Ep #400: How to Take Relentless Responsibility When Leadership Tests You

Hello, empowered principals. Welcome to episode 400. 

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.

Hello, my empowered principals. Welcome to the podcast. Happy Tuesday and welcome to episode 400. 400 episodes. What an accomplishment and celebration. That is literally over 7.5 years of weekly episodes of The Empowered Principal® Podcast.

What this podcast has taught me is that you truly cannot fail if you simply don’t give up. Keep going. Keep recording. Keep learning. Keep growing. Keep coaching. Keep diving in. Keep expanding yourself. Keep celebrating. Keep in gratitude. Just keep on. Just keep on.

And I want to invite each and every one of you to take this on as well. Keep going. Keep showing up. Keep planning. Keep failing. Keep trying. Keep playing. Keep resting. Keep taking action. Keep on, my friends, keep on. You’re on the right path. You are doing amazing things. You are being enough. Just keep on.

So cheers to 400 episodes. I want to take a moment to shout out to all of my clients, my past clients, my current clients, and hey, my future clients out there. And to all of those who have ever been a guest on the podcast, thank you so much for your brilliance and your wisdom and the opportunity to get to know you and speak with you and have you on the show. Thank you to all who’ve had me on their podcast. I really enjoy and appreciate expanding this work out into the world.

To my amazing team at Digital Freedom Productions, they are incredible. Pavel, Angela, Devon, Megan, and the rest of the team at DFP, I want to thank you from the very bottom of my heart. You’ve allowed me to produce this podcast during the highs and the lows of my business, and I am eternally grateful for the honor of working with you. Genuinely, truly, I thank you from the bottom of my heart.

And so as it is, this podcast, the 400th episode of The Empowered Principal® Podcast, I am taking a risk. I am taking a bold move. I am sharing something very raw, very vulnerable. And we’re going to dive in to relentless responsibility. Last week I mentioned this on the podcast and this week we’re going to dive deeper into it.

So I’m going to share with you a very personal story that feels very scary and vulnerable to share in such a public space, but it is an authentic demonstration of what relentless responsibility looks and feels like.

So for those of you who don’t know, I am very recently divorced. And while many of the details of this last three years of my life are very sensitive in nature, what I feel I can share is that the moment of separation for me came out of the blue.

In that moment, I was unaware and it caught me by surprise. I was in complete shock and devastation. And in that moment, I was left with nothing to comfort me. There was no escaping the shock, the pain, the emotional experience of the decisions and actions that somebody else in my life took, somebody I love, somebody I trusted, somebody I believed in, somebody I thought I was going to spend the rest of my life with, somebody that I felt so safe, so comfortable with.

And I had to face the reality of what had unfolded in my life, in my home, in my family, in my marriage. My brain wanted so badly to blame. My heart wanted to push away the pain. I wanted to be a victim of the circumstances. I wanted to blame. I wanted to abdicate. I wanted to accuse other people of their wrongdoings, of their faults, of their humanness. I was in so much pain.

But I also knew because I’m a coach, that I had the strength to feel and process any emotions that come up for me, just as I talk about on this podcast. I had the tools, I had the skills, and I had the capacity to acknowledge and process emotions head on. I knew the difference between clean pain and dirty pain, and that while I was experiencing clean pain, I was also furthering my suffering with thoughts, by perseverating on situations, by looking backwards, by re-imagining, by thinking back, trying to figure out what happened and when it happened and why, and getting caught up in the details and in the behaviors and the actions, and why didn’t I see this and how come this and how come that? It was relentless. My desire for blame and abdication and victimness, that urge was so strong.

But because I was intellectually aware that it was possible to navigate through this, because I’ve seen people navigate through grief in many forms, I knew that I could work through this. The hardest part of this work over the last few years of my life was that I knew through Byron Katie that there is truth in everything.

Was I right? Yes. Was I wrong? Yes. Was I good? Yes. Was I bad? Yes. Did I do good things? Yes. Did I do bad things? Yes. It’s all yes. There is truth in everything. Was I a great partner? Yes. Was I a terrible partner? Yes.

