Ep #209: Goodbye 2021, Hello 2022

Hello empowered principals. Welcome to episode 209.

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.

Well hello my empowered leaders. Happy Tuesday. I have a little confession to make. When I recorded last week’s episode, I thought that episode was dropping at the end of the calendar year. As I was looking through my podcast outlines, I realized hey I’m missing a Tuesday here in December.

So this little bonus episode is for you. It’s actually a really good one. It’s going to be short and sweet. We’re going to close out 2021 quickly, and then we’re going to say hello to 2022. I’m going to share with you all of the amazingness that is happening with my clients and students of the Empowered Principal Mastermind and the Empowered Principal one-on-one coaching programs. You have to join in. So I’m here to share with you all the goodness.

So let’s start with saying goodbye to 2021. It’s the end of the year. You’re in the middle of your break, and it’s been a long year. Let’s just put it that way, right? We thought 2021 was going to be amazing. I will say in so many ways it was, and also in so many ways it wasn’t.

So when you’re closing out 2021, I want you thinking about first of all, what are you glad you’re saying goodbye to? What about 2021 are you done with, are you over, are you happy you can say sayonara, I’m done with this. What is it that you are grateful for that is no longer going to be a part of life because it’s ending in 2021? With that, you want to start by kind of saying, “Hey I’m kind of glad this year’s over in these ways.”

Then I want you to go back and say, “But here are the things I did enjoy about 2021.” Your brain might offer you this was a horrible year. This was no good. This was worse than last year. It’s going to tell you all the bad things because our brains, for some reason, like to go to this all or none thinking. This all or none space.

But if you slow yourself down, what you’ll notice is you did have moments of joy and happiness and satisfaction and contentment. We have to remind our brain and remind ourselves that the year wasn’t an all or none situation. It wasn’t all horrible and it wasn’t all happy. We did have some good times along with the hard times. 2021 was 50/50, just like 2020 and just like 2022 will be.

So I want you to really notice. What did you like about 2021? What did you not like about it? What do you wish was different? What were you surprised about in a good way? Really just notice that the year offered us an interesting way to feel balance and to notice it. So you want to just look for the balance in it all.

Now after you do that, I want you think a bout what is going to continue being the same? Because there’s a lot of life that really isn’t going to change. So what are you still going to have to deal with on the daily? Laundry, commutes, traffic, student behaviors, parents, drop off, dismissal, your own children. Most of our daily lives aren’t going to change at all, especially not significantly, as a result of the calendar switching over to the new year.

But with that said, the calendar switching over to the new year does invite us to make a decision or think about the changes that we want to make. The changes we desire to have our in lives. The outcomes, the goals, the achievements, the accomplishments. There are things that your heart and your mind crave and desire to have that you haven’t yet achieved or you don’t yet have. Or that you want to change.

It might be something physical. A lot of people do weight loss, right, or they want to get stronger and fitter. Other people want to be more spiritual and be more connected. Other people want to build up relationships. Some people want to be more career driven, more professionally focused. Other people want to be more personally focused. There’s always something in our life that we’re striving for.

So one of the ways I think about my life in general and my goals is that I have a goal that I’ve already accomplished. There is always something in my life I have already accomplished. There is always something in my life that I haven’t yet accomplished.

So I have to sit in the balance of having the success that I’ve already achieved and really acknowledging that and appreciating myself for the work I’ve done to be where I’m at. There will always be a part of me that is striving for something I haven’t yet achieved, a goal that I haven’t yet met. I’m kind of aching or yearning or wanting or desiring a next level goal. That is the balance of our lives. We have and we want.

So look at what you want to change. The fun part about a new calendar year like New Year’s Eve, New Year’s Day, all of that. What do they call them? Oh resolutions. The new year’s resolutions that people create for themselves. The reason people do that is the calendar year invites us to reflect on the past and invites us, which is even more fun, to think about our future and what’s possible for the future. So we get our head into the space of future possibility.

I’m going to be talking a lot about future possibility throughout the month of January as we’re doing our midyear reboot. So for school leaders, for teachers, educators out there, the calendar year switching over is actually our midyear reboot. So as a calendar year for the school, you’re in the middle of the year. So I’m doing a midyear reboot for school leaders who want to jump in, start coaching now, and create the results that they really want in their profession and their life through mentoring and coaching.

So when you think about your future, you get into this energetic emotional space of hope, excitement, possibility, achievement, accomplishment, satisfaction, fulfillment. When you’re there, that is the space in which you create the momentum to actually have achieved all that you want. So what I want to leave you with is you have full control over your future. What’s possible for you this coming year is based on what you believe is possible.

For my clients and students of the mastermind, we are using 2022 to lean into the belief that it’s possible for us to have it all. The best career, work-life balance, making a lot of money, way more money than you ever thought possible. Looking at our physical status. How can we be the most physically, mentally, and emotionally fit person that we know? Being the best version of ourself. Blowing our own mind as to what’s possible for ourselves and our lives. We want to be connected to a higher purpose. That means trusting in ourselves and other people and the process of coaching.

