Last week I saw very little daylight for three days and at the end of it resembled an angler fish at the bottom of the Mariana Trench. Not appealing I can tell you!
How is your mood and disposition at the moment?
Many people find being motivated in January as difficult as Donald Trump having a quiet week.
So here are some ideas to help you to feel more rested and alert.
- Look after your circadian rhythms. Getting some natural daylight in the morning helps set our body clocks so we sleep better at night. Try to grab a few minutes outside whenever you can. Even on a dull day there is massively more light outside than inside to wake up our brains.
- Movement, any kind of movement stimulates the brain and improves cognitive function. So get up between lessons and wander around your teaching room or even occasionally in lessons.
- Eat boiled sweets. I’m not kidding you! I can get through an average chocolate bar in under a minute, but a chocolate lime or butter mint takes much longer. This keeps sugar consumption in more acceptable limits, preventing energy plummets on dark days when all some of us want to do is launch ourselves head first at the most decadent food known to humankind.
- Read something on paper before going to sleep. In our house we’ve all observed a noticeable difference in the quality of our sleep since we’ve switched off our screens an hour before bed. Keeping general light levels low also helps.
- Indulge your creativity by making time to play your instrument for you. As we know, playing musical instruments is a highly effective way to stimulate our brains, exercise our emotions and improve our cognitive abilities.
- It can also be difficult to keep your students motivated in January so I’ve got several ideas for you here.
- Last year we published this advice to help music teachers deal with feeling overwhelmed.
- Why not sign up to our free 29 tips for a thriving music teaching business. We promise that our 29 ideas will give you things you can do immediately to boost your music teaching business. They’ll also make you smile. Request our series of tips for music teachers today.