Let's talk about creating happier classrooms.
You're listening to that music podcast with Bryson Tarbet, the curriculum designer and educational consultant behind that music teacher and the elementary music Summit. Each week, Bryson and his guests will dive into the reality of being an elementary music teacher and how music can truly be transformative in the lives of the students you serve. Show Notes and resources mentioned in this episode can be [email protected]
Today's guest is Grace Stevens. Grace is a former corporate girl who quit VP life to pursue her dream of becoming a public school teacher. After 20 years in the classroom, she now focuses full time on helping educators have a more positive teaching experience. Grace combines her signature mantra, which is your energy teaches more than your lesson plans, with two decades of study in behavioral therapy, positive psychology and NLP to create science based habits for overwhelmed educators. She's the author of The Best Selling positive mindset habits for teachers and the one new habit book series, you can find free resources to help you put the balance back in your teacher [email protected]
Hello everyone, and welcome back to that music podcast. I am so excited for this conversation all about creating happier classrooms with a wonderful guest, Grace, Stevens grace, thank you so much for chatting with us today. I can't wait to see what we can dive into. Oh, thank you so much for having me. I'm very pleased to be here. So before we dive in too far or get too far into the weeds, can you tell us a little bit about yourself and why you have kind of started talking about creating happier classrooms, and why you think that's important, sure. Okay, so I am actually a second career teacher. I had come to the United States from Europe, fresh faced graduate, fell into a career, had a lot of success, climbed up the corporate ladder, and just was living this amazing life, except that it wasn't. I was stressed, I was overextended, I was burnt out. I had anxiety. I had two young children. I felt I never spent any time with like I said, I said, I felt like I had this wonderful life, and I didn't actually participate in it, and so I made this really bold move to give that all up, go back to school and fulfill my dream of being a public school teacher. And at the beginning, everything was fantastic. I used to tell everybody it was like winning the lottery. I mean, not financially. Of course, I'd had to take a really big, really big pay cut, but that's okay. But like, you know, it had purpose and and I found it easy. And it was, I was happy spending my day with kids. Like it was just, it was going great, except I looked around me and I saw other teachers around me didn't appear to be having the same kind of experience. And then, lo and behold, a few years in,
I started having all the same feelings I'd had before, stress, overwhelm, lack of boundaries, all the things. And, you know, I didn't have another career change in me. I'm like, I got to fix me like I can't, you know, the problem isn't the career. The problem is me. And so I kind of just it was really a personal thing for me. I went into this deep dive of trying to figure out what made me happy, what were the components of happiness? From a biological standpoint, I didn't really win the happiness lottery with my birthright. There's a lot of mental health issues in my family, and I wanted to see if there was a way to, you know, kind of hack my way around that. And so anyway, that's it. I started studying all the things, all the books, all the courses. I mean, it was over 20 years ago. It was, you know, when I took a course, it was on, like, a little, you know, tape or something
and so, but I did this deep dive. And out of that, I came up with a list of kind of things that I could do, intentional practices, that were scientifically based, that could, you know, kind of help myself have a better experience. And then about 10 years ago, I turned that into a book called The Happy habit. And then five years ago, somebody convinced me, like, Hey, you're in the classroom all the time. Teachers really need these skills. Why don't you adapt that specifically, you know, for teachers, because that's what you do. And so that's how,
how, really I started in that area. I published a book called positive mindset habits for teachers, and it's kind of gone from from there.
So that's the kind of how I got there. It was not, you know, to wake up one day and say, let's make this experience better for teachers. It was really, let's make this experience better.
For me, and then the ripple effects of that, when I saw when I was less stressed, when I was more passionate, when I was more relaxed, like things in my classroom just clicked, like it was magical. I really started to realize that kind of a common denominator about whether we were having a good day or not a good day was actually more to do with me than the kids. Yeah, I think you bring up such a good point and with and I think it's one of that, you know, not a lot of people would disagree with, which is when we as the teacher feel fulfilled and feel confident and feel prepared and happy, our classes go better. Our teaching is better. Our instruction is better. Our our ability to create a place for our students to want to learn is better. Unfortunately, it often seems like that want to create that type of environment and to have that feeling is working against the realities of what the educational system is asking of teachers. Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. Now, I always say your energy teaches more than your lesson plans, right? And you know, there's lots of research to back that up, but you know, you don't even need the research. You just think back to when you were a kid, right? Like, who was your favorite teacher? What was the class you loved being in? Where did you think you learned the most? And it was the classroom where, you know, the teacher was energized, and not necessarily energized like, you know, loud and, you know, skipping around, but just like you could feel that they wanted to be there. They were invested in you. They cared about your success. And that only comes when the teacher does feel fulfilled, because when we're really being pulled in a million directions and we have all these other things to do that really, we feel aren't why we became a teacher. But, you know, I never became a teacher to, you know, unpack the standards, or, you know, sit through a data meeting.
