When Life Throws You a Curveball…… Life throws curveballs. We all know that. They come in all shapes and sizes — illness, job stress, family change, loneliness, or just the slow build-up of everyday demands that finally tip you over. When I look back, the things that helped me most weren’t dramatic. They weren’t found

This week I found myself thinking about the people who make us who we are; those who drift in for a season and those who stay to hold us steady. Someone once compared people to parts of a tree. Some are leaves, some are branches, and a few are roots. It is a simple image,

The Real 5am Club It’s 5am and your alarm is screaming. The cat jumps on you r bed and decides to pee on your pillow. The world tells you this is what successful people do—wake early, push harder, squeeze more out of every day. But lying there, half-asleep, smelling of cat and already exhausted, you

I find Father’s Day kind of hard. My Dad died when he was only forty-five. The day always brings that loss close. While others celebrate with their Dads, I’m reminded of the conversations we never had, the milestones he never got to see, rounds of golf, All Black performances and the advice I can only

By mid-term many of us feel wrung out and distracted. Attention is thin, patience is thinner, and the to-do list seems to grow arms. Most mornings, before I open my laptop, I slip into the water. I’m not a great swimmer—just an average one—but I swim a kilometre most days. It takes me about half

Another Manic Monday: A 5-Minute Reset for Flourishing Teachers As a school leader, I used to find Mondays tough. Even after shaking off the “Scary Sundays” — that creeping feeling the weekend was ending and the week’s challenges were lining up — Monday mornings often felt like stepping straight into a storm. The emails, the

Why Academic Life Must Be More Than Assessment As a former principal, I get it. Student achievement. Data. Targets. Pressure. The relentless push to measure what matters—and sometimes, what doesn’t. But over the past few years, my focus has shifted. Through my research on teacher and principal, I’ve explored what it means to lead with

Sustaining Our School Leaders I’ve spent enough time in schools to know that behind every principal’s polished newsletter photo is someone who’s holding a lot, sometimes too much. The 2024 ACU Principal Occupational Health, Safety and Wellbeing Survey didn’t exactly sugar-coat it: school leadership is approaching a breaking point. Let’s not brush past the numbers:

But What If You Could Breathe Again? By Andrew Murray | Educational Consultant | Lumina Yes, we understand what burnout is. We’ve seen it in our staffrooms. We’ve felt it in our calendars, our shoulders, and our sighs at the end of a long week. That creeping exhaustion that no long weekend can fix. The