Thrive This Summer | Week 6: Strengthen Your Center

You've been busy. But busy doing what?

Thrive Summer Series for Teacher Well-Being

It's hard to believe it is week 6 already. The summer seems like it's flying by. With so much going on, it gets harder to carve out time to pause and think. If you can find the time to reflect now, you could be thanking yourself in November.

I'm grateful you're taking some of your precious time to read this week's newsletter.

"It's not enough to be busy. So too are the ants. The question is: what are we busy about?" — Henry David Thoreau, Life Without Principle

At some point in the school year — usually around November, sometimes earlier — you stop asking what you want and start asking what's next.

What's due. What's expected. What the data says. What the new initiative requires.

The self that had opinions about how to teach, what kind of classroom you wanted to run, why you got into this work in the first place — that person gets quieter. Not gone. Just buried under the weight of urgency.

This week is about those opinions again.

Why values clarity matters

This isn't about goal-setting. Goals are what you do. Values are who you are while you're doing it — and they're a more reliable compass than any to-do list.

Research in positive psychology is consistent on this: people who have clarity on their core values report higher life satisfaction, lower emotional exhaustion, and greater resilience during stressful periods. For educators, a strong sense of purpose correlates with longevity in the profession — not just endurance, but the kind of groundedness that lets you show up fully rather than just functionally.

Ikigai — the Japanese concept of purpose at the intersection of what you love, what you're good at, what the world needs, and what sustains you — lives here. Not as a productivity framework, but as a returning. A remembering of what actually matters to you.

When life gets chaotic, values bring you back. That's the whole point.

Try this week

Define/Revisit your core values. Take ten minutes and write down five to ten words or phrases that reflect what matters most to you. A few prompts to help: What qualities do I most admire in people I respect? What do I want my students to feel in my presence? What do I want to be remembered for? Then narrow it to three. Those are your compass points.

Check for alignment. Now ask honestly — where in my life am I living in alignment with these? Where am I out of sync? No shame in the answer. Just awareness. Clarity about the gap is the first step toward closing it.

Choose one small action. Pick one thing this week that honors one of your top three values. If you value curiosity, read something just for the pleasure of it. If you value connection, reach out to a colleague you've been meaning to check in with. If you value calm, give yourself five minutes of stillness before the day starts. Small and aligned beats big and scattered.

The Thrive This Summer workbook on Ko-fi has this week's core values discovery prompt, personal alignment self-check, and weekly action planner — all in one place.

👉 Get the Thrive This Summer Workbook