You know, you kind of teachers get overwhelmed and resentful and just lack of patience and and kids know that it's like a, you know, the vibe in your room you can, you can tell, and so that is really where it all started for me, was like, How do I proactively make my energy and how I show up. The most important thing more important than my lesson plans, you know, more important than, you know, having perfect presentations and, you know, with Bitmojis, more important than my classroom decor. Like My priority is showing up at the best version of myself. And it's really difficult. It takes intention,
and once you make that commitment, and you start practicing things that help you do that, and you realize how much smoother your day goes.
It's like, you know, it's like the opposite of a vicious circle, right, when you're frazzled and and, you know, I'm overwhelmed and short tempered, like the kids behave accordingly. So the classroom management goes out the window, and then you're at your matter, and they behave worse. And it goes round and round. But if you have the ability to just like, you know, stop like when you feel you're getting a little overwhelmed, or the energy in the room isn't great. Like, just stop,
take a breath and, like, make a different choice. And, you know, see how everything improves. It really does. Kids respond to it. Kids learn better. Kids are more cooperative. They're more patient. You know, all the things I was gonna say. One of the first places I started looking at the research was
at Harvard. There is a wonderful professor there, Sean Aker, and he wrote a book called The Happiness Advantage. And he was wondering why all these kids who were at Harvard, who were like, you know, this had been something they'd worked so hard for right to get into Harvard, like it's a big deal, and yet they were all miserable mental health. There had never been such a bad state with students, and so he did a lot of research on it. And what he came up with, and I'm going to kind of quote from his research, is that positive emotions, when they flood our brains with dopamine and serotonin, not only does it feel good, but it dials up the learning centers of the brain. Helps us organize new information, keep information in the brain longer, retrieve it faster, later on, helps us sustain and make new neural connections. Think quickly creatively, because become more skilled at complex analysis and problem solving and see and invent new ways of doing things. Now, if, if we could get that for our kids, isn't that worthwhile doing? For sure? I mean, that's, that's why we're there, right? Yeah, right. And, I mean, she's just thinking about my own learning experiences. You know, we learn things all the time, and I'll be the first one to say I've learned some incredibly.
Profound things from incredibly negative situations, incredibly unhappy situations, but the ones that stick with me in a way that I feel like when I I don't know that what kind of really sticks into my learning is when I'm happy, when I'm Yeah, but I'm having fun, you know, thinking about play based learning, thinking about things like that. You know, when are we able to set our students up for success by increasing happiness? And I really think it's interesting looking at the research of it, that it actually kind of shows up in the research as well. It's not just like anecdotal things that teachers feel like we know, but actually is supported by research Absolutely. So I would love for us to talk about the elephant in the room, which is something that I I know definitely was a thing for a while, but then when covid hit, it really became this huge deal, and it was thinking about toxic positivity. Yeah, so can we talk a little bit about how you define toxic positivity, and how the habits that you're describing are not toxic positivity, okay, yes, so, so toxic positivity, yeah, it's become a thing now. I mean, it was always there. We just never had a name for it. And so toxic positivity is like that tendency. This is how I would describe it, like you're looking at the gas Gage, right? And it's almost on empty, and instead of doing something about that, you stick a smiley face sticker on it.
That's toxic positivity. That's the education system around us has so many challenges. And then the tendency for, you know, you to show up at school and see posters that say good vibes only,
or, you know, teachers aren't in it for the income. They're in it for the
one. It's just like, it's like blowing through and completely invalidating how people feel. There is absolutely nothing about what I'm proposing that says what you feel isn't real, and you shouldn't feel that way. There's nothing about you shouldn't feel overwhelmed. Of course, you should look at what we're dealing with. You know you shouldn't feel put upon. Of course, you should. You're being put upon. So
toxic positivity would really be just not recognizing, not validating, not wanting to acknowledge that the challenges are real, and just kind of pushing on right, the same way that, let's say, self care has now become weaponized. Oh, my goodness. Oh, self care. You should meditate. You should do this. You should do that which, yes, those are all fantastic strategies, but when you kind of throw it at teachers that way it we're making it sound like we're lazy or neglectable. But the reason we're not taking care of ourselves is because we're pulled in a million directions. It's not because we're lazy. We don't see the value in it. So my habits are very different. I have what I came up with, this, this framework.
