Teachers are in my heart.
They are my heroes.
And it has been my honor and privilege to serve them through The Zen Teacher Platform for the last six or so years through my social media posts, my blog, my email newsletter, my books, my online courses, and my podcast called The Zen Teacher Experience.
But at some point, I realized–and I believe the pandemic and resulting quarantine was instrumental in this epiphany–that all kinds of people were feeling stress, struggling with overwhelm, and heading toward burnout.
And I knew I could help.
So my plan was to create a second podcast to help people in other industries and to share the same concepts, strategies, and tips to help busy professionals reduce stress, improve self-care, and avoid burnout.
But one thing I preach is to know your limits and not take on more than you can handle. To that end, I knew that trying to keep up with two podcasts would be too much for me.
I simply would not have the bandwidth.
Therefore, I have decided to combine the new podcast idea with my previous podcast.
From here on out, The Zen Teacher Experience will morph into a brand new podcast called The Zen Professional Moment.
Introducing my NEW podcast called The Zen Professional Moment.*
But fear not, educators!
I am not leaving my teacher friends in the dust.
Not at all!
I will continue to give classroom examples and applications in each episode. But I will also be mentioning ways these concepts can help people in business offices and corporate boardrooms, real estate and law offices, plumbers, bus drivers, candlestick makers, and even parents and students.
The thing is: Everyone needs helps with stress sometimes.
Each short, easily digestible episode (most are under five minutes) will center around a single concept, tool, strategy, tip, or mindset shift regarding lowering stress, improving self-care, and avoiding burnout. I also want to do a feature I call, “Three Questions With. . .” where I ask three questions (and ONLY three questions) of a guest expert. This will also keep the episodes short. I figure they don’t call it “busi-ness” for nothing!
If you’ve already listened to my previous podcast, you will notice that, at least for now, many of the initial episodes of The Zen Professional Moment are similar to what I did before because I felt that it was important to re-establish the foundation and the logical progression of how to start thinking about taking care of yourself with ideas like permission, beginner’s mind, and my philosophical statement of principles.
Moving forward, though, you will see entirely new episodes that mostly consist of me sharing some thoughts, but with my “3 Questions With. . .” guests popping up from time to time.
The beauty part is that with only one short podcast, I am confident that I will be able to be more consistent and show up more frequently so new content will be available regularly for everyone. And that’s a win-win for everybody!
The mission statement for The Zen Professional Moment is that I show you how to “maximize your performance without sacrificing yourself.”
I’m hoping that my little baby podcast will provide a service to people in the education and business communities and help people know that stress, tensions, and burnout is normal, but that there are ways to navigate it so that it’s not completely overpowering.
And I want to help.
I hope you will check out The Zen Professional Moment ** and that it serves you.
If you have any feedback or want to share any episode ideas, please do not hesitate to reach out.
In closing, I want to leave you with the thought that I share at the end of each and every episode:
Please remember that you are okay EXACTLY how you are.
And you have more power than you think. TZT
*If you find the podcast serves you, it would be wonderful if you subscribed and left an honest review. Apparently these things are important to algorithms and such. Thank you.
**The other point, of course (and this is an entirely other blog post on its own), is that teachers are OF COURSE professionals and should be treated as such. And I like to think this is one step in this direction by addressing them as such in the title of the podcast.