Table of Contents

Chapter 1: The Wake-Up Call

• Your waking thoughts
• Stress: the tension between expectations and resources
• Locus of control
• Inner versus outer control
• The flow state
• Prescriptions for control
• Depression and stress
• Who scrambled my eggs?
• “Change is good; you go first.”
• The ATM accepts deposits.
• Constants versus change
• The bigger picture
• Life experiences – cursed or blessed?
• The view from the school parking lot

Chapter 2: The Work Ethic

• The “Red Badge of Courage”
• Karoshi (death by overwork)
• Medical statistics
• The physiological reaction
• Stress, memory and high-stakes testing
• Life’s “little” stresses
• Anger and your adrenals
• The overachiever’s point of view
• Time for a little medical quackery

Chapter 3: It’s About Time

• Life after teaching
• Picking up the pace
• TechTime: the broken promise
• Doing two things at once
• To-do or not to do
• Where we spend our time
• What I love about my job
• To everything there is a season
• Circadian cycles
• The body’s resonant frequency
• “Turn, Turn, Turn”
• The tide won’t wait

Chapter 4: Throw Your Clutter in the Gutter

• The bath bubbles approach
• The curse of Kadema
• How the stars deal with clutter
• The Chinese perspective: Feng Shui
• Tips from the Queen of Clutter
• Organizing your stuff
• Display spaces
• Storage spaces

Chapter 5: The Busyness of Life

• Too much to do
• Start with dessert: first things first
• Administrators’ critical role
• Teachers – Who me? Stressed?
• Students as why-meisters
• From busyness to business

Chapter 6: Affording the Possibilities

• The cost of not funding education
• So how can I afford it?
• Shopping for bargains
• Clarifying “needs” versus “wants”
• Show me your checkbook, I’ll show you your values
• Both sides (of the brain) now
• Blame or bliss – choosing the abundant life

Chapter 7: The People Principle

• Challenging people
• “Hell is other people.” – Jean-Paul Sartre
• The staff meeting
• The students
• A wounded people
• Grief
• Abandonment
• Prescribed treatment: “The Animal School”
• Them versus us
• Two graves and some prayer beads
• Of two minds
• The conscious mind, limited by time
• The subconscious mind, accessed by kinesiology
• The road to right relationships
• 490 forgivenesses
• Loves me, loves me not
• Changing from the inside out
• The victim mentality
• Roles people play
• Heaven is other people
• Saints in training

Chapter 8: Good Vibrations

• The sound of music
• Psychoacoustics
• Resonant frequencies
• Deliberate use of sound
• Sound as a nutrient
• Music in the classroom
• The sound of money
• Slot machines playing open 5ths
• Dinner music in the same key
• Beats per minute to relax, but not too much
• The sound of words
• Country and Western song titles
• Our song
• Nostalgia and mood-elevator music
• Words that hurt
• A word from your biggest critic
• Self-talk: take it to the bank
• Verbal antidotes: loved, forgiven, called
• Your heart knows
• In a heartbeat
• The Institute of HeartMath
• Signals from the heart to the brain
• The heart (and emotions) as gatekeepers to thinking skills
• The magnometer measuring the influence of the human heart

Chapter 9: Power and Purpose

• In the end, there is no such thing as stress
• Belief creates expectation
• “Better to light a candle than to curse the darkness”
• Multiple levels of meaning – chunking up, chunking down
• Overlays that filter judgements of ourselves and others
• The power of purpose
• Fostering loving and enlightened students
• Connectedness: the Pando grove of aspens
• The What-How-Why model
• Power versus Force
• The Map of Consciousness
• Empowering students or enforcing systems
• The compassionate teacher
• Linear and nonlinear perspectives
• Reason and logic
• Archeology of the spirit
• The highest aspirations of the human heart
• The biggest picture – the global parking lot
• Dispelling the darkness of stress
• Time to awaken and stretch