Ep #140: Anatomy of a Decision

Hello, empowered principals. Welcome to episode 140.

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 my empowered leaders. Happy Tuesday. And here we are, finding ourselves in the month of September 2020. It’s amazing. Here I am recording at the end of July, and again, I am praying for some progress that by the time this podcast airs and you’re listening to this, that we have made some progress in terms of our schooling, of our coronavirus, hopefully of Black Lives Matter and racial equality and justice and all the isms are being addressed.

But as you know, it’s likely just as possible that we are right here where we started. And so if there’s anything quarantine has been teaching me, it’s that I actually do have more control over my life than I let myself believe that I have.

Before quarantine, I was busy hustling. I was flying all over the country, going to as many educational conferences as possible with the intent of meeting people. I felt like okay, how am I going to let principals know that there is a brand-new kind of service available that actually supports them? That doesn’t just tell them what to do and how to do it, that actually allows them to value their own mind, their own opinion, their own values, their own intuition, their own decisions, all of that.

So I thought that this was the best way. Connection with people in person, explaining what coaching is, listening to their specific story and how coaching might be of help to them, and really allowing people to experience the value of coaching.

So I was busy, distracted with all of that. I was writing the book, creating the podcast, trying to meet as many people as possible, tell them I’m a life coach, what the heck is a life coach, and let them feel in person the experience of what coaching does for people and how it empowers people forevermore.

So when the virus hit, and we were all grounded – I say grounded because I couldn’t fly anymore. But I realized that I was spending crazy amounts of time being super busy. Kind of like the way I was when I was a principal. I was on airplanes, I was at conferences, I was engaged with the people, I was spending crazy amounts of time and money as well on the airfares, hotels, meals, and applying to speak at all the conferences.

And my goal was to just let people know that there is this support available. Support that’s different than any other kind of support offers to school leaders, support that’s not from the perspective of your district and what they think you need, but support that’s designed specifically for you, to help you lead your school, to help you believe in the value of your opinions, your decisions, your values, and that’s because I know exactly what it was like to be in your shoes.

I know the pain of the crushing demands, the relentless expectations, and the exhausting work schedules. I know the frustration of meetings that don’t seem to accomplish anything and weathering the tirades of angry people. Angry parents or disgruntled teachers or unhappy board members or whatever.

And I also felt the social isolation that came when I shifted from being a peer with my colleagues to becoming my peers’ leader and their evaluator and their boss. So I know the pain well. But in my mission to share all of that and in my hustle about trying to bring personal education tools to the institution of education and to help individuals one by one learn how to manage their mind and their emotions, I was going full blast.

So having to slow my roll during quarantine felt like a really big hit. Just to me personally because I love to be with people, but also to the business. What was going to happen to my coaching business? Would it survive? Would people understand? Would they be able to connect with me if I weren’t able to be with them in person?

Just like the questions you guys are asking yourselves when it comes to your staff and your students, your families. And yes, eventually through the last few months, we’ve kind of figured out that we can do online meetings and chat rooms and FaceTime and have a good old-fashioned phone call with other people.

And those devices have allowed us to connect with people in ways when we cannot connect with them in person. But what I didn’t expect to come to the surface these last few months was figuring out how to more deeply connect with myself.

Because I went from that full blast of traveling and writing the book and the podcasting and coaching and figuring out all the technology that comes with starting an online business. Again, not unlike school leadership. And I felt like all of that came to a halt. And then in these last four, now five months, we’ve been spending a lot of time with ourselves.

And I know for me, that brought up a whole other level of discomfort. Because as I was sitting with myself for long periods of time during quarantine, I wasn’t distracted with the thoughts about meeting people and itineraries and conferences.

What I was noticing is that I was coming up with thoughts that questioned my capacity to coach, my ability to be heard over all of the chatter and all of the noise in the social media world, in the online world. How could I as one person be louder than the massive educational consultant companies out there? NAESP and ASCD and all these major corporations.

And I was beginning to feel doubt and worry and was I good enough basically at the end of the day. And I had to acknowledge these thoughts and feelings and take a minute. Well, more than a minute, and examine these beliefs that I had been pretty much able to ignore when I was over there spinning in massive action.

So this quarantine helped me bring those thoughts to the surface, understand where my feelings were coming from, but the key was that I knew that my thoughts created my feelings, just like you guys now know if you’ve been listening to this podcast for a while.

