Thanks Lurker for your best wishes.

Anna must have got busy with her life after dropping one-liner feedback. Happens. I shall learn from other sources lol.

Ciao

Jasmine

@steve-o

Hi Steve-O

I am sorry for your suffering. On a positive note, please note that you are blessed to be part of a nobel profession. I hold a lot of respect for teachers of any kind as they guide us in becoming better students of life.

I can relate to your situation as I have been involved in teaching over the last few years as a pay back to my profession. I teach adults who bring a lot of challenges to the table and are always in the question mode. I am in mid thirties and by right, I should be able to relate to them as we are not too far apart in terms of age and I have the relevant work experience, but in the first few months to a year, I was constantly questioning myself if I was doing a good job. I would often feel embarrassed, doubt my capabilities and had more bad days than good days.

I will share how I turned things around for myself:

1. by accepting that we are all students. Even students can teach us something valuable. This helped me open up to new experiences, which I was denying myself by thinking that I am the teacher / facilitator and students should just learn from my experiences. I am not sure what level you teach but perhaps asking the students their feedback on your teaching style may be a useful learning experience for you. We can all improve everyday in some ways. This also takes away the pressure off us as we dont have to be perfect all the time 🙂

2. By asking some star students in the class on what went well and not so well during the last lesson. You could trial the same and see if you can take some positives out of it and incorporate that into the next lesson.

3. By making the quieter students to contribute to the group as much as the vocal students do. This helped me the most as I could finally relate to where my facilitating skills were lacking. The quiet students can often give you a wealth of information, which you had no clue about. As they are shy, they tend not to step forward with their feedback or questions.

Now getting back to your actual issues.

Please do not feel defeated. Take something positive out of every experience and see where you can improve a little. You don’t have to master everything in a day. Just aim to improve in small ways. Try a new way of teaching. Try explaining a concept in a different style or ask one of the smarter students to share their insight on how they understand it. There are various ways to skin a cat 🙂

The kid who used to be fond of you and is not anymore and wont attend your class —– Hey, do not worry about this kid. The kid will come around when she has sorted her own issues out. Don’t make her issue yours. You are a teacher and you should remain completely neutral for all students. The moment you start to associate feelings or emotions towards one student, teaching takes a back seat. I know we all have our favourites in the class but we are in-charge of a big responsibility, which requires us to be professional at all times. Leave the emotions out of it as it doesn’t take too long to cross the thin line between our personal and professional obligations. Emotions help to create an unnecessary expectation and expectations often lead to disappointments if we are not careful.

Anxiety issues —– this is an issue that you need to explore and understand where does your anxiety stem from ? Are you afraid of rejection ? Do you have a fear of failure ? Do you need validation from students to feel good ? Do you look outwards for happiness or a sense of well-being ? Only you can work on this issue and you can find some support in the form of therapy if need be.

You can hit the reset button everyday in your own mind if you wish. It is really that easy. You don’t have to go to Peru to do that but Peru is a lovely place so go there for a holiday 🙂

Hey, the more you tell that mind of yours how bad you feel, the worse it will make you feel. The negativity slope is a slippery one, which only runs downwards. Don’t let yourself ever go down that path as it is difficult to get up quickly. Remember, you are doing a great job and always think of the huge contributions you have made in the lives of these students. I am sure many of the students think of you very fondly but may not have come and told you so. Some kids just don’t do that hahaha.

Work on always improving yourself and then you will never have self-doubts. No person is perfect in this world but we can always strive to become better by learning from every experience.

Hope this helps. Cheer up and chin up. You are awesome.

Jasmine

Hi Baby Beans

I am so sorry for your suffering. I can understand where you are coming from. I am sorry for other people’s losses in this tragedy and in any other tragedies where we loose our loved ones. However, any of these tragic events are not in one person’s hands. It is a collective action.

Baby Beans has a choice: you can either live in this world and make it as beautiful as you can in your little ways OR you can suffer by creating negativity in your life through complaining as to why things are so horrible.

I make a conscious choice to make the world around me better each day. Do you ?

Complaining doesn’t achieve nothing. Creating does. Work on creating a beautiful world around you.

Blessings,

Jasmine

Thanks guys. I am still waiting for Anna @lotusflwr81 to reply.

Lurker, you are so good at reflecting and summarising. You must be doing really well at Uni, yeah ? Best wishes,

Jasmine

Thanks Dain

Hey Awesome Little Buddha @therock

Thanks for sharing a little about Dad. And it is funny that you have sort of provided your own answer. Forgiving and letting go of painful incidents are 2 different things.

I can forgive anyone I feel like but have I actually let go of the issue from my core, from my subconscious. When I meditated on your issues in the past, it appeared like you are really trying very hard to hold on to all the negativity. And by your most recent post, you have sort of confirmed that for me. I am not sure why you would do that. I am not so evolved to have that answer yet hehehe.

I will offer prayers for you and I hope my prayers will do the trick for you and find you the right support that you need.

Can you try and read your last post again and see what I mean by that you have provided your own answer.

Best wishes,

Jasmine

Families are so much fun. I have got mine coming over for a few weeks and it is going to be full on gala time 🙂

Hi Anna @lotusflwr81

Thanks. Hey, can you elaborate on your comment, “There is some good advice, and some not so good advice on Buddhism posted in the responses here….No one pretends to be something they are not who follows the Buddhist path”.