My perspective and his perspective were both true. So instead of leaning into the story of blame and victimhood, I decided that through this pain, through this experience, I was going to take relentless responsibility for myself, for my emotions, for my emotional experience, for my actions, for my words, for my behavior in past, present, and future.

I was going to take responsibility for the outcome of this marriage, its impact on my family, my son, myself, my in-laws, my own family, the friend group we had, the life we had, everything. The financial situation that ended up occurring, it just was a moment of pure truth to lean into taking responsibility for all of the things that impacted my life, my business, and the outcomes that came from this very unfortunate situation.

I’ll tell you this, you guys, I’m not even clearly on the other side of it. I’m towards the other side of it. I’m more than halfway through, but I am so freaking proud of myself for choosing the path of empowerment and alignment to sit here with you today, to coach my clients, to record this podcast in integrity, in alignment with what I teach and what I practice in my life, and to be put to the ultimate test. To have to stand in that empowerment and stand in the truth of what I teach and how I practice coaching and practice living my life and using these tools and strategies, I had to be relentless in my practice, in my belief in myself, in my trust.

I had to choose to be relentless in my response to this situation, to look and listen for all the perspectives, to acknowledge and own my part, even though it hurt like hell. I had to take a moment to separate my actions from his actions, my words from his interpretation of my words, his actions from my interpretation of his actions. I had to take ownership of all of that, of the past situation, the current situation, and a decision to take ownership of my future situation.

And this did not come with ease. It did not come with grace. I have experienced the most alignment of my life and I still have days of victimness and blame and abdication and anger.

Now, some of you may be saying, some of you who are listening might be thinking, wow, especially of those of you who may know more details of my situation than I feel that I’m allowed to share or comfortable with sharing. People might hear this story in its detailed form and think, “But you were the victim. It wasn’t you. He chose this. He did those things. He did his part. It wasn’t you. You are the victim in this. How are you to take responsibility for something that someone else did, especially relentless responsibility?”

And here’s the answer. You can’t. You can’t take responsibility for his thoughts, his feelings, his behaviors, his decisions, his actions. I couldn’t do that. I wanted to do that. If I had a magic wand and I could have controlled his thoughts and feelings and behaviors and actions, oh boy, would I have.

I can only take responsibility for my part, my thoughts, my feelings, my actions, my behaviors, my decisions. And doing that is so hard. It’s emotionally so painful. We want to self-protect. We want to justify ourselves. We want to be the good guy. We want to be the victim because it abdicates us from the responsibility of relentless responsibility. We get to avoid ownership and the feelings that come with responsibility and ownership. It’s tough. Emotional maturity, maturity at all levels is tough. Taking responsibility and ownership and stepping into maturity, not easy.

Our brain says, “Why do I always have to be the most responsible one? Why do I have to take responsibility? Why not them? Why do the teachers get to blame and complain and I have to be the one who’s always the most responsible person in the room? Why me?” You hear the voice. It’s the little kid in us. “Why me? Why do I have to take the blame? Why do I have to take ownership? Why do I have to take responsibility? I want to be the victim. I want to get the love. I want to get the TLC. I want to get the coddling.”

I’m going to talk more about this next week on the podcast, the difference between responsibility and ownership. I do see a difference between the two, but I will say that when you are experiencing an outcome in your life that you do not want, you do not anticipate, or you didn’t wish for. So maybe you got fired, or maybe you got a sanction on your credentials or your administrative license. Maybe somebody blasted you on social media or in the local newspaper in the commentary section, or maybe something has happened in your personal life, or maybe the test scores tanked.

And you’re like, “Well, I didn’t take the test. The kids took the test. I didn’t teach. The teachers taught.” It’s very, very easy when a situation occurs that is external to believe that our experience of the situation can be blamed on somebody else or something else. It was the curriculum, it was the pacing guides, it was the district office, it was the test, it was the kids, it was the families, it was the weather. Everything else happened. We just had the worst technology those days.