But what I wasn’t doing as deeply as I could have was giving full space to allow and process my feelings. Because I was taking action in some ways and it was a subconscious thing, in an attempt not to feel the doubt, the worry, the embarrassment, the rejection, the fear of not making it or not having the service help the people who most need the help, which I believe are school leaders.

I think you guys are the ones in the middle of this all. The ultimate middle manager, you’re kind of caught between the two worlds of the teaching industry and the upper admin industry where they’re not as impacted by the day-to-day site issues as you are, and your teachers have different kinds of support.

They have their colleagues, they have grade levels, they have some other means to support them. I’m not saying the support is enough, but I do feel like principals are in this no man’s land where you feel complete isolation and with that isolation comes the doubt, the fear, the worries.

So I’m grateful for quarantine in the sense that it has invited me to identify some of my more subconscious deeper belief systems that were perhaps holding me back in ways I couldn’t even see. And then allow myself to examine those thoughts and really process the emotions that came up, which were intense sometimes.

But out of that, I was able to develop the process for processing emotion. So I shared that on an earlier podcast, and I’m definitely working through it all of my clients now. So I’m grateful for that opportunity because I wouldn’t have had it otherwise.

So I invite you, what good has come out of quarantine for yourself personally? I understand there might be some frustrations with the online learning experience, remote leading experience for you, but what good has come of it? Even if it’s been painful to process and to acknowledge, interested to hear what’s going on for you so let me know.

And I see this happening with many of my clients. We believe that action gets us out of this discomfort that we might be feeling. So when I think back to prior to COVID, I felt amazing because if I ever started to feel bad, I would just take more action to get out of the feeling bad and I would just keep taking action, thinking something’s going to work, clients are going to come, people are going to understand that this is the solution they’ve been seeking, they just didn’t know it yet.

So I was able to stay in that energy of providing content, providing value, getting out and meeting the people. And when I had to slow down, I had to sit in wow, there’s a part of me that’s questioning my ability to coach, or it’s questioning my ability to be heard in the – just all of the noise in education right now.

And I’ll admit, it’s still there. I have to work on it every day. But I see principals doing this where they are spinning in action to try and avoid the feelings of maybe frustration or disappointment that are coming from what’s happening right now, the situations that are happening in the world right now, and we think that the solution is action.

Now, here’s where it gets kind of clouded in our head. The urge to take action to get out of discomfort is what most of us do. That’s what we’re kind of wired to do or trained to do because that’s just called reacting. We feel frustrated and we feel an urge to take action, and in order to get out of the frustration, we believe that action helps us.

And it does that in the sense that when you’re in action, you’re not thinking that thoughts that you were thinking beforehand that made you feel frustrated in the first place. So you’re thinking about the action steps. Not the frustration steps.

But when you’re done taking action or you have a pause in your action, the thoughts that made you feel frustrated in the first place start to come to the surface, and then your emotion is triggered again. And this is because you’re still believing those thoughts to be true that brought up the frustration.

So if you have the thought, hey, we got to finalize this plan and school’s reopening in a couple weeks, we got to get a plan in place here, what’s going on? And you’re feeling frustrated that there’s a lack of a plan, your decision, your idea might be let me make a plan, let me kick into action.

So in order to not feel frustrated by the district’s lack of planning or whatever your brain believes to be true, you kick into high gear and you start taking action because that action feels good in the moment. You’re like, yeah, making a plan, this feels really good, I’ve got a plan so now I feel better. I don’t have to be frustrated at the district anymore.

And that can serve you, but in the end, if the district then comes and changes information or doesn’t use your plan or changes a plan altogether or presents something that’s entirely different than what you had prepared, you go back to frustration because then you’ll think, “They should have been more prepared, they should have been more proactive, they should have been x, y, z,” because you’re still feeling that a plan should have been in place.

Do you see that? You kind of chase your tail a little bit with trying to avoid frustration, taking action, which temporarily relieves you, but then feeling frustration the next time that a new situation is presented. So just notice that we can kind of get into this little spin cycle of taking action to feel better and then returning to frustration because the plan gets shot down or has to change.

What we don’t stop to consider is that we can reduce this spin cycle and acknowledge our thoughts and emotions. And our brain believes we should have a plan when there isn’t a solid one. I’m like that too. I hear you. I feel the frustration with you.

But what you can do is notice. I want to have a plan and we don’t. There’s the conflict, which is creating the frustration. But that’s it. You’ve acknowledged the thought. You’re like, yup, I feel like that’s true, we really should have a plan, but we don’t have one, I’m feeling frustrated, and then you sit there with it.