We are committing in the year 2022 to being fully alive. Living our life to the fullest in all the areas of our lives, professionally and personally. My group of clients and students in the mastermind, we are on the cutting edge of changing the way that principals lead and live.

These days where the expectation is that principals should be overworking and staying in overwhelm and always stressed out and chronic fatigue and chronic stress and chronic anxiety and never feeling good enough. Never feeling productive enough. Never feeling effective enough. Those days are ending with this coaching practice that we are offering to all of you. We are up leveling our belief in what is possible for our contribution as a school leader and in the experiences that we want to have in our lives.

So if you want this journey, if you want to be on this journey and you want to come with us, you have to sign up for coaching. Learning how to manage your thoughts to generate exceptional results in your life, having more time, having more money, making a greater contribution, having better relationships, having work-life balance, having time for self-care. All of it is simply done through coaching.

So join us. Come along with us. Join the growing community of empowered principals by giving yourself the gift in 2021 of life and leadership coaching. That’s what I offer. You simply jump on a call with me. We talk about what it is you want to achieve, and I help you get there. It’s as simple as that.

Okay. Let me talk to you quickly about the focus for January. So the midyear reboot is all about reassessing, reflecting, and reimagining what is possible for your future. So we’re going to prepare ourselves for this midyear reboot by talking about what is already working. We what to focus on the things we do well. What is working. What we know how to do. What we can accomplish. What we already have accomplished. What’s so easy for us.

We think that everything’s so hard, but it’s  because we’re not paying attention to the thing that are easy. So where are aligned? Where are we not? What’s working? What’s not? We’re going to work on all of that. The goal is not to continue changing your goal.

So when you have a goal and you set it and it’s big and it looks hard  and it’s scary and you’ve never done it before and you don’t know how, your brain is going to want to change the goal. It’s going to want to make it easier. It’s going to want to diminish it and say like, “I don’t really need to make that much money. I don’t really need that much personal time.” Because it wants you to not fail. It doesn’t want you to feel the disappointment of going 100% all in on a goal and then not achieving it.

But as you know, when you strive for a big goal even if you make it to 90%, that’s 90% more than you would be at if you hadn’t tried. This year is about getting clear with ourselves what is already working, what goals do we really want, and let’s get deep down honest about those goals.

We have desires within ourself that we don’t express even to ourselves, let alone other people. Because deep down we don’t believe that we are able to have it. Either we don’t feel worthy enough, we don’t feel capable enough. We think it’s for other people but not for us. We don’t think we could handle it is we actually had it. Like if someone wrote you a check for a million dollars, what would you do with it? Do you even know? Do you have a plan?

If you were going to make more money as a school leader, what would you do with that money? Do you know what you would do? Do you have a plan? If you had a lot more time after school, what would you do with that time? Have you thought about it? Have you planned? You want to get into your future thinking about what I would do if I had tons of time, tons of money, tons of resource. If my life was exactly how I would want it, who am I? How would I show up? This is what we’re working on in the Empowered Principal program.

Okay so the focus in January is going to be the midyear reboot. We are going to reflect and reassess and reimagine what’s possible for ourselves for the rest of this school year and going into next year. I want you dreaming and scheming over this holiday break about what you deeply truly want and getting really honest with yourself.

So join us on the coaching journey, and here’s what we’re going to cover in January. These are going to be the podcasts coming up that will give you more insight, more detail on how to get these results that you want for your life. Are you ready? Here we go.

Step one, prepping for the midyear reboot. Step two, not being afraid of numbers. Step there, the balance of and. Step four, future possibility. There it is. Step five, we’re going to decide ahead of time. I’m going to teach you these step by step through the coaching process, through the podcast. You will be the end of this school year have a different life. You will be experiencing your leadership life and your personal life in a different way than you are right now.

It starts by planting the seed of imagination and really being honest with yourself about how good can life get?  How big of an impact as a school leader can I make? What do I think isn’t possible but I would love to achieve it? What would blow my mind? What would blow other people’s mind? You’ve got to let yourself go to that space.

So I invite you to dream, to imagine, to explore possibility. To look at your future and to believe that you are the sole creator of that future. Your past doesn’t determine it. Today does not determine it. Your parents, your superintendent. Nobody else gets to control and have power over your future except for you. Merry Christmas. Happy holidays. Happy all of the celebrations throughout the month of December. May you be well. May you have an amazing New Year’s Eve, New Years Day. Happy new year. Talk to you soon. Bye.

If this podcast resonates with you, you have to sign up for the Empowered Principal coaching program. It’s my exclusive one to one coaching and mentorship program for school leaders who believe in possibility. This program is designed for principals who are hungry for the fastest transformation in the industry. If you want to create the best connections, impact, and legacy for yourself and your school, the Empowered Principal program was designed for you. Join me at angelakellycoaching.com/work-dash-with-me to learn more. I’d love to support you in becoming an empowered school leader.

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