Ep #124: Balancing Home and Working from Home

Hello, Empowered Principals. Welcome to Episode 124.

Welcome to The Empowered Principal Podcast. A not-so-typical educational resource that will teach you how to gain control of your career and get emotionally fit to lead your school and your life with joy by refining your most powerful tool, your mind. Here’s your host, certified life coach, Angela Kelly Robeck.

Hello, Empowered Principals. I celebrate you today. It is Tuesday. And statistically, Tuesday is the most productive day of the week. At least historically Tuesday was the most productive day of the week. But working from home, it might not feel like it’s productive.

It might feel like no day is productive. Principals from all over the country are expressing great anguish over trying to balance homelife, especially homelife with children, while you’re trying to work from home. I’m seeing so much pain out there; people posting about their stress, about the realities of working from home while having young children and trying to lead a school through all of this change.

You’re trying to be there for your kids, there for, your staff members, there for parents. You’re constantly on meetings. Then you’re trying to also balance your kids’ online learning experience. You’re trying to help them figure it out.

And there’s probably a million different ways schools are approaching this. So, your district’s way and your kids’ district’s way might be completely different. I can imagine the stress.

So, I want to address this on today’s podcast and talk about why we’re feeling so much dissonance while we’re trying to balance work and homelife. So, let’s start by talking about where the stress is coming from.

We have been taught from a very young age that our feelings, our emotions come from the situations that we are in or that we’re facing. We’ve been taught that all along. We have a very deeply rooted belief system that whatever experience we’re having in a situation is what’s creating the emotional experience behind it.

So, in this case, you’re in a situation where you are working from home with children. You are running your household while also running your school. You are having to switch back and forth your attention between your kids’ needs and your school’s needs. And for most of you, it’s slowing you down. You’re feeling completely frustrated.

Principals are eager beavers. They are up and at it kind of people, on our feet, ready to take on the day. We’re running around. We’re used to being highly productive, highly efficient, highly effective. And this change in our situation has really cramped our style and it’s very frustrating. It’s very overwhelming. And I can see how principals feel their heart being pulled in multiple directions, even more so than you feel when you are working from your campus.

So, why is this happening? It feels true that the situation is creating the stress. It feels so true. And here’s why. Because there are times when we believe that the situation is creating the emotion. Therefore, we believe that if we change the situation, that will feel better.

And guess what. When we change our situation, we sometimes feel great relief. And our brain is like, “See, I told you. By just going back to work and making everything normal again, I don’t have to feel the stress and pressure of taking care of the kids and dealing with their needs while I’m also trying to deal with my school’s needs.” So, it feels true.

Actually, I just coached a client on this the other day. The opposite is true for her. She is experiencing relief from the pressures of being on campus and is really enjoying leading from home and being with her kids. And she’s stressing about the thought of going back to her campus next year and that all of the pain she experienced while being in the position on campus is going to come back. So, she’s having tat cognitive dissonance.

But from those of you working from home who are feeling stressed, what you believe is that it’s because you’re working from home and the kids are there and the demands are higher. And there’s this whole story that we have about the situation.

But here’s the secret – let me give you an example before I give you the secret. Leave you hanging here for a minute. I want to try to put this into a context for you. So, this may have happened to you or not, but I know it’s happened to me.

I, as a principal, there were certain parents that I would have many interactions with. And I believed, before I learned coaching, that they were the source of my stress. Like, engaging with this particular parent was a stressful activity for me. It was a stressful event.

And then eventually, you would kind of pray to the moving gods, and then that family would move and your brain would say, “I don’t have to deal with that person anymore. I don’t have to spend so much time helping them and helping them see what’s going on and showing the value of what the teacher is doing,” or whatever it is. It’s just really frustrating, “And now I don’t have to deal with them, life is so much better.” And you feel relief.

So, your brain says, “See, I told you. The situation changing created relief.” But the secret is this; that parent was never the problem. What was happening from a neutral standpoint is that you were having interactions with another human being. Your thoughts about those interactions made you associate the emotion of stress with those interactions.

So, your brain basically said that interacting with this parent equals discomfort and pain. And then every time you interacted with that parent, you most likely experienced an uncomfortable reaction, which then further reinforced your belief that the parent was the problem.

So then, when you firmly believe that an outside situation is what’s creating your emotions, then the situation has to change in order for you to feel better, versus acknowledging that it’s your thoughts about it. Because when you think the situation is the problem, you don’t have control over changing, like, when a parent moves or when you get to go back to work or not or working form home versus working on your campus.

You lose your power over your emotions because you believe the situation has to change. So, when the situation changes, then it feels great, it’s only because your thoughts have changed. Your thoughts went from, “I have to work with this parent and this parent is taking a lot of time,” versus, “I don’t have to work with this parent anymore. I’m not even going to think about them. They’re gone to another district. That’s somebody else’s problem.”

