Pause & Reflect to Reconnect with Your Homeschool Purpose

EP195: Imagine starting your homeschooling day with a calm sense of purpose and ending it with a moment of peaceful reflection. In this episode, Jean shares how incorporating a simple daily practice into your day can transform your homeschooling journey. Learn how these moments of inner work can boost your self-control, positivity, and open-mindedness, creating a more centered and connected atmosphere for both you and your children. Hear a beautiful passage from The Parent's Tao Te Ching that emphasizes the importance of allowing your kids to follow their interests and unleash their creativity.

Find the Show Notes Here (www.artofhomeschooling.com/episode195)

Inspired at Home Membership (www.artofhomeschooling.com/inspiredathome)

Chapters

• 0:09 Cultivating Inner Work for Homeschooling
• 9:48 Enhancing Homeschool Connection and Purpose

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:09

You're listening to the Art of Homeschooling podcast, where we help parents cultivate creativity and connection at home. I'm your host, jean Miller, and here on this podcast you'll find stories and inspiration to bring you the confidence you need to make homeschooling work for your family. Let's begin. Do you tend to bounce from one thing to the next throughout the day without ever pausing or even taking a breath? I know parenting and homeschooling can be like that, but mindlessly checking things off the to-do list all day can create these little micro anxieties all day long and even create a sense of disconnect from those around us, from our children, from our loved ones. So in this episode, I'm here to encourage you to create a simple plan for daily inner work and reflection so you can pause and reflect, to rediscover your homeschool purpose each and every day. And I'm going to give you some simple suggestions and an example of how to do this so that it doesn't feel like just one more thing on your to-do list. If you're not even sure what inner work is, here is a quick description. Inner work is really just intentionally creating a way to get quiet, to become present and reflect on where you are on your journey of being a human. I've found, as a homeschooling mom, that finding tiny pockets of time at the beginning of my day and again at the end is a really powerful practice. I like to think of this as bookending my day with reflection. So, before we get to what this might actually look like, I want to share with you some of the many benefits of inner work and reflection. There are way more than just this list, but here are some that I've come up with. Finding time to pause and reflect gives you more self-control over your thinking, increases your ability to take initiative, helps you gain equanimity, which really means quieting your reactive emotions. Helps you increase positivity, be more open-minded, experience more harmony, be interested in and curious about the world, and avoid growing stale or sour. That all sounds good, doesn't it? So let's talk about what this might look like in real life.

Speaker 1: 3:18

Your inner work practice in the morning could simply be lighting a candle or sipping some tea, pausing to breathe mindfully for three minutes, or listening to a short guided meditation, reading something inspiring and thoughtful like a book with daily readings in it, saying a verse to yourself that you've memorized, and then starting the day with a sense of purpose At the end of the day. You might do any one of those activities. Or perhaps you keep a gratitude journal by your bed, write an end of the day brain dump, or simply list three things you're grateful for from your day. That last one has been my favorite through the years. I have a wonderful passage that I want to share with you as an example of a simple inner work ritual. This comes from a little book called the Parents' Tao Te Ching Ancient Advice for Modern Parents by William Martin. The book has short numbered passages that are one to two pages long, making it perfect for reading just one a day as a simple inner work ritual. Here's entry number 27,.

Speaker 1: 4:37

Fan the spark. Your children plan their own education, like it or not. You must learn to cooperate with that plan. If they are drawing, they become artists. If they are reading, they become students. If they are investigating something, they become scientists. If they are helping prepare a meal, they become chefs. Whatever they are doing, they are learning and it is for them pure joy. Can you refrain from judging their interests? Can you give them room to explore Schools? Do not often do this. You may be the only one who can fan the spark of their creativity into a flame of joy.

Speaker 1: 5:29

I'm curious your thoughts after listening to that passage. For me, this image comes to mind that I share a lot with parents where we are offering up lessons to our children and they have some say in what they choose to take in. The image that I hold is a parent facing a child and there's this space in between the two of us and we, as the homeschooling parent, offer the lesson up into that space and our child takes what they wish from those lessons. Sometimes they're able to take a lot of the lesson. In Other times it's just little bits of it and sometimes it's not much of the lesson at all. It's just like us as adults. We do the same thing.

Speaker 1: 6:19

Think of yourself a talk where you are taking in what the speaker is saying and afterward you have a conversation with a friend and they heard something completely different than you did. And what a beautiful reminder that as parents, as homeschooling parents in particular, we are in a unique position to help our children discover their gifts, to find their creativity and fan that spark. After all, our goal in the end is to help our children discover their own gifts and then go out and share those gifts with the world. Now can you see how these little quiet moments, reading something like this can help you feel more centered, more present with your children and remember that sense of conviction that brought you to homeschooling in the first place. This is your gentle reminder that as you start off a new homeschool year, or wherever you are in your year, to plan a little something each day just for you, so that you can pause in the morning and evening and be purposeful in practicing a little inner work, to be more open minded and gain equanimity. I'll put a link in the show notes to this little book, the Parents Doubt to Ching, and I have two other books with daily readings that have inspired me through the years that I'll include as well. One is called Daily Affirmations for Parents and the other Meditations for Women who Do Too Much. You can find the show notes for this episode at artofhomeschoolingcom slash episode 195.

Speaker 1: 8:06

So just to recap, inner work really can be simple and doable. You can pause and reflect to rediscover your homeschool purpose on a daily basis. Here is a simple framework to bookend your day with simple inner work activities. At the beginning of your day, with your morning beverage, perhaps, read an inspirational passage. At the end of the day, write three things you're grateful for in a journal that you keep beside your bed. And that, my friend, is how we keep things simple, inspiring and doable around here.

Speaker 1: 8:47

Now, before we sign off, I want to share that after last week's episode, don't Forget to Let the Learning Rest. I got lots of wonderful messages. Episode 194 really resonated with many listeners. One message came from Taylor via email and she said thank you so very much, jean, for this. I cannot tell you how much this resonates with me, for my children, and how affirming it is to hear from you, thus strengthening that voice of mother's intuition on what is best for her children. I love that, because that's exactly my goal here with this podcast to encourage you to tap into your inner knowing, while also giving you permission to slow down, observe your children and bring them what they need. So keep those messages coming, because hearing from you gives me energy and inspires me in the work that I do.

Speaker 1: 9:48

And I want to mention that Buzzsprout, the platform where this podcast is hosted, now has a new feature where you can send me a text message over there. I'll be sure to put a link to Buzzsprout in the show notes, which, again, you can find at artofhomeschoolingcom slash, episode 195. Have a great homeschooling week, my friend, and remember, pause and reflect to rediscover your homeschool purpose each and every day. That's all for today, my friend, but here's what I want you to remember Rather than perfection, let's focus on connection. Thanks so much for listening and I'll see you on the next episode of the Art of Homeschooling podcast.