I call it the echo framework, because, of course, you know, with teachers, we want accurately. We love a good acronym, yeah. So you know what, and you're a music teacher, Echo, so what goes out comes back to you. So the E is your energy teachers more than your lesson plans, right? So we talked about that. The C is, choose what you focus on. And I'll come back to that. The H is happiness can be synthesized. So that's exactly what we're talking about. And then the O is other teachers. Experience doesn't need to be your experience, okay? So if you look at that, where these habits come in is clearly the part where happiness can be synthesized. But the see, the Choose what you focus on is really the root of it. Are you going to focus on what you can control or what you can't control? Right? There's so many things in education we cannot control and
but we can control how we show up, right? Are we going to focus on all the time, the stuff we don't want, you know, those people, the negatives, who just all they want to talk about is what's going wrong? The worst kid, it's like a competition, right? You want to just maybe vent a little to your teacher, bestie, like, oh my gosh, this kid, and then they got up the ante. Oh, well, my class did this, or, you know, my parent did that. So are you going to focus on all the things you don't want, or the things that you know you do want? So we still have intentional choices that can be made. And one of the first pieces of research that I looked at that I didn't believe, to be honest, and so I had to do a bit more digging around in is really that, if you look at your happiness quotient, or like your capacity to be happy,
50% of that is really predetermined by your disposition, right? Either you got the Polyana gene or you didn't.
Right? I got the E or G, that's what I got, but that's only 50%
10% is made up of your life circumstances. Now, I would have thought that would have been a way bigger number than 10% but plenty of research on that only 10%
the other 40%
is intentional habits that you can do to increase your own happiness. And so that's where these habits come in, those intentional practices.
So kind of, that's how they're different than toxic positivity. It's not kind of in doubt, invalidating that there's, you know, so many challenges out there, but it's like, given that, what can I do to still make this the best experience for me, therefore my students, which will facilitate everybody, everybody's learning, and everybody's joy and less burnout, and, you know, all the things I I'm just here over here, I don't even know how to respond to that because so we hear about the toxic positivity in action so often, you know, and it, and it really, it can be kind of souring. It can really make you really jaded, because you're like, Well, I'm not allowed to feel, you know, like things are bad, so I might as well, you know, whatever. Like, no, I don't know. Like, I think validating the feelings that we have and understanding that, hey, a lot of times the educational system is set up against us, yeah, but I think that realizing, all right, well, I can't necessarily change that, or at least all at once. What can I do now to make the best of it? And I think, you know, sometimes the best of it's still not that great, not that great, but it's better than accepting defeat. Yeah, it's just, it's making a choice whether to be, you know, it's not
a question of like, Oh, I'm a pessimist or I'm an optimist. It's like, you can be a realist, like, things aren't great, but there are still things you can control. Are we just going to throw up the town? No, we're in it every day. Otherwise we would have left already, right? So
it really but the whole validation point even me like so one of my strategies is, and something that I'm really cognizant of is proactively protecting my peace, right? I'm very careful about my mental diet. You know? I think we all,
I think we all understand the correlation between, you know, physically, what we put in our body, drugs, medicine, food, whatever we couldn't expect to put all unhealthy stuff in there and and feel really vital, right? But I don't think so many people make the same connection with their mind, like your mind's the most fertile soil in the universe. So if you know, if what you're constantly doing is streaming, CNN, 24 hours a day, you know, our nervous system doesn't have the capacity to, you know, to drink that kind of trauma from a fire hose, right? And I, if you've talked constantly around toxically negative people, you know, all you listen to is, you know, true crime or whatever, like, it's going to be hard to have this world view that, you know, the world is full of good people doing the best they can, right? And so I make a very conscious effort to to kind of protect my mental peace. And part of that is minimizing my contact on campus with people who I know are just, you know, really negative. But even then you can't, you can't, not validate people. If somebody comes up to me and is just like, going on and on and on and on, you know, I'm gonna cut it short. I'll make a boundary, but I'll say to them, gosh, that sounds really hard, right? Like, I'm so sorry that happened to you today. I hope your day gets better, but I gotta bounce right? You can still set a boundary, but you have to validate people. You can't tell people, No, that isn't true, that you feel like, however you're feeling, right or like, I said, the tendency to make it competition, like, oh, this kid did this, oh, you should have seen this kid right before. You know, you're kind of like, off and running, right? So the whole point of validating is really
important, and I it is missing in a lot of campuses. And honestly, I think part of it might be, especially when people throw that charge against their admin that their admin is toxically positive, it's because their admin doesn't know what to do. Their life probably isn't as any greater than ours, to be honest. So you know, they might be parroting what they're hearing from above. Maybe when they take their concern somewhere else, they get the same response, like, do the best you can. Like, if I had $1 for every time you just hear like you come in with real, valid concerns, right? Like, there aren't enough hours in the day, literally, to have these minutes, this many minutes for this, this many minutes for that.
