there. Just let me know. And remember the best mom is a happy mom. Take care of you. And I’ll talk to you later.