I am running off my mindfulness PowerPoint slides. Guess who starts teaching in a week and a half.
It is a little scary. Not sure how I am going to organize my space, for example. I am going to need to have my CCTV and my notebook and the computer arranged somehow. I need to become efficient in flipping the CCTV camera around to see students and then flipping it back to see what I am teaching. I don’t want to be fumbling around but I can practically guarantee I will be.
Which brings me to concept 1 in DBT! (Bear with me. I need the review. I haven’t taught this module in nearly a year.) The concept is….ready? “It is what it is.” Sounds simple, but like so many things in life the simple is actually profound.
“It is what it is” means no amount of denial is going to change the facts. I may deny I am anxious about going back into the classroom with my vision loss. I may wish I did not have the complication of the vision loss but ultimately, yep, I really do have it. No sense ignoring it.
No sense getting peeved and denying it. It is what it is and I feel the way I feel. That is the way it is. Acceptance of what is important.
This is the dialectic part coming. Accepting things as they are makes it possible to change them. You cannot fix something you won’t acknowledge is broken. Why would you fix it? You are denying it needs to be fixed!
Acceptance of a crappy circumstance opens the door to change.
I am going to give you one more dialectic behavior therapy concept but first I want to remind you what a dialectic is. Dialectics maintain there is a grain of truth in every position. It involves acknowledging your opponent may have a point. It’s avoiding adamant black or white thinking. It is the middle path.
The concept is: “I am doing the best I can but I can do better.” Remember that one? I mentioned it before (maybe. I think.)
I am doing the best I can under the circumstances but I can learn to do better with support and skill training and practice.
So I go back to class knowing I am going to have glitches. I go back accepting I am going to be anxious. I go back knowing I am going to have to lean on my students more than I did.
Acceptance of my problems will allow me to start looking for ways to get around then. Acceptance will clear the road for change.