Like it comes to seven hours. I only have six instructional hours. I mean, that's a math problem. That's not me complaining. And then when somebody says, Well, do the best you can, we're on the same boat.
Specifically, what am I? What part am I supposed to drop? Right? So
anyway, that's my how I feel about toxic positivity. I feel it comes to everybody. Yeah, I think it's just everywhere in education. I feel like we could take this conversation and stick with toxic positivity the whole time, but I want to shift a little bit towards the positive. And can we talk about, what are some like? I would love you to walk us through a little bit more. I know you talked about the echo acronym, but what does it look like to create a happier classroom environment? You know, what are things that teachers can do? How can we implement these, these, these habits to help ourselves and, in turn, to help our students? So one of the things that I think is interesting, before I get into like some specific habits, is try and keep in mind that, if you remember, I don't know if, like, there were classes, gosh, I was in school such a long time ago. Don't want to put that out there, but, yeah, it was a really long time and but you know, if you remember back to any classes you had in psychology or whatever, the basic building blocks for happiness, if you look at teaching, we should have them all. So some of the basic building blocks of purpose, oh, we all got that, right. We've got that dialed in. That's why we're all here. Right? Purpose, connection. Well, we have a million opportunities to connect every day. Right flow, like being in that flow state, which, you know, there are many times in the classroom we would just be in our zone, right, and getting it done. And even though the interruptions are so frequent, you know, when the whole class is getting something and it's going well, like there is no better feeling than that, right? Like it's like, you're floating, you're like, crushing it. And then the other building piece is
occupational self direction, which has disappeared in a lot of classrooms. I would think in music, you have more ability to be creative than some of us who are stuck in classrooms with scripted curriculum. But if we can focus on those areas, where can I be more,
you know, creative, where can I create connections?
That's a good start. But, like some specific habits would be that you could just, if you want to create kind of a culture of just, you know, a good vibe in your classroom would be to, you know, the things that people do they have their little, you know, their social, emotional check ins morning meetings, make sure you take a brain break. I was, I would always teach the kids just one brain break, no matter what grade they were, maybe like, you know that take five breathing, or the starfish breathing, you probably know that. And I would even if the energy in the room was
kind of a little off, or I was getting frustrated, or somebody wasn't getting something. It was very common in my classroom for a kid just to say, hey, can we, can we starfish breathe? And, you know, they would take responsibility for changing the energy themselves. I think, a powerful habit for any educator, kind of as a closing ritual, right? When you it's really important to have this to create your ritual for yourself when you leave school, that mentally, you leave it as well. And I have this habit of three things at the end of the day before go home, write down the three best things that happen that day. And it does a couple of things, because one, during the day, now your radar is set for the good stuff, like, Oh, is that going to make it to the top three? Oh, that was funny, what that kid said. Or, Oh, that was a great moment, right? So during the day, you're having this, you know, kind of positive radar, but also you're writing it down before you leave, when you go home, when you walk in the door, and the first person who asks you, how's your day, instead of, you know, complaining about that parent or that student. Top of Mind, you've got these three positive things, right? So that's an exercise I have done for decades, and I took my kids to do it. Like, once a week we would have an exit ticket, which was just like, three favorite things that happened today, instead of, you know, what were the three key learnings of today? And we would have in the classroom a joy jar, literally, just like a jar with little stick notes. And when something good happened, or kids were excited about something, they would, you know, anonymously, write their little note. And if we had a few minutes at the end of the day, at the end of the week, the kids would be like, let's have some happy memories. Or again, if the energy in the room was kind of dragging, we'd be like, Oh, come on, let's go look at happy memories. So just kind of little things. I mean, I think it's
like in the 10 years since I wrote the original book, I think.