It’s very easy to believe that all of those external things are true. And here’s the truth. Both are true. We have ownership and other people have ownership. There are things outside of our ownership and things within. It is so hard not to get sucked into victimhood, especially when the aftermath of the initial situation continues to present aftershock after aftershock, and there’s so much more cleanup that needs to happen. It’s like when a natural disaster occurs, there’s the moment of crisis where there’s a flood or there’s a fire or there’s a tornado or there’s an earthquake, something catastrophic is happening in real time. And we’re watching it in real time, and we feel so helpless. And the people get out or the people don’t get out. It’s just horrible. 

And there’s the initial incident, and then there’s the aftershocks, there’s the aftermath, and you learn more and you learn more after the fact, and it goes deeper into, “Whoa, I had no idea this,” or “I had no idea this was coming that,” or, “We should have been informed this,” or, “I should have known this,” or, “I should have been more aware.”

And then all of the mind drama pops up after the fact. And what I have observed in myself, that blaming and feeling victim to a situation is a phase of growth and of healing and of expansion. It’s not that we want to eradicate it. It’s just a phase of it. And the key is how quickly do we lean into that phase and to feel it and to experience it and to move on from it.

Just as grief has been explained in stages, expansion, your evolution goes through stages. When an identity quake occurs and something rattles you to your bones, and what you thought life was going to be, or you thought your career was going to be, or you thought the experiences that you were going to have been rattled, you go through shock, denial, anger, blame, frustration, depression, oh my gosh, sadness, all of the feels before you get to any form of acceptance.

And just as with a loss from death, when you go through a divorce or you go through something so painful, it is socially acceptable for you to feel all the feels and to take time and space for healing. Now, people have kind of a limit on what they tolerate. It’s like, “Gosh, your mom died three months ago, aren’t you over it?” or, “Man, that divorce was like, wasn’t that a while ago? I mean, I know you had a long separation before you actually got the divorce finalized, but gee, aren’t you moving on?” Like, people will say that because they can’t handle it. They can’t tolerate your process, your feelings.

So it is acceptable to have a period of grief and loss and healing. And this understanding from other people, that understanding, that compassion, that coddling, that loving, that acceptance of where we are can provide us so much relief. And it is so needed, particularly in the clean pain when it initially happens. But it can also become a crutch if we begin to rely on it, and we begin to want it and crave it. And that’s how we get attention and affection and love.

I found myself stronger in the beginning when the initial quake happened because I had to show up for myself and my clients and my family. I had to just go through the motions of survival during the moments of what I felt was thrust upon me. And I was in that survival mode for around two years, just trying to keep up, just trying to show up, putting a happy smile on in the surface, right, in the public, and then feeling all the feels behind the scenes.

And as more and more information was revealed to me, I saw the depth of the impact on every aspect of my life and how far back this situation was brewing. I never saw it coming. That was on me, not him. I felt so defeated, so betrayed, so lost, so, so very sad.

And as I leaned into that and people were like, “Oh, you need time and you space and you poor thing,” hopelessness started to creep in. I started to wonder, how was I ever going to recover? How would I ever rebuild? How was I ever going to heal? How was I ever going to bounce back from the damage that was created in my life, the pain that I felt? How would I ever trust again?

I went down these rabbit holes of the worst-case scenarios, starting to believe I was never going to recover. I was never going to rebuild. I was never going to come back from this. That this moment of my life, the lowest moment, was it. That’s all the possibility. That’s all of my potential tapped out.

And then I realized through my coach, I am a coach. I am a life coach, and I have a life coach. I have a business coach. I have a life coach. I have all the coaches. I believe in the power of coaching and in personal empowerment. I knew there had to be a way to recover from this. I’ve witnessed it in other people, other things that feel more devastating than what I’ve been through. The loss of a child, the tragic moments that have happened in recent times in people’s families being torn apart in your children being swept away in monumental floods. There’s tragedy out there, and we do this. We kind of compare tragedies. “Oh, mine wasn’t as bad as theirs, so I shouldn’t feel bad,” or, “Oh, mine was way worse. Look at me. Look how bad I have it,” or, “Look how bad they have it.” We get caught up in the pain and the stories and the drama around tragedy. We’re drawn to it like a moth to a flame. But if we’re not careful, we get sucked in, and boom, we get burned. We’re in it.

