SUMMARY:

In this Oxygen for Educators Radical Hope episode, Michelle Kinder gets practical about “coping flexibility,” the everyday skill of noticing when your go-to strategy is no longer serving you, then choosing a better fit for this moment. Educators already live flexibly in classrooms, yet many of us go rigid with our own wellbeing. Michelle names the two big lanes of coping, problem focused and emotion focused, and shows how to choose between them with less judgment and more curiosity. You will try a brief nervous system check-in, then learn four simple practices, Awareness Pause, Strategy Swap, Coping Playlist, and Opposite Day experiment. This is not a magic fix, it is a kind, doable way to suffer less, model resilience for students, and keep moving with hope.

KEY TAKEAWAYS:

• Flexibility beats perfection, notice what helps right now, not what used to help.

• Match the tool to the moment, problem focused when you can act, emotion focused when you cannot.

• Run the flexibility sequence, assess, select, monitor, then adjust.

• Try the four practices, Awareness Pause, Strategy Swap, Coping Playlist, Opposite Day experiment.

CHAPTERS:

00:00 Understanding Coping Flexibility
02:49 The Two Types of Coping Strategies
05:58 The Importance of Monitoring and Adjusting
08:32 Coping Flexibility and the Nervous System
10:54 Inner Dialogue and Coping Flexibility
13:54 Practical Strategies for Coping Flexibility
17:28 Self-Care vs. Self-Blame
20:03 The Wisdom of Coping Flexibility

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