Just come much more mainstream, let's say, to think about, you know, gratitude and journaling and meditation and, you know, some of those things are a little bit more,
you know, like I say, more more mainstream.
And in the book, it was a way to bring those things into the classroom. But I think the whole biggest thing is just to recognize the vibe in the room, the energy you're bringing. Invest time in that more than all the other you know, little details, and then get intentional. You've got to get intentional about things you're not going to do, you're never going to get everything done. And you can either be in a victim mindset about that, or you can just proactively decide, listen, here's my not to do list, right? We all make a to do list. We got you gotta make a not to do list. I mean, you just do Yeah, you gotta take ownership of it. I think that's something teachers we struggle with because, yeah, we're really bad at saying no, yeah, and like it sometimes we're given the, you know, I made it like you're talking about making a decision, and, you know, making some, you know, where is your boundary? And one of my boundaries is, I don't take work home, I don't lesson plan from home. I do it during the school day. And I, I have created, you know, systems and things like that, and I've made decisions that allow me to do that. Now, could I they be better lessons, probably, but I I'm not going to spend time outside of my contract, time, you know, hours out of my day anymore, because then I'm going to show up burnout, which isn't, you know, I might have a great lesson plan, but if I can't deliver it, it doesn't matter. So I think finding that line of, you know, how are you going to do the job that you've been tasked to do in the time that you've been able to give it? It? And you know, if any is there, what time are you willing to offer outside of that time and
again? Choose what you're going to do and choose what you're not going to do and kind of stick by it, yeah, and absolutely 100% and also, like I said, I think the word intentional. I know it's an overused word, but, like, I find that, you know, teaching can just get so reactive, like every time you open your email or answer the phone, someone else got dumped on you, and you just get in that hamster wheel of, like, trying to get it all done. And
it's a pretty big mindset shift to be like, Okay, it's not going to get all done. So I'm going to choose, like, for me, really important that I have my North Star, my compass. I know why I started teaching. I know what I know is what I believe is important for kids, to feel, to learn, and the only way it's not like a set of rules I have on the wall, but it's my North Star, it's my compass and and when I'm evaluating what I'm going to do and what I'm not going to do,
if it's legally in my contract, of course, I'm going to do it. But if it's kind of like a gray area, if it doesn't follow my compass, it might be the thing that gets dropped. And so for me, some some things are in my compass are, you know, what I want kids to feel in my room is, I see you. You matter. You're safe here. I believe you can achieve at high levels, and your success is important to me, right? And the only way they get that is really from my vibe or my energy. It's not like a set of classroom rules. You can have the kids going to come up and say, oh, you know, point number three, you said you believed I could achieve at high levels,
and yet you gave me an F, right? So I think that's really the part that some teachers missing, is that they feel, you know, they're just reacting to everything that's thrown at them, and it is overwhelming, and it takes kind of courage and intention to take a step back and say, What? What are my boundaries? What am I going to do? How can I invest in having a little fun? Because the rewards on that, you know, it just comes back so much more. I've had groups of kids who were very,
you know,
really when I got them,
that a lot of those kids struggled, but I remember it was one of my best years ever. We just had this amazing classroom community, and everybody helped everybody. The vibe was always good. The lessons weren't always perfect. I remember one time I was teaching something and
I was just like, literally confused. Like, I was confused and I was almost embarrassed about it, like, you know, how can you be teaching fourth grade math and be confused, like religion, you know, fourth grade math, but, you know, I learned fourth grade math. I learned math on a slide. Talk about before, like, literally, in the 70s, in a convict school, right? We were not making tape diagrams and other things, right? And there was no shame in just, you know, this.
Students were like, Hey, let's, let's Google this. Let's go find a common Academy on this. Let's write. We were kind of all in it together. And when you have created the right vibe, the right energy in your room, you figure it out together. It's, it's miles away from being, you know, the cliched sage on the stage right? It's just, it's a whole different vibe. For sure, I I feel like we could keep this conversation going on forever.