I am really keen to learn so would appreciate if you could bring our attention to what was wrong about some of the Buddhist advice. I am not a Buddhist so I wouldn’t have a clue as to what you are referring to.

Appreciate your help.

Jasmine

Thanks Lurker for your reply.

Thanks The Ruminant and Matt

Hi Lurker

Thanks for an interesting question. You are definitely an evolved soul to be asking such questions at a young age. Good on yah mate.

I cant speak for anyone else but for myself here. See if my thoughts resonate with you. I am not a Buddhist nor do I follow all of its teachings. I understand and respect the values of this religion but they don’t define me at work or outside.

I have worked in both big and small organisations at various levels and now I work for myself with a small but flourishing team. We do follow the modern day business rules but with a twist. Everything that you talk about is correct in a sense. The focus in most big or small enterprises is outwards towards money building or expansion. However, if you look around there are many organisations, which are using spiritual values to provide a very good service and are also making loads of money.

Money is a sweet and necessary outcome of having a good business.

There are 2 ways to look at the modern business values. I will share my view.

1. Be competitive – not with the outside world but with yourself. When you are trying to better yourself each day, you wont need to compete with others as you realise that we all have something unique to offer. No one is going to be good at everything and no one is going to offer you nothing.

2. Offer something others don’t – absolutely. This is called product differentiation. If you are always trying to better yourself, you will be able to produce a product, which is a unique concept for your company. For example, a better service, a better computer system, better communication system. You bring your own midas touch.

3. Turn a profit / reinvest – in business you have to. Without money, you cant fulfil survival needs of individuals or nations. Who will pay for your education, clothes, medicals, etc ? I am not sure why so many people try to make money the evil master. It is not the money, which causes issues in our lives. Money only accentuates our qualities. If you are a dick head and if you get more money, you will become a bigger dick head. If you are a generous person with human values, more money will bring that out even more. Do you get the drift ?

4. Fight for your job – this is a personal value, which often becomes enmeshed with the organisational values. Depending on what sort of leader you have and what values a company follows, you will have to fight for a job (favouritism, politics etc) or you can work your way through different positions in a fair and equitable way.

Many good people fail to progress in their careers due to their own personal values and because they are not able to go past the politics, which exists (and will continue as long as there are 2 humans in a room). This is a very deep concept and you need to speak to a few people about it.

5. Aim to grow in the company – Absolutely. We have not been put on this Earth to be satisfied with just food, shelter and sex. If we were, we would be similar to our 4 legged friends or other legged animal friends. A person who is constantly evolving and expanding is a person who will be adaptable to any situation. This planet is all about change. Look around for proof.

You can change in two ways – you can either grow upwards or you can shrink (or become stagnant). When we are growing, we are in sync with the nature and its natural flow. The question arises – how do you grow professionally with spiritual values ? By working on self rather than others. A person who is able to focus on themselves and the tasks at hand 100 %, has to have maximum creativity. It cannot be any other way. If you are maximally creative, what will you produce ? Absolute gems.

6. Be better than the competition – Yes. Be better than YOU from yesterday. Each day, you should ask a question – Am I better than yesterday ? If your answer is yes, no one can stop your success and money flow. If you say no on a regular basis, you know your answer.

7. Failures and sometimes you have to fail thousands of times – Again, it all depends on your mind-set. Some people fail one time and it breaks their confidence and they feel worthless. Nothing happens of these people unfortunately.

Someone who takes the positive out of a failure succeeds in both personal and professional life. Why ? Because this person is constantly trying to find ways to be better than yesterday. Some very successful people have failed 1000s of times to produce a gem of a product, which has revolutionised the world and brought people like us together to be able to talk like this. Can you imagine, if they had given up, would we be flying today or talking to each other or would our babies have survived past their first year ?

8. I think a lot of confusion arises for new-beeies like yourself in the professional world as you do not have the relevant experience to understand the meaning of acceptance, letting go, striving to have no desires, forgiveness, love, understanding, mindfulness in a true sense. You may be taking the meaning of these words literally. A person who is working on self rather than others is following the values above in every way but is also progressing in life to greater heights. Look at Dalai Lama. Look at Pope. Look at Tolle. Look at Oprah. Look at Obama. Look at some of the CEOs of major companies in the world today.

9. You ARE INDEED awesome right now. You need to come to this realisation to progress spiritually, personally or professionally in life. You indeed do not lack anything. Now is indeed all that we have. Again, you may be confusing the interpretation of these sentences.

To say one thing (or read something in scriptures) and to feel something in the core of our hearts are 2 different things. By telling you that you are awesome as you are, you do not lack anything and live in the now – are you able to do that and live your life that way ? Can the other 6 billion people do it ? NO. Why not ? Because we have a MIND. A very logical mind and Logic has no end. This is where the interpretation differs for us and all the confusion arises.

To reach that state of knowingness, you need to go through the normal steps of evolving. This requires – be better, work smarter, improve, create your destiny, become in control of your mind etc.

To reach that state whereby your mind looses its logic is the day when you will be able to live in a true Dalai Lama style – the sweet spot, the balanced state.

Until then, stop getting confused with all the questions and get back to reality of self 🙂 There is an excellent book by the name: Your soul at work by Nicholas Weiler and Stephen Schoonover if you need more answers.

Hope this helps,

Jasmine