In leadership positions, it’s easy to get pulled down into the weeds. You know the place: it’s where you’re sitting in front of your laptop and as you sift through the minutiae of organizational life, you quickly feel as if you can’t do anything right–that the needs are overwhelming, and no one is happy.
It’s a feeling all of us are familiar with. The truth is, however, that it’s not true. In fact, I would venture to guess that, in actuality, 95% of your families, teachers, and students are happy, satisfied, and content with the direction of the school under your leadership.
So, what do you do about it? We have a wooded area on our property that generations of children have memories of playing in. When I begin to feel this way, I go to the woods to see the smiling faces of children and hear their squeals of delight. A colleague coined the term ‘forest bathing’ to describe what I was doing. This same colleague confided that he goes to a horse farm and watches the horses gallop for a while.