BTBC Day 7: Positive Mental Attitude

I'm really not feeling that motivated to write today.

But I've had a good streak going.
Funny thing, I'm not outwardly competitive, but inwardly I am. I am currently sitting here beating myself up.

Voice in my head: 

Kerry, you made a promise to yourself. You accepted a challenge! You're going to quit just like that? You didn't even miss a day over the 4th of July weekend when all you had was your phone and a shoddy signal! You're going to let a blah average day get you down? That's all? 

God I'm tough on myself. All this just to say that I did it. Prove it to myself. Add it to my shelf.

So here I am. I started writing about books. But that post is already long and I want to find cool pictures and really shine it up. And it's already 8:45.

Sometimes the hardest thing for me about writing is not saying everything that's going on in my head and my life at the very exact moment I feel it or it's happening. I'd love to recap my entire day and just exactly why it was so blah but, Impulse control. Self control. Knowledge of audience. Sometimes I'll write it all out anyway, so I'll feel better, then delete. But I'm tired.

I have been thinking a lot about PMA. A fellow blogger, that after 15 minutes of searching, I discovered was +Colleen Noffsinger over at Literacy Loving Gals. Her post  about PMA really got me thinking.

Thinking about how important it is.
Thinking about how our kids need it. (I discovered way too late in the year how little one student on my caseload thought of herself.) We all need reminders of the importance of PMA and self confidence and I spent the rest of the year reinforcing this in my classroom.
Thinking about how WE need it.
How I need it.

I kind of have a pffffft attitude toward PMA at times. This is because some of my swim coaches growing up would tout it as the solution to everything. PMA is what was going to make me the greatest athlete of all time! PMA, combined with (and what they left out was) any trace of natural talent, which I lacked entirely.

Yet, I find myself coming back to PMA.
In life, there are so many things I can't control.
Yet I can control my attitude and how I react in the face of challenge, adversity and good times.
I can control my PMA. I can chant to myself PMA, PMA, PMA!

I'm going to steal +Colleen Noffsinger 's image as well!

Here's to tomorrow and a PMA!

+Michelle Brezek  totally knocked it out of the park in the comments, articulating even more what I wanted to say in my post, so I'll add her wisdom here! This quote is so applicable to students learning their way in life for the first time and a great reminder to us adults out there who need reminders sometimes!