But before we wrap up, I want to let you know, is there anything that you want to share with our listeners, or maybe Is there something I didn't ask you that you wish I would have asked you? Oh, that's a good question. You asked me, I would say one of the best things for teachers to do if they really want to make a start on it is like, keep it simple. Get out a piece of paper. Do the same exercise with your kids. Draw your two circles right? Your circle of influence, your circle of control, like and put on the outside all the things you're worried about and on the inside circle or the things you have control over. So let's say this week,
are you having terrible weather where you're at right? In fact, we have crazy winter. You could put you know, you have no control over the weather, right? No control. However, in your circle of control, what you have control over is, do you have a plan? What's your Rainy Day recess plan? Do you have activities set up for kids? Do you have expectations set out? Like, so I would start there, and it's a powerful exercise for students of all age do too? Like, let's worry about this. Put all the stuff you you've got going on in your head on the page, but then in the middle, where can I focus? So that would be a quick like, everybody can benefit from that. And the other thing I would say
is I always start with mindset, and it is the work of a lifetime. But
my favorite quote is actually from Einstein, and it's not about science, even though I'm a bit of a science nerd, the quote I like about his was the most important decision you can ever make is whether you believe the world is a hostile or friendly place. Oh, I love that. And so you gotta decide, like what I said earlier about your mental diet, it's going to be hard to believe that the world is a friendly place if you consume trauma all day, right? And that's not to negate that the trauma isn't there. Of course, it's there, but our nervous system was not designed to be able to worry about the whole entire world right back in the day, we just worried about our little community, if the saber tooth Tiber was coming, if we were going to get attacked. We didn't have the capacity to know about the whole world. And so literally, it's, it's like a somatic function, like our nervous system as a teacher we know is constantly under assault, right? It's just there's so many things being thrown at it. So if we really try and take control of that mental peace. And part of believing that the world is a friendly place is just let everybody off the hook. Just assume people have good intentions. If you start there,
every relationship with a parent will get easier. With a kid will get easier. You will stop taking things so personally or defensively and engaging like if you just assume people are doing the best they can, but the skills they got in the circumstance they find themselves in, if you just start from there, pretty much everything about your day gets it's easy. And that sounds really simple, and it's really simple. Not to say it's easy, again, the work of a lifetime, but it is a good place to start. And, and that's kind of like the, maybe the the piece, I would say, is a great place for anybody to start. Love that answer. And again, I think it's super practical. And it's, it's, it's a place to start.
So what are you working on now, and where can the listeners learn more about you and kind of continue this conversation with you online? Oh, okay, so right now, I have been investing. So I should say I did. About five months ago, I stepped out of the classroom. I had promised myself I would be a public servant for 20 years, which I did, and that now I want to dedicate the rest of my career to, yeah, doing deeper work in helping I feel like if the more teachers I help, the more students I can help, ultimately, so I've been creating resources for teachers to set better boundaries, and as that seems to be at the root of many issues. Like you said, We're chronic people pleasers, conflict avoidant comes with the territory, and so I do have a free training that I would love for anybody or everybody.
To go check out. And if you just go to my website, which is Grace stevens.com Stevens with a V So Grace stevens.com forward slash boundaries.
There's like a, it's a 25 minute video training. It has a perfect boundary script. How to say no and feel good about it. You've got to give a student focused reason you're not saying no because it's not in your contract. You're saying no because it doesn't serve students.
So there's a whole training on that. I think that would be a great place. But people can find me on Tiktok. I'm Grace Stevens teacher, yeah, gracetevens.com, let's keep it simple. You can find me there, all right. Well, I will be sure to put all those links in the show notes, Grace. Thank you so much for chatting again. This is a conversation that is far from over, and I'm really thankful that you have decided to kind of keep this going, because there are so many teachers out there that just need the support to say no and to build those boundaries and to work towards enjoying their jobs again, yeah, having a more positive teaching experience, that's what it boils down to. Like, it's noble work. It's wonderful work. It's should be a really fulfilling part of your life. It should not be your whole life, but it should be a fulfilling part of your life. And I really, yeah, I appreciate the opportunity, and I do apologize I probably spoke really quick, so I'm very passionate about this, as you can probably tell. All right. Grace. Well, thank you so much. We will we will definitely continue this conversation. Thank you so much for joining us today. You.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