You acknowledge it, you feel the vibration in your body, and you sit with it for as long as it vibrates. You don’t take action to get out of this discomfort of the frustration vibration. You let it be present and allow it to run its course.

And I’m not going to lie, this is not a fun portion of the STEAR cycle, when you’re allowing an emotion to be present in your body and you’re letting it process all the way through. But I will also say that it’s not as bad as we think it will be. The anticipation of it is worse.

You know how the anticipation of going on vacation is sometimes way more fun than actually being on the vacation? The same is true in the opposite direction with negative emotion. The anticipation of feeling bad is oftentimes actually worse than letting yourself just feel bad.

Knowing how to process emotion is going to be important this month as we discuss the power of decisions throughout the month of September. So if you haven’t listened to episodes 136 and 137 specifically on emotional resiliency and allowing an emotion, I encourage you to listen to those so that you can have a grasp of this skill that will be required of you to fully own your decisions, which is what we’re going to talk about throughout the month of September.

So I’m going to start this month by breaking down the anatomy of a decision. What is a decision? How do we make them? What do we make them mean? What do we make them mean about us? And how do we manage them after we’ve made them?

So the anatomy of a decision breaks down to three components. It’s before, during, and after we make a decision. So let me set the stage for this. Principals are presented with a situation and are asked to make decisions. And this happens pretty much every day of the week and most hours of your workday, right?

Did you actually realize how many decisions you were going to have to make as a principal? I know for me, I entered the role with very little awareness of the magnitude of decisions that would be required of me, and I’m guessing many of you feel the same way. You think you know, you anticipate it, but you don’t really know.

And because of the intensity of the demands placed on you in this role, in addition to all of the decisions we’re asked to make, we go into what I call a decision default mode. And this is where we make decisions day after day without really understanding the process we’re using and the way we make decisions the way that we do.

It’s no wonder we do this because we’re inundated with decisions and actions we’re expected to take, so oftentimes, we default to the decision-making process we’ve always used and we don’t really analyze it and we end up rushing through decisions as fast as possible in order to get to those tangible action items that we believe will help us feel better.

So I want to slow this down and examine each stage of the decision-making process. Stage one, before the decision is made. Before a decision is made, we’re presented with the situation, and one of two things happens. One, we’re explicitly asked to make a decision by somebody else. Like here’s a situation, you need to make a decision, or we need a decision.

Two, what happens is you’re presented a situation and then your brain interprets that situation and makes it mean that you have a decision to now make. So we’re either asked to make a decision or we decide that we have a decision to make.

In the first scenario, a decision is presented to you and you’re specifically asked to make a decision. Let me use an easy example. Let’s say your secretary brings it to your attention that it’s raining outside. Maybe you’ve been in a meeting all day and didn’t realize it. And she asked you what you want to do about lunch recess.

And let me preface this example that popped into my head by saying I live in California where it’s sunny almost all the time. So when it does rain, especially when it rains hard, kids just don’t go outside to play. And I know, California, we’re weather sensitive. We’re very sensitive about any inclement weather.

So when it rains, at least in my experience, the parents didn’t want the kids outside, teachers didn’t want the kids outside, the kids didn’t want to be outside. Well, most of them didn’t. Some of them did. So we don’t go outside.

When I lived in Minnesota on the contrary, the kids went outside regardless of most weather conditions. So I’m aware that most of the time, in California when the sun’s out, we’re outside and when it’s not, we’re not. So anyway, I digress.

But let’s just say you’re a principal in California, it’s raining out, and you may have been in a meeting and were completely unaware that you had to make this decision. Secretary comes to you, asks you, hey, here’s the situation, what do you want to do about it? You now have been asked to make a decision.

Now, in this moment, in this case, this decision does not feel threatening or scary or difficult or challenging, and here’s why. Because as soon as your secretary, he or she, asks you what you’d like to do, you’re basically thinking thoughts like, it’s raining, kids can’t go out, I’m a person who makes this call, it seems reasonable and simple.

So there isn’t much chatter in your head about that decision. You’re presented with a situation, your brain instantly comes up with this series of thoughts, it feels very aligned, it feels very easy, you feel in flow, you make the call, and you move on. That’s the STEAR cycle in an instant.

Now, when a situation’s presented that feels more complex, we spend a longer period of time in the before stage. Now, there’s a before stage where we’re asked to make that decision, and then there’s the before stage when we make the decision that we have to make a decision.