You’re going to focus on other things. You’re going to feel relief, not because the parent moved, but because of your thoughts about it. The same is holding true with your work environment.

You had stressful thoughts about your work environment on campus. You just have different stressful thoughts about your work environment at home. So, I want to show you how this is rolling out and creating more stress. Because whatever thoughts you believe to be true, you create evidence through the results of your experience.

So, if you think that working from home is a struggle and it’s hard, you’re going to create the experience of having it feel hard and having it be hard. And then, you’re going to create that evidence. Your brain is like, “See, I told you so.” So, every time you believe something to be true, your brain is going to look for the evidence to find that it’s true and you’re going to focus on the aspects of your job that are hard and difficult.

So, the problem that we’re having in trying to balance home and work while you’re working from home is that, number one, you are completely out of a routine. The brain loves routine. It loves consistency. It loves to know what’s going on.

And believe me, we do not know what’s going on right now. That freaks your brain out. Every day is different, kind of like school anyway, but less so. You have more uncertainty right now.

Number two, when you’re out of a routine, you’re less effective. You’re not as efficient, you’re not as effective. It feels like the grind. It feels like being new all over again. You’re learning new things. You know when you learn something really hard and when you first begin learning it, it feels super painful and super uncomfortable. That’s what you’re doing right now. You’re in the grind.

So, you’re not efficient. You’re not effective in the sense that your routines aren’t effective, so you feel out of sorts. And that just doesn’t feel comfortable. But what gets to us even more is that our expectations have been disrupted. And what I mean by disrupted expectations is that you have an expectation and it’s routine-based about how much time you spend working, how productive you are at work, what you focus on during your time at work, what you focus your attention on during work, the method of operations that you’re used to at work.

So, for example, your brain is saying, “Well, I used to work this many hours a day. Now I’m working this many hours a day. I used to meet in person with people. Now I’m on Zoom all day long. I used to be present for my kids when I was at home. But now, I’m having to split my attention between my home and my kids and my work.”

Here’s one that a principal recently shared with me, “I used to have time limits for my children’s screen time. Now I’m putting them on the iPad more than I can stand because I have to be able to get work done.” That disrupted expectation in terms of how you parent, that is creating pain for people. And basically, just, I used to get this X amount done and now I’m only getting this much done.

So, our expectations for ourselves, our expectations of our teachers, our expectations of students getting online and being engaged in learning, all of those, plus our expectations for ourselves as a parent and ourselves as a leader, our expectations for our kids, all of it has changed. All of it has been disrupted.

So, the routines that you had for your life, which encompassed these two spheres of work and home and trying to create a little bit of balance there has now all melded together and there’s been a melding of boundaries.

When you were working on campus, you had a physical boundary that created a natural separation between work and home. You had your morning routines with your kids, your family, and then you would go to work and you had your routines in place there, and then you would come home and you would have your routines with your family.

And now, work might come home with you and there might be nights that you worked after you put your kids to bed or you caught up in the early morning on the weekend or something. But you had a set of expectations that were surrounded by a set of routines.

Now that all of those routines have been disrupted, your expectations are disrupted and your expectations are not in alignment with the reality of your current situation. So, when you have a misalignment between what you think should happen and the reality of what is happening, you are going to experience unhappiness because you’re having to code-switch back and forth between leadership and parenthood, leadership and household chores, leadership and being a mom and a wife and being a cook.

So, what do we do when we have disrupted routines and disrupted expectations? We have to acknowledge that the expectations have been disrupted. We’re fighting against them. We’re resisting that the change has happened. The reality of our situation is different. The way we’re thinking about that reality, we’re trying to make it go back to the same. And when it doesn’t, when it doesn’t work the same way and we resist that, that is when we feel the overwhelm and the frustration.

So, seeing the dissonance between our expectations and our reality and just acknowledging that it’s okay to feel frustrated that you’re not getting as much done or that you feel really sad when you have to put your kids on screen time or you have to ask your kids to wait because you have a meeting, that feels bad to do that because your parenting expectations are telling you, “That’s not how I want to engage with my kids.” And that feels bad.

You have to notice that misalignment. And you can allow it to be there. And you have to decide how you’re going to respond in your actions with that. So, you might decide, “This is completely out of alignment for me. I will not do that with my kids. I’m going to balance how much time I’m working and work less so I can meet my expectations as a parent.”

Or you might say, “You know what? My kids are a little bit older. Perhaps I can bend my expectations on my parenting right now,” which I’m sure you’re all doing anyway, giving yourself a lot of grace and your kids a lot of grace right now, to allow maybe some things that weren’t in place or weren’t happening before this.

