Ep #417: Personal Empowerment Over the Holidays

Hello, empowered principals. Welcome to episode 417.

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.

Well, hello, my empowered principles. Happy Tuesday. Welcome to the podcast. And happy holidays. Wherever you are in the world, I’m wishing you a beautiful holiday season. Whatever holiday you celebrate, it can be personal, it can be global. Whatever holidays you are celebrating this time of year, I just want to wish you the happiest and loveliest of holiday seasons.

As you know, this podcast is intended not just for school leadership, but for life leadership. This is a life and leadership coaching podcast. So today we’re going to talk about how to embrace your personal empowerment over the holidays. This is a stressful topic for many people, and I want to offer this. It’s quick, short, sweet, but it will give you some things to consider as you’re preparing and planning for the holiday season. So, a couple of topics that tend to come up for individuals this time of year are, number one, all of the pressures of the holidays. You are working full-time, you are leading a school, there’s a million celebrations going on at your school, and then your kid’s school, and then you have all of the personal obligations and responsibilities and festivities of the holiday season.

So it can feel like a lot of pressure when you are working full-time, if you are a parent, if you are a spouse, if you have an extended family that does a lot of celebrating, or your community or your church, any place of worship does some kind of celebration over this time of year. A lot of the time, there is extra contributions in terms of charity or donation work, helping those in need. There’s a lot of ask on us. There’s a lot of requests for our time, attention, effort, energy, and focus, and it can feel extremely overwhelming. There can be a lot of pressure. So, I want to offer you kind of a little process that you might be able to use to ensure that you actually have fun over the holidays and that the holiday things themselves don’t become the problem, okay?

So, I think back to my own days of school leadership and things that I felt were pressure points in the holidays were greeting cards, sending out hundreds of greeting cards to everybody I’ve ever known, family, friends, acquaintances, colleagues. I loved to do them, but it was so much work, and they felt like a lot of pressure. Another thing: so many gifts. Did I give everybody I know a gift? My neighbors, my family, my friends, Alex’s friends, friends of friends. It just felt like I was, colleagues. I wanted to gift everybody.

Gifting is my love language and it became pressure, and I would feel so badly if I accidentally forgot somebody or missed something. So gifts became pressure. Parties… they were both fun and pressure. So I would host a holiday celebration in my personal home for my staff, or we would have it out depending on the situation and the year, but there were a couple of years where I did have it at my own house just for ease and cost-effectiveness to not have to rent out a place or a hall. And it was both fun and stressful.

So, notice if you have a lot of parties, celebrations going on. Decorations can be stressful. My sister and I were talking about this where she has this big, beautiful, historic house. It’s four stories tall. You could decorate for miles and days on end in that home. It could be a winter wonderland, should you want it, Santa’s workshop kind of a thing. And she said it no longer became fun when you had to take it down, and it just took so much time and effort. We were talking about how decorations can even be a chore and another pressure on top of working full-time and leading all the parties, all the festivities, doing the cards, getting the gifts. Then there’s hosting. If you’re cooking or cleaning or you’re hosting people, that can be another pressure. Those are just things off the top of my head. I’m sure there are other pressures in your mind that you personally have dealt with before.

So whatever pressure comes from the actual holiday time, the holiday season, just consider, first of all, go through your list of things to do, your holiday things to do, and say, “Do I love this? Does this make me feel good? Do I want to do it? Is it a pleasure? And does it add value? Does it add pleasure to my life? Does it add a memory? Do I love the greeting card process? Do I want to send out 200 greeting cards for the holidays?” If you answer yes, you love doing it, you don’t mind the time, you don’t mind the effort, you don’t mind licking and sticking and stamping and mailing and you don’t mind all of that stuff, by all means, say yes to yourself if it brings you pleasure. If it does not bring you pleasure, say, “No, thank you.” Send out an email. Don’t send anything. You don’t have to do it. Did you know that?

Now, Step One is to go through your list. Anything that doesn’t feel good, say, “No, thank you.” Now, you’re going to go through your list and you’re going to be like, “Oh gosh, I would love to cross off this, this, and this. I’m not going to host. I’m just going to have it catered in at school. We’re not doing a holiday party, we’re just going to do a holiday lunch.” Great. Done. Ask PTO for some funds, get some money, get it catered in. We had family members who owned restaurants and they were more than happy to donate food for staff celebrations. It was so beautiful. I loved it. It was so fun. So think of creative ways to take things off your plate.

And then when you go through the list, there are things you would say to yourself, “I would love to cross this off my to-do list. I don’t like this. It’s a lot of pressure. I would rather not. I’m tired. I want to relax on my holidays with the week off or the two weeks off that you have, but I feel like I can’t.” And when you hit that little milestone, what you have to ask yourself is, why do I believe that I have to? And this is where you self-coach. Why do I believe I have to? What’s making me feel obligated? If I didn’t have to, what would I choose instead? What would I choose to do with my time, my energy, my life during the holidays? How would I want to celebrate? Get to know yourself better. Who am I? What do I love about the holidays? What brings me pleasure? What memories do I love to create and what am I happy to let go of? And then work towards saying no to that or to adjusting it to making it somewhat better. Even 10% better can be a big relief.

If it’s difficult for you to say no to things, try one teeny tiny no. See how empowering it feels to say no to one thing over the holidays that you don’t want to do. Maybe decline a party or maybe send out electronic greeting cards versus paper ones. Or again, maybe downsizing the number of celebrations or the amount of decorating. Just a 10% reduction can make you feel amazing.

Part two of this: navigating family events, dinners, conversations. Politics have been really intense this past few years. So if you are planning to attend a family event, ask yourself why. What is my intention for attending this event? Do I want to attend it? Do I desire to attend it? Even though I know it might not be perfect or I know there will be conversations that I need to navigate or emotions that I need to internally regulate, do I want to go? Why? Do I want to connect? Are there people I really want to see? Do I desire this? Do I want this for my kids? Do I want my spouse to have a connection with his family?