In the end, they end up panning out the same way, but I want to quickly highlight the difference between the two in this portion of the phases. So number one, you’re asked to make a decision. And the chatter in your mind beforehand when somebody asks you to make a decision is basically like, do I agree that a decision needs to be made? Do I agree I am the person who should be responsible for making that decision?

And then you start thinking about what you think is true, what you align to, what you believe is true about that decision, and then you start to think about what other people believe is true about that decision. So that’s kind of where our brain goes.

When we are asked to make a decision, it’s like, okay, number one, should a decision be made? Number two, am I the person to make that decision? What’s the process for making this decision? What do I believe is true? And what do I think other people will believe is true? That’s what happens in scenario one.

Scenario two, when you’re presented with a situation and some information and then you infer based on that information that you now have a decision to make, the best example I can think of is a common problem that clients bring up really regularly.

They’ll say, hey, a teacher came to me, telling me about a situation regarding another teacher. And immediately, their brain tells them, kind of as they’re listening to the details of the story, their brain thinks, “Gosh, now I have to address this, I have to decide how to handle this.”

Now, the teacher didn’t really ask the principal directly to do or not do something or make a decision, but your brain projects that onto the story and what your brain makes it mean is now I have to make a decision, I’m going to have to take action, I need to decide how to handle this.

So I want to just point this out because it’s important for you to stop and notice when you’ve been asked specifically to make a decision versus when your brain jumps to the conclusion that you have to make a decision. Because sometimes a teacher will come to you and maybe it’s a little tattle, like they’re telling on somebody else.

Somebody else came late to work today, or somebody else left early or didn’t get to yard duty on time or whatever they’re saying to you. Sometimes your brain is like, “Oh my gosh, I totally have to handle this. I need to speak up to that person and find out what’s going on.”

But really, is that true? Is your brain just telling you you have to do that, or can you listen to it and then perhaps monitor the situation and if further action is needed, you deal with it then? You see what I’m saying? So be aware that sometimes you believe that you have a decision to make and action to take, but it’s coming from your brain, not somebody’s request that you make a decision.

So oftentimes, we get stuck in this first stage of decision making because we listen to all the chatter. If a decision is easy, we make it, we move on, we don’t give it second thought and we don’t give it a lot of time and energy.

But when we believe a decision is complex or challenging or big, we allow it to confuse us, we allow it to cloud our clarity. We buy into all of the chatter inside of our brains and we go into this pros and cons and we start looking outside of ourselves to get other people’s opinions.

So now you don’t only have your chatter in your brain, now you’ve got everybody else’s chatter in your brain, which feels more confusing. Have you ever tried to make a decision about a purchase and you’re like, what do you think and what did you decide and what’s your experience and do you have one of these and did you try it?

Well, my best friend’s brother’s sister’s wife had that car and she said blah blah blah, right? You get into everybody else’s heads, and then all of a sudden you feel like I can’t make a decision. Why? Because you’ve clouded it. You’ve added chatter to your own chatter. And you haven’t just decided to value your opinion over the chatter of other people.

I have to be explicit about this because so many times as leaders, we want to run our decisions through somebody else or have somebody else help us or have a mentor, and there’s nothing wrong with that except when it causes you not to believe that you have the ability to make your own decisions.

So we get stuck in indecision. And this is where we feel the most comfort is in stage one because we are in anticipation of future pain based on the result of the decision that we’re going to make. And the more we think about it and all the potential pain that could come up based on whatever decision we go, the more likely we are to stay in indecision.

And here is what’s so fascinating about this. Indecision happens because of our fear of being potentially exposed to experiencing negative consequences, but it keeps us in stage one of the decision-making process, which is painful in and of itself.

Indecision feels terrible. And as much as you try to ignore that you have to make the decision or you procrastinate it, you just keep that cycle open in your mind. I call this open cycle. The more open cycles you have going on, the more indecisions you have spinning around in your brain and your body, the more you will not want to decide.

It’s almost like you get pulled into the decision-making process and you mull it over, over, and over again, sometimes it feels like it’s against your will. You’re like, I don’t want to think about this anymore, but because you haven’t made a decision, your brain has to go back and process it again and again and again.

And the only way you can get out of that discomfort without making the decision is to distract yourself by thinking about other things. But in the end, it comes back to your mind and then you feel another wave of emotions wash over you all over again when the thoughts come back.

