I used to teach French and Spanish to high schoolers. Recently, I got an email from a student I last taught in 1999. He had been searching for me on the Internet for years, and finally tracked me down. He just wanted to tell me:
"Of all the teachers I had at (high school) and for that matter at (college), you were the only one that really seemed to care about the influence you had on your students. I learned so much during those 2 years of my life. I firmly believe that if not for your class I would not have had the motivation to go to college and developed the respect for education that I currently have. Anyway, I really appreciate everything you did for me when I was younger and I just wanted to say thank you."
Nice, right? But I share this note not to be braggy but to highlight how the way you view yourself has so little to do with how you're viewed by others, out there in the real world. You see, at this time, I thought my teaching was terrible. I thought my classroom discipline was horrible, that I yelled or was sarcastic entirely too much, and that I would never get good at this teaching thing.
Then I get this note. What? The way this kid saw me is sooooo different from how I saw myself at the time. I think we need to leave ourselves more open to the positive energy of others. The negative self-talk is just wrong a lot of the time. I don't mean that there weren't some things I needed to clean up in having respectful relationships with my students at that time, but the way I talked to myself in my head was so much worse than the reality.
I invite you to shush your inner critic today. Sure, you're not perfect, but you're sooooo much better than that inner Siskel & Ebert would have you believe. Let's commit to surround ourselves with the sunny, positive people in our lives. You know who they are. Let them ooze their wonderful positive energy all over you today. Rub it into your skin, and live positive today.