I was also very aware that for every day I sat in disbelief and discontent and depression and sadness and blame and abdicating was a day that I was giving away to the possibility and the ability to rebuild myself, to rebuild my belief in me, to build up my trust again, to strengthen myself, to empower myself again.

Setbacks are not what prevent us from succeeding. They are the opportunity to build strength to succeed. What prevents us from succeeding at any level, at school, at home, in life, is our ability to experience a setback and to recover from it, to lean into the emotional experience of a setback and to feel all of it, and to take relentless responsibility of the situation, of our actions, of our emotions, of our thoughts, of where we are spinning as soon as we possibly can to take responsibility back.

There is a moment of grief, a moment of shock. You will go through the process of shock and surprise and pain and anger and for all of those frustration feelings, the helplessness, the depression, the sadness, the grieving, all of it. But how quickly can we experience that and bounce back and return and take ownership once again? People who are wildly successful, they don’t feel any less. They don’t avoid pain or feel any less pain. They’re just not afraid to feel more, to lean more into the experience, to learn more from it, to allow their emotional muscles to grow. They go to the gym, they feel the burn, and they get back at it. They don’t stop going to the emotional boot camp class. They might rest for a day or a two or a week, and they go back again and again for the rest of their lives.

It is a lifestyle to be emotionally mature, to take relentless responsibility. It is a lifestyle choice. Some choose it, some don’t.

Everyone goes through very difficult challenges, the things that bring you to your knees and make you question your capacity to recover and rebuild your life. There are things that are going to make you doubt yourself and others that test your faith and your patience, my friends. Things that will test your ability to trust yourself, to trust others again, and to keep going.

The way to align back to your empowerment when you’ve taken a hit, when you’ve had a setback is to take relentless responsibility for your experience of it, to take responsibility for recovering and rebuilding, to take responsibility for loving yourself through the hard stuff, to be gentle and to hold yourself responsible, to take responsibility for your part in having created it and in your part of rebuilding from it.

I promise you guys, this is one of the toughest things that we do as humans. But it is the true path to empowerment. It’s the most empowering thing I’ve been through. And I can say at this point, at this stage of the game here, I am grateful it happened. I can’t believe it happened sometimes, but I’m grateful for it. I have never been in more pain. I have never also been in more empowerment.

I feel this is truly the perfect episode to celebrate the 400th show of The Empowered Principal® Podcast, the empowered school leader. Embracing this practice, it literally has set me free.

And if you are wondering how you do this, “But how do I do this? What action do I take to embody this? How do I stand in relentless responsibility?” Join EPC. Do it right now. Decide. Join. Let’s go. You sign up for coaching and you give yourself the gift of mentorship. Life is not easy. School leadership, it’s not easy. And I don’t know a person who does life or who does leadership completely alone. There’s no way.

You’re not a leader by yourself. You’ve got so many levels of support. You’ve even got this podcast. I can’t imagine not having a coach in my life. And I invite you into the experience and the power of coaching, and you can experience this through EPC, the Empowered Principal Collaborative. We are evolving schools, evolving school leaders, one thought at a time, one week at a time, one thing at a time.

Next week, I’ll dive into the difference between ownership and responsibility and how you can leverage your empowerment in these two ways. But there is a difference between listening to the podcast and implementing the content, the concepts, and the work of this podcast. I could not sit here today and record this podcast if I hadn’t been through what I’d been through and if I hadn’t shown up for myself and my clients and my life and my son and my business and my family the way that I did.

I was tested as a leader. “Oh, you want to teach leadership? Let’s lead your life. Oh, you need a little bit more? Here you go. Oh, you think you’re that? Try this.” I got tested and tested and tested, and my bridge is strong, and I’m ready to go. Are you?

Join EPC. Let’s go. Have an amazing week. I love you all fiercely. Go be empowered. Go be relentless in your responsibilities this school year. I love you. Take good care. Bye.

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.