The other thing we do to avoid the discomfort of stage one is we try to rush through the decision. Because we don’t like the feeling of indecision, we want to make the decision as quickly as possible with as little effort as possible, and then we don’t have to sit in that indecision.

And trust me, I know I’ve done this plenty of times. But the problem I see with this kind of hasty decision making is that we are far less likely to make an aligned decision, which then makes it even less likely that we fully own all of the consequences of the decision.

So let’s say you were asked to make a decision about which online platform your school is going to choose for remote learning this coming year, and your brain might be saying on one hand it might be saying, well, why does it matter? Let’s just pick one so we can get to planning lessons because we need to get to the planning and preparing part.

Or in that moment, your brain might be thinking like, someone else should really be making this decision at a district level, why are you asking me? Let’s just pick it and move on. This isn’t my decision. I’m just going to pick one and get past it.

So what happens is in either case, you’re thinking let’s just get this done and move on because something else is more important, my time is more valuable over here, I need to be thinking and doing this task versus spending time on this decision.

Sometimes that works, but many times, when we rush through a decision without processing the potential outcomes of it, we end up making the decision and then kind of getting bit in the backside because we didn’t process fully that decision.

So we choose one, we move on, and then the nice part is you rush through the discomfort of having to make the decision and going through the decision-making process, but then on the other side of it, you have to feel the discomfort of what happens when difficulties start happening.

Let’s say there’s technical difficulties and the staff is asking you why you chose this platform, and you can’t really say because you didn’t take the time to make a strong decision, or they’re saying hey, can you help us fix this and you don’t know because you haven’t researched the platform itself.

Just thinking about that gives me goosebumps. I don’t want to be in that situation. So either way, you’re going to feel discomfort, whether you do it on the frontend or the backend. But what happens is that when you don’t fully own a decision in the beginning, in the decision-making process, then on the other side, when there’s consequences to it, your brain is going to want to blame and deflect.

It’s going to say, why is this my problem? I shouldn’t have been the one to make this decision anyway, and you will not want to own all of the consequences that came with that rash decision. Or if you do decide to own them, you’re going to have to deal with that discomfort of slowing down and going back and sorting through the platform and figuring out customer service and solutions so you’ll feel the discomfort there.

Do you see this? I hope I’m making sense to you. I know it’s complex in the sense of like, it feels like lots of layers, but it really comes down to this. Stage one is before the decision. This is where we get caught up. We make a lot of mind chatter and a lot of drama, my coach calls it mind drama, when we have a big decision to make.

So you either can slow down through this process, make the decision intentionally versus reacting to it or rushing through it, and fully aligning to what your decision is. Or you can get out of that discomfort quickly, either abdicate the decision or defer it to somebody else, or you can rush through it or you can avoid it for long periods of time and feel discomfort in indecision.

But eventually, you get to stage two, and that is making the decision. And the best part about stage two is that it’s the easiest and it’s the quickest stage because decisions are made in an instant. We think we need to time to process our decisions, but really, we make decisions instantly.

Our brain tries to convince us that it’s easier to make the decision later, like it’ll say let me think about it, let me get back to this later. But really, what’s happening is that you’re just delaying the decision that you already know the answer to. And the reason we want more time to think about a decision is because we hope we will feel better about making the decision at some point in our future. That’s what we really want.

We want to feel good about our decision no matter what. We want to talk ourselves in or out of a decision. But delaying a decision clutters your mind and takes you away from that ability to make an empowered decision and move forward.

Successful people give themselves a limited time to process a decision beforehand. They make decisions efficiently and then they don’t go back and change their minds or spend a lot of time questioning the decision. That’s terrible too, when you constantly look back and question your decision and re-decide or change your mind or you’re 20/20 hindsight, you’re thinking you should have done something differently.

That’s what less successful people do. They take a long time to make decisions, they change their mind often, and that leaves them at the starting line spinning. This is why empowered decision making is one of the best skills that I teach my clients.

And the key in this stage is to ask yourself, do I like my reason for making this decision? Is this decision aligned with the results you’re trying to create? Is the thinking behind the decision aligned with that result that you want? You have to explore this. You have to know what you want as a result from this decision that you’re making before you make it.

That is what empowered decision making is all about. This is how the before process is helpful to you. You process it within a given amount of time, you ask yourself what decision you’re going to make, you value your own opinion, and you align that decision with your values.