But you have to fully allow it. Like, saying that you’re going to allow it but then resisting it is not allowing it. You have to fully embrace that your expectations are misaligned and you have to renegotiate, what are those expectations? Can I find some balance in my expectations for right now? Can you give yourself some grace and some flexibility in those expectations? Can you allow yourself to work a little less? Can you allow your kids to maybe play a little more or not get as much done – maybe not – get out of their jammies some of the time?

But think about what it is about your new work situation that’s really causing you stress, where are your expectations not being met? Are those expectations self-imposed? Are they imposed by others in your mind, like the expectations of your district are really pressuring you to get more work done when you’re home with your kids? Like, where is that expectation? What’s being met? And is there a way you can soften the expectation in some way, shape, or form?

I also want to talk about boundaries and the importance of boundaries. So, when you were at work physically, there was kind of a natural boundary there. Now that that boundary has dissolved somewhat and it’s overlapped, you are faced with the decision of how you will set up boundaries that make your life and work feel better.

And I was thinking a lot about boundaries because people really don’t like to have to set boundaries or create boundaries because they believe that it’s uncomfortable. They think it feels bad. And so, they avoid setting up boundaries.

They don’t want to have to tell their kids to wait or have to tell work, “I can only give eight to nine to 10 hours a day. That’s my limit.” Because we’re afraid that the people we tell, we set the boundary for, will be upset or feel badly. And it also makes us feel badly when we want to be with our kids and we can’t or we want to give more to our school but we have our own children to take care of, so we avoid the boundaries.

And that’s where it gets super messy because there is no structure. There are no systems and people don’t know what to expect of you when you’re not telling them what to expect. You’re not telling your kids, “I have to be present at work for this number of hours,” or, “Work’s going to have to wait because I’ve got a two-year-old who needs my attention.” Those kinds of things.

Also, we have resistance to setting those boundaries because of the discomfort it creates in us. So, another way you can balance home and work is to sit down and ask yourself, like, “What boundaries would feel good to set? What routines can I establish? What can I put into place that will allow me to have some boundaries and some guidelines for myself so that I can articulate that to my team and to my family?”

And creating, you know, it’s not going to be perfect, but creating some sense of boundary for yourself – because here’s what happens; when you create a boundary for your brain, it feels safe again. It feels like, “Okay, there’s some plan. There’s some sense of certainty. I don’t have to be so revved up anymore. I don’t have to be on the defense. I can relax and I can know that there’s time for work and there’s time for home. It’s going to get messy at times, but at least there’s a plan.” And we just keep going back to the plan over and over again. Every day, we’re going to get up and try again.

So, I invite you to consider allowing yourself to accept that we’re not going to be ideal parents or we’re not going to be an ideal principal at this time. And I know that’s hard to accept because we make that mean that we’re not good enough; we’re not being a good enough parent or we’re not being a good enough principal and we cant handle it all and that’s a bad thing, and just this whole not enoughness thing comes up.

And I just want to encourage you that you are doing the job just by getting up and showing up in however way you are, you are doing the job. There are two ways to spin this. You can resist the messiness of your situation and you can wish and want and push and resist wanting those old expectations to be met. Or you can allow the messiness and you can say, “You know what? I’m doing the best that I can. I am handling it. I am good enough at this. It’s messy, it’s imperfect, and it’s not ideal. This is what it looks like to be handling it.”

You are an empowered leader. You do have control over the story that you’re telling yourself. If you want more support with this, I highly encourage you, this is the time to get down and dirty and work on your mindset. There’s no better professional development than learning how to navigate during this crisis, during, you know, leadership from home, balancing work and life.

If you can balance work and home right now when it’s all up in your face all day long, you are certainly going to be able to balance it when you get back onto campus. If you want more support, please reach out to me. You know where to find me; angelakellycoaching.com. get empowered and know there is no balance right now, and that’s a part of the deal.

Have an amazing week, you guys. I’ll talk to you next week. Take good care, bye-bye.

Hey, principals, listen up. I’ve created a professional learning program for you and your team to build your capacity and lead your staff through the empowerment process. I’ve designed personalized growth experience for you and your school. You’ll learn how to apply the leadership triad to empower your staff and students.

This is the moment where the perfect time and opportunity meet. Education will never be the same and I have the tools to help you navigate the change. To learn more, sign up for a free consultation at angelakellycoaching.com/programs. I’ll see you on the inside.

Thanks for listening to this episode of The Empowered Principal Podcast. If you enjoyed this episode and want to learn more, please visit AngelaKellyCoaching.com where you can sign up for weekly updates and learn more about the tools that will help you become an emotionally fit school leader.