So we’re going to the in-laws. Whatever it is, why are you going? Are you going for connection because you desire it, because you want to create these memories? You want your kids to create memories? It might be fun. You want to go? Or is it, “I hate going. I don’t want to go. I can feel it in my body. It’s an absolute stop. I don’t want to go. It’s obligation, pressure from the family. You’re expected to attend without your consent. There’s family dynamics that you don’t want to deal with.” Again, get in tune with yourself. What is triggering you and why? How do you want to feel?

And if you’re going to decide to attend because you do want to attend, but you’re nervous around navigating the discomfort and the differences of personalities, difference of opinions, you can still set an intention for yourself and create some internal calmness, some internal tethering, I like to say, so that you are still enjoying yourself as much as possible.

So, how do you want to feel? With whom do you want to connect while you are at this family event? What do you want to connect over with those loved ones that you desire to see? So what is it about them you want to know, learn, catch up on? What do you have in common that you could ground yourself in conversation to keep things pleasant and feeling light, love, connection, those kinds of things? What kind of conversations also interest you? So what are you interested in about the other person? What would you like to know about them? And then also, what are some topics you would like to bring up and connect with your loved ones, okay?

So even with all of that pre-planning, there still can be some stressful moments. So you want to prep yourself in advance for that, too, right? What are your standards of engagement? What are the standards by which you want to present yourself? Who do I want to be coming into my family? Because I know for me, I can get sucked into old patterns of behavior, old ways of thinking, old ways of reacting, from facial expressions to mannerisms to shutting down to pouting. I can go into very childlike behaviors, and I don’t want to do that. It can be hard with your family of origin because they trigger you back into a space and time when you were much younger. So what are your standards for yourself of engagement? And what are your boundaries? What do you plan to do if a standard has been violated? So let’s say somebody starts attacking you verbally about politics, or they start gossiping about other people, and you choose not to engage in gossip.

What is your plan if someone starts to gossip or someone starts to bring up politics, trying to poke the bear within you to get you to react and respond and engage? What is your plan? And where do you draw the line? Where you just say, “No, thank you,” and shut them down? Or is there a point at which you would have to take your family and leave? Just think about this in advance so that you can be prepared and you’re thinking about it with your prefrontal cortex versus thinking about it when you’re in fight or flight and you’ve already been triggered. And if you know things are going to be a little intense, you can set a time limit on how much time you spend there, okay?

So think about things, how you’re going to handle comments, things about your weight, your look, being present, what you brought, what you didn’t bring, your personal status, your professional status. People who like to poke at you, if there’s somebody in the family who does that, notice in advance what triggers you personally and what triggers you emotionally and why. Do the self-coaching work. This is preparing yourself, doing that internal work, knowing yourself in advance. You’re not trying to avoid it or shove it down or just suck it up. You want to be aware of it and have what is called a gray rock response.

So a gray rock response is just a flat line response that’s short, sweet, but it’s neutral, and it doesn’t give a lot of ammo for them to get you engaged in a tug-of-war conversation. So, here are a couple of phrases that can just shut down some kind of triggering comments. So, “Hey, Angela, looks like you’ve gained some weight this year.” “Maybe.” Dead, right? It just stops. “Maybe I have.” It just stops. I just say, “Maybe.” “You look so tired. That job must be too much for you.” “Maybe.” I love this word. “Maybe. Maybe. Maybe you’re right.” Just, it doesn’t engage at all, right?

The other thing that I say when people are making snide comments, “Nice of you to come this year,” because I used to live in California and come home. You know, some people might say like, “Well, so nice to see you. So nice for you to be here this year.” “Thank you.” “Thank you. It’s nice to be here.” I love this. “Thank you.” I say thank you to just about everything because what can they say back to that? They just look at you like you’re a little bit off, and you’re like, “Maybe.”

So, another comment, maybe like you’re traveling for the holidays, so you didn’t bring green bean casserole, or you didn’t bring the turkey. Everyone else did the hosting and the cooking and they’re going to let you know how much work they put into the red carpet event for you. You know, they’ll say like, “Well, we went to all this work for you,” or like, “It took us hours to decorate,” or, “You know, every time you come home, everybody goes crazy.” “Thank you. I appreciate that. I appreciate the work. I can see the house is beautiful. The turkey smells amazing. Thank you.” Boom. And you don’t even have to go into all the things that I just said. You could literally say, “Thank you. Thank you.”

When you gray rock respond, there’s very little room to pull you in because what they want is a tug-of-war. So just keep your intention in mind, focus on being in the energy that you want to be in the room. So what kind of energy do you want to cultivate in that room? Be the leader of that. Be the energy. Be the love, the light, be the funny person, be the excited, the eager, the enthusiastic person, be engaged, be interested, be interesting. Be that person whether or not people like it. Be you because you want to be you. You want to be that version of you.

And people are either going to meet you at that energy and things are going to go so much better than they have in the past years or your past experience with them, and they rise to the occasion because they just, they don’t even understand that energetically they’re matching you because it’s attracting them in. They like it. They like that there’s not conflict. Or you will have people who are resentful and resisting because they internally just can’t handle light, love, enthusiasm, and they want that argument because they think it makes them feel better, when inside you know that’s personal for them. They’re struggling internally and they’re projecting it externally.

So, with that said, happiest of holidays. Celebrate. Be the version of you that you want. Say yes to what you want, no to what you don’t. Practice it. I know it can be challenging at first, but it’s so liberating, it’s so freeing, and it’s so empowering. Have a beautiful holiday season. I love you all. 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.