You basically say do I like my reason for making this decision, my opinion matters, yes, it’s aligned, there, done. Then you get into stage three. When I’m helping a client process a big decision that they’ve finally come to, at the conclusion of that decision, I invite them to just sit for a minute with the feelings that come with having made a decision.

Making a decision feels good. It’s important to allow yourself to feel those positive vibes. Acknowledge that you have done the work of making a decision and feel the relief that comes with a decision having been made. And hey, it feels especially good when we love our reason for the decision, and we think that the outcomes of the decision are going to have a positive impact on us or others.

So if you make a decision that feels like a win-win, it’s going to be great for you, it’s going to be great for your staff, great for your kids, you are on cloud nine. You’re feeling like, wow, we worked through this, we made the decision, it feels really aligned, I like my reason, I’m good. Let yourself feel that. It feels amazing to be out of indecision.

Now remember, the reason we make decisions the way that we do is usually based on the way it’s going to make us feel or the way we believe it will make other people feel. So when we think others are going to feel good or that we’re going to feel good, we feel great about our decisions.

But even when we do make a decision that we know could have some potentially uncomfortable outcomes, when the decision is made from a place of alignment and you like your reason for that decision, that decision still feels good in terms of feeling really true for you.

For example, when you make the decision to apologize for something that you’ve done or said, you know that in owning your mistake, you might experience some guilt or shame or embarrassment or maybe regret during the action of apologizing.

But the decision to apologize still feels right and true for you. Either way, you take a moment to acknowledge yourself for having the courage to go through the decision-making process and actually making the decision. So many people let decisions forever stay in indecision. So honor that with yourself.

Then, after we’ve done that, we have to stay true to that decision and fully own it. Now, this doesn’t mean that you don’t ever make a new decision. It doesn’t mean you dig your heels in blindly and not ever make new decisions. It does mean that you don’t blame other people or the situation or things outside of you, or you don’t abdicate the ownership of that decision.

You don’t look back, you don’t question it, you don’t wish you decided something else in hindsight. You don’t constantly change your mind in reaction to new situations simply to avoid negative emotion. We make a decision, we get feedback, and people lash out at us and then now we have to change our mind, we have to decide.

And really what’s happening, you’re just trying to dance around feeling bad or having people be upset with you. No, you own the decisions. If they feel aligned to you, and if you like your reasoning for them, then you stay in that ownership and you also own the consequences and outcomes and you move forward through the challenges that you might have to face as part of that decision.

So for example, if you’re seeking your first tenure as a school leader and then you’re offered two positions in two different districts, you’re going to have to decide which position to take. The result of your decision will be that you need to deal with the outcomes of your decision and go all in on the challenges of the district you decide.

You consciously remind yourself; I chose this position and this district and now I’m going to own the challenges that come my way while I’m in this position. You don’t blame the district, you don’t look back and beat yourself up for that decision and wish you’d gone to the other district, or you don’t quit midyear just because you decide to change your mind. I mean, you could, please don’t do that to your district.

But an empowered decision is about not abdicating that responsibility or spending time worrying about how much life would be better if only you’d decided to take the other job. Don’t green grass yourself. Stick with your decision, have your own back, honor your decision, and just follow it through until there’s that moment where it’s time to make a new decision.

The ability to fully own our decisions is a scary proposition. But the truth is that we have to own them whether we decide to own them or not, whether we energetically own them or not. When you think about past decisions that you’ve made, you own the result of those decisions in the sense that you have to deal with the outcomes of those choices.

So you can decide to own them and feel a sense of control, or you can blame and deflect to other people or other situations and feel like you’re the victim of those decisions, which completely disempowers you. Owning your decisions doesn’t always feel comfortable, but it does feel empowering.

Not owning them doesn’t feel comfortable and you feel like you’re not in control. You disempower yourself. So you’re going to feel discomfort either way. I encourage you to go the empowered route.

If you are ready to decide that having a coach to help you through this year’s challenges is the best solution for you, then I want you to decide right now and make the decision. Schedule a free consult call right now and don’t look back.

As a client of mine, you aren’t just exposed to these concepts through the podcast. We’re going to walk the walk; we’re going to talk the talk week by week. You don’t have to go through this year alone. You’re going to decide, commit, and reap the benefits of an empowered career and a lifestyle for a lifetime.

This is the year, if ever there were a year to learn how to manage your emotions and your stress, this is the year. Let’s do this. Go have an empowered week. I’ll talk to you guys next week. Take 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.