How Do You Know If You Missed The Bus?

by Wendy Perrotti

I was hanging out with an old friend a couple of weeks ago.

We were talking about meditating.

Actually, we were laughing about meditating – the irony that we both do it given that in our 20s, we were asked to leave a meditation class for being disruptive.

She told me she meditates every morning before the kids arrive (she’s a 4th grade teacher).

Lights out,
Door closed,
In the silence of the empty classroom.

I’ll be honest.

With everything I’ve heard about how hard it is to be a teacher in 2022, I truly thought that she was about to tell me how effective meditation has been in steadying her frazzled nerves – how it protects her from the chaos of a broken system.

Instead, she said this:

“…because when I turn on the lights, open the door, and greet those amazing little people – it’s SHOWTIME, and I have to be 100% present.”

This woman has been teaching elementary school
for
OVER
20 years,
and when she said “SHOWTIME,” her face lit up like the sun.

She literally GLOWED.

And that’s what we all want, don’t we? To be excited by our work every day because it feels that meaningful.

A consultant I worked with well over a decade ago called it “being in the right seat on the bus.”

Personally, I've sat in more than one wrong seat so I know how icky it can feel.

I also know what it’s like to have work that makes me glow inside.

If the seat you’re currently in is no longer comfortable for you or maybe it never was, trust that your right seat exists…

You only need to be willing to look for it.